 move to adopt the agenda as amended. Is there a second on that? I see seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, we say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I see unanimous consent to that. Next item on our agenda is the adoption of the minutes. And I believe we got these today. Did we get them today? Maybe when I open. Last week. Last week. OK, very good. I'm slow. So I take a motion on the adoption of the minutes. So moved. Is there a second on that? Second. I see a second by Councilor Carpenter. Is there any discussion on the acceptance of that? I see none. So all in favor of adopting the minutes from the May 23rd meeting, please say or indicate aye. Aye. Any opposed? I see none. They have been adopted as drafted. We are on public forum. And our practice is to allow public forum now. It is also to allow public forum during the agenda item. And there is one substantive item on the agenda, which is an update from the police commission and a discussion then of that update. And the way that we would do the public comment is we'd hear from the commission, in this case, co-chair Seguino. And then we'd open this up to counselors and then open it back to the public. And then we'll make that moving the process back and forth. Just ask us to be cognizant of time. And with that, I open the public forum to anybody would like to speak knowing what I just said. I see you, Amy. Well, can you do you do this? Yeah, really good. OK, cool. So just a couple. And if you can identify yourself, even though you have signed in, please. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Amy. I'll ask you for one. I've been involved with people with accountability, about item number seven, working focus. Yeah, I know that this will be part of the agenda for later. But I just wanted to share my thoughts on it now, as folks go into it later. So I understand that mistakes happen. And my mantra is always to be really compassionate to people, but be ruthless with systems. So I don't want anybody to take my comments personally, like ask your neighbor. But I also want to set us on the record. So if we use the first three meetings of this process, those data points, I wouldn't follow this process anywhere close to rigorous public input so far. Meetings happen in conflict with NPA meetings that we're specifically focused on public safety. Also, please submit your meetings. These have been posted on the Supreme Court forum. And as we all noted today, there was confusion over time and place of this meeting. I communicated to people on Monday different times of basis. So yeah, when I asked where we stood on this process at the beginning of May during the city council public forum, I was told that it was really hard to schedule meetings and it was harder than I expected. So and I know during the first meeting, Councilor Carpenter suggested that we really scheduled months out, which I appreciated. So I'm curious where we stand on this. Sounds like we're going to be scheduled those later. When are they? We put them on front porch forum too. Where do we stand on the public facing website? That will close the process. And then my last thing is I just want to echo that I've been at these meetings for the past three meetings. And I think my concern is that we're going to take a while, this discovery phase, and not get to the phase of the work where we start articulating draft structures and opinions. And as Councilor Hightower has said, that's really where the work can be engaged with us. September's going to come up really, really fast. So now that we're free to begin, I'm really hoping that by the end of tonight's meeting, there could be a pretty clear timeline of when this committee is meeting. And can there be a timeline, a date put to, like when there will be draft language or when there will be draft structure that the community will then be able to react to? So those are some aspirations of most. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else? Yeah, my name's Dave Marr. I just regular guy lives in Ward 4. There's Bob City. Since the last meeting, I've reviewed the past proposals for improved police oversight. I saw some things I liked, some things that I didn't. I like the idea of having the police commission involved in whatever sort of process they come up with here. And they should probably be the core of it, I think. Think about it. Seems redundant to have a police commission, but another separate body that oversees the police. I mean, that's the police commission's charter. So she's going to be the core. I think the police chief should be involved. The mayor should be involved. Again, that's their charter, the HR director of the city, and perhaps some additional citizens from the city just to make it more broad-based. Make sure it's inclusive. There are some things I didn't like. And some of the proposals, one of them would give priority to criminals and people with drug problems to be on whatever oversight committee we end up with. Seems to me, we don't want people on the committee oversight committee who have an axe to grind. We want to have this an oversight committee or group or whatever you call it that works in harmony with the police, allows us to continue to rebuild the police force and further reduce criminal activity in the city. Thank you. Thank you. This is somebody online. We have Farid as their address. Thank you. Farid. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. My name is Farid. I live in Ward 5. I want to ask a question, which is what I've been trying to find out about this information, which is, under the current disciplinary process, historically, how many cases have there been where an officer's discipline and then they appealed to the commission for that disciplinary decision? I wanted to know how many cases have there been? Has it reached that step? And also, how many cases have there actually end up being in arbitration, which is the final ultimate step under the current disciplinary process? I can't get straight information about it. I don't think that's published anywhere. I don't know if any of the counselors know. So that's something that I would really like to know. And also, I want to speak in support of making the charter change so that the disciplinary process for the police department mirrors that of the fire department in which the fire commission is there. And about the city council ultimately has the decision of whether the discipline and what kind of discipline would a member of the department be. You want to look at the charter. I believe it's under section 190 and forward. So it would be great if we could have that sort of democratic control of city council be responsible for disciplinary decision. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope that we can get some of that information, not in the commission report, then shortly there after. I see the chief is here. And so there is something that we might need in terms of information that we can't get, that we can get that shortly there after. Is there anybody else not seeing the gun lines? So you were very helpful and you don't see anybody who's. I know. OK, well, then I will close the public forum and move us to an update from the police commission and discussion of that, which will include city counselors and the public. We'll give it back and forth. And welcome, commission co-chair Stephanie Sigrino. Nice to have you here. I understand you've got a comprehensive report for us. Why did you start it? Great. First of all, I want to thank members of the joint community for having me here for the opportunity to share the commission's perspective. My task was to discuss with you what is working with regard to civilian oversight thus far and what's not working under our current authority. And we will be advancing some specific recommendations but this sort of lays the groundwork and gives you a bit more information about the work we've done and where some of the rough spots are, if you will. And just to let you know that the comments I'm sharing with you reflect the input from current commissioners as well as recent past commissioners. So I broadly interviewed all of the commissioners to put this report together. I sent it to Commissioner Travers just before this meeting. And I assume you will share it with the rest of you. It is sort of detailed, my apologies, but that's what it's going to be. But you don't have to take notes because you will have a written copy of this. So I wanted to start out with what is working well with the commission. Let me say that I am now the longest-serving member of the commission. I've been on the commission almost three years. We recently lost a couple of commissioners that have been on for some time. And so their input into this was also very helpful. I think that most importantly, what is working well is the distance we've come in the last three years for the commission to become an independent review body. And there are several aspects of that. One is the hiring of a staff person. The second is that meetings have been moved outside of BPD to City Hall. Both of these, especially this, is important for citizens to understand that there's an arm's length relationship. We are also fortunate enough to be funded for independent legal counsel, important because the city attorney has a conflict of interest in that they represent the police department, not necessarily complaints from the city for complaints. We recently were able to mount a SharePoint site for document sharing. And it's been huge in terms of our internal process and the work that we've been doing to help the city. And it's been huge in terms of our internal process. And as a result of that, we also have a much more organized complaint process that are able to track complaints more comprehensively than in the past. And finally, we have an excellent working relationship on the commission. I think we've begun to develop an understanding of our role and work very cohesively together. So, and I want to just emphasize that these are important changes. This is a slow process of building an institution and it takes time to do that. And so we are continuing to put together, put in place processes and policies for ourselves that manage our work better. Let me talk about what is not working well. And with some thoughts about where there might be some remedies, although as I said, we're going to supply the committee with more detailed suggestions for remedies of the future. First of all is access to information. The commission continues to face impediments to unfettered access to materials that BPD uses in its investigations, which the commission also needs to perform its oversight role. I'm happy to elaborate on any of these afterwards, but I'm just going to sort of lay them out if you can come back to me if you want more details. Second of all is a really important issue and it actually speaks to Fareed's question and that is due process for officers. Currently, the structure is such that the commission both advises on discipline and is the body that carries grievances with regard to discipline imposed by the chief. And so officer grievances on discipline in our region be heard by a different body than the commission. And there are numerous alternatives, HR, Public Safety Committee, the city council, for example, as Fareed was suggesting. My understanding from talking to former commissioners is that for years there have not been grievances brought to the commission. There was one last year and that was the first one in years that it brought to the commission. So our role in grievances is actually relatively in frequent one. And for that reason, I think it's that task that should be outsourced, if you will, to a different entity. Third issue is the workload. The things have changed dramatically on the commission. We review now all use and force videos, complaints, work on policies, community outreach, and we're all working, have full-time jobs. And so really this workload is unsustainable. I myself probably put in 20 and 30 hours a week working on the commission. And so what the commission has proposed in the past to the Public Safety Committee and will want to reiterate is that it would be important to create the position of a monitor. I have attached a draft job description to the document that I sent you all to give you a sense of what the monitor would do. The expertise of a monitor would also improve the commission's practices and procedures. And this is because many commissioners come on the commission with absolutely no experience with regard to police oversight. And having a monitor who has that deep experience can really provide us more guidance than we have now with the limited training that we've been able to get from Naples. More than the longest of my comments here regards the complaint process. I think there are many things that need to be revised about this process. Just to remind you all in August of 2020, I think that's the right, yeah. Chief Neeraj, is that 2021 or 2020 that the complaint policy was adopted? It was the agreement between the Department of Commission was 2020. 