 motion that we adopt the agenda as is do I have a second and all in favor raise your hand or say aye that passes unanimously and moving on next to approval of the minutes from our special meeting on 8 to 21 there will be modifications on one of them so I'm just going to do I'd like to request a change to the minutes on August 2nd to include the full wording of the motion that we made with regard to hiring more officers and CSL's so just to clarify the motion is in all the taxes we said we were going to make a motion for but the actual motion did not make it into the minutes exactly all right my second that I think the process may be simply to table the minutes Shireen would you know I think we I would have amended them and oh you're saying I think we could approve them with that amendment made right yeah then that would be my motion is to approve them with that amendment that the minute of the the entire motion be included in the minutes second that motion any discussion all in favor of that amendment raise your hand or say aye aye and all right I think technically I said just for those minutes so I guess for minutes from 727 and 720 any amendments or yeah any amendments to the any amendments to the minutes from those meetings not seeing or hearing any all in favor raise your hand to say aye that passes unanimously and that moves us on to agenda item 3.01 which is the public forum at this point anybody that's in the public section is welcome to have us here this table here and you know you have a couple minutes to speak to us so if anyone is anyone like to partake now your time not seeing or hearing anybody and with that that jumps us into our presentations believe one is time served for 620 I'm not sure if you're ready to go now if you are then the floor is yours Mr. George thank you so and I say and we have here to present his state's attorney Sarah George to speak to us about alternatives to arrest and thank you thank you very much for being being here with us we really appreciate it absolutely thank you guys for having me and I'm not sure presentation is exactly what I would say if I was supposed to do a presentation I apologize and I thank you for having me I don't know several of you so it's nice to meet you I have heard a lot about the sort of new police commission I've been following a lot of the work you guys are doing I really appreciate it I know that you've heard a lot from the community and I know that you've heard a lot from Chief Murad and from representatives from the BPOA I think the what led to me coming was having conversations with people about prosecutorial discretion and how that relates to police discretion and what our office is doing especially during a global pandemic but really what we've been trying to do as an office in general to limit the number of cases coming into the system limit the number of people coming into our system and so for some people this you might know all of this and I apologize if you do but I'm gonna pretend that you don't so that I don't miss out on anything or assume anything I shouldn't the office of the Chittenden County State's attorney is responsible for all of the criminal prosecution in this county and anything that Burlington Police Department investigates unless it goes through the federal system comes through our office there are a lot of people within the system that have what's called prosecutorial or police discretion prosecutors from my perspective have the most discretion and therefore the most power within the criminal legal system not just because of the things they can do but the things that they can choose not to do and in some ways that's from my perspective more important there's a lot of national attention right now on policing there's also a lot of national attention prosecution rightfully and that discretion for a very very very long time has been used in my opinion to over police and over prosecute people and bring far too many people into our system with actually very little evidence to support the benefits that we at least initially thought we would be seeing prosecutors more than anybody else have probably 50 to 100 opportunities within the life of a case to speak into the mic or turn the mic up so everyone in the room can hear please yeah it also affects how people can hear when they watch back on like town meeting television thank you keep it very close and so what prosecutors can decide on their own with absolutely no authority from anybody else including judges or police or defense attorneys is whether or not to charge somebody and if they do decide to charge somebody with a crime what that charge is for example whether they decide to charge somebody with a felony or a misdemeanor with one count or 10 every one of those decisions is up to a prosecutor and nobody else law enforcement can cite somebody for a particular crime but we are under no obligation to charge the person with that particular crime or any crime we look at the affidavits and decide what charges we think are appropriate my office the policy within my office or the philosophy is to charge somebody with the least serious offense that still captures the importance and the seriousness of the conduct so if there is somebody who comes a charge comes over as a felony a good example of this is a felony for a theft that is over a thousand dollars when really the only reason it's a felony is because of the amount of the theft it's not actually based on anything else we will often charge those as misdemeanors but require that the person pay back the felony amount so that's an example of things that we can decide with no need to answer to anybody else about it we can also decide if whether to divert those cases so if we decide we are going to charge somebody but we're going to send them to diversion or we're going to send them to tamarack those are diversion programs that the state has where somebody will go into it there is required to do substance use treatment or mental health treatment or do community service or do a restorative process or payback restitution and if they do those things and they fulfill a contract then their charges are dropped and their records are expunged we can if we decide to charge somebody and actually send them through the system we have full control over what conditions of release we request whether we ask for bail whether we seek to have that person incarcerated those are ultimate those issues are ultimately up to a judge but we are the ones that decide whether to request it and the list goes on and on but we're here to talk about alternatives to arrest so the rest of it you know I'll sort of leave alone and go back to determining whether or not that discretion is used and how it's used and I think ultimately we take particular risks every day when we're making those decisions there's really no other way to say that every prosecutor that decides whether or not to do a particular thing is taking a risk one way or the other and that discretion unfortunately and those risks are what's led to a lot of people just playing it you know quote unquote safe and just overcharging and making those decisions to protect themselves because every prosecutor's worst nightmare or worse thought is that they won't charge somebody and that person will go out and do something really horrible and that will fall on them and so we've as a as a collective profession often just decide to do it and take the chances without recognizing the harms that come with that. So when we're talking about a charge that comes to us that's where we sort of come in but before that the law enforcement agencies are all interacting with these individuals and they also have a lot of discretion. What police respond to can be an agency decision it can be a city council decision it can be obviously decided by the legislature as to what things are going to be crimes or not crimes but whether or not police do respond how many respond whether or not an officer conducts a traffic stop at all whether they decide during that traffic stop to issue a ticket whether they decide to do a search whether they decide to make an arrest and take somebody physically into custody versus issuing somebody a citation whether or not they perform a in-person search not just their car whether they use force whether or not they send a case to a restorative justice panel and whether or not arguably the most important they do anything at all is up to police and it is within their discretion it is important I think to understand that a majority of these cases in the criminal legal system are misdemeanor cases most of our system is made up of misdemeanors that stem from minor infractions or minor encounters with individuals in our community and they take up an incredible amount of time and resources for law enforcement officers with very little beneficial outcome within the legal system in fact there are some studies that have recently been done saying that people being charged with misdemeanors actually and bringing them into the system actually makes them more likely to commit further crimes than doing nothing at all leaving them in the community hopefully connecting them with some type of service but that didn't even that wasn't even required in the study that they did and my office can use our discretion not to charge a lot of these misdemeanor offenses or we can use our discretion to divert them but that doesn't solve the time and resources issue for the law enforcement or agencies that are and arguably makes it worse because they're spending these time and resources to investigate these cases and send them to us just for us to not charge them and these are things like unlawful trespasses you know going to city market for example when they have a trespass order retail thefts but without any restitution you know that a person never even gets outside of the door and the stuff is brought back driving with suspended licenses those types of things they are a lot of work for law enforcement they take up a lot of time and we're not currently charging them and they even when we do they really they don't have a good we don't have a good beneficial outcome and the data does not support continuously prosecute prosecuting those cases excuse me so I'm not really sure if there was a particular ask incoming here but I do think it's important that we as a community encourage and allow officers to use their discretion on these cases I think it would be incredibly beneficial to the community but it'll also be beneficial to the system as a whole because law enforcement will have so much more time to invest in much more serious offenses as many of you know we are dealing with in Burlington currently to the extent that they do continue to respond and feel a need to do something my office continuously encourages officers not just in Burlington but countywide to send cases through some other restorative process either to the Burlington Community Justice Center or to use the parallel Justice Center both are fabulous programs in Burlington and Rachel Jolly and her team are doing really great work to make sure that people are held accountable in a way that just looks different to what we are used to but again there's incredible data to show that restorative restorative justice has much greater outcomes much more beneficial outcomes than punitive justice and that includes victim satisfaction 88% of victims that go through a restorative process are satisfied with that process versus I believe 26% of people that go through the legal system so this idea that sending cases through a restorative process isn't best for victims is is not just false based on my own experience but it is false based on the data I also think it's really important to stress that and encourage officers to use creative outcomes and creative responses to some of these cases the pandemic has forced this in a way that I think has been really beneficial to a lot of agencies I can say for sure that there are several agencies in Chattanoon County who have done some really cool things an agency that responded to a retail theft for a man stealing food and instead of writing any paperwork or citing the person for retail theft the officer brought him back to the station called a bunch of places for him got him a job he had lost his job from COVID got him a job within a couple of hours and the man started that job next week he's still there 18 months later doing really well we never you know we were never a part of that case I actually only heard about it because the store that he had been stealing from a friend of a friend I know them and they told me the story another officer who pulled somebody over they were suspended had a suspended license he offered roadside to call DMV and judicial bureau that is an absolute nightmare I can tell you trying to call either of them and spent a quite a long time trying to get this guy's license figuring out what he needed got him on a payment plan and got his license reinstated and then didn't send us the paperwork an individual whose bike was stolen went around to some community members and asked if they'd be willing to help buy this person a new bike because he needed it for work and the community responded and they bought this person a new bike somebody was being evicted and refusing to leave and law enforcement agencies called legal aid got this person legal representation to help them stay in this housing unit and those are just examples it's more difficult to work and I recognize that but in those moments if we are responding to these things the community responds back they notice these things they appreciate them and like I said none of those individuals have been in the system have been back the basic need was met or taken care of or the underlying issue was addressed and our legal system didn't have to be involved so I think that's all I necessarily wanted to say I'm happy to answer any questions about all of this I also fully recognize that you know different agencies have different policies and also have different resources I know that there are occasions where South Burlington will connect with Burlington on a particular resource or service that isn't always as easy in some departments with smaller agencies or that don't know all of the different services but it is happening behind the scenes and I think we should be encouraging those types of responses over sending cases to us that we really can't do much about I also would just because of COVID you know we my office has declined over a thousand cases since COVID and I think if we were to start charging those cases again it will be months and months if not close to a year before any of those misdemeanors are actually resolved in our courthouse right now given the backlog so you know I think that this is a timely issue to really be figuring out how else we can respond to them because even if we started charging these cases again it is not going to solve the problem it is not going to address accountability and it is not going to get people their basic needs met and any anytime soon so I'm always open and welcoming of suggestions and I always encourage officers to do that as well all right thank you very much for that the floor is open to commissioners to ask any questions good hi thank you so much for your time this evening also I want to thank you for speaking up about you know mental health funding right we've been pulling money away from programs and services for such a long time and we're now really we're paying for it right now a lot of concerns that we hear about especially in this immediate area the downtown area have to do with individuals who have mental health issues or who are committing quality of life quote-unquote that general term to describe a variety of behaviors that make people uncomfortable there happen some behaviors that I've seen that don't make people feel safe but I just wanted to have an idea about something like retail theft and when someone is caught doing retail theft and they're habitual and they know they won't get a certain charge this is a very common complaint that we hear over and over again from a downtown business so I was just wondering if you can comment on that a little bit because when you talk about restorative and working with the businesses and repayments occurring I'm just trying to gauge I don't want to use the word valid because I think the the complaint is a valid complaint but at the same time I agree that certain things shouldn't be overcharged right because it doesn't ultimately solve the problem so if you could comment on that I appreciate it yeah absolutely night I agree I don't know that that was the right word but I I appreciate the concern from business owners and I think it is happening there are there are people that will continuously steal from businesses sometimes getting away with the stuff and sometimes not and some of them are large amounts of money loss to the businesses I don't think that the from my perspective the question isn't necessarily is this a real issue the question is how can we actually stop this from happening and we've we've shown that charging people criminally with a retail theft when that's how people are