 All right then it is 607 December 14th, 2021 and I am calling this meeting to order. Um, we have all commissioners and attendance minus Kevin Gerson and you all her talk to all. And with that additional modifications to the agenda. I have one modification to the agenda and that is to make the item 5.01 the escalation discussion. I want to make that time certain for immediately after we approve the minutes from our last meetings. And that is just because we have the person that Mr. Goldman us who goes with that and his time is available. We just want to make sure that we get him in and then we'll have a public forum directly afterwards. Do I have a second for that or first I forget. Second. Any discussion over this. Okay, sounds good. And I just to clarify too. The screen for you guys in person is very small so I cannot see raise your hand or not. So just please. If you have someone to say just go right ahead. So with that, I had a second all in favor raise your hand or say aye. We've got passes unanimously. The next item is approving the minutes from 1026 2111 21 and 11 to 21. I motion that we approve all the minutes from the last three meetings to have a second. Second. Seconded by Milo. Any discussion. All in favor approving the minutes last three meetings to raise your hand to say aye. That passes unanimously. And with that we move on to the amended agenda, which is the de escalates discussing. And with that. Mr. Goldman you have the floor. I have to apologize because I didn't give chief. Much notice after November was. We didn't do the November meeting, but chief, did you want to start and then bring in Eric. Yes, thank you so much. So I, first of all, thank you very much for asking us to do this and talk about this important topic. First of all, thanks so much to Eric for agreeing to join us on this. As we hear what Eric has to say about his very unique experience being someone who had de escalation training and experience with Howard center and the street outreach worker. And then also has just recently gone through a version of our de escalation training as a new community support liaison as a new CSL. I want to explain a little bit about that de escalation training as officers experience it. It is a fuller program than what Eric went through. And I have here a note from Sergeant Belevo whom you all met when he came and talked about narcotics with us. He is. He also wanted to make sure that the police commission is aware of the difference between what is what I think Eric is going to describe, which is very important and what the officers get to do. And he also wanted to make very clear that he and the lead ICAT instructors have volunteered to put on a full day training for the police commission. And if that's something that you and the police commission would like to see happen, it'd be happy to make those arrangements. ICAT is a full day. It stands for integrated communication assessment and tactics. It is a program that was developed by the police executive research forum or PERF. This agency was one of the pioneers of it, worked on the very earliest forms of the training program with PERF. PERF sent a number of officers first to a large conference on the east coast, led primarily by the New York City Police Department's ESU and other entities. Pardon me about that, the radio. And then also did a visit to the UK where they really wanted to examine why it was that unarmed officers in the United Kingdom when faced with perpetrators armed with knives were not shooting them. The first answer is that the police are unarmed. The second answer is how are they doing that? And so ICAT was designed to deal with primarily individuals who are either barricaded in a situation that does not involve a hostage and or firearm and or designed to deal with people who are armed with knives, not with firearms, and maybe out in the open. And how do you communicate with these? How do you tactically approach them? How do you do that in a way that is safe for everyone involved? ICAT instruction is practiced by the BPD and the BPD have certified instructors in it that are certified through PERF after co-designing it with PERF and other agencies. But as after being on the ground floor as it were of the training regime, we also brought in PERF instructors at a later point and paid them along with South Burlington to train the trainer programming here in Chinden County. And we invited a lot of other agencies, the VSP, Williston, Colchester to that training session so that we could all be on the same page. And this was a time when we were really hoping, for example, that our emergency response vehicle or ERV, which is built along the idea of servicing the ICAT training model, would be something that would ultimately be a template for the rest of the county. And so we had four times where we envisioned being able to take that ERV and actually build other ones for other entities in the county. Whether South Burlington had the volume to need one all on its own or not was a question. But perhaps the county would have had one, Burlington would have had one, and they would have been able to co-deploy or deploy together. We were for a time period going to a lot of calls for service outside of Burlington with that ERV and using those ICAT training tactics. And as a result, the idea of having the county trained in a similar way was really important. We're less able to do that now, obviously, although even recently, a few, about a month and a half ago, we were in Winooski for a call with that ERV. So ICAT, the version that we train includes seven modules. There's an introduction, and these are very long, very long power points. And then they are anchored by the most important component, which is scenario-based training to go with that, those power points. The introduction is 13 slides. The second component is a critical decision-making model, which is 24 slides. There's a crisis recognition and response model, 27 slides. A tactical communication section on 21 slides. Operational safety tactics, 22 slides. Then integration of crisis recognition, response, communications and tactics. 11 slides. And then a page that is unique to the Burlington Police Department, an operational safety and tactics by our standards, which is another eight slides. And I say all that not to list off the numbers, but simply to say that as important as what Eric's going to share with us, it is a very, very big comprehensive kind of thing. And even what Commissioner Hart and I were thinking about doing was not going to really touch on this. This is an all-day process when officers go through it. Our ERU does it at least once a year and trains on it. It is also incorporated into other kinds of training, whether we're talking about patrol procedures training, training around our usage of CEWs or contracted electrical weapons, training around firearms and tactics. All of that ends up having pieces of ICAT inside of it. So it's a very integral part of the way in which the agency trains. So with all that as a long-winded introduction, I turn it over to your invited guest and let you hear from him and ask questions. Eric, can you hear us? Yes, can you hear me? Yep, we can't see you, but we can hear you. Are we supposed to see you? I'm not sure, I thought you could, but I guess that's not the important part. So what I had in mind, I was just going to kind of give an overview. It looks like Jabuz frozen. I think we all were just frozen or something in time for a minute. Eric, can you hear us now? We lost you right when you were about to... Yeah, can you hear me? I think your internet, I mean at least on this end is a little unstable. I don't know about others having trouble hearing him or is it just me? It's unstable and con toys as well. Yeah, can you hear me? I'm going to try, we'll see how it goes, sorry. Okay. I was going to briefly cover the training I had at Howard Center more as an overview. So the first training I had was therapeutic options to client facing staff as they start at Howard Center. It is kind of designed more for folks that work more in like an office setting or more like clinical setting as opposed to out in the community. This training is not focused completely on de-escalation, more so on basics of communicating with clients generally with themes around respect and politeness. And understanding that clients might work better with one person as opposed to another person sometimes for reasons beyond your control, but something that clinicians should recognize. Other kind of general topics, realizing that the interaction that you're having with a person that might be escalated. There may have been a lot of preceding events and this interaction could be a byproduct of kind of the last straw. And then it spoke kind of generally about body language awareness and basic safety. Things like keeping maybe a desk between yourself and a person if they're very escalated and just awareness of like positioning and reactionary gaps. So that was kind of the first training in a nutshell. Does anyone have any questions or can folks hear me okay? Yeah, we can hear you great. We're good. Thanks. Okay. And then kind of a second training ahead. Well, I was at Howard Center. Howard Center training per se. It was arranged through the medical director at Howard Center had a colleague who teaches this training called the art of de-escalation. Her name is Dr. Madeline Baronaski. And she kind of she trained just our street outreach team. Specifically, this training is obviously focused on de-escalation. We discussed the challenges, things like environmental considerations like support de-escalation, a specific consider. And don't really have a choice and talked about how in the context of like a responder, oftentimes it's health or having mid-story. So kind of the idea that there's not magic words to de-escalation and it's not a science. It's, you know, strategies that you can employ. Other things we've talked about in this training. Avoiding setting a time or an outcome expectation when trying to de-escalate. Things like avoiding contagious anxiety. Tactics for breaking a cycle of dysregulation or escalation. Using things like tone. You know, taking space from a scene, going for a walk. Food, water. Things like that. Which just might help someone regulate it again. We talked about kind of the approach of first assessing, then connecting with an individual, communicating with them. And then once you've established rapport, only then trying to polite. We talked about phrases that might be helpful. Kind of we referred to them as like tools in your toolbox. And then the importance of debriefing with team members after something to hopefully, you know. Can we just go back to that one point that you were talking about after you were