2020, okay. And so I think it was a good start, but the practice of reviewing and providing oversight on complaints really has taught us a lot. And so I'll just share some thoughts. First of all, the timeline of closed complaints as far too long leads to a lot of disappointment and frustration from complaints and the process needs to be streamlined. That is something that the monitor could help for reasons I'd be happy to explain to you. A general comment from the commissioners that the commission should have more voice in the disposition of the complaints. Currently the commission's role in results of officers regardless of the stipulation of union contracts. The next issue with regard to complaints is that the commission should be able to speak publicly about complaints, including discussing patterns of complaints. So for example, we're seeing a lot of complaints now with regard to insufficient de-escalation and complaints about dispatch. So the point would be for the commission to have the ability to speak in general terms at least about these complaints and the patterns that they're seeing in oversight. Next, the current process is set up in a way that leaves complainants feeling frustrated and unheard. A remedy for this is complaints to come directly to the commission with the possibility of closeout meetings for high level complaints, such as abusive authority, for example, that include a member of the police commissions, police commission and complaints that are low level. So minor complaints about failure to respond to a call for example, or maybe something even more minor than that could be useful. But there are other mechanisms actually to deal with that. And so for example, New Orleans has a mediation policy. And I think that, you know, what is essential here is we want to help rebuild trust between the community and the police department. We want there to be a feeling that there is accountability and that citizens feel heard about their complaints. And many of the complaints are in fact minor, but they nevertheless, even the minor complaints erode trust in the police department if there isn't a sufficient response. And an email to a complainant that the complaint is exonerated, there will be no further action, isn't really satisfying to many complaints. I think they feel very unheard. So this is a possibility of something to explore. Next on the list is that currently the chief determines the level of the complaint, low, medium or high level, rather than the commission. And on that basis, the chief makes the decision about which complaints to investigate. In theory, high level complaints are investigated and lower level complaints are not investigated. But we have had issues with regard to designation of complaints as low, mid and high level. We've had one serious complaint of excessive use of force that the chief felt was a low level complaint and declined to investigate. And a remedy for this is that the commission have the authority to determine whether a complaint is low, mid or high level and accordingly decide on whether or not to investigate. Next, let me talk about just the whole issue, the general issue here of the focus on discipline. I realized that a lot of the public dissent has been around and debate has been around discipline who has the final authority on discipline and so forth. But as I've mentioned, we actually have very few cases in which the commission would even be moved to issue recommendations with regard to disciplining officers. A lot of it is about, as I said, training, supervision and so forth. And so what happens is that the current complaint process really ignores the role that oversight can play in helping BPD become a learning organization. And I think that's really where the commission wants to see us go. And that is the, and so the commission's focus has been on providing its perspective on how BPD can do better and to move us in that direction. The department could be required to conduct a post-incident analysis on how things could have been done differently and submit this report to the commission after every incident review. Moreover, in some instances, and I think this is why this is important, is that in some instances no policy is violated or there may be incidents in which something is not even covered by policy. In those cases, there still can be learning from looking at the incident and figuring out how it might have been done better. And so the question really is, I think at the end of every incident, what is the learning here? How can the police department do better with regard to meeting the needs of the community? And this could be part of the closeout of complaints with complainants, is sharing what the police department learned from the incident. And in fact, there have been recent incidents in which the chief has met with complainants and done something of this sort, we think it should be memorialized as a practice and again, to sort of centralize the role of the importance of the department being a learning organization. That's all I have to say about complaints right now, the complaint process. Let me talk about the commission's role in policymaking. The commission's role in policymaking, in my view and that of the commission, should be memorialized in our authority. Currently the commission is consulted when BPD revises policies. Any ordinance should make it clear, however, that the commission can itself initiate policy revisions and independently seek stakeholder input on policy revisions. With regard to data analysis, currently the commission does not have the resources to independently analyze data. It relies on the city data analyst to present an annual report on traffic stops, use of force and arrests. This is prepared in consultation with the chief. As a result, this isn't an arms length analysis, nor is it independent. Embremity is for the commission to have input into the types of analysis included in reports, including analyzing use of force, stop seizures, searches and so forth and other issues in the data related to community and police interactions. Further, there are other areas of analysis that would be useful to inform the commission's work and a remedy for this is the commission to have independent data analysis resources. With regard to the composition of the commission, this too I know has been a subject of great discussion. The extent to which we want to weigh in on this at this point is that regardless of the method for appointing commissioners, the process should consider the needs of the commission in terms of expertise and experience. Currently, commissioners are appointed without reference to the needs of the team, i.e. the commission. And a remedy for this is that the commission be consulted in advance of appointing new commissioners to identify the skills and experience needed to support the commission's work. Next on the list is use of force incidents. The commission currently reviews use of force incidents and that's all. We are mistakenly portrayed therefore as having approved uses of force because we have reviewed a synopsis of the incident and videos. The commission should be able not only to review all incidents of use of force for policy violations, but should also be able to initiate investigations and make recommendations regarding training and or discipline as warranted. With regard to the commission's role in reviewing officer training, the commission currently does not have the resources to initiate reviews of training, nor has BPD given access to the information required to conduct such reviews. A remedy is for the commission to have the information required to conduct such reviews and have the resources to hire outside consultants to review the quality of BPD trainings. There may be other ways to review them other than outside consultant, but nevertheless, there should be a role for the commission in being able to do and assess the quality of trainings. With regard to investigations, currently the commission has no authority to conduct its own investigations. The commission receives heavily redacted investigative reports and may comment on their inadequacies in lacuna, but the chief has not required to address those recommendations. There are three remedies here. First, the commission should have the authority to review investigations for thoroughness, consistency and accuracy, as recommended by CNA, rather than the chief serving as the final authority on the facts of an investigation. Second, the commission should have the authority to conduct investigations if BPD declines to do so with resources in its budget to conduct external investigations. And third, the commission should have direct control and authority over an automatic external investigation whenever an officer uses a weapon to charge as a firearm or to charge as a taser. With regard to hiring and promotions, currently the commission has no role in hiring and promotions. The commission, however, it would be beneficial for the commission to sit on hiring and promotion committees and in so doing, the commission could help to improve interview questions. Audits. In addition to reviewing complaints and uses of force, the commission should have the authority to conduct audits. And that is really looking for systemic patterns in the data on various topics. As I said, such as de-escalation, but many other types of audits would be useful. Once the commission completes its audits, it should have the authority to make formal recommendation of policy reforms to the mayor, the police chief and the city council with the findings of audits made public. The commission relationship with the city council. The commission is appointed by the city council and currently interacts via the public safety committee. That said, there should be broader lines of communication, including for the commission to have the discretion to report complaints and commission findings directly to the city council. Secure funding. For the commission to be free from political manipulation that could weaken it, its funding should be both secure and sufficiently robust. It's possible, and I'm not suggesting this is the case now, but it's possible for a hostile administration to deprive the commission of its ability to perform its duties by cutting its funding. One way to insulate the commission from cuts to funding from politically unpopular decisions is for its budget to be tied to a fixed percentage of the police department's non-capital budget. So in other words, as the number of officers increases, the amount of oversight increases and the budget would increase to accommodate the oversight role of the commission. Finally, not finally, next to the last one, the commission role in oversight of non-sworn officers and professional personnel. The commission's role right now in providing, I should say not right now, but the commission's role in providing oversight of non-sworn officers and professional personnel, so CSOs, CSLs, and members of the CARES team should be made explicit. I think we are reviewing complaints about CSOs, but with the rolling out of this alternative public safety system, the interface between the commission and CSLs and the CARES unit should really be made more explicit. Finally, this is finally community engagement. This aspect of the commission's work has not been fully developed in part due to time constraints. Nevertheless, it's an important part of building trust between the community and BPD and we may have some more specific suggestions with regard to that when we come back to you. Our goal is to vet a variety of recommendations amongst commissioners to bring a motion to the police commission at its June 27th meeting, assuming that passes, we would then share those recommendations with the joint committee. Let me just close by saying that an overarching issue in the public debate has been the question of who has final authority over discipline and the resolution of complaints more generally. As noted by the mayor and his 2021 memo, there needs to be checks and balances and at the end of June, the commission will provide the joint committee with recommendations on how to achieve this. As we work to define the authority in police oversight, it should be understood that a weak civilian review board is worse than no civilian review board because it gives the illusion of independent accountability but actually provides little to no accountability. Further, it can lead to an increase in community resentment as residents turn to the commission to seek redress yet find very little. Ultimately, what the community wants and is articulated via the Talitha report and many public conversations is meaningful oversight coupled with the willingness on the part of BPD to acknowledge when mistakes have been made and a commitment to do better. The commission can play an important role in identifying where policing actions could be improved and be an important interface with the community but for this role to be impactful, Burlington requires a police department that accepts civilian oversight and is also a willing partner in this work. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Actually, Stephanie, before, is there a way that you can run down or summarize the job description of the monitor? Yeah, sure. Please, thank you. Absolutely. Just so the large cities have monitors that are full-time because commissioners may not be full-time. And I'm sorry, where is the written in the report? I forwarded it. I received it from commissioners to go in up before the meeting. It should be in your email now. I also just saw folks now send it to Joe and to Kim to publish online for the public. Thanks. And for the public and for the people here, we are printing out all of the documents that we're posting. There are two notebooks here. So as we continue to post things, we will print them out and add them to the paper records so that people can read them. Thank you. Okay. So there are several things we've identified in this, in this particular job description. Monitors in some cities have much broader authority. So one role for the monitor would be to receive, review, catalog and track citizen and internally generated complaints. That is a huge time-sink for commissioners and it takes away from our ability to do many other things, including research on policies that would be useful. The monitor, the reviewer, sometimes called an independent reviewer or monitor would monitor the complaint investigations to ensure the review is complete, thorough and complies with any existing police procedures and so forth. So they would be a direct interface with the police department in the conduct of investigations, monitoring them, providing input on where they think additional testimony is required and so forth. The reviewer would identify any inefficient and unlawful police operations via whether it's the use of force videos that we see or through the complaint process of review of incidents and the review of the report on complaints to the commission and participate in executive sessions. That experience is really helpful to the commission because again, the work that we do just requires, even with three years on this, I continue to find myself learning a great deal and with new commissioners, it's really important to have someone there that has a longer term memory and the expertise to help integrate new commissioners and the reviewer or the monitor can provide guidance on best practices for investigation of complaints and analyze and verify reporting trends, for example. So this is just, I'm just briefly summarizing that's a little bit more detailed. So those are the kinds of tasks that the monitor would take on. Thank you. I would open the floor for joint committee member questions, comments, then go to a counselor grant if she would like as city counselors and then go to the public. So I seek counselor Shannon, welcome home. By the way. Thank you. Thank you for all of that work. And I think that the, what I like about the idea of monitor is that it brings professionalism to the process that I think is the challenge we have with the idea of citizen oversight is as the commissioners currently experiencing, the volume of work and the expertise required to do that is beyond your average citizen can provide and beyond a reasonable ask, because it is a job. But on the other hand, I have thought a lot about what are we trying to oversee? What are we trying to oversee? And if we're talking about 26 sworn officers on patrol, which I would think is the primary target of discipline, that's where, you know, those are the folks that are having the most interaction, probably in the most challenging environments with the public. What you're asking for seems to be a tremendous amount of resources for this task. And wouldn't it be better to have a system like that that is and also more objective to have a system like that outside of the city, to have something like that at a state or regional level where you have somebody who is monitoring and not wanting to be a department, but many police departments. How can we, do you see a different, do you see the resources you are, I mean, it really sounds like a lot of resources to me. And as you say, in most of these places, we're not even talking about discipline, about, you know, how do we do things better? What do you think of the idea of doing something like this more regionally than locally? What is the advantage of doing it just at the local level? And there was one other thing you had said about the state police began disclosing complaints and disposition regardless of union contracts. CNA said that other cities do that. Vermont State Police, there was two separate statements. Vermont State Police is making complaints and they just disclosed a complaint. CNA recommended that as well and said that there are numerous cities that do that regardless of the stipulations of the union contract. Don't you have to order a new contract? I'm just telling you what CNA said. I'm not in a position to explore the legal recommendations of that but I'm just sharing what CNA said. And it's recommendations. Okay. With regard to, yeah. Okay. So Burlington receives something like 50, 55 complaints a year. That's actually similar to Boulder, Colorado which also has its own monitor. So you said Boulder? That's right. They have a full time monitor. We're not just monitoring the 26 officers available for duty but also their supervisors, the leadership of the organization, the policies, the CSOs. And so there are numerous things to monitor. If you look at, NACL has an interesting website in which they provide information about all of the civilian oversight boards across the country. And if you, I happen to look at Tucson, for example, you can look at the funding for all of these. And if we put Tucson and Burlington on a per capita basis Tucson is spending far more than we are currently. So I totally, someone who cares about money and expenditures and keeping them appropriately low. I also appreciate that it does require more funding to do this than is currently available. I think that the risk the city faces in terms of lawsuits, for example, in police operations not being conducted well is very costly. And a monitor is relatively cheap compared to the cost of lawsuits, for example. But so I would just say that I can't really react to the notion of regional or county wide monitor. That's, perhaps an idea that you'd like to explore but I can say that civilian oversight bodies of our size and with our number of complaints have monitors. And it could be that this person is part time, right? It may very well that be that you can combine it with some other activities. I'm not suggesting that the person necessarily needs to be full time. I think actually when we originally drafted this, we thought that this might be three days a week. Who would be the overseer here? A good question. I think that one would look into that in other cities see how, who their monitors report to. Are you all done? Great. Sarah? Just a couple, what type of background would you expect the monitor to implement? Sure. So for example, there's a person who is familiar with police investigations. People that have, for example, worked for the Human Rights Commission doing investigations, that kind of person. Okay. It wouldn't necessarily need to be a lawyer. Right? It may certainly click well be but the lawyers are expensive. And so, you know, you might be able to hire persons that have- I'm just sort of asking that in the vein of, you know, not full time. Are there tapes of people out there that you could contract? Well, I think school departments do that for child abuse and I was just trying to grab it. The other question I want to ask is maybe it's too much for tonight. There was quite a bit of work done last year with the public safety community and a draft from the city attorney on support and changes. And I don't know if that's what you're gonna get to at the end of the month, but I'm just pretty curious where you're at with that or your reaction to that. You know, is that a starting place for us or are we more likely to get a starting place for what you're gonna present to us at the end of the month? I think the starting place is the city council resolution of October, 2021. And we're then gonna move forward from that. Okay. Are you finished? Tim, do you have any questions? No. You don't. Ben? Sure. And I see that councilor Hightower has joined us. So I don't know if you've been, how long and what you heard, but we're now in the councilor comment if you're gonna need more time to orient Zariah by all means, not a problem. That is just meeting. I was one of the people that got confused. I was like, I had a meeting on my calendar and I can't find it. So maybe it was canceled with a special session. So I apologize, I'm gonna have to join you all in person. I love that. You are not alone in that confusion that we have blamed on various sources, but we will do our best to eliminate that going forward. So welcome. Thank you. Councilor Travers. Thank you. And Stephanie, thanks very much for being here. I'm sorry that our last meeting conflicted with your meeting. We'll make sure to not do that again, but obviously appreciate your being here and we had Commissioner Rao and Commissioner Oskie here at our first meeting. And so it was great to have them. This was incredibly helpful. And I think, well, councilor Hightower joined us just a moment ago. She's been an important voice at our last two meetings and sort of narrowing the scope of this committee's review to the end of our putting pen to paper eventually on some changes here. And I think that your report here, and I'm looking forward to the commission's additional suggestions, which I think we'll talk about our next meetings momentarily. I think we'll probably come in our next meeting based on the timeline that you just gave us. We'll be really helpful to the end of our narrowing the scope of the committee's review. I think just a couple of questions from my own end. So one of the things that I like to do is to go back into the charter itself and our ordinances and see sort of there, what is the directive of the police commission? I suspect, as you know, having been on that for eight years or so, our charter is pretty vague with respect to what the police commission's authority is, only vesting it really with the authority to hear disciplinary appeals. And then the authority to do basically whatever powers and responsibilities the city council provides it over the years. Now, I'm assuming that those sort of powers and responsibilities can be given by resolution, maybe an ordinance, but maybe I'm missing something. I don't really see anything on our ordinance that outlines the police commission's powers and responsibilities. So for the most part, it's what you all have developed over time over the last eight years. I know that the current administration is outlined sort of by executive order, some additional scope and responsibility, but can you just sort of speak to sort of looking at our existing charter, looking at our ordinances, sort of when you came into the police commission, sort of what you understood, the complete police commission's sort of clear authority to be at the moment. And I know that's a really loaded question, but perhaps sort of what the sort of clear, like black letter authority has been as compared to the space that the commission has sort of due to your colleagues great initiative carved out for itself. That's a great question. The complaint policy of 2020 really defined our role in terms of responding to complaints. And that role is advisory. If you look at civilian oversight models, there were three different types of oversight models. Ours would be considered a review or advisory model and that complaint process is consistent with that. There's also steps taken. And I think this was prior to when I joined the commission that the use of force incidents would be reported publicly to the commission. And we would review those, but there would be, there was no guidance on what that review would entail. With regard to policy, the practice had been that the police department would initiate policy revisions of its own directives. The commission would approve those or provide input into those. The, there were the CNA recommendation was that the commission also be able to initiate policy reviews and seek stakeholder input. Prior to that time, I think the perception was that if the commission approved a policy revision that was in itself stakeholder input, that's for serious, for certain areas like mental health, for example, where the commission doesn't necessarily have the expertise, you really do need stakeholder input to help shape those policies. I think the commission has, there's no place that this is explicitly laid out, but that the commission has the ability to comment on what they see as patterns in terms of complaints or practices and so forth, but that's not been memorialized. So it seems to me that there's some part of our work that we've been doing that is memorialized in various policies