 There's no one there, but do you want me to start it? All right. Oh, good afternoon, everyone. I am Pamela Nolan Young, the Director of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion here in town. And we are sponsoring a series of community forms on the establishment of the Resident Oversight Board. Those conversations are going to be facilitated by Rabbi Deb Coladney, and assisting me today is Assistant Director of DEI Jennifer Moisten. So let me tell you just a little bit about Rabbi Deb. She has been, or they've been consulting since 1993 and has worked extensively in the fields of conflict transformation, workplace democracy, strategic planning, anti-hate work, restorative and racial justice, community data collection, and the field of DEI. They bring extensive experience in police accountability from years of work in Portland, Oregon. First as a participant in a clergy group that met with police leaders and the mayor every two weeks to address community concerns. Then as a founder and leader in Portland, United Against Hate, a coalition of BIPOC and LGBTQ plus and religious minorities documenting, providing trauma informed care and seeking prevention of any outrageous level of hate. And this role, Deborah created reports that chronicled police violence against protesters and lobbied both the city council and state legislature about police accountability for their actions. Since moving to Amherst, Deborah has joined our Human Rights Commission and is providing training to the school district to support transgender and non-binary students. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pamela, and thank you Jennifer for doing our tech and thank you to the interpreters who are on call if anyone needs Spanish or Mandarin interpretation. So as people, if people come in, I'm not sure if there's a way for them to register. Obviously, if they're in the room, they can just let us know. We also, I want to say we have two representatives of Cress in the room. You can't be seen on camera right now, I don't think. But the reason they have made the time today to come is that we know that talking about experiences with police, especially if they have been difficult or unpleasant, can be incredibly stressful. And so they're on call right here to be available for you. If you have, if you decide that things are stressing you out and you want to have a kind and compassionate part to connect with. So as Pamela said, I'm Deb Coladney, I've been working in the field of police accountability for many years now, although much more extensively in Portland, Oregon than here. And I want to give a little bit of introduction to what we're going to be doing today. Most of our time is going to be devoted to hearing from folks who are who have come to tell your stories. So we've got I think one participant in the room at this moment, and two participants on zoom is that right Jennifer in addition to the interpreters so we may not be here for two hours. Because we're just going to we're not going to stretch us ourselves to fill the time. We'll definitely be able to hear everybody who came. Would you be so kind Jennifer as to put the PowerPoint up starting with the first slide. All right, so this conversation about police accountability has been happening in the town of Amherst for several years. There are two committees that have done extensive work in evaluating what the community's experiences have been with the police, and what our next steps should be. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. The reason that we're here today and we're going to have three more sessions is because the town was really interested in hearing from as many people as possible about their experiences so that the data would be as robust and as extensive as we could generate. Next slide please. The agenda for today you've already heard a welcome from Pamela young. I'm going to give you a little bit of history in just a second. And we're going to talk I'm going to set up some ground rules before you share your stories. And then after you share your experiences will ask you what you would like to be different about how the Amherst police force works, and then hear from you about what you would like to see in a resident oversight board. I'm going to get a little bit more information before you speak don't worry so you'll have some context and background, and then thanks and farewell. Next slide please. The guidelines for today. Oh, can you see that that's a real have to remember not to put something on blue that's a hard read. We have a lot of information gathering here today. We won't be debating each other or even responding to each other. Everyone's encouraged to participate. Everyone who wants to speak will have the opportunity to do so and we'll go back and forth between the room in the zoom. When you speak you can state your name and where you live, if you want, or you can be anonymous, and we'll only have one person speaking at a time. All right, quick check in any questions so far. Anybody raising their hand on zoom and zoom landia. All right. So, a little bit of history. Years ago, three or four years ago, Amherst commissioned a group called the community safety working group to make recommendations on different ways of providing public safety services. And their task was to make recommendations and reform to the current organizational and oversight structures of the Amherst police department. Specifically, they were charged with studying the complex complex issues of delivering community safety services to ensure racial equity. They collected data from people's experiences engaging the community's most impacted folks to see about alternatives to policing and identify solutions to diagnose problems from their work. As you may have heard of crests I just introduced a couple of people here in the room, which is an alternative to policing department that is here to serve folks who are who might be in mental health crisis or who have needs that the police really are not designed to address but have historically been been engaged with. They also said that we should have a DEI office diversity equity and inclusion office, and we have the two members of that office right here Pamela and Jennifer. So, and they also talked about a youth community center, which is something that's still pending. In addition