talking about taking some time away from the scene and food. I think you were talking about tools in your toolbox. Do you mind repeating? Were you set after that if you recall? I talked about the importance of assessing a situation, making a connection with the individual, communicating with the individual building rapport. And only once those have been done, attempting to work toward an outcome or align resources toward an outcome. Also, we discussed phrases that work. And that was where I said that those are like tools in your toolbox. These are things that you can kind of keep in the back of your head and employ in different situations that might be helpful. And we talked about the importance of debriefing after an incident, talking about what worked and what didn't work. You know what can be approved for next time. And then finally, we talked about risk management. So things that might increase the risk of a situation. Maybe an individual has certain substances on board, weapons, things like that. And also the importance of working as a team and not being an individual and putting yourself in an unsafe situation. So yeah, that would be the art of de-escalation training. I took a Howard Center in a nutshell. Does anyone have any questions? How long was that training? Was that a day long training? The art of de-escalation was probably only one to two hours. So I would say it was fairly brief. Okay. And then therapeutic options was the better part of the day. Okay. And then did you do retraining on those on either of those or was it just one time? No, those were one time. Okay. And then when you said you talked about debriefing after incidents, was there training? And maybe you're going to get into this, but was there training within that context when you were debriefing? Yeah, in the context of my work on straight outreach, the way that that team is structured is kind of that there's kind of constant ongoing debriefing and opportunities for feedback. So yeah, that was, that was kind of part of the culture and the setup at street outreach, even before the training. We would talk about things as a team and had that kind of environment. Can you tell me, like, give me some examples of how you go about establishing rapport? Yeah, it kind of starts with, like, just introducing who I am. And then taking some time to try to understand the circumstance as much as possible. When it comes to that, like, I would say active listening. And that's again, or something like trying to avoid setting a time or an expectation kind of helps. I think sometimes there's a rush to try to write a situation. But if I know, like, if you take a, if you have the time and you're afforded the opportunity to listen and act it back to the person that you understand the situation or ask clarifying questions, doing those things, you know, typically is the first step in trying. Can you tell us how often you use these strategies sort of in a week or a month or a year? Yeah, I mean, I use, I would say, use this approach every single, not necessarily in the context in an incident. I mean, the same things that apply, like they apply to my general work, which largely is proactive work. But you're still talking to folks, you're still talking about concerns they have listening to them, building rapport and then hopefully trying to work toward now, even if they're not escalated. So yeah, I would say I use these skills every day. Eric, did you, I was surprised by the one to two hours of training. Did you think that additional training would be helpful? Do you think that was adequate? I think absolutely additional training would have been helpful. I will say like beyond these formal trainings, like Street Outreach has its own approach for like, you know, shadowing and being a formal setup. So it's not like this is the only, but these were, I would say the only formal trainings. Aside from, I took the team to training as well. I believe Vermont Care Partners, which wasn't necessarily a Howard Center sponsored training. It's, I think, mostly utilized by law enforcement. But I took that training as well during my time at Street Outreach. Eric, would you say that the critical incident debriefing is actually part of ongoing training when you think through what happened and you kind of suss it out? Yeah, absolutely. You always kind of like learn from your colleagues and learn for next time. I have another question. I'm wondering, so you're working through different de-escalation strategies. At what point do you decide they're not working and what's your next step? And I know that's a very general question and it's very contextual, but if you could talk about that, that would be helpful. Yeah, like you said, it's contextual. I mean, obviously the safety of the individual and the folks around them and myself are all paramount. So if any of those things are compromised, then I'm seeking additional support to try to maintain safety. Safe situation, but a person is still exploited. You also have to kind of look at environmental factors in the middle of the street. You know, is there likely to be kind of ongoing concerns? Could there be safety become a concern once I leave? Yeah, things like that. So often it's trying to get the individual to a point where maybe you can mitigate some of those other circumstances. So that's where it's possible, maybe taking a walk, going to a different situation or a different setting, sorry. Yeah, so it's completely contextual. I don't know if that answers your question. Yes and no. The first part of the question is, which is what I'm interested in now is, so if you get to the point in a serious situation and you're not getting anywhere, what's the next thing that you do? Like who do you call? Do you call more CSLs? Do you call the police? Are you with the police already? How does that all work? Yeah, that's also contextual. So if it's like an immediate safety risk, then typically I would call the police. If it's, you know, something, I mean sometimes it can be something where you can employ someone's like natural support, so family and friends. And maybe they can come over and help support the situation better than, you know, like a professional support could. Yeah, sometimes that can be calling like first call for Chinne County for like an assessment clinician to come out. Certainly also enlisting if they have professional supports and they've identified that. You know, maybe having, if they have a good rapport with their case manager, that person might be able to come out and support. So it all depends on the situation and who the person kind of passes in their network that you can involve. Thank you very much. To be clear, you're talking about your training so far when you were as street outreach, correct? We haven't gotten to your training as a CSL or am I mistaken? No, you're correct. I just covered what I've done on street outreach. Great. And did you want to talk any more about that? Or do you want to tell us now about what what your transition to street to CSL has been in terms of training? Yeah, I can kind of cover my training that I've had in a few months. I've been a CSL if it's that time folks right for that. Yeah, so kind of starting out there's, there's a training with the community outreach supervisor, Lisa and Smith. This was quite brief. This is like the new CSL's and CSO's. I believe some folks from parallel justice attended as well. Just a brief kind of overview of having respectful interactions with the public and with each other. You know, mindfulness for hooks or things that may be upsetting to different people or, you know, identifying our own hooks or things that might be things that might be difficult for us. While having an interaction or something that might, you know, get under your skin, just being able to identify those in advance and recognize when that things might be going in that direction. I took the training that the chief described focused on de-escalation. This began the first part of the day was actually spent kind of covering some basic safety procedures and things to look out for be mindful of for and safety while we're working in the field. And then I believe we kind of transitioned more into the de-escalation portion of the training. This was a lot of the same themes that were covered in the art of de-escalation training that I had taken. But this was, I believe, a full day or the better part of a day. So we kind of fleshed out these things quite a bit more. There's a lot more interaction with the instructors. There's time for some videos of kind of officers in other departments in escalated scenes or just relevant scenes and how they handled it, kind of some analysis of what worked and what didn't work. And like the chief described, there's some kind of acting out situations with our colleagues at the end of the day. I think one of the main kind of things that I took away from this, there's quite a bit of time spent on active listening and this kind of behavioral change staircase, taking steps in time to build connection and listen before attempting to work toward an outcome or influence a person's behavior. There's also some time spent on self-regulation. There's time spent on kind of like conversation rules, things like, you know, listening 80% of the time and talking 20% of the time. You know, understanding influences in the individual's life, which may be leading to their escalation, family factors, mental illness. Again, that kind of, you know, you might be interacting with the person or coming in right at their kind of last straw moment and just recognizing that, you know, there might have been a lot of circumstances leading up to that. And then there's some discussion as well about where police resources and non-police resources like CSLs and street outreach, kind of what the roles of each might be, or I guess in establishing or an emphasis on communication between the two. Yeah, and I'll just, I'll echo what the chief said as well that this training was kind of tailored for us and separate from what's provided to the police officers. Does anyone have any questions about that? That right now, but I'm also wondering in terms of your previous street at which work, did you typically see the same people over and over or was it, you know, regularly wider than that? It's a mix. I mean, when you're working on street outreach, you have quite a presence in downtown Burlington, so you're going to see the same folks over and over again, specifically like members of the unhoused population. A lot of that's like proactive work. When it comes to more like incident response, you do see like the same folks over and over again but with less regular and there are extreme, you know, new folks that you're interacting with as well. So it's more of a