that were passed in 2020 and the city charter, but others that have been sort of implicit and that we have taken on, but for the commission to function well, those really need to be memorialized and made more explicit. I have three other questions, a couple which should be relatively quick. No, you do not need to rush. This is about substantive review, so just to be clear. So this may come after the commission next meet, it comes up with recommendations, but assuming the commission were to have some scope of authority as you've outlined it here, what are your thoughts on the current size of the commission and whether it's right sized or should be increased in size? When I looked at New Haven, for example, I think there are a civilian board of 15 as compared to the size of the commission right now. So what are your thoughts there? I think that seven is fine. I think that bigger than that becomes unwieldy for a lot of different reasons, for coordination reasons in particular. The only reason to expand it would be if you didn't have a monitor because we really, even with seven commissioners, we don't have enough of people's time to do the work that needs to get done. But I think that seven is actually a very manageable number. It provides for enough variety of points of view and really rich discussions and I'm not sure that expanding it beyond that would be helpful. And I think five would be too small. Okay. That's my opinion, I just should say. Yeah, no, that's fine. The commission, you know, I will actually ask if they would comment on that as well. Great. The resolution that the council passed in October of 2021 that you've referenced talked about potentially the possibility of setting up a second board, but for the most part, as I read it, focused on the police commission itself serving both in an investigative role as well as maintaining its position as an appellate body, which is why when I read the first draft of what the city attorney's office had put together, it put forward this concept of the police commission splitting itself up where three or four folks would be on the investigatory side of a complaint and the remainder of the commission would be left out of that process such that in the event there was a later appeal of that discipline that they would not be conflicted out of sitting in that role. Am I correct in assuming I know that you sort of cite back to that resolution as the foundation for what you all are thinking about right now, but it sounds like the commission may be of the mindset now that that doesn't make the most sense, that there should be, that we can't sort of split the commission up in that way, four, three, three, four, and do both of those roles, is that right? So right now I'm representing my opinion and some discussions, but not necessarily the commission stands on this. You know, going back to the issue that there's rarely a grievance, it means that if you were to set aside some commissioners to be available to hear grievance, you're essentially removing them from important work of the commission, increasing the workload of the remaining commissioners, but of greater concern to me is the politicization of the commission, jockeying for position about who hears investigations and who advises on disposition of complaints. So I think that's a fraught process. I think the assumption should be that anybody that's appointed commissioner has that role and that the grievance role, because it is so rare, could be outsourced to a different entity. So to confirm, sort of, I don't expect you to be able to speak on behalf of the whole commission here, but given your experience, I think your individual input here would be helpful. Let's assume that the police commission, as it is right now, is the commission that continues to have policy input, continues to review use of force incidents, continues to do potentially community outreach and so on and so forth. Do you then also view the commission as the investigatory body of those complaints and then a separate entity being set up to hear the rare grievance today, or would you expect that the investigations would be done by the independent monitor or some separate body, such that the commission, as it exists under the charter right now, would hold onto that appellate role? What are your thoughts there? Most of the investigations are conducted now by BPD and we've initiated a couple of investigations ourselves for a variety of reasons. But it seems to me that if you have a monitor that monitors BPD's investigations, then the commission wouldn't be conducting many of its own investigations. Again, that would be a relatively infrequent occurrence. Having the monitor, actually, I think is hugely important and useful in terms of confidence in the quality of the investigations, the objectivity of the investigations and so forth. So I think that would be really beneficial and again, it would then take away the burden on the commission to have to itself conduct a lot of investigations, but there may be circumstances in which it should have the authority to under certain circumstances to conduct them. But again, that would be infrequent. The last question that I had on my list here was that I know that in reviewing the draft ordinance that the city attorney's office put together previously and previous police commissions in response to that, there was some discussion around how the complaint process, as it stands right now as of 2020, really only focuses on external complaints from the community. And I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more to the extent there ever is or was an internal complaint from someone within the police department, what your thoughts are with respect to what the police commission's role would be with respect to an internal complaint, may differ from an external complaint. I already think the independent monitor in your mind is the entity that would be responsible in one form or another for overseeing, again, perhaps the police department's own investigation of an internal complaint. I wanna, I'd like to just say that I think that that's something we haven't dealt with extensively and haven't thought about extensively. I'd really want to think more deeply about that. The commission's sense is that it wants to be able to hear internal complaints. I think there's a sense that, once the commissioners and civilian oversight bodies in general, that they're not just for the community, but they're also there for officers. But we haven't really thought deeply about that process. At least to my knowledge, in the time I've been on the commission, we haven't received an internal complaint from officers. So I don't have any experience yet in how that would be handled or how we might wanna modify how that is currently handled. I will put that down as something that we should look into a bit more though. I just remember looking back to the commission's comments, sort of in that red line version of previous ordinance, I think there may have been some discussion around adding internal complaints to the process that the commission would have there. So that would, I would be curious to hear more about that. Okay. We have Chief Murat here. Just a point of information, the current agreement does include all complaints and DD-40 includes all complaints that includes complaints made by officers and includes complaints identified by the police staff and brought to the police commission. And just last week in executive session, we brought you just such a complaint commissioner. So the notion that there haven't been complaints brought from officers or that had risen from internal is not, it is a reliance. That's actually a good point. And that was an example of a case where we declined to comment because we feared that we might be, the discipline might be grieved and we waived any input into the discipline itself. Thanks for that correction. There have been a number of such. Okay. So we won't get into a back and forth but thank you for the point of clarification. And Joe's not here, so I don't know whether that policy is part of our documents. But DD-40 is the, memorializes that. Okay. So we can- Can you just ask us the agreement from August 2020? An agreement with the commission. So we should make sure that, if it is possible for you because I don't have it independently, I don't think to chief to descend it to- Leave, I've provided all those. Okay. I- They're also publicly available. Sure, it'd be much better for us not to be able to have to hunt for them. But if, I'm sorry if I've missed it previously but DD-40 is also there and that's an easy one for us to get. DD-40 is a very problematic directive that is one of the first orders of business and CNA reports for the commission. But right now it is a current governing document. That's what we're looking to. Is the all CNA in there too? So just to confirm what we have is sort of in our package of documents. We have, and Chief had provided some of these before, the 2022 citizen complaint process flow chart use of force flow chart. We do have a CNA assessment of BPD final report and we could add to the grouping DD-40 as well which is not a part of our agenda. I don't know that we have the complaint process that we've been discussing here from August of 2020 and if I missed that myself. No, I can either too. Yeah, so we will need to just get better in terms of the documents that we are posting as part of meetings so that they become part of the public record. Because everybody should have equal access for them. And we have a, the staff person in Joe Dempsey from the city attorney's office who does that work. So we just need a little bit of coordination. You have some, you have comments or questions? Just a quick question or a comment with an index would be wonderful. Do we have 472 pages today's meeting? If an index can be done in several ways. So if you could be so kind as to just maybe flesh out a little bit in an email, that would be great so that we can make this stuff user friendly and friendly for those who are not attorneys having to deal with all sorts of documents generally speaking or researchers. So that would be helpful in terms of some thought on that. And it's a great idea. Any other reflections or comments that you want to make, Councilor Dempsey? At this point, I did. Just the index. Okay, that's great. Before we get to the public comment on this sort of first round, Councilor Hightower or, and I'm gonna have to get some help here with that, or Councilor Grant, would you like the opportunity to ask some questions? And I would start with Councilor Hightower as a member of the committee first, if you would like. Okay, yep, you said that. Not, it is not a problem. Don't no need to apologize. Councilor Grant, is there something that you would like to ask or state before we turn to the public comment? I would like to say a couple of things. One, under the commission, of course, I think that leads to the last executive session regarding the commission, if I'm understanding, Mr. Spinoe correctly, recusing themselves regarding a complaint from the officer. The statement that the commission saw, I think the word that was just used was several of these complaints. That's not true in my experience of almost three years on the commission. That was just not something that I was seeing. And I just disagree with that. I do strongly agree with the concern over the total, but making everything that the commission did live with, I think this may be very upset at times because it shouldn't be a political issue. This should be about what's right and what's wrong for the residents of Burlington. The issue of expertise, you know, when I first joined the committee to review police and policy, maybe people lived with me and thought I was in a person with, quote unquote, expertise. I was somebody who cared, maybe I was somebody who cared about the community, city, I was someone who had personal experiences and I was also someone willing to learn. So I think we have to be very careful about in the future how we label what is considered to be expertise and how we decide we want to immobilize fire, because a big part of this is being willing to work, hard and being willing to step up. That's a lot of experience I would consider myself to be a subject matter expert now and oversight and accountability. And, you know, I have to go through this process and hope to continue to give more information. Really want to strongly agree with that. Mr. Stabiner, when we're talking about not focusing on just the officers, keep doing that. We have to focus on our community safety, all the individuals involved in community safety response system. And because we're changing what that means and I believe we are doing that for the better. Timeness is huge, time is huge. And as a commissioner, we've made mostly on paid work, the majority of tenure, it's really something that it's a big concern. So I think it should be put down as no, it's a big concern, which also leads back to the need for support, such as a monitor and having someone administrative. Objective, the