 Okay, it's six o'clock and it looks like we have a quorum. So I'm going to get started. Welcome everyone to the Burlington Police Commission monthly meeting today is January 23, 2024. As I said, it looks like we have a quorum with Commissioner Garrison, Commissioner Cumberford, Commissioner Cox, is Commissioner Keith here? I saw someone sign in as Jack. I wasn't sure. I don't see him so far. Carolyn. Sorry, they're coming in. Okay. Okay. Commissioner Hanson. And is that Commissioner Keith? It's Jack. Right. Is that probably. Yeah. Okay. So could I have a motion to amend the agenda to add item 6.2 police commission charter change review process? So motion. Thanks. And a second. Hey, Jack. Is there a second? Mary, thank you. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. Motion passes and you've added item 6.2 police commission charter change review process to the agenda. Any other additions or modifications to the agenda? Could I have a motion? Could I have a motion. To approve the agenda as amended. Sorry. Sorry. A second. Yeah. Second. Thank you. All in favor. Aye. Great. Motion passes and we've approved the amended agenda. The next item on the agenda is public forum. Are there any members of the public here to speak to us? I do have a counselor grant. Okay. Great. Counselor Grant. If you would identify yourself and tell us what's on your mind. Hi, thank you. Me, the grant. I'm a city council for the central district, which. Covers wards two and three. It's amazing how quickly time flies. The report that I discussed last month, I just emailed you a little bit ago. It had to do with the final report. Around supporting new American youth and families affected by gun violence. Very, very interesting. And also. As I mentioned last time I was with you just. Really dwells deeper deeper into some concerns about lack of cultural competency that we have in the city. And then also some great concerns about. Community trust. I did include the link. So there's a PDF of the report. And then there's a link to the RBI. The RBI committee. Meeting that reviewed the report. For you. I wanted to stay. That. The. With civic clerk, there's a. Area for the meetings. And these have not been. Hosted. For the police commission. So I was just wondering if we could talk amongst yourselves and just make sure I've been told by. The city as I've been setting all of this up. They have said that staff has been trained. And should be uploading all this information now. But I have also found that that is not the case. That all staff have been trained. Or have been told that they should be. Attaching the meetings. So if you can just verify that a staff person has been given. Correct. And current information that would be awesome. Because it allows people to go to one place. In the civic clerk calendar to find all the information they need related to a particular. Meeting. The other thing I wanted to talk about tonight was I was deeply concerned about some comments. Made by chief Murad. Around the larger retailers in the south end. So at the public safety committee. That was held on December 21st. We were talking about. The online incident. Reporting system. And we were talking about. The online incident. Reporting system. That has turned out not to be the best way. To have businesses report retail theft. There has been updates with regards to that. But there's still some questions about. The data. The data. That's related to the backlog that occurred. What's happening with that data. Has it been looked at? Is it actually. Included at all in our incident reports and some other questions. I also had a concern about some statements made about large. Retailers. That. They were accumulating and reporting. The. Retail theft incidents in large bundles. And that. They weren't preventing victimization. And they only improperly made on time reports. So my concern at the public safety committee meeting was that. All retailers, regardless of their size. Had been told. By BPD as a matter of policy at the time. That submitting retail theft via online. Was what they should have been doing. So that has changed. And they're being advised differently, but I don't believe it's proper to criticize them for doing something. That they were advised to do in the. The first place, you know, saying that, oh, okay. Well, they shouldn't have been told only after. We're saying that, hey, we shouldn't blame them for following the instructions. And so if you're not getting any responses. Then you start filing bundles because you're also told, because I know myself and other city counselors told people to continue to file online. Until the recent change. So that was on December 21st. Then at the police commission meeting, which was the following. Week when the chief was reviewing the retail thefts. And he had that new graph showing by area. He then again said that the big, bigger box retail stores in the south end. Don't care all that much. They don't try to stop it. They only use BPD as a reporting service for write-offs. And that, you know, Hanifords at least is trying to do something by engaging the sheriff's department. So that was really deeply disappointing because the other thing that was mentioned on the 21st is that businesses, no matter what the size are very careful not to advise their employees to get involved