mix when it comes to the incident response side, the proactive work you tend to have the same folks over and over again. Thank you. I'll also say, after that training I just described, I also took a two day training hosted at South Burlington Police Department called verbal de-escalation and crisis communication. This was a retired lieutenant from Utah who works for an organization called Legal Liability Risk Management Institute. The instructor also I believe is currently employed in crisis services. So this was a two day de-escalation training that I took just last month. How was that training? It was good, it was helpful. Again, a lot of the core themes are the same as what was covered in my training at BPD and also in the art of de-escalation training. But again, you know, two days spent on it, you have more time to flesh things out, just more conversation around it. So there's quite a bit of interaction with the instructor. He was kind of telling, you know, personal anecdotes of things that he encountered over his career in crisis and law enforcement. You know, again, video examples. This one did get into duty to intervene. And there's a little bit more time spent discussing specific mental illnesses and also suicidality. Thank you. That's great. So just out of curiosity, does that mean the training sort of helped you identify what the mental illness might be and to have a de-escalation strategy commensurate with that? I hesitate to say that just because working in the field, that's, it's really not a spot to be trying to, you know, understand a diagnosis in that moment. Nor is that really our role. And again, we're coming in mid-story. I don't really have the information, I think, to make that call, nor is it really within my purview to diagnose someone. I think it's just more that they are providing this information more in the context of behaviors you might encounter versus maybe diagnoses. If that makes sense. If that makes sense. Thanks. I believe Milo has a question. I want to let her jump in. Thank you. I had a couple of questions. So I completely understand what you're saying that, you know, you can't arrive on a particular situation and actually diagnose someone. So that is definitely very clear. I want to know if there's, you know, do you feel that you received enough emphasis on being trauma-informed, you know, like recognizing that the ways that someone's behaving may be a result of trauma or a result of, you know, certain general behaviors that would indicate a possible source of mental illness. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? To make sure I'm understanding you, you're wondering if I feel that I've had sufficient training on trauma-informed care and being guided by, you know, an understanding of some other factors in an individual's past. Am I trashing? Well, able to look at someone's behavior and their initial responses and knowing that behavior is indicating something, be it something related to trauma or mental illness in general, that you're able to adjust your approach as quickly as possible, if necessary. Yeah. I mean, it's really difficult in the moment unless it's somehow like relevant or communicated to understand a person's history. There's been a training at Howard Center on motivational interviewing and trauma-informed care, but having, even having taken that training, you know, a lot of the times in the moment of the response, I feel that you don't always have access to that information until maybe things kind of, or at least until you've had time to build the rapport. What would you say? Oh, I'm sorry. What would you say is the most important thing that you've learned about de-escalation? I would, I mean, again, it's what's important depends on the scene that you're going to. If I had to say one thing that has been helpful is knowing or having some existing knowledge or relationship, especially relationship with the person that you're responding to, that is absolutely in my eyes like the most helpful thing as I respond to something. And then my last question is behavior that's non-verbal. We recently have been reviewing an incident where there was a physical gesture. It wasn't an actual conversation, but it was a physical gesture that when looking at this gesture, it's interpreted in different ways by different people who are viewing it. Is there any training around that, like not making those type of assumptions and engaging in a conversation? I'm just curious if that's brought up in any of the trainings. So you're asking if, like, you know, something that's purely body language or gesture, but there was no communication if there's been any training on how to react to those. Exactly. Like what would be the best practice to handle something like that? I mean, it's pretty difficult for me not having any other knowledge around this circumstance to really make a comment on it. Yeah, I kind of would hesitate to, it's, again, like so circumstantial. What would you do in general in a situation like that where there is no immediate threat to you? No person's gesturing, but it's non-threatening to me. Again, it's hard for me without knowing, like, more context. I mean, I would say, like, in my work, like as I'm going through my day, if someone's gesturing at me and, again, like, I'm really having a hard time, like, without more information or context. You know, a gesture could be interpreted so many different ways. So I guess what I'm getting at is, I'm just curious if there's some specific information, because as, so it was something that was interpreted differently by different people that were looking at it. So if there was a conversation, you know, saying, what exactly do you mean? What do you want me to do? What do you not want me to do to determine if something's appropriate? I'm trying to get a feeling of when something like that happens. Is there a training to say that I can't act on a physical gesture alone? Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm still feeling like it's so circumstantial that I'm not really comfortable talking about that. Okay, so you feel there could potentially be circumstances where you would act on just a physical gesture alone? Or do you feel the training that you've received would guide you to engage in more conversation? It totally depends on the situation. Like what is the gesture? What is the surrounding environment? You know, what maybe is like the other factors that maybe have happened leading up to that. Okay. So yeah, it's hard to say. Well, that is the specific circumstance in mind. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Chief, did you want to add anything? No, thank you. Eric, thank you so much for jumping in last minute and sharing that information with us. It was really helpful and we appreciate your time tonight. Thanks, Eric. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. All right then. Thank you, Chief, and thank you Eric for that. Moving on, we have to jump back to public, we have to jump to public forum. And with that, I can't see people who are in attendance in the auditorium. Anybody in attendance in the auditorium that wants to speak now is your time. I asked you to come up to the table for the commissioners and I'm talking to the mic. To introduce myself, my name is Anna Waggling and I'm one of Eric's colleagues. Pull the mic closer. Oh, closer, sorry. I'm Anna Waggling. I'm one of the new CSLs with Eric. I just wanted to introduce myself on here to observe the question. Thanks. Are you a social worker? MSW, I worked at USCRI, the refugee resettlement program for five years. So lots of experience. Thanks for coming. You're still here. And Chris, this is for Shannon. I'm not sure if anyone reached out to you. Looking to comment today. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm torn on weather tip. So I did have somebody reach out to me. She is in attendance on zoom as well. She asked me. To relay something to y'all. And so I don't know if that's, if this is the place to do that. Well done. Let's see, Mary. There you are. I'm comfortable in just saying something. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I've spoken here a few times during the year. And so I didn't want to occupy too much of the public forum time, but I did want to mention that. My family just recently, within the last couple of months went through another crisis period. And. There was certain things going on and I became frightened and I was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was on the street and just had a conversation. With him. And. It turned out that the Howard center had already gotten a. A court order. Allowing for his involuntary assessment. And so the police knew about this, that there was an involuntary order out for him. And so they had to come off to the emergency room. But instead they saw him out on the street, met up with them and had simply had a conversation with him. And then they came to my house afterwards and let me know what had happened. Told me that they did know about the order that that had made. You know, the judgment at that time that he seemed. You know, Contained enough within his own self to be able to allow him just to go, you know, return to his apartment. And so I was, I was really impressed that they had just taken the time to have a conversation with them. They, they. It sounded like, you know, all I had was their take on it, but I was really impressed. I was really impressed. Listening to them was that they really did treat him with. Some kindness and that they listened to him. And that they. Treated him with respect. And didn't take him voluntarily, but suggested that he may benefit by having a conversation with the crisis worker. And so allowing him to have that voluntary moment. And so that he could have a conversation with the crisis worker. And so that he could have a conversation with the crisis worker later that evening. And said that he was ready at that point to go, to go talk to a crisis worker. And so I was able to make that decision and to go voluntarily. And talk to a crisis worker. And I think that that also kept his relationship with the, with the police better. Unfortunately. The way that the system has set out the only place where there's an emergency room. Then he became. Kept there involuntarily because they have the order there too, you know, just waiting for him, but I'm. I was really impressed by the fact that the police had found a way of communicating with, with him. In a kind and respectful way that they listened to him. And so I think that that it would be beneficial to him to talk to a crisis worker, but also allowed him to make that decision. And so I just wanted to share that that. The difference between that and what it was like 10 years ago. It's so significant. And even just a few years ago, it would have been a different outcome. And so I wanted to compliment the officers. One of the officers was a female corporal. Who was very interested in mental health work. I got her card, but I couldn't find it. But, but I was just so impressed by both of those officers. They just seemed like that they were generally interested in having a good outcome. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. Was there anybody else on your side. That was it. Awesome. Thank you. And I can't seem to the gallery. I just want to thank everybody. And con toys. That's looking to speak at this point. Awesome. All right. Then with that, I closed public forum, move on to the chief support. And with that, Chief Mirad. Thank you so much. Mr. Chair for the opportunity to talk to the, the commission. So it's, we've had a lot of time since our, our last time together. We had a lot of things to talk about. I do have a presentation, although we don't have to put that up quite yet. I'll talk a little bit about some things that happened over the past two months. We, we had a swearing in ceremony on Friday, October 22nd. That included a lot of things that had been left in arrears during the past almost two years, really. The last time we've done one was when chief Morrison had still been the interim chief. We gave oaths of office to our three new CSLs, which includes Anna and Eric. And also Anthony Jackson Miller, a third. We gave oaths of office to two new community service officers or CSOs. We gave belated oaths to, to Shannon and to an ID technician, Courtney, an ECS or emergency communication specialist, and we promoted Lacey Smith from a community liaison to our community support supervisor, which was a nice, well-deserved and belated bump for her. And I'm very glad to have been able to do that. We also administered a number of sworn oaths and we call our officers sworn officers because literally when an officer takes an oath, it is under the pains and penalties of perjury. He or she is, is doing more than, than saying that I'm giving my personal credibility and giving an oath where as, as other employees do, and it's certainly important. It is actually a legal oath and it comes with certain authorities and responsibilities. We gave sworn oaths to our first probationary police officer in more, much more than a year, almost two years, who also is a former Howard Street worker and so has a number of the same kinds of experiences that Eric just described and is currently down in the police academy now. We made promotions to Sergeant and these two were very belated. Some of these went back to, to 2020. We had Sergeant Dan Delgado, Sergeant Dwayne Mellis, Sergeant Mike Henry, Sergeant Jake Seller, Sergeant Simon Bombard and Sergeant Vincent Ross all promoted to Sergeant. And then to Lieutenant, Lieutenant Mywin, Lieutenant Brian Labarge and Lieutenant Anthony Brownell all were, were given sworn oaths and promotions. On November 8th, we did an award ceremony for 2020. And so we had done in May an award ceremony for 2019, given in May of 2021 because it had been so delayed. And that was something that normally we do at the hotel with the Queen City Police Foundation. It's a big day. This was a little smaller and more intimate but no less important for that. That was on November 8th. We gave certificates of appreciation to Kyle Dodson and to Jennifer Morrison for being members of the community who contributed greatly to the agency in times of need. We gave certificates of recognition to officers Byrne and Marvin, both of whom went through that team two training that Eric mentioned and is a state level training for mental health and had both performed exemplary in two different situations that rose to Team Two's notice and Team Two included their efforts in its newsletter. We gave a team award to the St. Joseph's Orphanage Team, a number of detectives who worked to resolve or bring as close to resolution as possible that lingering wound in our community. I was really proud to be a part of that and get to be at the head when we brought our part of that to some degree of closure on behalf of those survivors. That was a very meaningful award, I felt. They worked incredibly hard on that. That is an incredibly difficult case that was obviously obscured by years and murky record keeping and the stories of traumatized children, now adults. Yet they found what would have amounted to probable cause had it not been for the statute of limitations. There was instances I think that would have risen to the level of probable cause. Obviously that's for a prosecutor or court to determine, but we were confident in that assessment. Unfortunately, well, not unfortunately. The only crime at the time that was within the statute of limitations still was murder and there was no indication that such a thing had occurred there. So that is fortunate in the sense that nothing that awful occurred but awful things happened there. We gave a team award for two shootings on a rainy night in April of last year. This was in 2020 during the very early stages of the pandemic. We had two shooting incidents on one night and attempted murder and then another which turned out to be self inflicted but initially was reported by the victim as a black man having burst into his apartment and shot him for no reason in the leg. And officers responded to both of those. Initially they were uncertain whether or not they were linked. It's not like we usually have two shootings closely temporarily proximate. These were within less than an hour and a half of each other. There was rain, there was multiple responses. There are a total of 23 employees responded to that in different ways. Five of those are gone now. We don't have the capacity to make those kinds of responses anymore to handle the two incidents like that would be a real challenge for us. But they did an incredible job that night and they very quickly saw through the report of that second victim and charged him ultimately with the false report and the reckless endangerment of the self inflicted gunshot wound. 28 employees were awarded a team award for the North Avenue homicide which involved a full-on three-way gunfight with multiple rounds expended in the middle of the night. There too, huge number of employees, five of whom are no longer with us and not all the same five either. And a response that again would be a challenge for us to muster. But they did amazing work and that was a stone cold who'd done it. The family of the victim did not know who that had been. They did not know what had happened. There were no cameras. There was no ability to have a statement from the victim who was already gone when officers arrived. And the detectives put that together through a lot of legwork and gumshoe and leather. And it was really great. We gave distinguished service awards to Lacey, to Cole Hayes, our IT person for the incredible work he did during the pandemic. We ran the city for about a two-week period out of One North Avenue. There was an emergency operations center set up in One North Avenue's community room. And the whole city ran from there. Every department had would come and meet there. And we had to, Cole had to set up the entire thing for IT, put all these extra people on our VPNs, et cetera. Really, really great work. And to the SRO team because the school resource officers, obviously we don't have school resources officers any longer, but they were an incredibly important part of our agency for a long time and did amazing work. We gave life-saving awards to Sergeant Simon Bombard and Officer Joe Congdon, both of whom saved individuals on the night of those two shootings, applied to our victim with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and he'd hit an artery. There was blood everywhere and his life was absolutely saved by Joe Congdon. And also to Gino Bakalini and Billy, our canine. They tracked an elderly man in Shelburne who left in the midst of below freezing temperatures wearing very little clothing and disappeared and ultimately was discovered down an embankment near a stream in a more than a half mile from his home. That kind of location would have been a lot of dog. And so canine Billy and Gino really helped there. The chief's award, which is our highest award, was offered to the department as a whole for the work that it did in an incredibly stressful year moving from the pandemic, from frankly the challenges of bringing in a new chief and the reasons for having to bring in a new chief in the form of interim chief Morrison to the pandemic, to the murder of George Floyd and to the stresses that defunding has brought upon the agency. And last was our coveted badge award which goes to an external party and we gave it to the Queen City Police Foundation for unwavering support during that incredible year and just really important role in letting the officers know that the community was behind them. We are working on training. As I promised, we have run through our juvenile training as discussed in a couple of issues in front of the Police Commission. We are now in the midst of doing fair and impartial training that adds to a long regime of training that we did with Trustee Loving in the beginning of the year, a total of six one and a half hour sessions with her covering a range of bias and anti-racism issues. And we are now augmenting that with our fair and impartial policy which was adopted by the City Council in spring of 2020 and is up online and that will qualify for our rule 13 fair and impartial compliance I'm hopeful. And to come we are working to identify mental health training team 2 training. We'll continue to leverage that but I am working very hard to find someone who can purvey for us or be a vendor for us for CIT training. And one potential avenue is one of our new CSLs, the one who you have not yet met, who wasn't here tonight, Anthony Jackson Miller has worked on CIT training with some other entities and that's an avenue for us to explore. We had a holiday party the other week with the Queen City Police Foundation, a really wonderful opportunity to get away and have people be able to see each other in a context other than work. We had the incredible difficult but incredibly well affected and safely affected operation at Sears Lane. That is something that we had been working on and planning for a very long time. There were those who claimed that we had done it because the night before there had been some piece on a news station nothing could be further from the truth. You cannot put together an operation of that scope without planning and coordination between the entities involved. And there was a huge amount of coordination between our CSLs, between us, between CVOEO, between DPW and most importantly