getting by isn't a deterrent so and especially when it is eight to ten weeks from the time they steal the items to their first arraignment they might have done it multiple other times in between and even then at arraignment they're given you know a condition of release not to go back to that business so they go to another business it's I guess my point is the criminal legal system isn't the answer it's not doing anything that will actually prevent the behavior you could slap fines on those individuals or make them pay the restitution but the reason they're stealing from the beginning is they don't have any money you know there are some people that might be doing it as some bigger scheme to make money most people are stealing it and trading it for things of value or for drugs those are not individuals that are capable of paying these big fines or even paying the restitution and that's that's all the system can do those are our tools that we have is we either find people and give them convictions or we you know put them in jail neither of those solve the problem those people are just then more disenfranchised when they come out of our system and are more likely to continue to steal things so I would love for us to really find ways one I don't know how many businesses are doing this but I have recently learned that some businesses give their loss prevention officers essentially a I can't think of the word they will give them a bonus or extra money if they arrest or if they find somebody stealing and my understanding from some of these policies is I'd like to maybe I shouldn't talk I want to try to figure out what this actual policy is and in particular a couple of places that I've heard but it essentially favors somebody leaving with with the item which doesn't make any sense in theory which is why I like don't I can't imagine that that would be anybody's actual policy but I think a bigger question for a lot of these businesses is how to not allow people like some places it is very easy to do and some places it is very hard to do and in most of these places they know the people you know I mean you read these after Davids and the last prevention officers know all of these people and they will watch them walk all around the store steal items leave and then call the police so they're I do think there's got to be a different way to be addressing it from the get go but then again I think beyond that there needs to be a way to just figure out from most of these people the rule not the exceptions of why are you doing this and what can we do to help you what do you need because most of them just need food they need money they need basic needs met and they don't need more criminal convictions on their record that will then make it harder for them to get jobs and get food and get money so that's a long way of saying I appreciate the issue but like many things it has been an issue that has fallen into the criminal legal system to fix and we're not doing it we're not good at it because our only options are punitive and they cost the person money so if you're talking about any quote unquote quality of life crime that you want to then respond with fines and more money isn't gonna work it's going to fail every time and it's it's failing every time thank you appreciate that hi there it sounds to me I'm a social worker right so it sounds to me like what we really could use in our community since we've been saying over and over that we're not solving problems because both the schools and the prosecutorial systems are overloaded and they can't actually resolve the issues they become the kitchen sink of our society so to speak it seems like it might be really a good time to have a community summit and bring together all the partners that are involved in this the social service agencies the business people your folks the police department others to really talk about this in the mayor's office because we're trying to resolve the issue in silos and just doesn't work right that's the big message I think right now in our world is we can't we can no longer use a silo approach to anything that's the first thought the second thing is I'm interested in your observations and your vision for potential changes in the mental health system and I use mental health system and quotes because it's sort of broken at this point we're talking about a cahoots model we have the street outreach outreach folks and we have you know other folks from Howard Center and others could you give us an idea of how you sort of rate what we're doing now as opposed to what we need to be doing and talk about your own vision for what needs to happen yeah I have a lot to say about our mental health system as if any of you follow anything that I've done lately I spend most of my time fighting with the mental health system I think that it is also one place where there's several but this is a big place where law enforcement and I are on total agreement that we don't have the capacity and nor should we have the capacity in the legal system to be dealing with a lot of these individuals needs and the department of mental health and a lot of our mental health services that are sort of underneath that and are run by very large corporations or nonprofits but with a lot of money behind them are not doing what we what I think they should be doing and some of that might be their own resource issues I'm not I'm not saying that that isn't but every single time when they don't have the capacity it is put on law enforcement and therefore put on us and that is the last place it should be it exacerbates most of these individuals symptoms and especially when law enforcement are having to respond repeatedly to people who are not in their right state of mind and are probably scared of most people coming into their spaces let alone law enforcement agents and then again there's you know they're cited for a particular crime for eight weeks 10 weeks 12 weeks out and we're expected to then fix that a lot of times law enforcement is called for people in mental health crises at the hospital some in the mental health ward in CHEP 6 at the hospital and they're acting out they're assaulting somebody or they are throwing things and breaking things and they call law enforcement to charge them with a crime when some of them are on an involuntary hold at the hospital meaning they're obviously not competent to be standing trial they are probably not saying at the time of the offense and yet our immediate response is to call police and then put them in through the court system which ultimately will get an evaluation done they will be found not competent and then we have to put them on an order of non-hospitalization put them in the custody of the department of mental health but nine months later so we again like we're not the answer to it I don't I understand that there are some people who commit crimes who also have mental health issues that's a lot of people in our system I'm not saying that anybody with a mental health issue shouldn't be prosecuted with a crime but there are a lot of people and it seems like a growing amount of people whose mental health issue is the cause of their crime it is what has led them to criminal behavior and it is often means that they are not competent or not sane at the time we we literally can't prosecute them but police continue to get called to the same people and I get into arguments with the department of mental health every week because we have people on orders of non-hospitalization meaning that they are in the custody of the department of mental health and they do nothing to service them and when we reach out and ask why this person isn't being serviced or even more so why they haven't been taken into custody and put on an order of hospitalization we get excuse after excuse been told that they don't aren't a risk to the public even though they're committing crimes every day some of them are suicidal and talking about FBI reading their mail and the department of mental health is telling us they don't they don't meet criteria or telling us that they're not going to service them because they don't the person doesn't want to be doesn't want services well most people again with mental health issues especially the more significant ones don't want services but they want us to put them in jail you know so I guess the really short answer is that I think we I'm trying constantly to just push back and and trying to you know again be on the same side of this with law enforcement to say law enforcement shouldn't be responding to these issues but I will also acknowledge that when we say law enforcement should be shouldn't be responding to mental health calls social workers should be that there are a lot of social workers who will say I'm not going to that call without law enforcement so we have a lot of work to do from the ground you know before law enforcement is even involved in making social workers feel safe that doesn't involve bringing weapons with them or people that might have to then arrest them or be put in situations to harm them and I think if we really do that and we start to get more and more community based organizations involved it will come but a lot of it is just mental health system department of mental health have gotten really used to pushing back on us and putting it on the criminal legal system and we've done it we've done it for them for a really long time we've done it poorly but we've done it and so we have to I think prosecutors have a really big obligation to start saying no we're not doing this and they are technically you know for the people especially that are already in their custody saying this person is in your custody you need like they are your responsibility not ours the few times that we've done that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but I have I have one woman who I put on OH I think I put around three different OHs for really low-level misdemeanors BPD was responding to calls on her through the pandemic weekly if not more often than that and I would send every single one of those cases to the Department of Mental Health and say this person is you know still committing crimes like what what are you doing for her is she engaging in services just to find out that they discharged her from her order a week after I put her on it because she didn't want to engage in services and you know about a month or two ago she stabbed somebody in Burlington and those are cases where police and prosecutors are getting you know the for lack of a better word the sort of blame and it is 100% in my opinion on the Department of Mental Health they failed this woman and they then failed this victim and this community because they didn't provide her with the services they had and they didn't use the authority that they had to do it to force to force it and we need more beds yeah and you know I I also appreciate we need more what beds we need more long-term beds the emergency room is not an appropriate place for people to be held on involuntary hold it's dangerous for anybody else there it's dangerous for their staff and you know I know Dr. Leffler is very frustrated by that and I don't blame him I think that the Department of Mental Health has an obligation to have enough beds to hold people who are unsafe to themselves or to others and right now they they have there's a lot of beds that are still not being used and I think they need to do more to get enough beds to serve the state and we also need more long-term facilities for individuals we are often having to send people out of state for more longer term and if they don't have their own health care that's coming out of pockets of their families and we all know you know that is not the majority of the folks that we're dealing with that have that kind of money or resources we need a facility like Phoenix house we know we're sending people to New Hampshire we need to be able to house those people here thank you that's like it's I know that's a surface but we at least we're getting there yeah hi thanks for being here you know somebody was born and raised here in Burlington and I've been on the streets growing up and when I'm what I'm seeing today is a lot of drug issues you know a lot worse than it ever was when I was growing up yeah I mean you just walk down the street or you drive on the street and you see drug activity and I'm just wondering what what is the core system doing to help kind of lead these these folks with these drug problems which I think have a lot to do with some of the crimes that we're seeing today into getting help the help they need and making sure they get that help can you just elaborate on that if you could yeah I mean that's that's it's a complicated issue it's it's not really a simple answer but if it is an individual who is just possessing a drug then we're not doing a lot about it you know we're doing what we can to connect them with services but we can't force somebody to get substance use services and even if we tried the data suggests it doesn't work recovery is very short if at all if it's forced people really need to want to stop using drugs and not to make this more about mental health but a lot of people use drugs to cover up for trauma and we don't have the trauma services and mental health services that those folks need so we are essentially asking people to stop using drugs or they're gonna get charged or we're gonna put them through the court system without providing the underlying mental health service that they need that led them to use the drugs and so if you imagine trying to do that yourself you know for people it's a lot easier for a lot of people I think to imagine or to swallow if you think about it with alcohol if an individual is using alcohol to get over a bad breakup or to you know anything a death in the family and we just tell them they can't drink anymore it doesn't take care of the fact that they are struggling with this underlying mental health issue that you know you want to talk about more drugs in the community we are seeing a lot more suicides in my opinion lately than ever and young people so you know that to me is a much bigger concern and I'm not I'm not saying that people using drugs is in a concern but the people that are using drugs are either using it and their only crime in a lot of cases is the possession of the drug and then there are people who are committing burglaries and much more serious offenses because of a drug addiction or over drugs much more often and we're charging those cases you know I think that there's a there's a big difference between the two sending somebody through the legal system because they're possessing a drug doesn't in my opinion like it doesn't work that's that's again not really those people need the service they they need whatever services they might need and the system yeah we can probably get them there eventually but my my preference would be that if somebody is found with drugs they are connected immediately with a co-occurring wrap around service program that has mental health services and substance use services that they can go to and address both with people who understand that they might not immediately stop using the drugs until they've addressed this underlying mental health issue but the other folks that are out there committing really violent offenses because of their drug use we're charging those and in some of those cases those individuals are going to jail and in some of those cases they're going through a treatment court but either way they aren't using while they're in jail well the hope at least is that they're not using while they're in jail and if they're going through treatment court it's actually far harder our treatment court is really it's really hard it's it's a people can't work during it because of how much time it takes and and how much effort but a lot of the individuals you know that we see on the on the street that maybe have open drug use you know the police might know those individuals but a lot of them don't commit other crimes we don't see them in our system well I mean they kind of are when when people are you know old deeing and you know being brought back to life I mean it happens all the time you know so these people are out on the street dealing these drugs and and the dealers and yeah absolutely and we're I mean we are charging sales you know people who are selling drugs we're still charging those again exceptions versus the rule though a lot of people who are selling drugs are also using drugs and they're selling to support their own habit then there are others who are selling to make a living all of those cases are very different law enforcement does a really great job at determining you know in their investigations which is which and that's usually what tends to sort of focus our resolution it doesn't mean we're not charging those individuals but those individuals who are selling drugs to support their own habits are usually the individuals that will end up in our treatment court versus individuals that don't have a drug habit and are just selling those are usually the ones that are ending up in jail I'm not saying none of it's working great you know I don't and you