to that if you could go to the next slide. And specifically that because the charge of this group was to dismantle racism. In any way it could. It focus a prioritize its conversations with people who are by pop and by pop community. And did extensive connection outreach with folks who are by pop leaders and had a commitment to increasing the power and voice of by pop residents in this town. If you could go to the next slide. I'm going to do it myself. The CSWG issued two reports, and the first as I said, called for creating a crest service and a resident oversight board and that's what we're going to take a little bit of time talking about today. We have a by office, a youth empowerment center, and a by pop cultural center, and they also made a couple of other recommendations one was to reduce the Amherst police department of 43 officers, and hire no additional officers until crest was fully operational. And then continue the ongoing work of the community safety working group. The second report if you go to the next slide, Jennifer please. She has had several, many, many more recommendations and the first was to create a community safety and social justice committee which has been functioning since after June 30 2021 established this resident oversight board review the Amherst police department use of force policy, prohibit police department consent searches and vehicles prohibit police department low level and pre textual traffic stops at Fox to vehicle report form and several other recommendations you could take a look at these slides and I will say that this is just a sampling when I read through all the reports. They had basically this committee had covered every possible intervention that I've ever seen in community accountability police work so they were incredibly incredibly thorough. All right, please. This details the scope of the advisory board and what their work would be. They could receive the recommendation is that they could receive complaints from members of the public conduct hearings, hire professional investigators to as needed. The discipline supervision and training for officers recommend mediation for complainants and officers have the authority to subpoena witnesses and documents and be represented on the interview committee. That is now being created to to hire a new police chief and other high level positions. Their recommendations was a very, very extensive robust resident oversight board and I will say that around the country. That's a rare model. The vast majority of the oversight boards have much less, much less authority. All right, so that's how we got here today. Since the board, these, these recommendations were made. The state of Massachusetts came up with a new data collection system called post, and you can go to their website. No, if you could go to the next slide please Jennifer, you could go to their website and learn about how their process works for adjudicating complaints. You can read their reports, you can file a complaint against a police officer the next slide please view officer disciplinary records and law enforcement status of each officer and then view decisions and orders and reviews when complaints have been made. Lots of words, because there's been lots of history, your citizen representatives have been awesome and amazing. And now we're here, we're here now for you to have the opportunity to share what your experiences have been with the Amherst police department. So I'm going to take a breath and ask if anybody has any questions or comments before we move to the next phase of our conversation. Next slide to. So the way we're going to do this is that I'm going to hand out surveys to people in the room so you could take a look and read through the kinds of information we'd love to get from you. What language would you prefer Spanish English or Mandarin. Okay. Would you like a survey. All right, Spanish English or Mandarin. And I'm going to give the folks on the folks who are online who are on zoom. If you could share your screen Jennifer and put up the flyer so that people could go to the survey that's online and they could also see the questions. But only one. Thank you on zoom there's a QR code on the bottom of the flyer that's listed if you could use that that would be great thank you. So I'm going to give everybody a few minutes to read through the survey and actually, you know it would be ideal is if you actually filled out the survey, so that I could collect them. And then I don't have to rewatch this and transcribe it which will be harder for me, and you will make sure that every word that you want to be communicated is communicated if you if you fill this out so yeah take a few minutes, and then we'll hear from folks, what their experiences have been like, both the survey online and the survey in your hand can be totally anonymous. If you want it to be, or you could leave your name if you'd rather do that. And the same is true for when you speak in the room, you can show your name or not up to you. So I think maybe we can move into hearing from folks. And are you comfortable going first. All right, I'm going to hand this to you otherwise people want to. My name is Vera Duangmini cage. Hi, my name is Vera Duangmini cage I actually have a incident to share that occurred yesterday at the former Hickory Ridge golf course area that's now owned by the town of Amherst. I actually want to play this video. Just to share with you straight from BIPOC youth, what their experience is a plate, and this particular youth and the other youth that were there. We're also have also experienced throughout their childhood. These different interactions with the police that are not savory to say the least. So, let me just play this and I hope it comes clear to the audience. What's your badge number 104. I'm just here we're going to take pictures and he's targeting me saying I read the weed. Yeah, I'm a victim. Yeah, that's fucking crazy bro. What's your badge number again. This is insane. Everyone's the same every every cop on me from Amherst police department we're talking about Nagle Casey Nagle. He's a fucking the same thing. So, basically, the boys were or young men. They were parked they met up at the Hickory Ridge parking lot. It was a nice day as you all recall yesterday was a very nice sunny day in the 50s and they were there to shoot