the mayor's office on that issue. With that, I'll launch into the report the first slide Shannon, if you could. Chief, do you mind if we just have a couple of questions on this before we go on since it's a different topic? First of all, I would gladly accept your offer for de-escalation training. I don't know if maybe we could coordinate amongst the commission, but I think that would be really great for us. Just curious as to whether there has been training on the new use of force policy? Yes. We're mandated to familiarize ourselves with it once we adopted it, but it was essentially ours. The vast majority of the statewide use of force policy was cribbed from the one that we wrote. And so it wasn't a stretch for the officers to become familiar with it. Thank you. I'll start off with just a picture of our head count. You see that little bump that represents officer, a new officer, Mayor Dirk's at the Academy. We're flat. It'll go down again next month. Once I enter in a January 1st 2021, excuse me, 2022 number, it'll be down by at least one because we will very, very sadly be losing Deputy Chief Sullivan, who's in the audience tonight. I'll say more about his incredible contributions later and the loss that his moving on is to the agency and to the city, but it's an incredible opportunity for him to be the chief of police in Swanson and to take over and have the top spot and be able to give that community the benefit of his great experience. So it'll go down again and I fully anticipate that by February 1st of 2022 it'll be down at least three more as we lose officers to the BSP. The next police academy begins in March 2022 and hopefully we will have candidates for it and this is why. Be a Burlington cop and for those watching this or for those who will see this once we post it online, we have a $15,000 hiring incentive. This is a job that offers $63,300 for its first year salary. There are incredible benefits to this job and you can come in at a higher step as well depending on commensurate experience or previous experience. So people from other agencies especially out of state, I'm hopeful that this is an attractive opportunity for them. We're really working to make this something that helps us grow again as an agency and return to where we were as the preeminent police department in Vermont. Next please, thank you. Incidents, again, I put this in every single one just because not for you all who have seen it of course but for those who are going to look at it online as a new document that they've never seen before this grounds the next couple slides. Next please. Incident volume year to date. So as you see, we are still down this year about 10% but I think what's interesting is that since June 1st we've actually surpassed last years so that means that that decrease of 10% was all in the first half of the year while the pandemic was still upon us and before the governor listed stay home, stay safe order. We've seen it tick up fast enough then to overcome that 10% deficit and in fact go past the previous year. We are still stacking about 15% of calls owing to the priority response plan and again I point out that difference, that drastic difference from June through December of 2017 versus June through December of 2021 almost half of it 46% of that comes merely from the diminishment of traffic stops and foot patrol which are entirely discretionary and proactive on the part of the officer not entirely. There are some traffic stops that you simply cannot not make the egregious driving behavior in front of you but much of it is proactive officer behavior and that is half of that decrease. We are not seeing decreased volume because the public needs response less. Next please total incident volume just another way to look at it again it's indisputably down this year is that bottom line but there are as I said some reasons for that and you can see on the visual how far off it was up and through about May and then it just really started to level off and keep up with the previous year starting in June. Next please, thank you. This is priority one incidents and again as we've said before priority one incidents are not changed at all that diminishing drop of all overall incidents is real it is not at all the fact for priority one incidents and this year in fact this so far is the highest number of priority one incidents since 2016. Next please uses of force we are the second lowest we've been that is a good thing every single use of force as you all know is made public now the link is right there for anybody to be able to look and see and I have talked today again with the city's HR department to get that redaction specialist position it's being graded and reviewed and I'm hopeful to be able to get that posted ASAP so that we can make body camera footage as well as the narrative reports available to the public. Next please selected incidents trends so these are trends I think people can look this over sort of on their own at a later point I'm not going to belabor any of these I've broken a couple of them out in the next slides however this one is violent crime so of the violent crime categories they're looking at 2021 versus 2019 and the rationale for that is that 2020 was just uniquely anomalous we see that we have had real increases in the violent crime categories that we've been tracking since we started this report for the commission so I didn't add any or take any away I admit that for example that percentage for gunfire is disingenuous owing to the incredibly low numbers that we're talking about but I think that the number for assault is alarming I think that the number for domestics that's aggregated domestics domestic disturbances domestic assaults misdemeanors and domestic assaults felonies is also disturbing next slide please chief what are you sure if you go back to the previous thank you how do you account for the rise in gunfire so the rise in gunfire is I think driven by the same phenomena that are driving it across the country we're just very fortunate in that our drive has not our increase has not been accompanied by good aim and I don't mean that to be flippant I mean it sincerely we had a as everyone saw in the news we had a full-on three-way shootout at a gas station and no one was struck that is a miracle but that is in no way the fact that they didn't want to shoot each other other cities across the country are seeing this there's hardly a big city that hasn't seen an uptick in shootings and homicides Savannah has had some good success from 2020 to 2021 but 2019 to 2020 was terrible in Savannah just like it was elsewhere in Chicago is awful Los Angeles is having a tough time New York has seen incredible percentage increases although they were starting with very very low bases compared to their historical highs but the nation as a whole saw an unprecedented 5,000 homicide increase from 2019 to 2020 and it has seen a and that is not merely a numerical increase it's a percentage it's the biggest percentage increase in this phenomenon is happening elsewhere and and what's driving it I think there's a host of factors that are driving it I think that the pandemic is overstated as a contributor I believe that the largest single contributor is police withdrawal and I think that in some places that police withdrawal is predicated on actually diminishing police forces we've seen it in some cities and in other places it is predicated on officers not wanting to take as much enforcement and in some places it is predicated on municipalities and local laws saying you can't do foot pursuits anymore states that are saying that reasonable suspicion no longer exists as a means of actually making a street encounter we have seen changes in prosecutorial agendas and habits and all of these together combined with the pandemic as well and the desperation that came from that you know once in a hundred years global event to create this but the crime rise that America is seeing is not being seen anywhere else and that is and the pandemic was global now a component of that also is the availability of guns in this country and the fact that there are a huge number of guns in you know in play and that gun crime is much more pronounced here than in other places but nevertheless there are there are host of factors that are involved and here in our community I do think that diminished police presence played a role I think that there are also waves of this kind of behavior that sort of just happen I think there's probably I think there are dozens or hundreds of academic papers to be written in the coming years about group psychology and zeitgeist and how those things actually affect these kinds of waves but it's definitely indisputably real so what I did here to avoid for instance that huge percentage increase with gunfire although I actually dropped gunfire out of this because I didn't think it was realistic or fair is I took a five year average from 2016 through 2020 and compared it to 21 and the numbers don't change all that much aggravated assault is a little bit less pronounced you know excuse me it's actually more pronounced a simple assault is down whereas when you compare 2019 to 2021 it was up a little bit burglary this is still up but this is just a way to see it against a wider longer trend and I thought it was a somewhat an additional piece of information to present these crime trends or incident trends rather traffic disparities I've talked a lot about traffic on this and I am very happy that as we close the year out and we're really at 93% 94% of the year done there's not a heck of a lot of year left we are as low as we have been on previous slides what you'll see is that our crashes with injury and fatality have not changed all that much they certainly haven't gone up our traffic stops have and in the process we have eliminated disparity in our traffic stop and in 2021 that is the case I'm not misspeaking on that that's where we're at I was looking at the data online and actually over 5% of stops have missing race and so it makes it very hard to make that a solid claim that racial disparities have disappeared I was actually concerned about the missing data BPD had done a good job of eliminating missing race data in the past but as I said it jumped to 5% which given the racial percentages in the community can really lead to distorted perception on how we're doing in terms of racial disparities so we'll absolutely make sure to clear that up by the time of the annual report that's what the annual report with the longer analysis period is for but some of those stops that are captured by the online system are being re-evaluated because they're not stops there are a number of things that the online system grabs that aren't are they statistically significant I'm not certain