as people are shoplifting. It's a huge liability issue. Many businesses of all sizes have reported employees being hurt, even if they're not trying to interfere. So we have to be very careful what we say about our businesses because we want to be supporting them all. We cannot assume, you know, our landscape has changed for shopping. So many people buy online. We cannot assume that big box stores are, you know, the so-called brick and mortar are swimming in money that they can take these hits. I was in a legislative meeting and there was a gentleman who manages a group of Hanifords stores, including the one in the new North End, and he is not at all happy about the amount of money that they are spending to have the sheriff's department there. It is a huge expense that they would rather be investing back in their employees. And the last thing I'll say about the box stores, I was upset that they were perceived as not caring. Their loss prevention officers came to Burlington. They came to the mayor's, one of the mayor's coffees late last spring, early summer. They wanted to know what was going on. They said that theft in Burlington was number one in the country. The TJ Maxx home goods and Sierra clothing, they're all under the same corporate umbrella, but they each have their own loss prevention officer. They came here because they were seeing the same thing that other retailers were. Their bathrooms, they had to think about, can we make them public anymore because people are going in and using and leaving needles and overdosing. They had those same concerns. They were losing employees because they didn't want to deal with that. We had to be very careful what we say about our businesses and about anyone when they were following the instructions that were given to them. We can't make these assumptions. We can do better. When I say there's negative community engagement and that we're not doing the best to improve that, this is a prime example of what I am talking about. And the last thing I'll say is that there wasn't a chief's report posted this week. I would assume it would be the year in review. It repeatedly, these documents aren't being posted. Its report was not posted for last months. When we send people to the links, this is the information that they need to see and it's not occurring. I would say that we would love to see something that wasn't included on the preliminary year end was what were the number of incidents that CSOs and CS cells participated in. That data is going to be really important. I thank you very much for listening. I thank you for your time. If you have any questions about what I mentioned, please feel free to email me. Thank you, Councillor Grant. And thank you for letting us know about the civic, the civic clerk omissions. And we will look into that and appreciate your comments. Next is the chief's report. And I don't think that we did receive this in advance. If we did, I missed it. But chief, I believe you're here. Hello. Yes, it was emailed to everybody as part of the, it is the year end, the preliminary year end report. So it was emailed to everybody in a press release back at the beginning of the year. And it is posted on the BPD website, which is where that press release link goes to. We distributed it again via from porch forum. So it's a very large porch forum in the city. And so it's out there in that format. Thank you. I just didn't know if it was a different one for, for tonight, but I appreciate it. And with your permission, I'll start to share it now. Great. Thank you. Am I going to share it from my screen Shannon? Is that the plan? If you wouldn't mind, chief. Not at all. Just one moment then. Okay. So share screen. So it is a very long document. It's almost 40, almost 50 pages, 40, 50 pages. I can't recall which. So I'll move through it quickly. It covers the year 2023. And it shows, you know, our staffing. These are our documents that we've seen before we ended the year with 69 officers. That is what I predicted on January 1st. When I sent out an internal memo and a sort of a prediction for that. I'm proud that we made that it required extraordinary effort on the part of our recruiting team. We brought in 15 new police officers in 2023. That's more than in any calendar year in the past two decades. It's actually more than two decades. And that was just a real, an amount of work. It was balanced of course by departures, both tenure retirements and also resignations. But we ended the year. We ended it basically 61 and ended at 69. Here's how those 69 are currently divided. And this shows patrol with 21. This in this shows marketplace officers, which were in effect on December 29th, but are no law, excuse me, December 31st, but aren't anymore. The marketplace detail has been rolled back into regular patrol. What this also doesn't say is that we've actually, we lost an officer in the early part of January to a resignation. So we're actually technically at 68, but this is a snapshot as of the beginning of 2024. We will gain another officer next week. At the very beginning of the next week, our one officer who will be attending the Vermont police Academy for the February class. That is obviously not what we had wanted. We did not want to have only one attendee in that class, although as it is turning out, our field training