police commission's objective, you know, a lot of the political team that have worked on this, a lot of this information that was to be given to those holidays, all of that was meant to make things seem non-objective. Commission is objective, but the problem is, as members of the commission, we weren't allowed to tell people, you know, there was misinformation that was being distributed, but we had to be very careful about what we were saying because we couldn't reveal things that had been said and talked about in an effective session. But I was probably one of the biggest frustrations that I had as a commissioner, knowing that this information and it's not even a couple of times just out now, why is it meant to do fear-mongering for the concept of oversight and accountability. And it's saying sometimes that in my bright answers from wanting to work, let's be a Burlington, it's very disturbing to me, and I think we have to be very, very mindful of that. We don't want to pile on to that misinformation during this process. And I think that, in regards to my notes, but to also, to Commissioner Seguino's point that other oversight bodies across the country aren't doing these things that we talk about. These things are not full of full experiments. That was something that was thrown about. Although there is no oversight body that is exactly the same because each community says, what is it that we need to hear, concepts or being done in other areas could be done here, especially if we claim that we really care about transparency because we hear that a lot, transparency, transparency, 20% for policing, 20% for policing, but then we're not actually doing the things that live up to those pillars and live up to transparency. Okay, thank you, Councillor Grant. For myself, I am looking forward to the particulars that you'll come back with from the next commission meeting. I have real concerns about the amount of work, the mixture, what I consider to be inherent conflicts of interest when you've got a single body that is doing auditing and reviewing and monitoring and investigations in discipline. I think it's exceedingly difficult and can create conflicts when the same people are being close to the department in terms of helping, even with a monitoring system and also being engaged in the discipline process. So I'm concerned about that, but I'm personally open to a model that has broad community consensus. So that's just the way where it is with that. And I do think that will be interested, I will be interested in seeing what the recommendations are in terms of, as Councillor Chavez was saying, both charter and ordinance recommendations. I think that there's some basic categories and you hit on all of them. And he asked my specific questions that were sort of festering, so nicely done. But I mean, so there are gonna be these choices that we've got based on all these categories and we'll see if we can hit a sweet spot of community consensus. And so I would hope that the commission will look at it in those different baskets and try as hard as you can to group all of the investigative slash disciplinary from the complaint and through the grievance, through appeals, all of that into the investigations of it into one set of recommendations. And then you're auditing and monitoring about the way that things are working to keep constant improvement and getting the flow of information as being a separate category. And if you decide that, whoa, we really do have too much and to then make recommendations and you have in terms of the monitor. So just be mindful of that. I think that that will be greatly helpful to us. And those are my comments right now. And so therefore, Sarah, and then I wanna turn it over. Maybe there's nobody left. I would give Councillors another round. Is this something that you... Well, I just wanna support what you said and cause I think it'll be important to quickly, but differentiate charter versus ordinance. And I, there's a ton of work to be done in ordinance and I personally don't think as much in charter and I find the charter somewhat inflexible. So I just kind of keeping those two hats on will be really important for your recommendations both in order to get input to go to voters. So I just think that the other thing, which I don't see as a major thing, but I really would be curious to understand the state police process, you know, and maybe we can invite somebody for a short explanation to us about that. So we can definitely free the commission from that responsibility to get our own, it is noted on that. And so with that, let us turn to members of the public here and then Fareed, I think is the one member of the public that is online. So, and it is perfectly fine if no member of the public would like to comment now about this presentation, but if you have comments, Dave. Yes, I have a question, if I may ask a question. Of course. Do we have succinct definitions as to what a low, medium and high level thing are? Those are defined in the union contract. I don't have the contract in front of me, but they are defined in the contract. But there are succinct definitions in the public. Thank you. I think that now that Joe is here, we can say that we should probably have the current union contract be part of the documents so that everybody can see. Because when one person says succinct, another one might see as being vague and ambiguous. So depending on how you look at it and what you're looking for. So let us try to get that document on. Is there any other points or comments, Dave, that you would like to make? One quick question if I could. What is CNA? I've seen that around and built by definition of CNA. Somebody wanna field that one, Chief? CNA was a consulting firm that was hired by the city to perform a full operational and functional assessment of the Burlington Police Department. It doesn't stand for anything. It may have at one point, but it's no longer an acronym. It is simply the name. I think once upon a time, N was Navy because they did some federal work and did some consultant seats of that kind. But currently it's just CNA. And so they began, they were, it was required that the sets could begin with the June 2020 racial justice resolution, but the company wasn't identified and hired until very early 2021. And then it began its work and completed it in September of 2021. Okay, thank you. Great, excellent. Any other? That's just for me. Great. Amy. Do you go first? And if you could be so kind since you were muffled by the mask. Oh, I was. You don't have to take it off. I mean, if you're not comfortable, just know that talking louder and clearer would be really helpful. Thank you. Cool. Oh, so I wanted to second the thought that Councillor Bergman brought up, which is working on the ballot item number seven and being involved in that taught me a lot about what this commission's role is. And there's so much in there as you have brought up like so many things. And so I do really wonder about the mix of all of that if it creates opportunities for bias if we're thinking about, you know, as Councillor Grant often says, a lot of the commission's role is really about training and coaching and not so often as much about discipline. And so thinking about the concept of the same person who's growing familiar with you and coaching you also then becomes a person who's like reviewing and investigating discipline or it seemed boring to say body. And so I think that is a point that it deserves a lot of community engagement. I'm not somebody who should be giving a strong perspective on that because for me, policing is just a concept. I'm white, so this woman. So, but that is a point that I think really needs to be thoughtful and considered. And I don't think it was a big part of the conversation that the community had around the valid item because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of just like how much the police commission does outside of that, that you could chunk off a piece that just is about oversight and there still would be a whole bunch that could be done. So I think I just want to echo that. I just really think that needs a lot of community engagement. And then the one other thing I wanted to echo was Councillor Grant bringing up the piece around like how we're defining expertise. I think it's just really, there was five pillars that were grounding the community control police proposal and a big part of that was representation. So making sure that we're not creating a situation where if the city council or sorry, if the being too rigid about what kind of skills or expertise are on the need to be on that body because we want to make sure that we're having like truly community representation specifically on that oversight process. So those are just my two comments of like this question is going into this process. And I look forward to hearing specific things and thank you so much for preparing. Thank you. Great. Lee, did you have? Yeah, I was just reviewing my notes. Thank you so much. This presentation was really enlightening. I like to think I'm pretty familiar with the commission but I learned a bunch of new stuff tonight. So that's great. Some stuff you mentioned that I think would be really good for community trust building is the monitor position you talked about. That specifically addresses concerns. I've heard people on both sides of the ballot number seven item had, particularly in my neck of the woods, the new North end, I've heard a lot of concerns about qualifications and experience of commissioners around investigating instances and people feeling concerns that maybe that experience is not there. And I'm not saying whether I agree with that or not, but I do really like the idea of a monitor who has had experience in investigating different types of complaints. I think that's great. And also like other people have mentioned, it's clear that the workload of the commission is very heavy. And speaking as someone who is on a different commission and several committees, your free time really limits your civic engagement. And I had a hard time recruiting people for commissions that you maybe spend three hours a week. And so the more hours a week a commission takes up, the less amount of people can apply. So anything that can help with that is great. And then I really liked the comment about being able to share complaint and complaint outcome data that's been anonymized. Obviously it's important that officers still have the rights to anonymize certain anonymized things. All their business can't be put out there. That's just not fair. It wouldn't be for any employee. But I think that's important because currently the only things we hear about are complaints that are just so incendiary that they've reached the social classification of scandal. And I think it's honestly really helpful to also hear about mundane stuff, little stuff that got addressed through training or whatever. It's really, really helpful for public trust because obviously that's what I'm assuming and I think what I've gleaned from people is the mundane stuff is the majority. The big stuff is not the majority but you don't really know that unless you're being given that information. And I think that's important because my personal view from Jobs iPad some with very serious consequences for mistakes are most mistakes you can come back from except for very, very serious mistakes. Most mistakes you can come back from and can be great learning experiences. And I think most people understand that and kind of to a point Amy was talking about. I mean, unfortunately, I mean, I have had a lot of police involvement in my life both due to the time before I got sober and also as a domestic violence survivor. Some of my experiences with officers have been horrible. Some have been really great and actually sober because an officer involved in my relapse was for whatever reason way more kind than he probably should have been and he allowed me to go to a hospital instead of arresting me and putting me in jail. Now it was the last night I drank over 15 years ago. So some police in my life have been great and a lot of just been mediocre or totally neutral and but I think when the public's only experience with police are the stuff that makes it in seven days or is the stuff where someone comes to the mayor's coffee hour because they're unhappy with their interaction. I mean, it just really skews your viewpoint and like, hey, I guess we really do have a problem here. And I just think it's important that there are mechanisms where we could be having a more accurate portrayal and that's best too for figuring out the problems. If it's not clouded by a bunch of hearsay or assumptions, just to get a more accurate picture I think would be super important. Yeah. Thank you. That's good. Jake, you're in the room. Would you like an opportunity to share? If not, we'll see if Farid will. It's up to you. Who that hasn't been already shared and I've been folks and I've been folks. But I will say that I'd like to echo the sentiment that I think it's humans, right? We are human beings that