about that yet here is what is recorded in Valcor as a traffic stop and there is no racial data missing from these to my knowledge I had it run by the city's analyst and that was not flagged as an issue for it and I'm confident that this is basically what we're going to see so obviously we will see what the annual report says and be able to dig in more deeply for it there but I think this is good news and I think this is something that is is worth a is worth taking a moment to say okay that is some degree of progress on something that has had bigger issues in the past next please I think it's a really good thing that we ask questions detailed questions and important ones we had good responses so thank you on both sides this is a slide about the FBI Nibers data so BPD does contribute Nibers data it has for quite some time I think Vermont overall is a state that is incredibly compliant there are only of the approximately 18,000 agencies in the country there are about just under 10,000 that contribute Nibers data Nibers is a frankly don't remember the exact acronym and what it stands for I don't know if DC Sullivan does it is a successor to the UCR which is the Uniform Crime Report it's a much wider set of data it's not easy to comply with smaller agencies it's a burden for a smaller agency to have to comply with this data we obviously have record keepers and dedicated analysts that can do that other places don't but these are the data there this is really straight from the FBI page we have included it for commissioners to look at at their leisure next please this was something that oh national incident based reporting system Chief Sullivan believes this is something from our that was asked of me by another requester and I thought it would be interesting for the commission to see our education levels for the department of our 69 current sworn officers I have three on long term military one on long term injury and one of the police academy so we are 64 effective but of the 69 sworn 61 percent have bachelor's degrees are higher 13 percent have advanced degrees 8 have master's degrees our deputy chief of administration over there has a JD so we'll have to scratch that one soon 19 officers have associate's degrees and 14 officers have no degree although the majority of those have military service in lieu of a degree and for comparison I ran a very long longitudinal study of a 2000 excuse me a 22 500 person cohort of the New York City Police Department back in 2012 and 33 percent of that agency had a bachelor's degree or higher so this is I think it puts us in a good place I think it's certainly something we want to continue to look at and work on it's not a requirement to have a bachelor's degree for the department I think that making it a requirement can be limiting especially as we try to seek a wider pool of candidates but I do think that it's important to see this next slide please demographics I think I've showed this before if I have forgive me it puts the the city versus the department the total department higher since 1996 the current department's makeup of people who are currently employed by the department in the sworn officer position and then the city's position and those rates and next can I so the black percentage is off it's earlier was around five or six percent just to let you know that the U.S. census data is out now and so for Burlington the black share is over seven percent I'm happy to ship those data to you we're just using it for something else and I'm happy to ship that to you I'm not sure about the Asian and Hispanic but I can those aren't in the census I just don't recall those numbers but I'm happy to send them to you great can you send these to us absolutely they'll be sent to you if it's at all possible we can be thinking about them to answer good questions can you really finish them right before I get over here it is posted on board they're always posted as soon as the session is over and that's it and I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak thank you very much I thought this was really helpful and really accessible for everybody I think I just had a couple of questions and they actually don't relate to the data my apologies so we had discussed the BPD having training on the role of civilian oversight boards and I wondered if you'd had the opportunity to contact Nicole to set that up no I have not done that and do you need any information from us to connect no I have connections to Nicole so are you planning on doing that I don't have time to do that and also I don't know if you wanted to the resolution I'm wondering which rather should we be talking about the hiring I'm wondering we had a resolution that talked about trying to reach out to smaller groups in the community particularly the African-American community but beyond that and I'm wondering if you have done anything with that with regard to hiring specifically not just hiring but sort of seeding the community as this is a possibility for you even if it's not today but sort of going out into the community in various ways and talking to the leadership of various communities and offering this and then you know sort of building up the capacity so that is absolutely a part of HR's routine outreach with regard to new positions they send it out they have a long list of entities including entities like that in the community to whom they send the materials and with whom they work and so some of that is done at the HR level when a job is posted some of that is done by us I have sent job descriptions in the past to different groups like that particularly when we were seeking both CSOs, when we were seeking Beach and Parkers and now that we're seeking officers again I frankly haven't had a lot of chance to do that I've been hiring officers for about a little less than a month and a half now so during my 10 years chief I wasn't there was no hiring but I have spoken with different members of the community who represent different ethnic and racial groups about hiring and about trying to seek their assistance in getting new tools of candidates and that's absolutely something that the city does under Director Durfee I just think it would be really helpful if when you can squeeze that a little bit of time to maybe invite leaders from all those different groups who are meeting with you and really kind of talk to people and show them some of the possibilities and ask them specifically to sort of talk to people they know in the community who might be good candidates it would be better coming from them in a way agreed I think that is the nature of the HR outreach is that it goes to the groups and the leaders of the groups rather than trying to reach individuals I think it would be helpful for you to have some relationship with the different leaders of those communities if you can squeeze at the time right I do have those relationships and I have met with a number of those individuals one-on-one or at different times but the idea of a group meeting has appeal any further questions to the chief no question to comment I loved all the commendations taking the time to appreciate and recognize individuals in the department that was beautiful thank you I've seen Mila with her hand raised Mila Flores here thank you I had just a couple of comments if it is a possibility in the future to have the chief's report added to board docs like at least the Friday before scheduled meetings that would be awesome give us an opportunity to take a look at it and have questions prepared if we need to to have those questions answered and so I do regarding the issues around the improvements around the data and traffic stops I do acknowledge that so I want to make that clear but at the same time I often have concerns around the how can I put it all the focus being on the traffic stops being reduced does it necessarily solve well not necessarily it doesn't solve other issues of bias that need to be addressed so I still think that we need a strategic plan we need more details about the training more details about upcoming training because I personally have been very curious about this and I've never really felt that I've gotten adequate information and I've been in some interesting situations lately where really culturally insensitive things were just stated in my presence or directed toward me in a very casual way and it makes me think wow what training is going on how effective is it and we had a speaker recently who talked about the need to change certain types of bias training because of the realization that it's not really effective so I hope that we really do at some point deep dive that and really look at it in a meaningful way that I feel has really not quite happened and then the other thing I wanted to do quickly is I wanted to acknowledge Deputy Chief Sullivan and his service to the department I know that we always agreed on things but I have always appreciated your demeanor and your ability to have conversations about things that at times can be very emotional but that you know you keep a level head and you present information in a way that's very respectful and I've always appreciated that thank you and good luck awesome thank you for that any further questions or comments for the Chief no oh I'm sorry I apologize quite a right Milo is your hand still reaching before you have another question sorry nope I'm done I'll lower it my apologies just double checking alright then I will close that agenda item and we shall jump to agenda item 5.02 which is a CNA report discussion I'll kick this one off this was going to be I think this was going to be a lengthier discussion but I feel like the drug community we had last week Tuesday kind of put some more clarity on how this is going to plan out moving forward and I guess in attendance was meeting right now was at that meeting so I won't go over verbatim what Councillor Paul told us but basically some of the people in the audience listening in there is going to be a review committee to go over the recommendations that were listed in the CNA report and the goal is to look over sections one through four over the first four Tuesdays in January January 4th 11th 18th and 25th times the meeting will be from 515 to 730 and the make up of this committee will be the public safety committee, two commissioners commissioner from the marketplace commission I believe maybe a higher commissioner and one member of the community I believe another member from a not named group as of yet I remember correctly from that meeting I believe Milo volunteered I don't know if that still stands and I was looking to hopefully see if we can get another volunteer that could join that committee we will be a time consuming committee in addition to those two hours per week for the meeting it