officers are incredibly over taxed. Having gone through a, we had a class that came out in July or June rather, and that was a four person class. We then got two laterals in September. And then we had six officers graduate the police academy in early December. Our field trainers are absolutely wiped. They have been field training nonstop for 14 plus weeks. It is not tenable for them. And in some ways, having only one person in the next coming Academy class is going to be a necessary pause for our field training program. When you only have four officers on a shift and we, that is what we currently have. Four officers on one side of the day shift, four officers on one side of the evening shift, two officers on the midnight shift. That is non supervisory officers. They're based, we are basically asking all of them to be field trainers and not all of them are certified. Not all of them want to be, not all of them have enough tenure to be. And so the handful that are sufficiently tenured that do have the requisite training and that are willing to do it is a small handful and we are, we're wiping them out. This shows that, you know, inside that unavailable of 13 includes injured persons on light duty, a military, an officer who's out on military and those field training officers. That is the officers who are on field training, not the ones who are the field trainers. This talks about where we are. We are actually now as of this point in January, we have our full complement of six CSLs. As of the first of the year we had five, we now have a full complement of six. And so we are fully staffed on the CSL team. We have promoted Lacey Smith to the assistant director of Cape. And so we now have an opening in our community support supervisor position, where CSL positions are fully staffed at six. And that is great. This shows that new organization that we talked a little bit about. As of the production of this document, we hadn't named that position, but it is Lacey Smith. And I'm very, very happy about that movement. I, we had, you know, a number of people participate in the hiring panels and she did an excellent job in that. We have a team and something that, you know, no other department in the state of Vermont and very few in the region or in the nation have is an in-house team like this. This is our new org chart. And you've seen versions of this, but, and I encourage anybody that's watching to go to the website and click on the, you know, preliminary year end report and look at this at length that they're on their own. This, the numbers that are in parentheses are the authorized numbers for each position. We certainly do not have 48 patrol officers, but if we were fully staffed at 87 sworn, this is how those positions would be divided and where they would be. Seven at the airport plus a sergeant, seven patrol sergeants. We currently have, I believe, four and four area lieutenants. We currently have three. So we are, are trying hard to get to these, to these numbers. The changing proportions, something that we have seen before. It shows now the 2019 authorized total does not include parking. I removed parking because parking isn't part of the department anymore. It was moved to DPW. Had that been included, then the total BPD staffing would have been 150 at that point. But we, I didn't, and yet even with them removed, what this shows is a significant change between the proportion of sworn to professional staff in the agency. This shows what we actually have on the ground in those positions. So the actual count in May of 2019 and the actual count as of January 2024. And I believe that it's sort of a visual representation of just, you can see huge deficits in the supervisory ranks of sworn officers, huge deficits in the non supervisory ranks. And we are working hard to build our professional ranks up, but we already have more professional staff on the ground than we did in May of 2019 incident volume. And that's a picture of champ just before champ was burned on New Year's Eve. The incidents were up in 2023 higher than they've been in five years. So we'd have to go back to 2019 to see a higher year and it wasn't very much higher just barely. I was just told today by a sergeant I hadn't run the numbers myself that we are 300 incidents ahead of where we were last year at this point already in 2024. So 2024 so it shows no sign of abating the artificial low of the pandemic years has been utterly erased. And that artificial law was partly used to justify the decision to reduce the police department. We're definitely outside that now of our incidents. We stacked about 14% and we took another 13% via online reporting the and again this reiterates that incidents are not crimes but they are how we count our what we're doing. This is the priority response plan this is the version that was released in May of 2022. The version in May of 2021 when we first released it did not have the color coded designations next to the call categories. So in other words there wouldn't have been a yellow CSO or an orange online. But this is exactly how we released it in May of 2021. You'll note that larcenies and retail thefts have never been online reports. They weren't supposed to be online reports. They certainly were mistakenly diverted to online reporting but not as an official stance of the