know a lot of people say that our system is broken you know I often say I don't think it is I think this is how it was designed it just it just isn't it doesn't work in the way that we were told it will work you know it works in punishment and it works in punitive responses but in terms of actual good outcomes for the humans involved not just the people charged but the victims we're not we don't do that very well and we have a lot of work to do to get to that point true thank you thank you that was it's all really really been illuminating a couple of things one with regard to the discussion around mental health it strikes me that even if we were to adopt a cahoots model if we were to get new beds and so on and so forth that's still going to take a very long time and that we have to think about the next couple of years where we won't have those things in place and so I just want a second Commissioner Comerford's idea about a summit if you will just in the way that we address COVID with community partners in a collective way it seems to me that this is something that also requires our attention and can alleviate some of the burden on officers who as you have said themselves don't you know understand that this is a burden that isn't really shouldn't be directed towards them I wonder if you could you you mentioned the Parallel Justice Center and you just mentioned treatment court and of course the CJC which I'm a little bit more familiar with but could you just describe each of those and how they play a role different role yeah so Parallel Justice Center I believe South Burlington just started one as well but before that Burlington was the only parallel Justice Center in the county and it is essentially a way for individuals who are victims of crime but that a crime hasn't been charged to have some needs met whether or not an individual for example has their tires slashed or a window broken on their car but law enforcement hasn't been able to determine who it was or maybe no they won't be able to determine who it was those individuals I let a law enforcement can or I will send to the Parallel Justice Center and they have some money and resources to help that person get their get a new tire or have their window replaced those types of things sometimes it is a burglary a victim of a burglary who or even a domestic assault where they can't find the offender or they don't know who it is wanting new locks on their doors to make them feel more safe and they can go to the Parallel Justice Center and they'll help them buy new locks or replace their locks or get a security camera those those types of things so it's a really really great community service or resource for individuals who are victims but there is no offender charged my view for that is really to expand that to not necessarily just victims where an offender isn't like we don't know who the offender is but maybe in some of these cases like these retail thefts where we do but we also know that the victim isn't going to get their money back from charging that person and so maybe using the Parallel Justice Center for more of that to alleviate the harm some of the harm to victims without needing to bring an individual into the system that we know won't actually alleviate that harm and then treatment court is what you have to be charged with a criminal offense and you actually have to plead guilty to the criminal offense in order to enter our treatment court we have a track that is for drug crimes that are fueled by drug use and then we have a track that is crimes fueled by mental health issues and then we have a sort of co-occurring track and they're they're separate teams there is a prosecutor and a defense attorney assigned and there is the same judge is assigned to all of them but there are case workers assigned to an individual and again they do have to plead guilty in order to go into it so they're immediately taking accountability and while their case before they're sentenced they engage in really intense treatment they come to court every week sometimes every other week if they're doing well they meet with their case workers they have to do UA's every week or every other week if it is a drug issue if it's a mental health issue they have to check in with certain aspects it's like I said it's a lot of work if an individual chooses to do it judges usually go through a long dialogue with them about how frankly probation would be easier furlough is sometimes easier than going through our treatment court the benefit if you do it obviously the biggest benefit is that you are usually in recovery or doing well when you graduate that's of course our goal but also that you don't end up in jail or on probation you usually have a sort of time-served sentence and you are you're able to go if you don't and you fail for lack of a better word our treatment court then you serve the underlying sentence in jail so there is a very big punitive response if you don't engage and people typically know that and there's been ebbs or highs and lows for our particular treatment court that you really need the right people involved there's been years since I when I was first a prosecutor that the team really wasn't great and a lot of people weren't held accountable and you know when when this when the program doesn't do well law enforcement will lose a lot of trust in it the prosecutors will lose trust in it the community loses trust in it it's really important like our community justice centers that the people hold them accountable and do a really good job so that the community can feel safer I'm having people engage in it and right now we have a fantastic team and they really did some miraculous things to keep people engaged during COVID because for a lot of these folks doing the virtual anything was not a possibility or was much harder and for some of them it was amazing it was really great for them to not have to you know for certain anxieties or other issues to not have to come in but those are the differences can you say something about the community justice center as well yeah so every town has they might not have their own community justice center but they have access to one there are some that serve multiple towns for example but if you're if you commit an offense in any town in Chittenden County there is a community justice center available to you or available to us to send them or to law enforcement they can do direct referrals to these community justice centers and it is a restorative approach so the individual would be asked to come in and they do have to immediately take accountability they have to take responsibility for the conduct the victims of the crime can be involved but they don't have to be if they are involved then they can meet with the offender I can tell you a lot of people that are victims of crimes especially when it's a random person they just want to know why they want to hear from the person why they did it and how they're going to make sure it doesn't happen again and our system does not allow for that victims and offenders are not allowed to talk during cases pending in fact they are usually charged with a new crime if they do talk to the victim and even at the change of plea they usually say very little their attorney does all the talking the prosecutor does all the talking there's really no dialogue between the victim and offenders so in this there is if the victim wants it they can have whatever dialogue they want ask all the questions they want and the offender has to answer them and if they don't and they don't fully engage then they get sent back to our office for prosecution and otherwise whether a victim is involved or or not there are volunteers from each community that make up a panel and if the victim isn't asking those questions then this panel does on their behalf to sort of account for why this person did a particular thing and and can they can ask them to do certain things to sort of account for it to to repair the harm so that might be something as small as a letter of apology or it can be a donation to charities or it can be community service or it can be PowerPoint presentations to schools have seen some of them do that it's really great they can come up with anything and as long as the person who has committed the crime agrees to it and succeeds and does what's asked of them then again they they are not criminally charged thanks would all three of those count as diversion programs so when people refer to diversion programs would include all three of those I I think that in the sort of somewhat layman's terms I don't mean that as a then yes I guess so treatment court not so much because they are they are pleading guilty so in that sense I would say no the true diversion there is an actual program called diversion and an actual program called tamarack those are people that we do actually take the paperwork from law enforcement and we charge it but then we send it to these programs they do what's asked of them then if they don't complete it it's already charged and it just goes into the system so those that's a true diversion program but in in reality yes the the parallel justice again not so much because the offender isn't involved in that but CJC could be considered you are diverting it you're diverting it from the criminal legal system and that's technically all that should be required of a diversion program thanks that was helpful yeah so could you give us your assessment of how well we're doing in the criminal justice system with our neighbors in the new American community not really I mean I can tell you that it is it is definitely an area that needs improvement I can say personally when I first became a prosecutor I did the domestic violence docket for three years and that was a particular area where I felt we were really failing our new American community members because those charges even let alone convictions have drastic consequences that most folks in our community don't have not to minimize the consequences of a domestic case but we were asking them to come into this court system asking victims to be a part of a system they did not trust and surrounded by a language they did not know and our access to interpreters was very slim we usually had one interpreter that was dealing with all of the individuals involved that the people charged and the victims sometimes the parents or the you know and then we're also sending their kids through the DCF process with their again very little outcome very little good outcome because there was no programs that they could do there was one program called Connecting Cultures at UVM that was fantastic but they were overwhelmed with how many cases they were getting and we didn't have you know I actually remember at the time I really wanted to do a sort of treatment court but for new Americans where we had a dedicated team of people that would work with them and their and their community that obviously never worked never worked out but I think in particular cases like that in domestic cases I don't think we're doing a very good job I think in other cases where there isn't quite so many complicated factors we're doing okay so we need more interpreters and we need more like um by like impartial interpreters it's a very small community and even our interpreters know all of the parties involved which creates a lot of anxiety for the folks that we're dealing with so where do we go from here with that population if we need to do more work what's the work that needs to be done besides interpreters I think that I know Sandy Baird bless her heart is trying is doing a lot of work with really just trying to educate a lot of them about law enforcement responses DCF responses what their rights are what the laws are what they're at what the kind of community expectations are around certain behaviors but she can't do it herself I think that more community forums in those communities with giving them the information that they need in their language from people that don't know them necessarily but are a part of the larger community could go a long way for them because they immediately a lot of people will just immediately think they're in trouble or think that something is going to happen with them with immigration if they are involved at all or that that's going to happen to their partner which is incredibly terrifying and it doesn't it doesn't allow for us to address the harm I hope if we do end up having a summit and I'm hoping you're gonna take some leadership on in your spare time that we do include the leadership of those communities absolutely because they're the ones who are staying and they're raising their children here and I think they would really add to the conversation absolutely and I mean I sort of went off on the domestic aspect just because that was more of my experience but the mental health aspect is a very real one for that community as well and even less services you know we're talking about having limited services for folks who do speak English and look like me they're much fewer for people who do not speak English and don't understand our system thank you very much I guess I would have just want to just let you know that professor gross is waiting to come on in a couple of minutes so just just to let you know thank you what can people do in terms of getting the message to our representatives in the state house like what what kind of actions would you want to see people in the community do to help get more resources to help get more attention paid by the the mental health system are there some things like if you were queen for a day what would you make happen I think that you know going back to is it comma Comerford yes Comerford as Comerford is common I do think that the more community like as a bigger voice is much more powerful if this is a community demanding a certain thing versus an individual it will have a lot more impact I know there's some press here today involving the press in those conversations is incredibly important because I you know I think that the me sending emails every once in a while to the Department of Mental Health doesn't have the impact that me making a very public statement about the Department of Mental Health has on the news or even in committees or forums like this but it's just me and not that I'm the only one speaking out about it I know Mark Redman at Spectrum is screaming from the rooftop about these things and how it's impacting our youth in this community but we're all just individuals saying these things so my hope would be to do something where we come together as a community and we do find those couple of things we're not going to agree on everything and that's okay but coming up with a few things that we are just demanding that the state do and also not just saying we need more beds but really trying to think creatively about how we can do that because there's nothing worse than people just saying do this but not telling you how it happens to me all the time like solve this I don't have the tools to solve it or I don't have the resources to solve it you know so really making sure that it's a collective ask or a full ask where we're thinking about all of the you know I'm I'm sure I know most of the ways that Department of Mental Health or other mental health organizations are gonna say we can't do this because I've heard them so if we have all of those voices in a room and are coming up with it together and can know what those pushbacks are going to be and try to solve that for them for their own good and ours but my biggest hope would be that we have enough services that somebody can go up to law enforcement officer or go up to the emergency room in crisis and immediately have a safe place and it not be in a lobby of an emergency room where they will be cared for and they will be cared for until they no longer need it instead of cared for overnight and then put back out on the streets for law enforcement to then pick up and bring back I mean I'm sure it happens all the time where cops come into contact with people and they are in clear mental health crisis and so they bring them to UVM Medical Center and five hours later they're back out on the streets in clear mental health crisis that I think is a resource issue and I also in some of the cases think that it's just a misunderstanding of the law so I do think that there are some clear legislative asks that can be a part of that to either clarify a particular statute or to give certain resources where they should be and not where they currently are thank you very much for your time it's been I think very beneficial to us and the public at large and hang in there thank you thank you thank you all right moving forward agenda item 4.02 we have professor Neil Gross of I is zoom and he's here to talk to us with I talked about police reform so professor the thank you for being here very much and the floor is yours so I'm happy to happy to be here you know my understanding is that you wanted me to say a few words about police reform around racial disparities in vehicle stops in particular so that's what I've focused my my short presentation on today and if you have other things come up that you like to discuss I'd