video to upload to their social media. And as they were talking to each other via cell phone. One of the young adult male said, the police is pulling up behind you. And so that was the video that I just shared of that young man who was at that interaction with the police and his voice sounds very exasperated and I think it's because this young man has had horrible experiences with the Amherst police. He was a young man that was interrogated at the police station without his parents. And, you know, these are individuals that you're probably not going to hear from that you're that's not going to fill out this paper survey. I'm just going to scan the QR code to submit their survey about an a bad incident because this has been normal for them since growing up here in their own town of Amherst. So my friend who passed away, September 11. One of her passions was advocating for young people. And she did so with such heart and such passion as if she was a mother to all of these kids that have no voice in this town. So I sit here to share another incident with the Amherst police. But if the status quo continues. These voices won't be heard and their wishes won't be carried out because and unless the people who hold the power and the privilege step aside and allow their voices to carry through. Thank you. We wanted to submit the video to us so that we could have that for our files. That would be great. I believe that there is an email address to you. All right, so either one of you so I don't have your email address. Young or young as in the age young P at Amherst dot gov or moist and Jay at Amherst dot gov Amherst MA dot gov. Also, before you leave, I'm going to find my own card and give that to you. I don't remember things that are said I need to have. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing that. I know that I'm also very open and would consider it an honor. If there was a place to meet with young people, especially so that their voices definitively got heard, you know, outside of these, you know, outside of town hall if that feels intimidating or something like that. So I'd be very happy to speak with you about that. Thank you for coming. All right, we're going to alternate between the room and zoom. So, if there's somebody on zoom right now who'd like to share a story. If you could raise your hand and Jennifer will pull you onto the screen. See if anybody's raising their hand who wants to speak. Nobody is raising your hand to speak. All right, we've got somebody else in the room here. Would you like to share. Not yet. All right. So, um, there's another two questions that we have in addition to incidents. And so, if nobody on zoom wants to contribute. What I'm going to recommend is just ask this question or two more questions. What would you like to see from Amherst police and you've already said that. The truth with respect is certainly what I heard, but if there's a specific answer. More specific than what you shared in your story that you'd like to offer up. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the resident oversight board or if you have any thoughts about what authority it should have or how it should function. It should be named complainants. Got it. I'm going to repeat that a little bit shorter probably because so everybody on zoom can also hear it. The resident oversight board should accept credible anonymous complaints and make sure that however the process works. Those who are in vulnerable populations can be assured that there would be no retaliation and vulnerable, vulnerable groups include those with a variety of immigration statuses those who are court involved. And, you know, anybody you certainly, you know, also categorize any, anybody who has a history of even arrest, not even in incarceration. So anybody with a history in the criminal justice system. Anything else you want to add. Okay. Thank you. Jennifer, can you see if anybody on zoom wants to contribute answers to those questions. Nope. All right. Well we have one more person in the room who's writing quite a lot. Are you ready to. So we don't have an agenda to fill the space. At this point. Is there a hand up and zoom there is. All right, we're going to hear from a zoom user. Thank you. Just barely. I'm actually in route to town hall out the park. I was hoping to actually come in person. Wanting to thank everyone for this work of these sessions. And so anyway, if I make it there in time, I'll be there. Great. So if you didn't hear that I was a little sketchy, someone is on route. They are walking here at this moment hope to be here in person and share more than. All right, while we're waiting for that person and the person in the room. I'm getting you my card. So for the, I think two people besides the interpreters and the person who's walking is making their way here. Since it looks pretty clear, we're not going to be here until four o'clock that this is really your moment. If you have the inclination to share an experience or that you either had yourself personally or that you witnessed either way. And it could be an experience that happened yesterday. As we just saw it could be an experience that happened years ago. We didn't put a time limit, a historical time limit on this. I think there should be also thought and consideration around how and who will assemble the resident oversight board. Because it is a serious duty and so that process needs to be transparent and the whole resident should be able to say who should be, you know, representing them in that body. And they should have investigative authority. And whether it's to interview police officers or seek discovery of evidence and such. So I think if this is going to be done the right way, I think that there should be some contributions from the public about who and how this body will be assembled by it. Thank you so much. I'm not going to repeat that because you all heard it from the microphone. I will add that the recommendation included that I think it'd be a five member board and that four to five people be BIPOC from the BIPOC community. I don't remember reading the process. So I'm going to get this all up here right now. All right, I put up input from community on who serves on ROB. And they should have the capacity to investigate and do discovery. Do you work in the legal profession. Excellent. Do you feel ready to