will require about an hour to two of homework for lack of a better word just so you are fully prepared and you can jump right in with whichever section is being dealt with for that meeting so yeah I guess are there any questions regarding this committee that I would like to ask me about at this point in time I can't see hands so just get close to the microphone start talking so the committee is going to go through piece by piece the entire report the I'll pull up the actual language the meetings for January will be will be dealing with sections one through four and then I believe section five through nine section one through four will be that was in January and then section five through nine for the deadline for completing the review that's in early spring I believe the important part to get there one through four and then five through nine I believe is not quite as in depth section one through four so I believe that will be worked on in the months following that for the deadline in early spring does that answer that question I'm sorry yes thank you all right Mila I see your hand raised close yours yes I just wanted to offer a few details so the general goal is in reviewing these sections and prioritizing them and coming up with action plans so looking at these sections looking at you know what the recommendations are and then coming up with a plan to enact these recommendations and part of that is determining who would be responsible for enacting particular recommendations establishing timelines and things like that thank you for that I'm not always the most particular so I appreciate that clarification I'm still confused right now about what I'm confused about is this going to be done hand in hand with the police department at BPD or is this a different thing I'm confused sure so if I may I'm sorry chairman I didn't mean to I'm looking over the e-mail so I'm looking over it so essentially the last meeting was the last meeting of the joint committee which was previously the police commission and the public safety committee the city council's public safety committee so there's going to be a new committee which will have representation from the police department representation from our commission representation from the business community and some other areas and I'm not sure if all those details were included in the e-mail but they were looking for two volunteers from the commission and as the chairman said I volunteered for one of the positions Mr. Chair sorry I couldn't see you yes come right in so the department's been working on this for quite some time basically since the report came out and we have a matrix that actually breaks down all of the recommendations into who would do them the recommendation about whether or not there is concurrence or partial concurrence or disagreement or non-applicability with the given recommendation whether the recommendations already been accomplished and then a sense of prioritization of the recommendations that are agreed to including whether they could be done as a quick win whether they are priority one or two or three for implementation and the ways in which each of them interacts with the others so I guess we look forward in I don't need any volunteers this very second if someone would like to I guess if people want to mull this over this is a commitment get back to me by let's say end of Thursday end of business day on Thursday whether I don't want to sign up for this I'm going to share this information with Kevin and you all as well since they're not here so I'll give them some time to think this over as well so I guess for that being said no one can get back to you in a second unless you really want to jump on this and do this don't get back to you right now I'm going to talk to Kevin and you all as well and then if people can get back to me by the end of the business day on Thursday so I can then let Councillor Paul know who will be presenting us Chair, good morning. Yes, John. Please do. I think it's good to know that we're working on this and that this should be communicated to Zariah Hightower who is basically chairing this committee as I understand it because I think we don't want to duplicate efforts so I think one of us maybe you, Jabu could communicate with Karen and Zariah that the police department is working on this as well and find some way to share that information. I'll do that. Thank you. I would add a friendly amendment which is that they're well down the garden path with us already. Thank you. I think it also would be helpful for the Chief perhaps at the next meeting to share with us what you've come up with. The parts that are extant are with the mayor so I'll have to speak with him about that and where we are on that and what he's willing to with his approval. Any further questions or comments with regards to the CNA report moving forward? I think it's going to be important for the new committee appreciate what the Chief is relaying I think this really needs to be as transparent as possible with the community especially given certain parts of the report that are most concerning to the community. I think the new committee will help to do that as well and to make sure that the priorities of the community's view of public safety are kind of are in line. They are ignoring a specific community concerns even if it's inadvertent so having a sense of the work that's already been done will be important but we want to make sure that something's not being pushed to the side. Thank you. Any further questions or comments with regards to this agenda item? Not seeing any pixelated hands or clothes that agenda item and move on to the support reports. I hope people had time to review the support reports for October and November and I believe now is the time to ask any questions regarding or any allowable questions at this point in time or in your request to see certain videos that are not hearing anything so moving on to agenda item 7 which is commendations with that I'll floor over to Shannon. It's going to just I have to bounce between screens so you'll have to give me a minute while I kind of switch between back and forth. Lacey had sent Lacey and Smith had sent commendation from someone that she took a message from stating that she was impressed and grateful for the assistance that the police department provided to a group of them and she spoke specifically to Sergeant Ross and Sergeant Melis and saying that they went above and beyond and provided some cruisers to keep a few of them warm and she expressed her gratitude on that. I had received an email directly from someone on Officer Yeh's performance on a scene with his professional demeanor and his empathy with this gentleman's frustration and anger from being involved in a hit and run incident and Officer Yeh would kept communication open over the next several weeks and kept in touch with this gentleman and he persisted and went above and beyond and he was thankful for that. Also have accommodation for two officers on their exemplary conduct on an evening it seems a man was attempting to get out of the state back to Ohio and he had no GPS and nothing so the officers got the address and printed out directions and gave him the directions and they were able to make contact with this gentleman's daughter who they all then came up a plan with to locate the male and get him a hotel for the evening and the daughter flew out to meet her father and so they were expressing their thanks for that going above and beyond as well and I'm just taking a final scan here since it's been two. So that was an elderly gentleman who had made it all the way here from Ohio he attempted to cross the border a couple different times into Canada was rejected but could not be held by them when he encountered officers here they at first thought that he was just trying to seek assistance with his GPS and sort of said yeah well you do it this way and then there were some real misbehavior and they said there's something different and wrong here and they were able to quickly ascertain that it was more than just I need some help trying to get on the road again to ground him and the vehicle to get him a hotel room to work with his daughter who I believe is North Dakota is that right Shannon? I think she was in the Dakotas we had to fly here you know just at the last minute and arrive that was I think really great work by those officers to see what was in front of them to think outside the box and then to take the necessary steps to to prevent someone who knows where he would or would not have gone had he just moved on and they wouldn't have been wrong to say well a person asked me for assistance I gave him the assistance here's how you program your GPS be on your way thanks have a great night sir and off he went and they did more than that it was good good work and that's all awesome thank you for that next is commissioner updates and comments and I will start this one off first and foremost I want to say thank you and good luck to I just found out now that you're leaving and I'm surely going to miss you and working with you on this commission and it was very much our losses swans gain so good luck you got speed and you'll be missed thank you and my next thing I wanted to bring up I didn't put this on all this came up earlier on today so that's why I was on the agenda but I do moving forward want to kind of more formalize us looking at and updating them as need be I think it would be a good idea for us to form a subcommittee that looks into doing this and just so we can kind of stay on track and get some of these things done um I was talking to Stephanie about this a little bit earlier on today and I think she could probably articulate much better than I can Stephanie want to jump in and kind of finish off what I started okay and I'll ask Sharon to jump in as well so some of this is based on a consultation with Nicole about what's a good process to use in revising policies and and so the suggestion was to create a subcommittee that included members of the police commission not the entire police commission but had interest or expertise member of the police department and agencies or entities that had the appropriate skills one of the issues that has come up a lot is around the mental health directives so that seemed to be a good place to start and so we might invite whether it's the Howard Center or whoever is going to the commissioners on this can identify who those people are Nicole did sort of and again I invite Sharon to fill in if I missed anything that these should be public meetings and that they should be the public should be invited to give input so that the policy revision really reflects stakeholder input so that we have a final product that really represents the sort of expertise