be happy to happy to talk about those as well so I'll start by way of a little bit of background I'm a sociology professor here at Colby College in in Waterville Maine many years ago in the early 90s I was in law enforcement I was a police officer in California for the city of Berkeley for a short time and and then went to graduate school and had been working for the past few years on a book about police reform on kind of what what works and what doesn't and what what good policing looks like in America today so the issue that you know I've been asked to talk about is racial disparities in in vehicle stops and you know my my focus today is an article that I wrote editorial for the New York Times in op-ed back in the fall on this topic outlining the extent of the problem of racial disparities in vehicle stops and some possible solutions to that problem I'll tell you a little bit about how I how I came to this topic one of the cities that I'm studying for my research is heavily invested in a police reform strategy that I'm sure you're aware of that's called procedural justice it's the idea that that that kind of things go better in a community in terms of relationships between law enforcement and the criminal justice system when you know people in the community have some sense of confidence have a perception that they're being treated fairly and equitably by by law enforcement by by prosecutors by judges and so on and that you know if the aim is to produce a kind of just and equitable society it's really important to focus not just on just an equitable treatment of individuals but but also on on perceptions of of that just and equitable treatment so lots of police departments over the years have been working up procedural justice reforms of one kind or another and one of the cities that I'm studying had done that as well but when I started to talk to people in the community about what procedural justice meant to them what it looked like on a daily basis one thing I heard very frequently was that the idea of procedural justice was was well and good but but the main way that people interacted with the police wasn't through the kind of formal training sessions that are dialogue sessions that the department hosted between community members and the police the main way that people came in contact with the police was by being pulled over and in fact that's one of the main ways that anybody comes in contact with the police you know police officers in the US make around 19 million vehicle stops a year which is an extraordinary number and and again that is the one of the main forms of interaction that citizens have with law enforcement it's not you know waving to the officer as they ride by the street it's not calling an officer to report a crime it's it's being pulled over for for an offense and possibly receiving a ticket and you know the data on this really aligned with the experiences of the people and to talk to and I talked to and the data showed that that you know in this country black Americans and Latino Americans but in particular black Americans are pulled over at a much higher rate than white Americans and this isn't a single city problem it's a it's a national problem the the data that look at this use a whole variety of methods and you know depending on which method you use the the magnitude of the disparities vary you know but on average the evidence suggests that black Americans are pulled over about 40 percent 43 percent 43 percent more likely to be pulled over than for example their their white counterparts and it's not only that black Americans are more likely to to be pulled over their cars are on average about twice as likely to be searched even though the hit rates the the rates at which contraband are found in those cars are are are either no different than white Americans on average or or lower than for white Americans so there's a great deal of intrusiveness in vehicle stops of black Americans but there's more to it than that we all know ways in which vehicle stops can quickly escalate into situations of violence and beyond that I'll say just based on a number of studies and certainly many interviews that that I've conducted it's the case that you know being pulled over on a really frequent basis for no real reason at all is frustrating maddening terrifying and conveys nothing so much as that you know one doesn't have sort of the full protection the full rights under the law and so this is a it's a huge problem and this is not news to to anybody I would think at this point but it's a it's a really significant aspect of of the problem with racial inequality and policing it's not that the use of force aspects aren't also significant but but they're partially connected to vehicle stops and and separate anyway from them the vehicle stops are just this huge issue of course make it much harder for people to to to travel to work if they're fear getting pulled over and there are many other ways in which these disparities just impinge upon people's lives so I started doing some research on on solutions been teaching a course about the police for for some time now so I knew something about some of this already but I was looking for kind of practical solutions what what things could cities actually implement as opposed to kind of pie in the sky plans I started looking at things that didn't seem to me to be terribly useful as far as solutions go a one is at least as concerns of vehicle stops is is implicit bias training this is something of course that many police departments have have invested in quite heavily as have many corporations and other organizations throughout the country the idea would be that you know someone comes in and gives a training or a series of trainings to hopefully reduce implicit biases the thought being that it's those biases that that drive the disparities which which which they may well you know from from my standpoint as a sociologist looking at the data I haven't seen any evidence that implicit bias trainings are effective in reducing racial disparities in law enforcement despite their really widespread implementation you know there's evidence from other areas of organizational life that this kind of training actually in some instances makes biases worse because it either makes people angry that they're being told that they're have biases which can activate their biases more and in other instances it gives people in organizations the false illusion that their organizations are now bias free and that can actually exacerbate bias on so I've not seen good evidence that implicit bias at least as it's currently formerly implicit bias training is is terribly effective in this regard that's one solution people have talked about another one that I think has come up quite frequently in recent conversations has been the shift to some kind of automated enforcement for for vehicle stops or for traffic offenses so can you you know use more red light cameras for example to to to give tickets or other kinds of automated technologies you know I think these have their place I think that there are challenges with with implementing them and you know there start to be I think other problems that arise when cities rely too heavily on these kind of technologies one of them being that you know when you eliminate discretion in the part of officers that may reduce the potential for bias but you know if everybody who's driving two miles an hour over the speed limit gets a ticket automatically all of a sudden you've got you know a huge number of tickets given out in a community and and and that's not a good thing it's certainly other places now other cities and states are considering other alternatives some are asking police departments to get out of the traffic enforcement business altogether in the department that I used to work for in in Berkeley there's a move afoot to try to get civilians who don't work for the police department to to do traffic enforcement I'm not sure whether that is going to come to pass or not and other cities and states are directing their officers to stop making stops for minor equipment violations for you know for tail lights out for example or license plate lights out you know I think these have some potential I suppose the the reduction of stops for these minor offenses could be useful but you know it's also the case that vehicle codes have to be enforced and it's not clear who else is going to be doing that enforcement and doing it well so three other solutions as I was doing the research seemed to me to be much more promising as as possibilities and and it's those that I'll I'll talk through a little bit more and then happy to open up to questions for you so the first one that I discussed in this in this article is reducing or potentially banning the use of pretextual stops so pretext stops as as people know are stops where an officer might suspect that a driver of a car is involved in criminal activity but where the officer doesn't have probable cause to make a stop on the basis of that suspicion and so instead the officer notes a minor traffic violation perhaps an equipment violation or you know failure to come to a full stop at a stop sign makes the stop which is legal and but but the real purpose is not to enforce the traffic law it's to then investigate the driver for for criminal activity there's some good evidence that that pretextual stops are a significant contributing factor to racial disparities in in vehicle stops there've been a couple of sort of natural experiments have been conducted where departments have been first disallowed and then allowed to do pretextual stops and and when that's happened racial disparities and stops have have gone up so it seems that that pretextual stops are an occasion for officers to in some instances rely on underlying biases to make stops so you know one possibility would be to dramatically scale back the use of pretextual stops you know in conversations I've had with law enforcement officers and executives there's been some real sense of being uncomfortable with the idea of banning pretextual stops you know it is it is sometimes the case that that officers go on kind of racially motivated fishing expeditions and certainly those kinds of stops have no place whatsoever in law enforcement it is also sometimes the case that officers will have you know some level of information or intelligence about the occupant or occupants of a vehicle that lead them to have you know real reason to believe that there may be criminal activity taking place but where that that level of suspicion goes beyond a hunch but doesn't get me the standard of probable cause and you know sometimes those stops do result in in in you know finding contraband finding narcotics for example of finding finding weapons so some chiefs that I've talked to have you know acknowledged that greatly reducing pretextual stops might be viable banning them outright they tend to be more uncomfortable with in the interest of preserving public safety which seems to me to be a reasonable idea so that will be one suggestion right think about dramatically scaling back the use of pretextual stops you know build that into the policy of the department build that also into the organizational culture of the department into field training that officers receive that you know we don't we don't do pretextual stops here unless the circumstances really really warrant it and I think that could have a pretty significant and beneficial effect a second option that I discussed briefly in that piece is is and I don't know the the current policies in Burlington is requiring written consent for vehicle searches this isn't directly related to pretextual stops but it it sort of speaks to whether officers are incentivized or disincentivized to conduct them you know in in many stops that are pretextual the officers you know have is their ultimate aim to to see whether there's anything going on in the car and if they don't have probable cause to search the car they'll you know they'll ask for consent it's it's common of course for people to to to give consent even though in these circumstances they typically don't have to people feel that the power dynamics are such that if they don't give consent they will look suspicious and there's some good social science evidence to suggest that when you require written consent not just consent that's recorded on a body worn camera but an actual form where the per you know you're reading to the person you know you don't have to read this you know to this search and it will not be seen as evidence against you that you don't allow the search that that makes it less likely that officers will stop cars on a pretextual kind of hunch basis because the whole process is more fraught for them there's less likelihood that they'll actually be able to conduct a search and they also then have to oftentimes justify to sergeants you know why they stopped the person in the first place why they're going through this whole rigmarole of of having to to get consent so there's some evidence out of North Carolina for example that requiring written consent can be beneficial and can start to dial back some of those disparities but there's another option that I'm equally hopeful about and that's one that to my knowledge not many police departments are using and that has to do with with visibility and information you know in many in many departments and I don't know for this case in in Burlington data on disparities in in police operations whether they're traffic stops or pedestrian stops or arrests or use of force those those data are compiled on a quarterly sometimes an annual basis and they're they're they're even if they're available in some kind of real-time format on on dashboards they're often not available to officers and yet there's good evidence from research on on discriminatory practices in hiring for example that when employees and especially managers have real-time data on how their employees are doing with respect to equity that those managers become strongly motivated to get more equity into their work procedures and processes so one possibility that you know I think could be quite intriguing would be to have it so that police departments are you know telling sergeants patrol sergeants on a weekly basis look here's how your shift is doing in terms of racial disparities and stops here's how you did this week here's how you compare to you know swing shift and with then pressure put on sergeants from above to you know really bring bring down those numbers you know make the traffic stop numbers you know roughly proportional to the the the demographic composition of the city you know I think that could be a very powerful move with that information available in a sense sergeants and officers don't have any excuse anymore for continuing with the same procedures they they have it right there in front of them that there are these tremendous disparities and and there starts to be again real pressure put on supervisors to to push their officers in in different directions you know I think there were other possibilities as well that I didn't discuss in the piece in some cities it's the case that racial disparities in vehicle stops are driven partially by police deployment patterns so that in cities that are highly segregated if you have you know many more police officers assigned to neighborhoods that for example have a higher concentration of of black people or Latino Americans and if those officers are instructed to you know make a lot of stops that will naturally you know create disproportionality in the in the overall patterns of stops in the city so you know there are questions that can be raised about changing police deployment patterns as well the the reason I'm kind of favorable on these three policies I laid out is that you know I think that they could be accomplished without you know huge changes to police operations I mean getting rid of protectional stops would definitely take some take some it would take some getting used to I think for cops but but I think it's I think it's I think it's doable and and you know I think that the other thing I'd add here and I guess I'll direct this especially to those in law enforcement in the room you know I think that folks in law enforcement also don't don't fully recognize how incredibly damaging it is to the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color that these racial disparities and stops exist I mean I think it's certainly well known outside law enforcement how damaging those patterns are but I I think that many in law enforcement are are not fully cognizant of of how much improved the relationship between law enforcement and various minority communities would be if those racial disproportionalities were diminished it really is just something that is tremendously burdensome on many different communities and many different individuals and and departments would would go a long way toward improving their relationship with the community and really toward improving both procedural justice and and really justice if they could reduce those stops so I'll I'll I'll stop there and happy to thank you very much I was very interested in some of