share. So there will be a point I think at which will call the meeting to a close if there aren't other people who want to share, or person who's coming here, you know, we'll certainly wait for that person. And it's, I see you've been writing quite a lot so we'll certainly take your written report, but I hope you're ready. I guess is what I want to say to share before we end up closing. My name is Deborah Coladney and I'm fairly new to town. I've got here about two and a half years ago. I serve on the Human Rights Commission now. And I came here to Amherst with an extensive background in police accountability work. First, in Portland, Oregon, first as a clergy person who met on the regular with police officers there to address community based concerns. And then as a person who was a founder and a leader in a coalition called Portland United Against Hate, and that was a coalition of all targeted communities so immigrants, refugees, LGBTQI plus people, BIPOC people, Jews and Muslims. And one of the things that we learned is that I'll tell a few stories. At the time when I started that work, the FBI and police combined said there were 10 hate incidents that had occurred in the year before. We launched a community based data collection tool that people could respond to anonymously. And once it was up and running we were getting 200 complaints a year to give an example of like what people feel safe doing and what people feel comfortable doing. So we were recording that kind of data and then when after the George Floyd murder when the racial reckoning hit Portland, Oregon as it hit here. We turned that instrument into a vehicle for collecting data on police violence against residents in Portland and we did a report and community learning sessions about it and we lobbied and got some movement around, as has already happened here around the development of crests. We, we call the Portland equivalent equivalent was called Portland street response. That's just a little bit about me I have a law degree but I haven't used it in a very, very, very long time. I'm assuming are you the gentleman who called in excellent so thank you so much we're glad you're here. You just heard me introducing myself a little bit I'm Deborah. Are you ready to share what you'd like to but you came to share. Thank you, assistant director Jennifer moisten, director family known young, so glad to have this opportunity to speak for a moment to the our efforts on behalf of what we're referring to as a resident oversight board. This is something that in the immediately in the wake of the tragic murder of George Floyd, that many of us really were most engaged and concerned about the many, many things that we express concerns about, which I'm proud to say we've seen our town here. Listen and act upon, such as the creating of an office of diversity equity inclusion, such as the creation of a program like crests. And, and even now having these hearings toward engaging with the establishing some type of accountability and critical engagement system for residents of our town with our with our police department. There were many voices in those times crying out. Some were crying out with the cry of abolition abolition of the police is an idea that, especially in academia has gained quite a bit of credibility, and many people are engaged in pointing out the research that that sustains such an idea. But, but of course here there was considerable counter reaction to, to even just that the bare mention of that idea. But I only mentioned is to say that there's been a been quite a spectrum of opinions on these matters. For some of us that recommended what we're referring to as a resident oversight board. We saw it as a middle ground, a middle ground between an actual abolition of the Amherst police department and the current way in which we attempt to provide community safety and public safety to scrap this current system. And, and doing nothing that somewhere in between that that measure and and doing status quo. We came up with this as an idea, the particular term that I was most drawn to was commission was calling for a commission on police practices. I was particularly called to that by the example of what I observed going on in San Diego, California. My, my cousin my first cousin was who was an attorney was one of the leading forces there in San Diegans for justice that was calling for a commission for police practices and interestingly in their case they went the route of a of a town referendum. They had an actual through the city charter, not town but through the charter of the city of San Diego. They were able to get on the ballot, a measure in which the citizens of San Diego was actually able to register support for the creation of a commission on police practices. They created an outline of what the commission would look like what the kinds of powers they were talking about they did a lot of this kind of listening and educational work, and, and they put it before the voters and the voters strongly supported the creation of such a commission on police practices. And so that's the term that I adopted and that was the direction that I was, I particularly advocated, but folks here were like, well, we don't necessarily need a charter initiative. I'll go to the charter and do a townwide vote on on such a thing we can do it internally. And so we see three years later we're still working on it internally. And so, hopefully then as we go into 2024, we will be redoubling our efforts we will look at the array of of recent iterations of the kinds of things we're looking for here in other places I hope particularly will look at San Diego and what what they've have come up with and are continuing to work on and implement, but we critically need this and the reason we need this is that problems of of our policing system. Aren't episodic. The, the commentary that Vera Domini made cage has made and the video that that she has shared and we see the incident just on yesterday. This is not episodic. This is just an ongoing feature of our society of our levels of concern in the public about what it means to have an encounter with the police. Not everybody is going to just, you know, take things with open arms. Oh, the police are here. Thank you, Lord. And, you know, but what might have different reactions. And then the question becomes, how do we