department. This is the exact same report that we placed in that we put out in May of 2021. Excuse me 2022 and it can be found in the in almost every single report since then. This is a way to visualize how it works because I know that that has been a source of some concern and question. You start out a shift with six and by the way we don't have that we have four on our shifts now. So I really should rewrite this but we had a very brief fat period where we had six on a shift and we were feeling like we were getting somewhere. And that has been undone by some unanticipated resignations and other staffing changes. We are if we look at six however it will take a best case scenario and say you've got six. Officers one and four are responding to priority three calls for service because we will respond to priority three. That's all these white ones until we can't. So for the first for the first part of the shift every call gets responded to in the order it comes in. Officer one goes off to a retail theft officer four goes off to a stolen vehicle that leaves officers two and three and officers five and six. Officers two and three are assigned to a domestic assault. We never send to fewer than two officers to a domestic assault and we send supervisors to those as well. So they are gone that leaves us with officers five and six. Now if a larceny come from a building comes in officers five and six are not going to that call. If a burglary in the past comes in officers five and six are not going to that call. They are waiting for a call that involves life safety or for other officers to finish with their current assignments and come back so that we are once again above two. But if we remain at two the only call they will respond to is something like a robbery, which is a priority one. These are selected Valcor incidents for the year and we can see where they move. We had some some tales of success. Around assaults for example around gunfire and we had places where and mental health issues are down and we had places where we've seen continuing increases including overdose horrifically and aggregated larceny. This picture shows the comparison a year to year just 2022 versus 2023. And again, if we were only looking at that we'd see basically almost as many categories that we regularly track are down as are up. And some of those are good at 30% 38% reduction in gunfire. A, you know, 10% reduction in stolen vehicle and 8% reduction in felony assault. Those are positive markers, but they don't tell the full story. This shows 2023 versus the five year average of 2018 through 2022. And I feel that it's a fair comparison, although it too is a little bit flawed in that it's got the artificial lull of 2020 2021 and to a certain extent 2022 inside it. Nevertheless, here you see a different picture and the down is smaller and the up is greater. Even with the huge number that even though we had 16 gunfire incidents this year for example, it was still 33% over the average. Now it's far down from last year's horrific total of 26, but it is higher than the overall average stolen vehicle up 144% overdose up just an unconscionable 252% over the five year average really really terrible numbers and indicative of the challenges we're seeing in the drug market. This is the part where I'll skip through because frankly we can move on to the rest of the chiefs to discussion but major events, you know, we solve the read occur in case in February. There was an airport bomb threat that we responded to. We did some I thought really innovative fair and impartial policing training with a group called the Center for Policing Equity, who came in and conducted that training with us based on a concept that they came up with and help design and then they furthered it along with director Kim Carson at REIB she provided tremendous assistance on this and worked very closely with the two trainers from CPE. We had an award ceremony that was really wonderful. We went on went swimmingly as it as it thankfully does. Third of July, great day, large number of officers there that's about as many officers as you can possibly see at this stage in the department, because everybody was there and all hands on deck effort. We had a sign of growth and that we swore and we had a large robust swearing in and promotion ceremony in August. We will be holding another in very early February and I'll be sending out an invite to all of you about that ASAP. The Pride March in September. We had some terrific representation. You can see our PIO Sarah Tim and the victims advocate Hannah Brizlyn in the photo there sort of in the middle you can see Officer Kelsey Johnson. They were presented at IACP in San Diego, which is a pretty big deal for an agency. There are literally hundreds of presentations and they are selected pretty discriminately from with a lot of discrimination in those topics by the IACP board. And we got to present on what we were doing with Kate and you can see there Lacey Smith and Anna Wagley who also came to present with us. A terrible night in November with regards to just incredible busyness, gunfire incident, a double murder, another shooting, an arson in our headquarters, a night that really did not seem like it was going to let up. And then of course are the street lighting ceremony on Church Street, the holiday