it's not necessarily a scheme or anything that anybody's trying to do. But I will note that the first meeting of the joint committee was at the same time as the public safety meeting at the ward 565. The second meeting was during a police commission meeting. The third meeting, if you look on board docs, it's not in there, but board docs does show that there's a city council meeting. So I just think that, again, I don't think anybody's doing it wrong, but I just think that moving forward, we have to be really, really intentional on this to be processed. That really hates the public to be very explicit. When the meeting's happening, where it is happening, I hope, and I'd like to go back to something which you said, resources and that we should really remember who is having the issues of trust with our police department. We should make sure that there are language resources for these meetings and that we should also be very happy if they're not correct. Maybe a summit, maybe they're the public, so you need not be in the oversight of these stuff. They have a family that's really engaged, right? Thank you. Fareed, is Fareed still there? Looks like Fareed is not. Let us. Why don't I respond? Well, of course. There's several of the comments here, and one, Councillor Bergman was yours with regard to the vast array of tasks, and the issue of essentially becoming too cozy with the police. I think the issue is what structure maintains an arm's length relationship, right? We've, I've actually had this conversation with Commissioner Bergman before. I believe that the breadth of the tasks that we have need to all stay within the commission. There's substantial learning in every one of our tasks. There's substantial learning that informs other aspects of what we do. I think if you specialize too much and hive off some of these tasks, you really let, you fail to develop the experience and full knowledge of the complexities of managing the system. With regard to the issue of becoming too cozy, I really appreciate that. I think that having a monitor who would be the interface between the police department and the commission is a way to gain that objectivity. But I would like to say now that what we have done in the last three years is to develop a separate identity. We now deliberate independently in executive session, for example. And all that we do is to understand, to maintain an understanding and inform ourselves of what the commission perspective is. So again, I appreciate your concern, but even with the current structure, I don't see that problem. It could be with different commissioners that that would be a problem. And as I said, maybe the monitor is the solution to that concern about objectivity. With regard to expertise, I did mention not only expertise, but experience. We have a few people of color on the commission. We have people who have mental health experience that work in mental health, for example. So all of that is tremendously important to what we do. And so when I say expertise, I'm not talking about just documents, but also an understanding of the nature of how public safety can go wrong if there's bias, for example, or failure to understand various groups. With regard to expertise also, let me remind you all that we have legal counsel. That's a lot of where our expertise comes now. So that is why having independent legal counsel has been so important for us, is to inform us of what investigation should look like, what questions to, to what documents to ask for, how we should implement our policies and where the policies, our own policies have gaps and where we should seek changes and so forth. And finally, I'm gonna say a little bit about anonymized complaints. I think your perspective is exactly right that we get a lot of complaints that are not serious. I think it would be beneficial for the community to understand that. And many times the police department responds very well to those complaints, right? And it's, so it would be, it would be good to know what the police, how are the police departments responding to them? And in many cases, there's a lack of understanding of policing. And that process, I see complaints not as a tool for punishment or discipline, but I see it as an opportunity for discussion and for expanding understanding in two directions. But that has to be in two directions. And quite frankly, we don't quite have that yet. But let me say something else about the complaint process being public. And by the way, you can look at the Boulder, Colorado and you will report to see how they, they report all of the complaints in their annual report on the disposition of the complaints. You could look on Vermont State Police website to look at how they summarize complaints there. So you can get an idea just how you can do it in a way that's fairly sanitized that is not outing anybody in particular. So I'm gonna just put this out there is something I've thought a lot about because the discussion inevitably gets held up on who makes the final decision about discipline. Should it be the chief? Should it be somebody else? You should know that South Burlington, the mayor makes the decision. The chief makes a recommendation to the mayor. There are many different models, but a conversation I had with Nacol a couple of years ago and the person who I think is now president of Nacol said that she thought that the decision should rest with the chief, but that the way that you have really accountability is that the complaints need to be public. The chief's decision needs to be public and why? The commission's recommendations and findings need to be made public. And when the chief disagrees with the commission, he or she needs to in writing and publicly explain why. That then gives accountability, that gives the community, the chief is then accountable. The secrecy that we have now doesn't really allow for that. But I also, you know, and her argument was that, you know, ultimately the chief should be accountable for his or her decisions and by making those decisions public, that is a way to achieve that. I'm not, I probably will, don't know where I will end up in that, but that has really informed me a great deal. And it's one of the reasons why I think making complaints public is actually can be very healthy for this process. That's it. Thank you. Let's go to Councillor Shannon who hasn't had a second bite and then we'll go to you for the third one. Yeah. And I just wanted to say to Jay's comment because I think it's really important public know how to access our information that the official warning for the city is the city calendar. Not everything is on four dots and we're transitioning off of it. So you're gonna. Yeah, we have this conversation after the meeting. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm aware. Thank you. Anything else? Um, I'm not completely clear where we're going. Well, that's the next item. That's the next agenda item. So, and I'm, so, so in the where we're going from here, I just want to say that I continue to be concerned about our, you know, that we want to, we don't want this committee to be adversarial to the police that we want. We're not getting input from police officers at this point. And they think we should figure out how to get it. How do they see the current oversight model? What do they see as the strengths and weaknesses of our current oversight model? So we will get to that in the next item. Sarah, saying on this one, and then we can follow up on Stephanie's point about the need for transparency when I agree. And I soon enough, I would love to have us have an analysis. And I want to task somebody with it, either the commission, a commission's attorney, or even the city attorney. What are the impediments that, you know, you're not getting it now, or you feel you're not getting it now. What, you know, in terms of HR union contract policy, you know, are the things that we need to fix to make that happen. If there's impediments, legally or whatever. I'd like us, somebody in the, I'm just gonna month or so to identify that clearly. Cause I think, I don't know what to talk. I think I think that's a very important thing. And we just need to understand what do we need in ordinance, do we need that? What tweaks do we need? Okay. Can I just make one final comment about internal investigations? I think the reason there's a difference of perception between the chief and me is that, that my, when I conceptualize internal complaints, I'm literally thinking that officers coming to the commission with a complaint. With the recent complaint that the chief, the internal investigation the chief was referring to didn't come to us as a complaint, right? From the police department to the commission. So I don't, that may be a nuance, that's too complex for all of you, but just to say that there is some complexity around that as to whether when we talk about an internal complaint, it's actually an individual officer or is it BPD or someone internal to BPD that has gone to the chief to ask for, make a complaint. We, in this recent complaint, we didn't know about it until the, until the very end. So it didn't come in through the same complaint portal process that we normally get those. And just to, just to try to explain the confusion and I think we should do some more thinking about that process as well. So the chief would like to speak. I do not want to get us to get into a back and forth, but please. This was brought to the commission in the second session prior to it being brought in its fullness in the most recent second session. When the complaint was opened, it was in fact brought to the commission. And there are any number of, for example, the one complaint that the commissioner mentioned had been brought to arbitration, that was an internally generated complaint that was brought by, it's true that they don't go directly to the police commission. They can and the new, and there is a, we've recently adopted a new directive that allows for that, that they can go to HR, they can go to the police commission, they can go to the mayor. In these, both of these instances, they chose to go to their chain of command, which is the proper way to do it. Certainly, if there were some other complaint that the complainant felt would rather go outside chain of command, there exists mechanisms for that. But these are nevertheless internal complaints and they, as soon as they are registered with us, we share them with the commission at the very next commission meeting as we do with any complaint. Okay. I don't want to get into a back and forth. So thank you for that. Those two perspectives appreciate that greatly. And to the extent to which it reveals systems that need to be looked at, and they may not, but it may, then we should possibly look at that or we can look at that. So I'm not, let's not go any further than that. Is this something? Yeah, I was just wondering if, well, so I just shared with, so Councillor Shannon shared with the Councilor Travers, the link to TV 40, which is online, and it's TV 40 and it's limited power are a listing of directives, which is on the police department website. And then I just shared with that same email group with Councilor Travers, the agreement with the police commission from August 2020. And there it states that all complaints whether generated externally or internally are referred to as citizen complaints. All citizen complaints are documented on a spreadsheet maintained by the deputy chief of administration. And then it goes on to talk about how those are shared with the police commission in the next police commission meeting in the executive session. But what we've done is that any complaint that comes in through the online portal goes automatically to the police commission. So it's a simultaneous that it comes to the department and the commission. Similarly, any complaint that comes to us through other means, we endeavor to make that known to them for the next police commission executive session, which may be some number of days away. Can I just ask a clarifying question about the August 25th, 2020, Burlington Police Commission policy? It was this, it says it was adopted on that date. Was this adopted by the commission? Was it adopted by the police department? It's unsigned. I just, where did this come from? If it was agreement, this was worked on primarily by then these commissioners Shereen Hart and then interim police chief Jennifer Morrison. I finished working on it with Commissioner Hart and because Commissioner Morrison, Chief Morrison left on June, I believe 11th, 2020. And it was agreed by all, to by all parties in that August, 2020 police commission session. No, it's not signed, but that is, it was an agreement between two parties. Thank you. Okay. How about we move to the next and last item on our agenda, which is a discussion of next steps, which includes outreach and support, but also includes meeting dates and agenda items. And the outreach and support has been common at the bond and so it's a pretty broad look at it. And I would return to my co-chair here, who has had a