the things that you said in our area we have actually dramatically reduced the number of traffic stops but we still have issues we have reporting that continues to show racial disparities and I found some of the the things that you mentioned and I would like the chief to address a few things because we've been kind of oh we've not been moving forward with how do we address this ongoing issue we as a commission were told that it was due to warrants but then we've got some information back from our data team in the city that no it's not due to warrants it has to be something else so we're not really getting to the root of it and I do like the idea that you have of you know looking at what's happening across different shifts maybe down to specific officers I I don't know if that's an option but could you expand on that a little bit more with just some other ideas of of how to dig deeper in a way that you know you're talking about not not doing things that would cause huge changes to police operations which is a very sensitive subject but any other ideas that you have along those lines thank you sure thanks for those questions um so uh you know I guess one one thing I'll note is that um you know it's it's common for departments to identify factors that they think are driving these disparities and they're they're the factors that departments point to are often factors that are really specific to their departments so you mentioned you know the idea that that there are lots of lots of stops involving warrants and maybe that is what drives these these disparities um you know the the interesting thing from my perspective as someone who's kind of watched different departments respond to these issues over the years is that though different departments cite different factors um you know the overall numbers across the country are you know are roughly the same um there are there is some variation from department to department but um but these really specific department factors probably aren't the things that are driving the issue right there's there's probably you know kind of a some systemic issue here that's a resulting in very similar patterns um in different cities around the country um so that would be you know the first thing that I wanted to note um you know you you mentioned the idea of uh kind of monitoring the performance of individual officers um and you know I think that there's there's um I think that's also a kind of a sensitive issue um I mean I think that we are um we're now at the point where um in terms of technology where some more of that monitoring might start to become a realistic possibility um for example um I don't know the situation with the body worn cameras in Burlington I know that in a number of cities folks are using body worn cameras that produce um automated uh transcriptions of exchanges and some cities are connecting those to pretty sophisticated um computer algorithms that try to detect evidence of bias in interactions from those transcripts to try to flag officers who are engaged in bias behavior this would be beyond uh uh vehicle stopped but to encompass all kinds of police operations um so I know that some cities are trying to set up sort of early warning systems to that effect to identify officers who are uh you know kind of particularly biased with regard to this behavior um I think there are other possibilities that are that are coming online some of which are are also intriguing um a number of um uh body worn camera companies and now have uh streaming body worn cameras um which begin to raise privacy questions but you know they allow um a sergeant to to be there virtually um potentially on any stop on any interaction um and you know I think that that raises some more possibilities for monitoring officer behavior um I think that starts to get really tricky though um if the concern is with with pushback um you know employees and um in in most fields don't don't like having their bosses right there over their shoulders and you know being watched at monitored at every second um so I think that you know that starts to raise some issues um partly for that reason I I guess I personally would favor um looking at these data uh not at the individual level but at the level of a shift um right so you know as a as a shift patrol shift you know we we know that these you know we're just stopping you know many more people of group x than of group y and that that doesn't square with the demographics of the city um and you know we're getting pressure from above to you know be more like the the next patrol team um you know I think that's can be a much more effective kind of motivator uh and end up that um you know necessarily raise the same kinds of pushback as um as some other kinds of strategies um so that's that's what immediately comes to mind um in response to your questions thank you hi uh so uh you mentioned how implicit bias training is you don't find to be all that effective um what trainings do you well do you see um that are that are in fact um have use and are useful because I feel there is um almost like a big national push for it's like more training more training more training so are there any in fact that you that you find based on on your observations that are better than others um so there may be some kinds of implicit bias training that are that are more effective than others um when it comes to to law enforcement I think there's um some really interesting experimental work that's being done now I think um what doesn't seem to be very effective is you know putting cops in a room with someone who's lecturing um or or you know leading discussions for for an hour um there may well be um uh forms of training that involve um you know putting yourself in a in a kind of a simulated environment um in which the simulations are altered to um to uh try to disengage any biases there's some evidence that those kinds of implicit bias trainings might end up be more effective so I you know I wouldn't want to rule these out entirely um you know when it comes to the issue of um of racial disparities and in stops um you know it seems to me that there are there probably are you know kind of trainings that that would matter um you know one thing that isn't directly about the vehicle stops but I think is quite helpful is um is uh is conversations where officers are brought you know in a room uh with people who are affected by law enforcement and in which um you know the officers and the people who've been affected by the behavior of law enforcement you know talk openly and honestly about um about their experiences that happens much less frequently than people would think uh and um you know there's some quite good evidence that uh that those kinds of kind of meaningful exchanges um can really start to shift um you know perspectives um so that you know cops can start to realize what is it what does it feel like to um to be stopped to be stopped so frequently I was um talking to an interviewee um not too long ago who described the experience of driving home with her uh husband from dinner um she and her husband had taken one car and her two teenage sons had taken another car um and her two teenage sons um the family is is black and her two teenage sons were were pulled over by officers um for a minor equipment violation and you know one um suv pulled up and then another pulled up and a third pulled up screeching their tires and um she and her husband were just freaking out um because they were they were um they were terrified and um I I think there is an inadequate understanding on the part of law enforcement about the extent to which that terror is real uh and um so I think those kinds of kind of dialogue trainings can be somewhat effective but for me when it comes to solving these kinds of problems the solution is organizational not training um the the idea is you know can sergeants put pressure on officers to reduce these disparities right let do something different this is not okay change your behavior why are you making all these stops right those kinds of things and and to do that you need to have organizational incentives the sergeants uh you know sort of their feet have to be held to the fire um at at command meetings like okay why is your shift doing so much worse than this other shift um those are the kinds of incentives that can that can make a difference I think for for these things it's it's policy change that probably matters more than uh than individual trainings at least that's my view thank you very much chief mirad thank you mr chair um thanks very much for for being with us and sharing these ideas professor uh so we do not do any searches without a written uh permission so we that's something that we've done pretty much always it's certainly in the the memory of officers who've been here longer than I um and contextual stops uh are are incredibly rare and really only occur when we have intelligence about the specific vehicle so that we're looking for it's an intelligence driven stop not a protects a pretextual stop we've actually been able to drive down our traffic stops over the past six years by by seventy nine percent but we have driven down the number of black drivers stopped only by seventy five percent so there does have a disparity that remains there uh basically of our driving populations eight percent according to crash data uh the number of stops that we conducted last year in in 2020 uh was 10.7 percent so eight percent 10.7 percent there is a slight difference there we're talking about very small numbers of drivers we're talking about very small numbers of stops and we're also talking about uh incidents that are spread across shifts uh we do have certain officers who are more oriented towards traffic enforcement um and are still driving it since it has been been made clear through the agency that traffic enforcement is not something that we prioritize with regard to interdiction or with regard to non-safety violations so uh egregious driving is still going to to cause an officer to pay attention and take action on that the the majority of the time the officer doesn't know the identity of that driver uh that is you are seeing a car behave in a certain way not a driver behave in a certain way um what we have seen I think is is the importance of of working here to try to find ways to make certain that our drivers across all groups uh have baselines that are equal when it comes to issues like suspended licenses what we find is that if we remove suspended license from the picture we actually issue tickets less often to drivers of color uh if we not in 2020 but that was the case in 2019 and 2018 uh whereas if we do factor in license suspension which is something that we do have to address um we we are not uh we don't have the absolute immunity but the speaker before you was our state's attorney who talked about the discretion not to do certain things in certain instances she's got absolute immunity we have we do not we do not have that immunity not as an agency and not as individual officers and so when we encounter someone who is driving without us without a license or with a suspended license there's certain things that we do have to do in order to address that situation in front of us but we we do make uh efforts to to find other alternatives other than for example taking cars which which used to be far more common we now tend to ground the vehicle and allow other people to come get it um nevertheless if you take that suspended license out of the picture uh the the rate at which we issue tickets actually reversed in 2018 2019 in 2020 it went back up crept up a little bit again um warrants don't have anything to do with our vehicle stops so warrants have to do with with uh certain kinds of uses of force but had nothing to do with with our vehicle stops i am really intrigued by this idea however of of what you you talked about like organizational ideas and looking across um across shifts etc when you have such small numbers uh you're not going to find those spikes those spikes are incredibly tiny and so i'm i'm curious what your thoughts are as to how to how to drill into those when they are so tiny and when they may not even exist across shifts yeah thanks um you know i i do think that the the situations of of different departments is obviously um gonna be a bit different um you know i think that in a in a small agency um it may well be that there there aren't these dramatic differences across shifts as you mentioned you know i think there can still be uh incentive structures in place that can be can be effective um so you know there could be um a push from from above from you um to all the sergeants to say well look these are what the numbers are maybe there aren't huge differences across shifts um let's be in a race to get those numbers down uh and to get the numbers looking like you know like like the numbers should have been standpoint of equity um you know how can how can we do that um so that you are in a sense you know pitting teams up against one another uh to see who can reach those equity goals fastest um i mean it's one way of thinking about i think it starts to get very difficult when you're making those kinds of policies because i i think then it's you know then are you um encouraging um uh officers in fact to look at race uh in in in their stops if you're if you're trying to get more equity um in the stock i think that's that's a challenge um you know i guess i would just push back with with tremendous respect on the the pretext point um you know i have never been in uh in a police department where uh unless pretext stops are banned outright and in which the culture of the agency is we simply do not make stops um in which cops don't make protectional stops um you know this guy looks suspicious let's light him up um is is really common um and you know so i think that part of the organizational change it sounds like maybe you're moving in the right direction or have gone a long way there anyway but part of that is to you know reinforce that notion even more as part of the organizational the culture of the place right you know we're the burlington police department uh you know some other agencies might make the protectional stops we just don't do it uh and you know and your fto's teach that uh and you know and it's and it's you know drilled into officers from from day one um you know i think there's some reason to think that um that those kinds of organizational culture changes can can also be effective um you know i i do think that you're pointing to something which is um part of these you hear that um that that we've not addressed that and that is that um you know part of the these disparities in um in in stop patterns has something to do with socioeconomic status at least it can if uh if uh if vehicles are in a state of disrepair and officers are making stops on that basis without seeing who's in the car um and if there's a correlation in a city between socioeconomic status and and racial identity then that might go some way toward accounting for these disparities so you know i think there are lots of factors at play you know the bottom line chief is that as i look at this um you know police departments when they you know really set their mind to solving the problem uh can often do it very very well um and it's a question of you know whether um reducing these disparities becomes a prime focus for the agency not just from the top but you know at the middle ranks as well um all the way on down um and uh you know that also opens up the possibility for you know for line officers for sergeants for lieutenants to come up with their own ideas as to what might be effective in solving this problem um uh so that there's a lot you know space i think for for real organizational creativity there um you know it's a question of whether departments are going to take this seriously uh as an issue and really forefront it uh and and grapple with it um head on and you know i think if if departments are going to do that whether using these strategies or others i think there's a decent chance that they can you know start to reduce some of these disparities so that's that's um i guess that's my thought in response to your comments uh thank you we don't have much time left for the professor so i ask if any commissioners have questions please ask them now i'll just make a brief comment hi professor gross it's stephanie seguino who contacted you nice to that said thank you so much for taking the time to do this i think what you're describing is what we're grappling with here and that is that um we have traffic stop disparities even though we stopped many fewer cars but the most notable disparities are in use of force and uh and the question becomes what is the cause of that and what's the solution to that and uh i think that is where we are really struggling to all be on the same page that is we as a police commission and the police department i think there's a difference of opinion on whether those disparities are justified or not and from my point of view the the question is exploring more deeply what what is leading to these disparities and i'll give you an example um in uh in the use of force