handle those interactions. And are we looking at de escalating or we escalating. And, and these then are common features that we need a system whereby beyond just a complaint structure, but whereby incidents can be looked into whereby there can be some some ability for the community to to engage with the police on their standards and practices and and hopefully influence change lead to change. You know the July 5 incident, despite all that happened and all that it took to even have a conversation on that. I still wonder whether we've we've actually have any measurable change in how we practice right now if a call is made at midnight tonight about noise, how folks roll out and I mean what is our response to that going to be in terms of a group of teenagers being outside waiting for someone to come and fix their flat. So, I really think this is something that in 2024 I hope and look forward to us making substantial progress on it will make a safer, not less safe. It will ultimately benefit the police because now the police can have can hopefully begin to work toward a greater degree of legitimacy and a greater degree and a wider degree of acceptance in the community from all parts of the community, understanding that there is there is a tough job, but that hey when certain things blind spots implicit bias explicit biases come into play that people are able to have those incidents really looked at and have things really addressed in a way that we can fall not see a repeat of it and not see anything such as what has happened in Minneapolis and other places ever ever ever happen here in Amherst that's our goal that's what and I think that's what we can accomplish if we stay the course on this and and move forward with the what this listing session is designed I hope to get us toward. Thank you. Thank you so much you didn't tell us your name you can be anonymous but if you want to share your name that'd be great. Okay. Thank you, Mr Shabazz, and was there a specific incident that you wanted to reference that you had your, your own personal experience with the police to share today. Not, not supposed to be. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. So, because the folks on zoom didn't hear that I'll just really briefly say you don't have a specific incident. There, there was one in 2007 it might have been with the UMass police and you're in discussions right now with the interim police chief about an initiative that you're feeling positive about. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Jennifer, can we check in again with the folks on zoom to see if anybody wants to share they're still being shy. Yeah, so on zoom in zoom landia if you'd like to share would you please raise your hand. And you can have the floor. All right, going once going twice. How are you feeling are you feeling ready to share, you could also just submit what you wrote and not share verbally totally up to you. Okay. All right, it's totally up to you. And again, you could also just submit whatever you wrote if that would be better for you, whatever you want. Whatever works for you. All right, I don't see any hands up on the screen. So, in addition to the questions about individual incidents we have questions about the resident oversight board and what you want to see from the police which I guess it's progress Professor Shabazz has already spoken to quite eloquently. So all three questions are up for you for those in zoom land if you want to share. I'm always amazed when people come to just listen. It's like what a public service to just come and listen. I will say that as preparation for my time here I spoke with three people who were members of the CSWG. Yes, I got the acronym right. Yeah, so I got a wonderful introduction to the history of the work. And I also read all the reports and I just want to say that there's like dozens of recommendations specifically about how the police operations. So standards and operations, which look great totally state of the art, you know, on police accountability and oversight so the work that's been done to date has been incredibly sophisticated thorough impressive. Yeah. Well I'm going to say that I don't see any more hands on zoom. I think the people in the room who said they're ready to talk have spoken. This is your last call. If you want to speak now or hand in your paper and whichever one you'd like. If you want to speak. Let me give you the mic. Well not now is the time. So it's either now or never to speak and you could always hand in the paper. You'll pass. Is that it. Yeah. All right. Well I want to thank those who came I don't want to hold you keep you any longer, because you've said your piece and we really appreciate your input. Well here Pamela, so would you like to give a goodbye and Jennifer can also see a few words of thanks. The director of our DEI office I think Jennifer you could also say a few words, and I want to thank since I'm going to hand this over I'm not going to take the mic again I want to thank the interpreters for coming even though we didn't end up having a need, having access for Mandarin speaking and Spanish speaking is critical even if folks don't opt in so thank you great to have you here. Hi I'll just close by saying thank you for those people who were able to join us here in person and online. Also, thank you to the interpreters I think it's really important that folks know that we have three more opportunities for folks to share their story and have input and there will be interpretation services at those three events. Oh one more at the next one on January okay interpretations services at the next event in January. You reminded me of something there are flyers so for those who came, I want you to go home with some flyers and give them to people who you know so the more stories the more voices, the more effective this work can be. So yeah so please spread the word I'm going to pass. I just wanted to thank everyone for coming and of course, thanks to UMass Translation Center translate to educate we so appreciate you guys joining us and helping us get through this as we all learn how to navigate the translation which is crucial for us to continue to have. And I would like to say have a good afternoon and we hope to see some of you again on the 10th of January and as well some new faces. Thank you and have a great afternoon.