tree. Great night. And then unfortunately this terrible way to terrible way to end the year. A hateful act around the shooting of those three young men of Palestinian descent. We closed that case in less than 24 hours and had an apprehender, the shooter apprehended. We are working to rebuild. As I pointed out, we've hired 15 officers in 2023. That's the most in more than two decades. That's a large part of the work of Anhad Bajwa who you see there to on the left hand of the image. And also Carolyn Irwin, Corporal Carolyn Irwin who is the recruiting officer on Anhad Bajwa who is the recruitment coordinator, which is a professional position. We also use other officers. You'll see two officers down in the lower photo. Corey Orfont is in uniform and behind him is Zach Beal who's one of our detectives. We're doing everything we can to make recruitment happen. And we did a darn good job of it in 2023. 2024 is starting out a little slower, but as I said, that pause is sadly necessary. These are the data tables for recruitment and retention. And you can see the sort of some of the success we've had, but we'll see some changes. I mean, even this shows four lateral hires and says that as of, you know, the first of January of the four hired how many are still with us and it was all four. That's no longer the case. One of those laterals did depart and was a resignation. Our rebuilding goals ambitious but achievable, although every time we lose a person that we did not anticipate they become a little bit more difficult to achieve. The basic strategy for this is we have to keep the personnel we have we have to and they are starting to get burned out and they are starting to feel the sort of doldrums of winter. And the, the, the results of, I mean, even yesterday, we had a five hour hostage standoff situation that was incredibly taxing to the people involved. And, you know, addressing something like that is on the one hand, that is why a lot of these men and women became police officers to deal with scenes like that, and to put to the test their expertise and their character, but it is also exhausting. And we have made, as I said, you know, growth important growth, the police Academy graduation in June, and then the police Academy graduation in December. And we are offering some of the most competitive compensations in the entire region, and we have some of the best things to speak for us as an agency in the region, including some of the best shift structures. People talk about this shift structure as a really sort of a unicorn. Most agencies want it. A lot of agencies won't do it. It is an agent, it's a shift structure that has a certain amount of overlap that overlap if used properly allows for a lot of robust training and development. And that is certainly what this agency has used it for over the past two decades. But it is now a key component in our value proposition to prospective employees and certainly to the employees that we still have who are with us. And that is it. Thank you, chief. Are there any questions about the report from commissioners. This is Mary Cox. I don't say how to put my hand up for a second, but could I ask a question? Yeah, please. I see your hand, but I don't. Can we, can we unshare the screen so we can see ourselves again. Thank you. Go ahead, commissioner Cox. So I was wondering, does the pressure that we're having on training officers include the training officers for the ERU? And I was also wondering if you could give us an update as to the BTV CARES team. Sure, thanks. So the ERU, those training, you know, it's those are different. We don't have, for example, training officers for ERU. We have a team that train each other in different kinds of things. And so different members of the ERU become experts in different things. There are certainly officers. We, there are supervisors who are leaders of the ERU. There are officers who are a little bit more senior on the ERU and perhaps have been to trainings about more specific kinds of things. But there's no one training officer for the ERU. They cross train together and work as a team. And that does, that can make staffing a regular shift challenging at times. If you have a certain number of officers who are assigned to a shift, and they're all participating in ERU, it can be challenging to have the shift fully staffed. If we did not have that kind of training and that team, we would lose more officers than we even hold by, than we would hold by having better staffed shifts. In other words, at the expense of putting one or two more people on a shift, a given shift and saying it's a little bit better staff today is that the thing that many of these officers enjoy the most and find the most fulfilling which is training or membership on that team wouldn't be possible. We make these kinds of decisions a lot. What are we going to, you know, how much do we sacrifice here in order to have something here that is of a an attraction for the officers. During the CARES team, we have had ongoing conversations with the Department of Mental Health and ongoing conversations with the University of Vermont Medical Center. AD Director Kate, excuse me, Assistant Director Kate Smith is going to be working on that. We have a clinician, a clinical supervisor who is in the hiring process right now. That's some good movement. We're still working, however, with the hospital on the legal ease of getting nurse registered nurses assigned to Burlington in order to be a member of this team. Thank you, Chief Merride. Are there any other questions for the Chief at this about the yearly report or anything else? Great. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is commendations. Commendations are generally based on a specific conduct of an officer or officers. There was an email in our packet, but it doesn't amount to accommodation. Is there any other, are there any other commendations? I'm sorry, Jessica, could I just say something positive about it? It was in an email that was like sent just shortly before our meeting regarding the arrest of somebody who was like, I guess, dealing cocaine. It was like it's being processed through the federal courts rather than the state courts. I'm hoping we get like a better result regarding if there's an eventual conviction then regarding sentencing and so forth. Then we sometimes get in state courts, but I wanted to commend the police department, I guess, that was like very involved in that and maybe Chief Merride could speak a little bit to their efforts, but I just wanted to make sure that the public knew about that. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Cox. Chief Merride, do you have anything to add to that? Thank you so much, Commissioner Cox. I very much appreciate that. Yeah, we did send out a press release about the operation just because it had occasioned it had been noticed in that part of town that we were doing that operation. A few days ago, I think it was very appreciated by that part of town they've been having challenges that are, I believe, repercussions from this particular group and the arrest I think is an important arrest. I'm hopeful too that we will be able to really have a vigorous prosecution that leads to a decent jail sentence for this individual. But more importantly that that particular operation remains shut down and that that part of the city can breathe a little easier. And then it's on to the next one because there are a lot. Thank you, Chief Merride. The next item on our agenda is commission business. Are there any commissioner updates or comments at this time? Seeing none, I'll go to the next agenda item, which is 6.2 police commission charter change review process. And on behalf of Commissioner Rao, there's a proposal that you all received and I'm going to read it now. This is the proposal for the process for further review of the police commission charter change. All commissioners will submit their comments on the joint committee's proposal to Commissioner Rao and co-chair Rao and Cox by Friday, February 9th. Commissioners Rao and Cox will prepare one document with all commissioners proposed changes and send out to the commission with the commission packet for discussion at the February 27 police commission meeting. After the February 27 police commission meeting, we will discuss areas of agreement and areas of disagreement to narrow our differences. After the February 27 meeting, we'll send our working document to the chief, the BPOA, the joint committee, MPAs and other interested groups and ask them to bring their feedback to our March 26 police commission meeting. At our March 26 police commission meeting, we'll hold a special public hearing to receive feedback from all interested parties. At our April 23rd police commission meeting, commissioners will present any proposals for further charter amendments and will vote on each as necessary. The process will continue at our May 28th meeting. The goal is to share with the joint committee after our May 28th meeting. Are there any comments or discussion of this proposal? Great. I'm trying to figure out how to unmute myself for some reason the things I'm driving. This is Carolyn. I just had a comment or a question about that because I see that under the schedule we submit our comments and then we're going to have a discussion. And I didn't know if it would be possible for us to have some discussion before we submitted all of our individual comments just to kind of understand what people understand to be the proposal and just some general, I don't know, just an opportunity for general discussion. And I also wanted to mention at least for me, I noticed that two of the dates are ones that, meetings that I will not be able to attend because the February meeting is during school vacation week and I am going to be out of the country. And then also the April one is a school vacation week. So I just wanted to mention that to all of you now. I'm not really sure. I know the February one it will be really impossible for me to participate in. It's possible that the April one I will be able to participate even though I'm going to be traveling with my family but I'm not 100% sure that. Thank you Commissioner Hansen. Are there any other comments or responses to that. So this Mary Cox, I, you know, so Commissioner Rao and myself are always open to like a side discussion with an individual commissioner. What we have to be careful of is to avoid any meeting of the open meeting laws. And so if you have a particular question or a particular comment that you'd like to share with Commissioner Rao and I, then you're welcome to share that. And we will respond. But it