joyous time not sharing this, this meeting I'm sure. Yeah, we're done. So. So, first of all, in terms, I mean, if we're looking at this all as sort of one agenda item, outreach and support and sort of next meetings, next steps, so to speak, let me acknowledge that on any issue, there's always room for us to do better. And that's not just for this committee, it's for any city committee, it's for the council itself. It was constantly a discussion when I was serving on the ward five NPA or the parks commission, when should we be hosting meetings? Where should we be hosting meetings? What type of support can we provide to promote further attendance along those lines? So, let me acknowledge that there is always room to do better. And I do think that with whatever our next meetings are, we need to be very clear upfront with respect to when those are and properly warn them. I do want to say though that I don't think these are meetings that have been occurring in the shadows. More than four weeks ago, we warned all three meetings this month, including the meeting on the 23rd and the May 30th. We were very clear in an email that went on May 1st that our May 23rd meeting would be at 5.30 that tonight's meeting would be at 6.30. I regret that there was a change in location because of a special meeting called for the city council this evening. But we've been very clear about the meeting dates and times. We also, unlike any other committee that I've served on, have a very specific warned meeting group for the purposes of these meetings that includes the police department. It includes all the municipal unions, including the police union. It certainly includes representatives from the police commission. We specifically reach out to every neighborhood planning assembly. We've added a number of mayoral departments, including the racial equity inclusion and belonging office, including, of course, the city attorney's office, including human resources. And we heard from director Karen Durfee at our last meeting. And as well as resident advocates on this issue, we've been very purposeful in sending these warned notices since, again, well more than four weeks ago to folks behind the question seven ballot item. And so while I acknowledge that there's always room for improvement, I also think that we're off on, I think, the right foot here. And I know that we've been talking to folks in the city attorney's office about standing up a website and getting more information. I think Councilor Doherty's point about an index and being clear about our agenda items in such a way that are easier for folks to follow and track is a point well taken. So with that, we had circulated a doodle poll to members of the committee. And as a larger committee, especially during the summer months, it's been, as it was initially with these meetings, it's difficult to find a time that works for everyone. But I do think to Commissioner Seguino's points earlier that if the police commission is able to have some recommendations by the end of this month, the first date that we had amongst this group that worked for everyone was July 6th. And that is what day of the week is that? It looks like it's a Thursday. Yeah, Thursday, July 6th. So let me just parenthetically add that it would appear that the NPAs meet on Thursdays. And they meet like every, basically every Thursday of the month, there's one of them. They sort of go in sequence. So when we're looking at dates, we need to keep all that in mind. Well, I think ours doesn't, but. Wednesday, right? It's out there, it's out there. It's followed Ben's business. And I also want to note that Councilor Hightower has had her hand up. So we would do that. I wanted to make sure that Ben was done and also Councilor Grant has their hand up. So. Well, we just throw the dates out that we got basically between now and the end of August. These are the dates that all six of us have indicated our availability. It's July 6th, July 13th. Wait, hold on. Yeah, sorry. July 6th, July 13th, August 1st, and August 8th. Oh, I also kept you on this one. How did it respond to you? Do you not get my answer? Okay, well. I'm pretty sure that was on, perhaps I had provided those dates to Gene before you responded. So. But the date that worked for everyone else. So, okay. So we have two dates that were for all six of us the entire summer. So let it, let's, let's, those dates are out. We have at least some conflicts. We've got some possible slash probable conflicts with NPA dates. Councilor Hightower. I don't mean to stop the conversation on our next date, but I thought I would love to get them on the calendar because I know that I have to talk about. I just, I think I just want to reiterate that I think we've had so many, we've had so much conversation on the oversight of general and there's been a lot of public input that has been done. And I just want to reiterate that I think the sooner we can come to the decision points based on what we're hearing, the better our public input will be because if folks can respond to something it doesn't matter if that's police officers with us in general public, if that's NPA. I think we find over and over again that we make decisions really late and then we get a bunch of response and then we don't have this time to react to it anymore. So I just really want to avoid doing that, which is the way that public input usually goes and make sure that we're coming to decisions as early as possible or being clear about it. We have these decisions with those cars. We can't be back on decisions not just on hypotheticals. And I think that's different right now when I was moving back with myself in the room and things like that, but I think the more we're trying to play in terms of public or broader groups, the more we'll have to be clear about what we're making decisions on and what we're trying to get as far as possible. Thank you at the risk of pilloring myself from our last meeting when you told me how wrong I was. If you could be so kind as to repeat what the more specific suggestion that you had, that might be helpful. I think it had to do with the two co-chairs coming together to do something. So if you could just state that again, that would be helpful. Yeah, I think I would prefer the two co-chairs that together and then outline of what we think we need to make decisions on. And then we can have the next meeting decide what we have the ready-made decisions on, what we need to get more information on to make those decisions and work through that. Thank you. And I'm happy to provide in time, but I don't want to step on their feet. Thank you. This is all helpful in terms of moving forward. That is an idea that relates to agenda items. Is the desire to focus on dates or should we, and we have an idea for, you know, sort of like conceptual what we're gonna, what we would talk about and we will get to the resources for outreach and staff support after, or maybe even now. Is there a preference in terms of this agenda item, how to move us to decisions? Well, first of all, for John's point, forget what I said about August 1st and 8th, going back to the Duel poll, it could be August 2nd or 3rd is a date that we all have availability. So July 6th, July 13th, and then August 2nd or August 3rd. And just food for thought here for the purposes of our discussion here. My suggestion would be, if we are able to meet on July 6th and we have Commissioner Seguino here, if we believe that the police commission would be able to provide further input by our meeting on July 6th, then I would propose that our agenda at that meeting be to further review the specific recommendations from the police commission, I think to Councilor Hightower's point, Jean, you and I can perhaps before that meeting. And I do think that report we received this evening gives us good framework for us to put some of these more specific questions together, can post some questions then to try to at the meeting on the 6th, really narrow our work here. I, to Councilor Shannon's point at either the meeting on the 6th or the 13th, I think perhaps the meeting on the 13th that would be open to Chief Mirad's feedback on this as well. I think we should be purposeful about receiving feedback from the police department directly. And whether that come from Chief Mirad or for us to figure out how to get the union's representation here or other police officers, I think that that would be helpful for the 13th. And then I think it's possible that we may be able to have something on paper on or about the 13th, certainly no later than whatever our meeting is in the first week of August, whether or not we're able to pass something out and make that our last meeting in August or whether or not we'll need one more meeting after that, which I think is probably more likely that that would be sort of a roadmap in my own mind for how the committee can operate over the next three to four meetings. Committee member reflections. And then we'll go to Councilor Graf. I was just gonna say, were you looking at me? No, I was, but I look at y'all. I think a lot of that depends upon Commissioner Seguino's assessment as to whether or not the commission can that time play. That seems to me a first order question. That's Michael. That's, you know, the commissioners are, we are prepared to work hard to bring you something, which I think is helpful. Thank you. Okay, Sarah, and then we'll go to Milo and then Zariah, you wanted to, did you have your hand up anew? No. Okay. I agree with all of what we said. I don't know. We're three doodling us to, we've got three meetings set up for sure, right? Six, 13th and the second or third. Herjust said, he's another couple in there in the next few months. And understand that we may not get all of us, all six of us there. I mean, that's just going to be a reality. I think it's going to be a reality that we're going to conflict with somebody's meeting and exercising a little privilege. We've got to get our work done. I agree absolutely with Council Hightower that I think the bulk of public engagement is better served when we have something specific to react to. We did a lot of work through the, to leave the process. We've done a lot of work over proposal seven. I think we need something for people to react to. I think, I like the idea of even a summit, but I think that's going to come later. Not, I think it was too early for us to be doing that. Okay. Councilor Grant. I have two things. I'm sorry, I had my hand up for a while, but I think it's possible just to keep in mind around investigations in addition to the use of a lawyer, of the directives of policies. If we're lucky enough to get a projected affidavits, you know, we're using that information as well. So investigations pull from different areas of the new involved law enforcement. It's just that sometimes you're not given true transparency and harshness to information that's needed. If I see this process help to protect that, to protect that right, to get that information at times, and to represent the city attorney's office, so I really don't know why you've got my most productive information, but I think that's the reason. You know, those weren't open any conversations, you know, you've got the January meeting where we didn't discuss the specific business around the complaints, but in general we're talking about why so much productive information is occurring, so that's something that we have to keep in mind. Saying that we shouldn't have input from officers, I just want to raise it, everybody needs to check it, that we have to have that representation, that we have to make sure that we have a good balance and an understanding that part of this is to put the alcohol lessons in our community. So for example, I'm not going to go through every item in the contract that CNA recommendations suggested in taking into consideration and forms, but there was a failure there, right? So that's what gives us information about how are some really problematic things that have set us back and the matter of fact didn't contract, such as the length of the amount of time that the disciplinary records are kept, you know, things like that. So we got to keep all of that in mind and keep pushing that, we have to have that balance, we have to realize what our job is looking out for the residents of the city, improving the atmosphere for our officers, right? And because the whole community engagement part of it too is a separate thing. That's something that I've cared about for a very long time, but I've been helped to put some on the ground to look out of what I can say about it. There's improvements I've made there, right? And I think things that the commission can do that other commissions and civilian review boards that I looked at, you know, they're more involved in soliciting combinations for the department. They get more information on when people, when they're changes and we have so much change, but we don't always get the information on new hires in terms of identifying them and ways that we can introduce those to the public. We don't always get information like it's all the house is detected. So, Councillor Grant, if I could get you to focus a little bit more on this particular. We're getting away from focusing on the residents and having that balance because we haven't had the balance to be truthful. We have not had the balance. And so that's one thing I guess I'm going to teach more about. Because if we don't have the balance, we will fail. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I just want to say that on July 6th at 6.30, the Ward 6 NPA is scheduled to meet. It's not my NPA. My NPA is meeting on the 13th. It starts at 6.30, but our Councillor comments happened about 7.45. So I think that perhaps a meeting schedule of ours that started at 5.30 and went to 7.30 would eliminate the conflict and considering the Zoom options, then they would at least provide an opportunity for people to do both. I personally believe that there's conflict in terms of meetings. And we can't, we're going to be conflicting with somebody at some point. And so we've got to do the best we can. And so that is the way that I think we can accommodate those two conflicts. I, Thursday the 3rd is a conflict, but there is nothing on the 2nd, so of August. So unless we were going to meet two days in a row, then the- Maybe we should. You know, I- We got two free days. You know, yes, I do not think it's out of line despite the amount of garbage that I will get at home for that. But be that, yes, yes, garbage, totally, right? You know, there's good garbage, but there's garbage nonetheless. So there is that. And I think moving forward, my suggestion is that we embrace Councilor Hightower's suggestion for the co-chairs to sit down and work through those decision points and outline those and try our best to bring them to this committee on the 6th. I also think we have been offered by Jordan, some staff support from an attorney, not for the outreach stuff, which I think is, but for Josh Diamond is a former assistant attorney general. And I think he's connected, has been connected in a variety of ways with public safety issues. And she said that he would be willing. And my suggest to help us as a staff attorney. And my suggestion would be that Ben and I work through that with Jordan and see if we can get that kind of support because we may want to have some more research as well as maybe some outreach, but also to see if we can get Jordan's assistance in getting the outreach work to the community through REIB and the CEDO's public engagement, community engagement, which I did do one reach out, but did not get any responses. And it's my bad that I didn't follow up on that. So we should do that. Maybe between the two of us, we will have the political clout to do that. I see Jordan, whose name I've mentioned, not in vain. And perhaps she would like to weigh in on both the Josh Diamond but also trying to have us enlist REIB and probably Jillian at CEDO for doing some engagement with the community. That was very successful with the all resident legal voting when Jillian helped us. So I know that it has an impact to be helpful. And I just, what you have reached out to Jillian? And Kim and didn't get any responses. Actually, I reached out to Brian. So I didn't reach out to Jillian, but I did reach out to Brian and Kim. And so your assistance in that would be greatly appreciated. Great. Let me have a follow up of those folks and see what I can do to assess. That is wonderful. And we will talk to you about Josh. Thank you. And thank you. We'll talk to John later about working with Josh. Great. Thank you for making that connection. So. Yes. Do I need you anymore? No, I don't think I need to know you, you can go. If you, if this isn't scintillating enough for you, then you can, you can go. Thank you. Thank you very much, Steph. Council. Yes. Having worked on that all resident voting and it was very successful, but we did in fact have something crafted for people to respond to. So again, I think I don't want to call people together and use the resources of whatever we need until we're like ready to. Well, I think this is the blending of all of these together. So that we are doing that work to bring back to you and then getting the resources that we need. And Jordan is still on there. So I don't know, Jordan, whether you heard the request for translation services and a sorted other and website stuff. So ultimately our success in doing that is predicated on our ability to access other people to help us do the work. Yes. And I don't want to speak for legal, but I think it seems to me the website and the degree that the mayor's office can phone. I mean, I know how swamp legal is. And I think having the website, which is something that we all can get out to a lot of people. And that's easy to do once it's set up because you can then send the link to billions of people. So this is great. And I think that what I envision is also us seeing if we can do further outreach, you know, and with that group of people that we have sent things to and anybody's assistance on that would be very helpful. So I look to people who have come and have shown an interest to help us with that. I look to the chief to help us with that and that outreach so we can do it in the most effective way possible. And one size like a meeting doesn't fit all. So we should be open to going where people are and consistent with the idea that we're giving something to people that they can actually look at and focus on. So it's meaningful to them. Because otherwise the point is well taken. I just want to present a copy to a solicitation of these requests that they pertain to other departments. Yes, that's exactly what I'm seeking from you. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification and yes. What? Joe. I think that it may be a little bit of a chicken and a chicken question. Because while it's good to have something to respond to, there's often the reaction that you've created something without input. So I just want to add a little bit on this and help that impact as well if we present something. Fortunately, this community has had three years. I look at my watch, but I have no years on it. Three years of working on this at least. I would not say that by any means. We've had a discussion about really, we haven't been working on it. And... Okay, we're not gonna debate that. Suffice it to say, we've had votes at the council. We've had votes in the public. Whether it's been sufficient, one can agree to disagree. Is there anything new that will help us get our charge accomplished? Any new comments that will, if not, I would entertain a motion to adjourn? Well, sorry. Go ahead. I'll adjourn this, but for the half of us on ordinance. Yeah, June 12th, that was what I was gonna bring on the 12th. So just if I could use this opportunity for the folks that are on ordinance, we also have to meet with respect to the South End Interpatient District. Zariah, Joan, Sarah, are you available to have our next meeting on that on Monday, June 12th at 7 p.m.? Yes. Okay, thumbs up all around. So I will reach out to city staff. I know Megan Tuttle's in a way. I mean, I'm open to another meeting time. I thought I would personally prefer seven, but we could meet earlier if folks would like. Zariah, do you have any preference? There is a Board of Finance, but it doesn't affect us individually and it will, I don't know what's on its docket. Well, later is better just in case anyone wants to go to Board of Finance. Now staff, including within planning and city attorney's office, it indicated that June 12th works for them, so. At seven. And on dates, because there is no conflict on August 2nd, if we can have the August 2nd date be that date, maybe we'd propose the August 3rd as well if people wanted, but. I put it on there. I mean, it's easier to cancel than it is to set a date and there's actually not as many other meetings in the month of August, so. Well, what's hard is to get, you know, if you really want to ask for a done, if we need to accept their fact that if we need an ordinance, then you can do it. Those other dates could provide the other meetings that have them. Well, I still think we need another ordinance meeting, but I think in terms of the work of this joint committee, there's a lot to pour over and I, you know, so hopefully by August 1st, no, August 2nd and 3rd, we have some documents to review, which could in fact take us more than one meeting to allow them. So I'm suggesting the joint committee still keep those meetings and chair Chalmers, we still need an ordinance meeting as well. We have June 12th, the next available is June 29th, but it's not available that day, so. June 29th? Yeah. Well, you could re-doodle them, like four of us. I have a bell. Okay. Is re-doodle a verb? Sure, it is now. Okay. I'm concerned if you tell me I'm not, because I don't see why I wouldn't. I don't know, I didn't see the green check, but here we go. What day is it, July? June 29th, June 12th, June 29th for ordinance. Okay. And for the joint committee, July 6th, July 13th, August 2nd, August 3rd. Are we gonna email that out? Yes. Let's do it right now. Okay. Would you say July 27th? That was the time I proposed, but I'm flexible. Amy? You'll... Oh, sorry, sorry. You don't have jury duty on June 29th, but later would be better for me, but I think it's five or a year later, I'll be fine. If you don't have a jury duty on the Civic Act one. How you got it? So, Civic duty. But how could you be impartial? Dave, you're a federal, you're exempt from federal juries if you're a government official. I knew I had a reason why I wasn't on the jury for 20 years I worked for the city. I've never been asked. You're missing something. That's great. And can we say 530 just to keep it consistent? 530. 530 on those for our joint committee meetings. I say that because of the conflicts with the NPA and there are three of the four meetings are conflicted. So at least we have a shot at participation of some fashion at an NPA meeting and can ask them to move any conflicting thing back like a public safety discussion. Amy, did you? Yeah, so just quick thought. So I'm coming out of this from my solicitation perspective. You've got a welcome to my jury as well. So I kind of almost like work backwards a little bit to say like if we need to have something by the beginning of September and we want to have a public engagement but actually have it be meaningful to potentially be iterative and not just like I said, Councilor James mentioned my chicken and red but I'm looking at your instance and you've already decided. I'm wondering like at a councillor's point like having meetings that are scheduled out I'm imagining it being through August. We get to that. I'm also wondering that the very short time period to potentially get public input and we're talking I think what it was said was by July 13th would potentially have like the bare bone structure or something for being at the outcome and not just saying like, oh, that's totally good. Like you think about getting the feedback like how many weeks do you need to do that? And then also the respond to that and then also give whatever language you finalize. Like that's a lot of things to happen at the end of July, August and then your meeting September, right? Or the closing September. So I think it'd be very clear like by July 13th trying to have this language and then is there a very short period of time where it's being very clear to the public. This is when your meetings can happen. The secure voice needs to be heard. There will be these opportunities, whatever they are. And it sounds like that is evolving. So I'm not trying to put too much pressure on them saying like, what are those opportunities right now? But we can be very clear about what that window is so that then there's also still time to come back and iteratively like change things from the community engagement. I just want to be clear about what the timeline is for that community engagement and then what is iterative process after? So it doesn't just become like that. Be sure that another's not a tangled and actually we have to think of a share of that. That does. It does. I'm also mindful of the fact that once this committee comes up with something it's going to be forwarded back to the full council. So we won't ultimately have the final say. So once our committee comes up with something and I hear everything you're saying there will also be yet another process for the full council and additional voices perhaps a window there for us to do something broader whether, and I would hope in addition to what the committee had already done but I think there will be yet another opportunity before the full council considers whatever I believe will come out of this. Okay. Any last comments? I entertain a motion to adjourn. I hear a motion by councilor Shannon. Do I hear a second? I see one from co-chair Trappers. It probably is, but I am motion to adjourn. I think I'll make a little bit of a change in that. There you go. You know, like a minute. If you ain't got a minute right now to give up then I see no objection. So we are adjourned.