data that we get for example police officers will identify whether they think the person is intoxicated or having a mental health episode and so forth and so white use of force uh suspects are much more likely to be identified as being having a mental health episode as compared to for example black um black use of force subjects and it really for me really relates to some of the work by philip philip goff or or jennifer everhart about the threat perception of blacks that they're more perceived as more threatening and criminal and uh and uh so that's sort of where we're at and i would maybe ask you to comment on that and i appreciate your point about implicit bias training and yet that is an example of implicit bias that we have to come to terms with and how do we get there and how to you know maybe if you have some thoughts also about how to you know productively work as a commission uh with the police department to provide the uh you know the the prioritization on this in a way that's really constructive and not destructive sure so just to clarify um i i do think that implicit bias is uh as a process is an important driver of disparities in vehicle stops in use of force it's just that i haven't seen any evidence that training is an effective way to reduce those implicit biases so it's a you know so you have to put some organizational architecture in place to want their effect or to change the way they work it's hard to kind of drill drill biases out of people um that doesn't seem to be very effective of course i'll add um that you know the point that should be um fairly obvious that um but surprisingly isn't you know which is that the more you can diversify the department itself the more you reduce those biases you know for for some time social scientists weren't sure whether having more diverse police forces would reduce um the use of force would reduce racial disparities and a whole range of things from arrest to use of force um there's been some really fantastic studies um by iconomists um recently um that uh that i think show quite definitively that in fact uh that that they do uh and so you know i think that's that's one way to kind of i think that is an organizational change as well that can reduce those disparities um you know i i think the use of force um pieces uh is is really complicated um um uh uh you know i'll guess i'll just say two things um off the bat um so the first uh again this won't come as a surprise to anybody but um you know the i think the best evidence we have suggests that um that the way to um to scale back use of force um and uh and also potentially to reduce disparities in use of force is through uh through policy change um you know as uh as agencies tighten up their policies on the circumstances in which force can be used um those those tend to be quite effective um over the long haul in in in dialing back uses of force um i would issue some caveats here um you know i think that um uh you know kind of dramatic policy change imposed from outside agencies um can tend to be very counterproductive and so there's a way in which you know it's probably much better to at least there's a strong argument for um for incremental change that is really built in partnership and in cooperation with with the agency so that kind of everyone's on board as you're making a change um the question is what are those changes going to look like um one thing i would i would note um is that in conversations about uh use of force um uh there's kind of a kind of a crucial um insight from um from social psychology uh that that i think is um is sometimes ignored it's it's built into some of the better um sort of de-escalation training uh modules there there i think you know when it comes to kind of practical training training can be actually quite effective um and uh and uh it's and also relates to your idea of um kind of threat perception um and it has to do with the idea of of uh deference um you know it is a part of police culture it's been part of police culture since studies of the police were you know first done in this country in the 1950s uh that uh officers expect civilians to be um uh they may not they may not they may be acclimated to them not being like this but there's some expectation that civilians will defer to their deferred to their commands um you know if i'm an officer and i i ask you to do something i i expect you to do it um and uh when when that doesn't happen uh immediately um it can trigger a sense that you know something's up um you know why is this person following my commands um you know what's going on uh it can lead immediately to the perception that the person is is a threat um and can trigger a whole range of responses when in fact the the person may not want to defer to the officer's authority for a whole range of reasons uh including um you know long histories of of of of abuse um uh within that community or or nationally um so trying to get officers to think seriously about um what deference and the rejection of deference feels like and how to dial back the natural response when when deference is denied which is to get upset but you know differences tonight i think that that's a really important part of de-escalation uh training and and i think that uh there there are some training modules that i think have been shown to be uh pretty effective and and i think that those can there's some evidence to guess that those can start to reduce um some of those disparities and use of force that you've identified i think it's also the case that as officers um get more acclimated to kind of mental health concerns um which sounds like they may already be uh to a large extent in in burlington um that uh they are more likely to see um mental health as a kind of major factor um in dealing with a whole range of civilians whatever their whatever their their background um so um i know we're running short on time but i will just say that i think there are some training solutions um with respect to um de-escalation but specifically key to this notion of of deference and you know why um why interacting with uh people from some communities um might kind of feel different from the police point of view um there's some evidence that those trainings can actually be quite effective in scaling back use of force and they're also connected very much to what i was saying before about those those difficult conversations right as you as you get people um cops and civilians together in rooms to talk about this stuff you know openly and honestly um you know stuff comes to light about why people do what they do and why cops do what they do um and those conversations can be i think especially in a relatively small community like yours can be extremely productive and a source of real a real trust building as well so i definitely encourage more of that thank you awesome uh thank you very sorry any uh the commissioners have anything to say just many thanks for taking the time to do this it was really great yes thank you very much yeah thank you for being here and taking your time out of your day with us much appreciated of course awesome thank you all right uh that concludes four four and zero two and up next is uh agenda item five point zero one which is the chief's report and with that i give the floor to our chief mirad thank you mr chair i think i heard a request for a break a quick bathroom break if possible i think it's been a bit yeah absolutely uh we'll have a time for a five minute recess awesome it is seven fifty nine and we'll see you all at uh let's say eight oh five for um make it nice and neat very generous the agenda item five point zero one which is uh the chief's report the floor is your chief great thank you thank you very much mr chair i first want to begin by expressing my my deep gratitude and and the agency's gratitude for uh for what this body did talking to the city council about the need for resources frankly you know many of the things that that both of our speaking guests have talked about tonight whether it is uh the the words of the state's attorney with regard to the ability to pursue what she acknowledged are more timely more labor intensive courses of action that are not oriented towards the just moving it down the criminal justice field as it were but instead diverting it in other yardage ways or whether we're talking about some of the things that were mentioned by the professor with regard to the difference between proactive and reactive work we don't make those distinction anymore we cannot we can't we are still diverting things we are still sending a majority of our cases to alternative justice when appropriate simply because that is not only is it the right thing to do but it is the best course of action when our uh when our state's attorney is is making it clear that that's the direction in which she prefers we go so we do do that we're still doing that but it is labor intensive and it causes more work and fewer officers to do that work um and further more with regard to proactivity uh there's there's no time traffic stops and and declined uh over the from 2015 through probably 2019 largely owing to uh both explicit and implicit indications within the agency about what was important and what was what the chief wanted to be done um more recently it is simply a fact of nobody's got time to stop cars unless they're causing something that is that's bleeding out as in a great public safety violation um and we're we're we're seeing some impacts from that I think that I can demonstrate that in the numbers but uh before I do talk about those numbers I just wanted to say again to this body how grateful I was for that support for for going to the council uh saying that to the council and and I think making certain that they understood uh that it was not merely something that's being said by those who are close most closely associated with the agency that the concerns are are elsewhere so thank you for that um I I'm gonna ask uh our our person at home who I believe is is moving the the slideshow um if if she can thank you so these are the incidents I show these to the you you've seen them before they haven't changed I just show it uh this this has been posted to the internet or it's going to be very soon and it's just another place for people to be able to familiarize themselves with how we prioritize the 130 incident categories that come at a val core one of the challenges that we are now confronting as we talk about what a priority one versus a priority two is is that oftentimes the distinction is not made until the officer gets to the scene or after the fact it's the officer doing his or her report after the incident who recategorizes it from a suspicious event to an aggravated assault because uh the people who are calling don't know the difference between aggravated assault and simple assault or certain kinds of criminal categories they just say this thing's happening or I'm fearful this thing is happening or I don't even know what's happening I'm just scared and there's lots of noise and so as we talk about dispatch and and working on that uh one challenge is the fact that we don't know and dispatch doesn't know what they have often until someone gets to the scene and figures that out um so uh the next slide please so this is incident volume year to date and as I said in our more recent meeting um the last at which I spoke which I believe was June uh year to date we're down overall incidents are down drastically down um and uh we've had a they're down not only for the year in which case they're down about um about 16 percent but they're down from June through August as well although that gap narrows it narrows a lot and I think the the absolute number there I don't have the math right in front of me but I think it's it's a much smaller number I think it's something like four percent or eight percent down much smaller than the year to date uh difference so the year to date decline from 2020 to 2021 is large the year to date decline from 2020 to 2021 for June through August is not as large and it says that we're tightening up um of those incidents that have had happened since June 1st 13 percent of them have had to be stacked according to the priority response plan next slide please thank you um these are total incidents just a different way to look at it so the same data that we saw in the left hand column on the previous slide here it is just showing it uh sort of building up year a day over day for a year so it climbs as as incidents occur uh again we see a market difference between uh 2020 and uh 2021 um and we see a market difference between 2020 and uh 2015 but I I do want to reiterate that the 79 drop in traffic stops constitutes half of the decrease from uh over those times and if I take into account other kinds of proactive incidents um we are are talking about that half of this decrease is is bpd's efforts to reduce traffic stops and reduce the disparities that uh that are found in interdiction based traffic stops um next slide please priority one so unlike overall incident volume priority one is the same it has just stayed the same in fact you can't even see 2021 in there very well it's the black line it obviously ends in in august uh or almost in september there um and it's up above some years it's twined in these are all very close and what needs to be recognized as well is that as these priority ones stay the same while the others fall the priority one leaps in percentage uh previously priority in 2020 priority one was was about eight percent of the total volume it was uh less in previous years it'll be more this year because if overall volume is down and priority one is staying essentially the same then it's going to constitute a larger percentage of of the calls that remain and and that has a lot to do with officer exhaustion and what officers are doing next slide please thank you uh use of force so um here is our our use of force we are still trying we're down for this uh category as well that's a good thing um I I do think it's possible that we'll end up having 2021's total ultimately exceeding 2020 if we look at that that that sort of trend line right now 2020 really leveled off in november and december uh those were just very very slow months we see that with regard to incident volume as well um a little less so with priority one incidents uh but uh we're still the the number is down and that is what is very important to me getting these numbers down so that we are this this indicates uh changes in in uh improvements in training improvements in our use of force policy which is largely going which has been largely adopted by the state and will be a state policy in coming in october uh and they took um they took word for word sections of of the policy that we together the myself and and you uh many some of you as members of the committee to review policing practices and then all of you as members of the police commission when we we worked on that together in july of last year june of july last year um that is now the state standard and i think that's something for all of us to be proud of uh so what we see here this this diminishment of overall numbers is is driven by uh by changes in in how we work now it's each individual incident is driven by behavior and to a certain extent officers can't control the behavior that they encounter they can't control what it is that they see out there or not and as the priority one uh from the previous slide shows us the the behavior that we think of as as dangerous and criminal and the most risk filled behavior is not changing in our city other kinds of behavior are but we're not seeing changes in the in the the stuff that is serious um next slide please thank you so here are some selected incident trends uh these are year-to-date through august 22nd um and we see many that are going down we see many that are staying relatively stable uh two that have gone up a lot are mental health issues some of that is an improved uh ability on officers part to to mark mark it off however i think that's more likely to be seen in the mental health checkbox and this is not the mental health checkbox this is a mental health issue this is when the incident is determined to be a mental health issue um the checkbox can be added to anything you can have an aggravated assault with that checkbox you can have a uh a suspicious event with that checkbox um but uh and i do want officers to do that better i we're we're always working to make certain that that checkbox is used more uh more more often when it's appropriate um but this shows that we we are seeing these calls some of this too is is the fact that callers are more aware of what is mental health or what appears to be mental health and and add that in when they call the other category that i think is is concerning is overdose overdose uh after two years of of real work with that with regard to uh i think comm stat the community stat uh that the mayor really stood behind as well as chief del pozo um that work uh that process drove it down a lot we've seen it spike and that spike in my opinion comes from um the fact that the covet covet caused us to lose our eye on it but uh if you look at the 2020 data it