shouldn't be sent to all, for example, because then that would be in violation of the open meeting laws as I understand them. Is that correct Commissioner Aske. Yes, that is correct. You can't have a quorum of the board, the commission communicating outside of a publicly worn meeting. Right. But so if you have any questions or comments or feelings or you're not going to be able to make it to a meeting, we'd be happy to express things on your behalf. We're totally open to working with you so. Okay. Any other comments on the proposal? Can I have a motion to approve the charter change review process as just outlined. And for the minutes I'll submit this and writing. So that whoever is, is it, I don't know if it's Shannon's going to do the minutes. But we'll figure it out. Could I have a motion to approve the charter change review process as just outlined. I'll move. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Cox and Commissioner Comerford. That's a second. Right. All in favor. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed. The motion passes and you've approved the police commission charter change review process. The next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are approval of two minutes. The minutes from the December 20th meeting and the minutes from the December 26th meeting. Could I have a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions noted. Excuse me. I did have to correct the minutes for the 20th. It said I was not in attendance. I was in fact participating in that meeting. Great. I'll make a note of that for the record. Thank you. That's the 20th. Correct. With that change to the minutes on December 20th. Could I have a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions noted with the amendment of adding commissioner Keith to the December 20th meeting. Commissioner Garrison is second. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Keith. All those in favor. Any opposed. Any abstention. I assume. Yeah. Commissioner Hanson is abstained. She wasn't attending. She didn't attend the chosen on the commission yet on December 20th. So that's the end of our regularly scheduled meeting. We do have an executive session. I have a motion for a special finding that premature general public knowledge of the commission's hearing of grievances and complaints would clearly place the state municipality. Other public body or persons involved at a substantial disadvantage. Commissioner Oski. I'm sorry. This is Carolyn again. And I can't figure out how to raise my hand. Just before we do that, I don't want to make you repeat all of that. I just had sort of a comment and a question about minutes. I'm just wondering if it would make sense for someone to respond. I noticed there was a seven days article that talked about how we had not posted any minutes to the site. And that that was required by state law and also the, I'm mindful of the comments that commissioner grant raised. And I think that it would be helpful for the general public to know that we don't have anyone to do minutes right now. I know that came up in the meeting, the special meeting that the Charter Change Committee was holding. They were surprised to learn it wasn't until commissioner Cox explained to them that we've had no administrative help whatsoever. This all of course predates me being on the commission, but I was interested in the fact that the committee didn't seem to know that we didn't have anybody to do minutes or provide any administrative support. And at that meeting, the representative from the mayor's office who was there said, oh my gosh, we didn't know that you didn't have any support either and the mayor's office will make sure that some support is provided to the commission. But I think it's important for the public to know that and to know that it's not just that the commission is, you know, neglecting or not interested in providing those minutes as quickly as possible. But it's just that there isn't normally there would be a staff person that assists all the commissions with doing that sort of thing and there isn't anybody for us right now. So I try to raise that. Okay, thank you commissioner handsome we have had a staff person regularly until December we lost that staff person. So there's been a, there's been a pause in our staffing commissioner Cox did you have something you want to add. I'm just going to say that we have had an excellent help from Shannon trample, but she has like a complete full time job, other than this. And so it seems like kind of a burden to be placed on her and she's been excellent and helping us like muddle through this, but it would be super helpful to have a more regular staff person as we had previously last year. So thank you. And, and I, it's my understanding that there is somebody from the clerk's office that is in line but I don't know, I will be responsible for putting out the minutes from this meeting. I don't know if it's in city format but I, I have the minutes, and I will share them with commissioners Cox and Rao, and we'll work to get them posted as well as the previous minutes that we have and I'm not sure why they're not on civil, civic clerk. But as I said to commissioner to counselor grant, we will look into it and make sure that it gets posted. Thank you to quick points one I think there are minutes from