was happening before covet it was there was a very uh there was a big uptick in january and february that proceeded the pandemic um i think what we are also seeing in addition to the pandemic and the fact that it's it's caused us to lose focus on it as organizations and it's also factually caused people to feel more despair the kinds of underlying issues that sometimes lead to substance abuse or contribute to substance abuse disorder um are are are more prevalent because of this pandemic but i also think that the success that was seen in 2018 and 2019 particularly with regard to uh the the wider availability of mentally excuse me medically assisted treatment or mat um mostly through you've been our friend but other substances as well that had that that the sort of the low hanging fruit of that has been has been plucked so people who wanted mat to get off of the other substances they were using and to find progress in their own journey towards uh towards being able to to work with their substance abuse uh disorder and defeat it that those low hanging fruit have been plucked and what we have now are people who who often avail themselves of mat or other kinds of substances not as a pathway off but as a pathway towards handling it well i don't have the thing that i need in front of me which is which is again the bulk of these overdoses have to do with uh with fentanyl and other kind of opioids so that is a contributing factor as well um and and things we have to sort of plan for back thank you uh so this is just a reiteration of what i stated before with regard to the the volume uh you know incidents are down 16 percent for the year but our staffing is dropped by 35 percent and so i again i really appreciate what this body did with regard to uh bringing that that information to the city council um and thank you and that's what i have for the chief any questions for the chief uh that'll be the time to uh do that just a quick question on the last page d slash c i missed what that means uh okay oh well not on the last page on the first on the on the right i think the second page the first page of that what i gave you oh i'm sorry this one here i apologize the last page that i gave to you i apologize commissioner um yes dc stands for disorderly conduct got it okay thank you uh and and i don't domestic so mental health issue domestic disturbance domestic uh assault misdemeanor and domestic assault felony those are aggregated assault misdemeanor and assault felony those are aggregated overdose sex assault disorderly conduct crash with injury or fatal those are aggregated and and by the way it ticked up this past year um which was interesting to me owing to the fact that so uh i don't know if all of you remember those those cannonball run movies with burt reynolds right uh so the cannonball run is a real thing there's a race that goes that people do it's illegal but they modify their cars uh last april and last march in april the cannonball race record was set and reset something like five times because there were no cops on the road anywhere there was no one else on the road anywhere and these guys would put together these cars and put extra big gas tanks in them and they they made it across country i think the record was something like 26 hours from new york city to los angeles in a vehicle there was lots of that but we didn't see crashes with injury or fatalities increase here we saw some increases elsewhere we are seeing a lot of it this year and some of that at least in law enforcement circles has to do with with a belief that there are still fewer officers out there doing enforcement um and yet the traffic levels have risen back to normal so people are driving the way they drove in the early days of the pandemic when you could get away with run for stop signs and going a little faster than you're supposed to uh but once again the traffic has returned and now we're having more crashes uh that's being seen in many localities here we see it with a return to our normal kinds of numbers of of injury or fatal thank you thank you chief for that sorry any any further questions for the chief all right that concludes agenda item 5101 moving on to agenda item 6.01 future locations of uh commission meetings with that i give the floor to uh commissioner grant thank you i was able to um get some research started with um different locations throughout the city and um types of information that they would need in order to host the meetings so uh i'll start with the one community center on north street which um i feel it would be a great space unfortunately there are some things that would prevent us at this time from considering that location um number one they have some staffing issues and in number two the space is actually owned by the champagne housing trust and so in order to kind of pay for the space there's like a rental fee to use the space and this space would be familiar watching the mp3 for ward three meetings it would be that larger room there is a smaller room that could be perhaps used in the future i have not seen that room i would have to go and kind of scope it out to see if it would be appropriate but it's kind of a mute issue at this time because of the increase in covid cases in the city they're not booking those spaces at this time so it would be something that we have to come back to um the miller center would definitely allow us to use their space there is no charge they would need advanced notice so that they can account for staff to be there over the course of the meeting and we are responsible for providing any type of equipment related to trying to have a hybrid meeting so we would be responsible for making that happen some other spaces that are looking into and just waiting back for some confirmation with the person who manages the meeting space this would be in the south end and the dpw space department of public works they have a meeting space so i've given um i obtained that contact person and then they emailed me some questions which i did reply back to so i advise what we normally schedule so we may need to start to schedule our meetings to have really firm dates because part of going to these locations is going to be needing to commit to very specific dates with sufficient notification so i did let them know um how long our meetings could be minimum to two hours up to possibly four hours especially if we have executive session and then i have a message out to city market which the south end city market apparently has a meeting space so i have reached out to them but i don't have any specific information as of yet so those were the four locations that i started with that i think people would be familiar with that also one of the things i was thinking about because downtown has parking there is parking downtown but there is a perception of how accessible that parking is right because everybody wants to be able to be close and some people don't like being in the parking garages and i recognize that so when i was looking at these other spaces i was just accounting for the fact that they all have parking that people can use that would be very easy to get to and then get into the locations and that is all i have if anyone has any questions what about just some of the schools like sustainability academy and champlain elementary oh that's a good question i will look into champlain um and i'll look into sustainability especially since the next store the one center community center wouldn't be available for a while so thank you so as of now i know our next meeting um i think it's september 27th don't quote me on that but uh we have uh we do have it um this the space reserved so october um i guess ideally october we would not be in this space we could maybe circle back to the space months down the line but try to try to pass them around what uh is dpw probably the best um option for that uh october meeting or too early to tell might be too early to tell um but one of the good things about that space is they routinely do meetings out of that space i mean their own commission meetings they run out of that space okay so if we do october would we be looking at tuesday the 26th um if that's the fourth tuesday of the month that is the fourth tuesday of the month i i wonder if it might be better to book this for october and to just get all of our options all that information together because i think we need to book far enough in advance and so that that would be my suggestion is to book this for october and to continue to work on this um i the i'm sorry that the one community center isn't available because when i think about people who don't have as much access to the meetings it is people in the old north end okay and uh for a variety of different reasons and so finding a space there would be really great maybe at the st joseph's school um where aalv is and other organizations maybe there's space there um one of the things that presents a difficulty and i'm glad our lawyer is here because uh this might be something she might be able to respond to is that um executive session can prove difficult because we need a separate room privacy so on and so forth and i'm wondering if over the next few months we could uh i was i just realized this is not a very good suggestion so uh i was just thinking about executive session on zoom um partly because of the delta variant and maybe some of the difficulties of using these spaces but that might be i think dicey now that i think about it i just want to throw out some ideas to help us figure it out yes um any further questions or comments on this just one more thing make sure you check for parking the microphone sorry i'm sorry make sure we check for parking at dpw it's a huge building and they have some parking on the side but they don't have a lot of parking as far as i know having been there multiple times for permits you know another possibility is the the faith community right there are a number of churches and they may be willing to um allow us to use their space sorry do you mind just being into the microphone sorry uh any further comments on five uh six point oh one thank you milo thank you thank you milo for looking into this all right uh closes that agenda item next is six point zero two uh commission work plan and basically uh sorry okay so i think i think i sent out to everyone a copy kind of a draft copy but i haven't heard back from everybody yet but if we could do that by um you know sort of next week maybe next wednesday or so i can ship out the revised version and i'm hoping that's helpful to us just to have kind of a big overview across time and maybe at a meeting the next meeting we have we might want to talk about what are the next kinds of steps you want to take from january to say june um so we have kind of an ongoing process i i really have appreciated all of the learning opportunities that are providing for ourselves and everyone else i think they're really beneficial and what the good news is is that they're online i think we want to probably publicize that for people in the community that are interested that couldn't get here so if we could have stuff to me by next wednesday if you haven't responded already that would be really helpful for that work plan then i'll put it out susie does what's attached to the agenda reflect any of the changes that we would have sent you not yet okay perfect thanks for doing this it's a lot of work um so in the interim that you're waiting for changes for september we had uh discussed having samsa speak brian coro uh and uh will we be going through with that and who would be responsible for organizing those visitors and so forth question shereen's name is down tentatively as the organizer to contact the organizations and to work to invite them i think you're looking at december uh september 28th you know if you look at the chart unless it's up above why trauma trauma and medicine right and their question marks for the contact person oh i see what you're saying oh oh i see what you so can you explain are we doing is brian with samsa brian coro is the person who is at nicole that spoke to us at our last training yep and so he's with nicole and then we were hoping to get someone from samsa is that one understanding as well that was the that was the thing to hope so then there would be a question of which commissioner would be take on the responsibility for contacting these folks and organizing their their presence at the meeting i can work on that but just to be clear we've got we're going to contact brian from nicole but then we're trying to identify someone from samsa is that am i reading this right or is this that's what we had talked about i think at some point yeah i i mean i'm happy to talk with susie offline about samsa i you know it's a national group so i don't know okay we'll talk offline yep who is going to get in touch with brian i can do that i can it's up to you you want to do that and then we'll work on samsa sure so we'll work on the samsa if you want to contact brian i will contact brian okay i'm sorry if i might just offer a suggestion it's complicated to organize two speakers and i think the same person needs to be responsible so that everything gets coordinated so i think having two separate people makes it logistically a little bit more complicated well as long as i think as one of them cc'd with the email you know may not have to respond to the person but as long as one of the one of the other cc'd in it that shouldn't be a problem yeah i think what we can do is use the timing that we use for tonight those two slots i think that our agenda tonight was pretty aggressive in terms of how much time we're going to take tonight but um yeah yeah i can at least do um you know check his availability to start off i mean he may come back and say that that date is not a good date for him so we can establish the date and time and then confirm a specific time for him so one of the things um that we could talk about with samsa is they have the training on they have the trauma-informed training so um it could be that we have someone come talk to us about what that possibly could look like and brian coro that was his area as well so i think having both of them would be really really helpful any further comments on um on this agenda item so this will be on the agenda for the next meeting as well after susie gets some comments and so forth great yep so we can have this posted to the board docs and not run afoul of open meeting last correct uh with that moving on to agenda item 6.03 uh which is the body worn camera video release policy um so if folks remember back in april we reviewed this revised policy and we had requested a few changes to it uh and so uh we are now getting this back from the city attorney's office and i'd like to make a motion to adopt this policy with two uh changes and just give me one second here i'll read the motion so the motion to approve the new the revised body worn camera footage release policy with two changes number one change number four to read the commission shall revisit this policy in march 2022 to evaluate and assess implementation uh and the second motion is to delete the phrase any member of the public who wishes to view the blurred footage or redacted audio may request that information in accordance with the vermont public records act with regard to the that's the motion is is there a second uh so the second oh were you going to elaborate on yeah okay that was that was my question just okay uh so the changing it to march is because we had estimated that we need six months to evaluate the policy and it's been a while since we uh passed this so six months from today is march 2022 so that's the reason for changing that in regard to the last part what the city attorney brought to my attention is that this is redundant the second part uh on public wishing to view the blurred footage or redacted audio is redundant because earlier in the policy uh the policy states that the body cam video uh footage would be released proactively and so it's not necessary for people to request it through uh foya it was are we striking those those that line i am saying to delete it that's correct yep so thank you one of the comments from the city attorney is asked to paragraph 1b about discretionary use of force and i'm wondering if we have an adequate understanding as written can i um can i maybe see if we're on the same page with that we as i recall we had an extended discussion about that and what we learned was that not all uses of force are discretionary and so we wanted to change the verbiage so that we were referring to those cases in which use of force is discretionary so for example um uh pointing a gun is not always discretionary and that was the reason for the revision and chief is that the new wording is that that consistent with what you think is appropriate so i i i'm afraid that i haven't i haven't seen the new wording other than what you're discussing right now um there are instances you're correct in which it's certain kinds of uses of force are not discretionary uh and actually the new use of i would also note that the new use of force policy that is going to be used by the state should probably be