the 26 December 26 meeting that were posted and I was not in attendance I would recuse but we couldn't adopt those. The use of force reports for December, I believe was on the agenda for tonight's meeting. Thank you I skipped over that thank you for reminding me. And yes, we did just approve both. They were both on the consent agenda the minutes from December 20 and the minutes from December 26. I just to be formal, I recuse myself with a 26 that was not in. So sorry, thank you for letting me know we skipped over the use of force reports that was item number five on the agenda. And the purpose of this agenda item is for counselors to identify any use of force reports incidents that they would like to request further information on. You will receive the use of force reports for December. So now's the time to for us to discuss those. I would like to make a request for videos, if I may request videos for incidents. 35 and 23. As they pertain to DD 13.3 interacting with persons with diminished capacities. Justification is to contribute to the commission's understanding of how these departmental directives are working in the field. I would like to request video for incident number four. As it relates to DD 05. State uniform use of force policy, particularly as it pertains to the use of OC spray. And again, for the purpose of contributing to the commission's understanding of how the departmental directive is working in the field. Thank you. Thank you commissioner. And we have a temporary policy that you are relying on to request the video the incidents as they pertain to the use of force reports. I would like to make a request for the departmental policy, but the department and the BPO a have not agreed to that yet. And we're meeting with them tomorrow to review that. So your request are going to be on the record now. And we're going to have to wait, I believe, until the outcome of this meeting. Several, this was discussed on at least more than one occasion in public meeting where it was clear. That while the initial request that all videos be released without citing specific justification was put on hold pending resolution. That the commission has and will continue to have unfettered access to any videos related to citizens complaints and where we are proffer cause as I've just done. So I do not believe that's a correct interpretation that this is put on hold. We are allowed to request for for if we give a specific justification, a blanket request for all videos is not allowed. And your requests are in the record and we'll see what attorney Pellerin says about that if we get the if we get the videos commissioner Cox. So that's my understanding is that we would let attorney Pellerin know like what we wanted in the justification as a commissioner key just stated, and I also would like to see those same ones and I think all the people who finished the records of training and background check necessary to see the videos should see those and so definitely on board with this but I think the process right now is just there's somebody that needs to be the gatekeeper to say, yes, this is sufficient justification and I think what commissioner key fast stated sounds to me like just like sufficient justification. And so hopefully that should go smoothly. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other commissioners that would that request more information on any of the December use of force incidents. So just so I'm clear commissioner key for the record. You've requested videos for incident three incidents three five and 23 as they pertain to DD 23 regarding persons with diminished capacity. And you request incident video for incident number five. As it pertains to the state use of force policy and the use of OC spray. Yes, I'm sorry, it was the last was number four, as it pertains to the use of force. Incident number four, not number. Okay, so yes, so if helpful, I would just say three number three, five and 23 as pertains to DD 13.3 and incident number four, as it pertains to DD 05. Sorry, log items in there. Okay, great. Are there any other commissioners that would like to request further information about any of the use of force. Great. Okay, thank you. Sorry that I skipped over that. So now we are at the end of the meeting and we are going to get a motion for executive session, and we will not be returning to the public meeting. After we go into executive session. So, may I have a motion for a special finding that premature general public knowledge of the commission's hearing of grievances and complaints would clearly place the state municipality other public body, or person involved at a substantial disadvantage. Commission, thank you commissioner come effort may have a second commissioner garrison thank you. All in favor. Thank you. The unanimous the motion carries may have a motion that the commission enter executive session based upon the special finding pursuant to one VSA 313 a one. Thank you. Commissioner garrison and may have a second. Thank you commissioner Keith. All in favor. Hi. Thank you that unanimous motion carries. So again, the commission is going to move into executive session and I think you all have the link. And we will not be back in public session at the conclusion of the executive session we will adjourn. I'll see you at the other channel.