incorporated into this or at least not incorporated but its uh restrictions and and definitions need to be accounted for in this so it mentions for example that there's certain things that are not uses of force but are not discretionary as well it talks it talks explicitly about the use of uh of firearms for doing certain kinds of building sweeps and things like that um when when those are or are not a use of force uh and so i think that that might be important we did not get our policy doesn't get into that specificity the new state policy does i believe matt am i right i mean i remember reading that part in the new state policy so um a description of when pointing a firearm does and doesn't constitute use of force and it talks about entries and those kinds of operations um so yes i i think that is that's accurate i think uh you know i i also wanted to note um i have a job description that i am working on uh for the redaction specialist uh i have not yet sent it over to hr but it's it's in my uh in my folders as something that i started i should be able to finish that as far as getting it to hr as a draft for them to then improve and and fix um i should be able to do that if not this week then i'm very early next week uh it's something that we we were authorized to do in the brand new budget starting july 1st and so we need to get our uh there's a lot of hiring move movement going on for a lot of different positions but we do want that one because as i as i stated you know back when we talked about this the first time i want to but cannot comply with this until i get that position in place but um in so far as the definitions of what uh yes i think that that's correct there are certain uses of force that aren't discretionary and i also think that everybody should take a look at the new state use of force policy which i will share with this body after this meeting chief if you haven't seen this can i read this uh portion of the policy the revised so it says an incident of discretionary police use of force that involves the use of aerosol agents conducted electric electrical weapons police batons less lethal impact munition firearms or other lethal force so those are the kinds of uh videos that would be proactively released so that was our attempt to differentiate the especially with regard to firearms yes okay um yeah i i think there i think i for the sake of our own workload i would strike aerosol from that but uh i know that that's something that's that's in it and wasn't it before we will have the opportunity if we pass this to revisit it in six months and so perhaps that's something we could you know think about how that impacts this so uh we had a motion on the floor um it was seconded by susie is there any further questions or comments about the those two modifications sorry those two amendments are the technical or those two changes to the policy do we look at the state plan or before we do this so we do that retroactively i think that's a you know question for discussion i'll just state my own opinion on that and that is we can always revise this policy but i have a i have a real concern with what i have seen in the slowness of government action this policy was drafted last october and it is nine ten months later and i'm in favor of voting on this tonight and looking at the state policy if we decide to revise it per that i'd be all for that and maybe that's what happens within the six month period but um my personal view is that you know that the community expects us to take actions and this was something that was requested of us to do over a year almost a year ago and that we really need to move this along any further question or comments i am not seeing or hearing any um all in favor of the proposed amendments to this policy raise your hand or say aye that passes unanimously thank you for that moving on to agenda item 6.04 um said delirium and preliminary discussion uh if i will if i might just say something because i was working on the agenda while um jabu was attending to life matters this past week um i i think the the idea of having a preliminary discussion is to decide what it is we need to have as testimony perhaps is a strong word but information what kind of information will inform any decision or discussion and so we might think about who would we invite to speak about that and you know who might be responsible for inviting people to speak on that and so to figuring out how we actually have the policy discussion now and then schedule that uh in our work plan as you have the floor followed by milo oh thank you mr chair uh that term is not in the new use of force policy that the state has it's not in the use of force policy that the state has so so the section that is in our use of force policy which we drafted with an er doctor um the er uh the association of er doctors does uh recognize the term it is a very important term to them it's a hugely important uh set of of evaluation standards and i worked on it with an er doctor who was a member of the committee to review policing practices and uh and define the language for us and also define the things that we need to do when observing those conditions um it's irrelevant now simply because it is not in the state use of force uh policy and it won't be part of ours either thank you for that i i i disagree that it's not relevant because we've recently seen it used um in use of force reports so that's how it came up um that we're we're using that term in the city so i do believe that it is something that people need to be educated about um that the department needs to be educated about it is not a legitimate term um i i actually i actually would like to to read part of something um this is from the american medical association the AMA uh this is a press release that they did uh june 24th of this year a policy adopted by physicians residents and medical students at the american medical association's special meeting of its house of delicates opposes excited delirium as a medical diagnosis and warns against the use of certain pharmacological interventions solely for a law enforcement purpose without a legitimate medical reason the new policy addresses reports that show a pattern of using the term excited delirium and pharmacological interventions such as ketamine as a justification for excessive police force disproportionately cited in cases where black men die in law enforcement custody specifically the policy confirms the AMA stance that the current evidence does not support excited delirium as an official diagnosis and opposes its use until a clear set of diagnostic criteria has been established denounces excited delirium as a sole justification for law enforcement use of excessive force underscores the importance of emergency physician led oversight of medical emergencies in the field opposes the use of sedative and disassociative drugs as an intervention for an agitated individual in a law enforcement setting without a legitimate medical reason recognizes the risks that sedative and disassociative drugs have in relation to an individual's age underlying medical conditions and potential drug interactions when used outside of a hospital setting by a non physician so that's where i'll stop um there is a there's a little bit more in terms of their their press release this is being discussed nationally in the city of burlington i believe that we are small enough where we can eradicate the use of this term whatever is going on with an individual we should use actual terms not a term that was quite frankly made up not a term that has a lot of racial disparities something and stephanie helped me out i want to say it was 10 percent but i can't remember 10 percent of deaths in police custody involved the the use of this term um and there's various lawsuits there is a whistleblower suit that is is happening in minnesota where an emt felt they had to leave their job because they were being forced to medicate people by law enforcement so there's just a lot of things that we could cover but i feel that we need to eradicate the use the fact that it came up in one of our publicly discussed reports and it came up under two different incidents if i'm remembering correctly tells me it's it's being used in the city and it's not something that we should be using um we'd probably want to invite the fire chief because i believe the fire department oversees um you know emt's response so it uh and it might even involve a conversation with the hospital right because you're saying that you spoke to someone um who was on one of the previous committees and they reviewed the term i remember the term coming up but there was so much other things to to cover on that particular committee um and we didn't get to everything as it was but i think now we just need to take the time to really examine um a term that's that's that's hurtful right and we also know that there is not only in law enforcement but there is structural racism and healthcare as well so when you bring that in and you end up using a term which often involves and could involve medicating people it it just brings in a lot of issues that we need to review thank you i wonder if it's a possibility to relook at the use of force policy and maybe just strike that out from it is or is that is oversimplifying it well i think it's it may mean if it's not in the use of force policy as the chief says we know it's being used in the department right so what kind of training um education needs to be done in the department to eradicate its use is what i guess i'd like to see us explore i'm sorry i was i was under the pressure that so the state just adopted their use of force policy we still have hours which can i guess supersede that right is there is that the the floor i guess hours will cease to exist i believe it's october 1st matt i yeah i mean i may be off on that date but i believe on october 1st the new state policy goes into effect and that is every single agency's policy and ours does have excited delirium and ours does that's correct so that will go away so it does that's correct right and it has never been used as a justification for force it's been used as a description of the situations that that can ensue after force and frankly the the things that it lists in our use of force policy which is available online and publicly available those are those are uh conditions and criteria that i don't want to train officers not to recognize or take care of or address appropriately that's not what i said um but they can use the actual terms right it it it's it's this made up term that's supposed to just summarize all these other terms we just need to use the actual terms right and we need to use legitimate medical diagnoses when we're talking about i think um using uh sedatives on people or or disassociative drugs or when we're we're using things in the field um i i i understand as i started to look at this there might be some consultations but at the same time it's just not a term we should be using we need to recognize the racial disparities with the particular term so i'm not saying that officers should ignore behaviors symptoms that have been lumped in to this term what we're seeing is overuse of this term right just throwing it out there to justify bad behavior in some departments we want to avoid that here we want people to really be thinking of in terms of what they are in fact dealing with instead of like oh it's excited delirium we just we want to eradicate that term we know this this term and and part of it would be educating people who maybe don't know um it's it has a lot of racial disparities associated with it and that is a problem that we don't want to be a part of considering our other racial disparities right so we i could go on but i will defer to my commission fellow commissioner um so i i really value exploring things in detail when it's related to a policy change and um we do have our attorney waiting for us for executive session and so i i think this is a good preliminary discussion but i think we need to make a decision uh about whether we want to schedule this and again we need a variety of uh perspectives in order to think this through so i think that discussion takes some planning and i might just propose that we um think of it after the next meeting so maybe october and that would give some time uh to kind of research who might be available to talk to us about it and so forth i agree with that approach i think that makes sense i'm also in favor of that i think it's a very important discussion to have because whether we use the term or don't use the term and i agree i've read some similar things commissioner grant the the terminology is really important it has a very loaded history and just because you take the words away doesn't take behavior away so i think we really need to talk about this at much more depth as a commission maybe there's a possibility of asking whoever speaks to us from samsa or brian coro to you know comment on that as well if they have some expertise in that area no i just i'm in favor of that um any uh further questions sorry any further comments or questions on 6.04 all right with that i'm moving on to agenda item 7.01 which the use of force is the report and uh see how we did it last time we received this it was been posted on board docs and if the commissioners have any questions about any incidents um i guess are there any questions or any any incidents that popped up on uh use of force support that would be appropriate for um now say on the record that we did um have the ability to look at all the video from last month and thank you for uploading all of those i think we had made the ask that um i think there were nine cases if i'm not mistaken last month and all videos or each incident had at least one video so thank you not hearing any questions that moves us to agenda item 8.01 and that was just commendations usually Shannon does that but she's not with us so i'm not sure if you're doing that on her behalf or no i'm afraid i don't have that information in front of me all right it just shows how important shannon is all right and in that case we'll we can just add uh july's into next next month's meeting going on to agenda item 9.01 commissioner updates and or comments i just like a brief comment i i was really struck by uh susie's suggestion around someone around mental health i think that we have a role to play as a commission because we see the impact on the department and we see the data that we just saw uh i i think it would be important for us to leverage some movement on this uh whether it's through a resolution or connecting with city council or something and maybe we can uh think about it and put it on the agenda for next meeting uh that might include a motion to urge the city and city partners to convene a summit like this thank you just want to add that it's not that difficult to do you know it could be a one-day deal where we bring everybody around the table from their own perspectives lay out some of the data you know and talk about where do we go from here but i think it's really important to have some legislators there um that represent our community and the mayor's office and the mayor himself among others thank you moving on to agenda item 10.01 which is the next meeting agenda items um which i feel like we kind of broached with um the commission work plan um with uh samsa um richard of ryan corps from nake hole um any other big ones jumping out of us i also mean finding people to talk to because of excited delirium but because for our october meeting so i think basically um it's kind of there at the work plan but unless um maybe just do a check-in on september about potential speakers for october and educational materials so not a full link but just a check-in happy to put that in any further uh comments on that not seeing or hearing any um some and uh before we move into executive session i want to state that uh this meeting will be adjourned uh at the conclusion of executive session with no action on items to be taken so with that um my move that we go into executive session seconded by steff all in favor raise your hand or say hi sorry my apologies to that's the mind sorry um we move i move that we move into executive session to talk about um discipline and citizen complaints i'm sorry could you repeat the uh this the s a 13 okay and for i got the first part and same part one of us a 313 b for uh legal um inviting um thank you very much for clarification can i make a suggestion yep would you email him the verbiage so we don't have to do this every single time because it is long and cumbersome thank you we've been without a city representation for quite some time so appreciate it you know we present a shape all right um i motion that we enter executive session to discuss disciplinary matters pursuant to one vsa 313 a4 and um also we also for one vsa 313 b for our inviting legal council for that so that's a motion i'll take a second seconded by susie sorry our hand is faster all in favor raise your hand to say hi that passes unanimously and uh awesome i say we recess for five minutes if people need to bathroom and we'll see you um downstairs at the shambles around