and experience of a wide variety of the community Sharon did I think that's that is right my impression was that the public input would come after there is a draft policy and a forum right correct that this the working group would be smaller but that the public would absolutely be invited to the table when there's a draft present really helpful meeting with Nicole on this it was extremely helpful to outline for us how one would go about starting on these policies and hopefully we recorded this for the rest of the commissioners so hopefully the commissioners that weren't able to attend can look at it at least the first half of it shouldn't take you long about a half hour but Kami is really informative and she shared a lot about other civilian oversight board approaches to these issues so that's been very helpful thank you for that thank you so I guess moving forward then also a conversation I'd like to have with Kevin and you all who aren't here I don't know about that with forming this I guess then I guess how would be the best way for us to go about doing this then kind of I'm thinking just we all know that it's here I'll talk to Kevin and Kevin and you all bring up speed with this and then hopefully take some volunteers and if not I will be more than happy to assign it to people but hopefully you can get some volunteers for this I guess timeline for assembling this I think we could I don't see any issues I have to figure out how to make this committee buy our next meeting and then jump into it from there I'm happy to hear people stop on that I can hear from the chief as well since the chief would be we would be wanting department input on this committee so very true my apologies so we would want if you want to think about who that would whether it's you or whether you would be assigning someone we'd need to coordinate with them what meeting would look like sure of course and I think ultimately it would probably be probably rotate it would be different supervisors with different expertise or areas of knowledge depending on the directive at hand yeah so it seems like probably a January the committee the base committee could be formed by January and then like the first meeting could be mapping out what policies I don't think it's realistic to take on too much you know I think it would have to be policy by policy in my opinion unless there are two policies that you know might have juveniles in common or something where expertise would help just to I thought that what we were going to do would be start with mental health right okay started with two right you're working right but I stopped working until after the meeting but one thing I did just so you know I've been because I'm in the social work department I have a lot of connections in the disability community and also underneath that is you know people with diminished capacities so I've been talking to people in the community about it nowhere near even close to being done but I solicited people from the commission that's where we are with that but we can start with mental health this one is kind of on hold for a little bit I personally think it would be important for us to set a timeline and I would say that by the end of February we should have completed a draft policy for the commission to consider there are overlaps between what the CNA report recommends and its recommendations and a number of things like that and also the addition of the non-police personnel that you fired that also shapes things in a slightly different way that's yes that is correct it certainly adds to different things that you add into a directive but the directives don't apply to the non sworn employees in the same way rules do rules apply to all employees the directives don't necessarily they're certainly there as guides but they're primarily for the sworn officer so the way in which you would make mention for example of the CSL as a new position would be to include how their role interacts with that of the officer in the directive and the directive wouldn't give the CSL's instruction or procedural guideline it would give the officer procedural guideline for how in perfect scenarios the interaction with the CSL works as you're talking in my head I'm seeing a flowchart that would help inform us in a sort of a succinct way sure so Chair Kamash I think perhaps what we could do is see if commissioners Hart and Cumberford would be willing to take the lead on this and aim for finishing by the end of February things don't always work out that way but I think having a goal in mind really helps kind of keep us on task I just spoke to Commissioner Hart I think she will agree and Commissioner Cumberford to lead that effort on the mental health directives is commissioners Seglino going to be on the team too? I think you know having two leaders is enough but I certainly will be joining the meetings and having what I can to support you all having leaders on the commission the committee would be great that sounds great to me um if Hart and Cumberford are on board with that then I'm completely okay with that alright then alright then thank you for that um still commission comments and updates for any commissioners have any other comments or updates they want to give now is the time is the day that I started as a commissioner is a succession plan and a real clarity in terms of where we're going as a commission given all the changes that are going to be happening and already happening I think this is a really critical transition period to for the commission to be more independent and I think it's going to need you know beyond many in June to get us solidified so I just want to put that on the radar because I think it's very important I'm also cognizant of the fact that it's important for us to bring in some of the new people to some of the things we're doing so that they can also carry them on you know beyond those of you who've been around for a while and have done an exceptional job she said politely thank you I'm hoping to keep you all forever but any other commissioner comments or updates sorry was that a none or a sum none okay sorry alright then that moves on to next meeting agenda items and I guess to riff on what Susie was just talking about a succession plan I think it's actually a great thing to come up with I did start on a communications protocol and I think that ties in with the succession plan and I will be ready to talk about that at our next meeting so I have that for an agenda item I guess more important before we even write the agenda our next meeting date was supposed to be on the 25th that is going to coincide with one of the CNA committee meetings so I guess we'll look good because all the Tuesdays are off the book right now so I'm not sure Mondays or Wednesdays are better for people for next month is the 24th and 26th would that be is that okay on people's calendars I made that on Wednesdays I'm sorry I cannot do Wednesdays I have class cannot do Wednesdays they're off the book Monday the 24th works for me fine I can go on either day January is pretty good 24th is okay with me and we know there's do you have the city council schedule in front of you I do not I'm assuming they probably wait when is can I just jump in yes please when we talked about this at the joint committee meeting there was a discussion that they would start that meeting earlier and we would start just a little bit later so one possibility is that we keep it for the 25th of January but start at 6 30 I believe that's what they said is they'd work from 5 15 to 6 30 no no I got they were saying that they want me to be from 5 15 to 7 30 so that's the reason why I was questioning that because email got what was after the joint committee meeting so I'm not sure at all I can reach back out to them and get clarity on that but it seems like even if they start early like earlier than that I'm happy to start at 6 30 don't get me wrong it just seems like it might be kind of tight and this kind of visualizing how those needs are probably going to go I don't see how they could shorten the meeting as opposed to yeah might be tough on the short I heard 6 30 I could have misheard but one possibility is that we start our meeting from 7 to 9 and because we're not going to have executive session on the same night as the regular meetings going forward 7 to 9 might work if they're 5 15 to 7 works for them because I think we're going to run into the city council on Monday night and losing a commissioner on Wednesday night I hear that I guess I guess we won't to the hard date right now for that meeting I will reach back out to public safety and try to pinpoint a date for all of us to meet then in the next couple of days does that work for everybody yes thank you thank you and then I guess back to agenda items so I have a succession communication protocol that I will have finished for next meeting anything else that's jumping out of people right now you would for us one component will be an educational component I think we still need to decide on who that will be and if folks have some questions they could send it to me or Susie but that would be there will be an educational component in January as well looking for the work plan I'm looking but I have it at ACLU as a possible option or is there anything that ties in with the policy we will be working on I'm sure they have something to say but I can't like pin it down we didn't go as far as January so so maybe if several of us talk through email we can sort of present something at the next meeting that takes us through till June in a preliminary how does that sound sounds great to me work plan through June do is line it up with some of the things we are working on for instance the mental health piece and while I'm on the mental health piece what happened to the mental health resolution does anybody know I'm sorry my understanding is that the mayor's office has someone who is working on putting that together but I haven't heard any more details about when that would be Chairman Gommas I'm wondering if you could connect with the mayor and ask what's happening with the mental health resolution and when they plan to bring people together so we can get an update on that taking note of that I'm making note of that right now thank you I want an update from the committee the CNA committee from our from Milo or whoever is attending that by then they'll have met three times it would be great to have an agenda item with an update that sounds good thank you noting that down as well policy and the first one mental health so see what we've got by the end of January since we're supposed to get this done quickly that can be as quick as I think we hope that we'll try succession of planning communication protocol educational component plan through June CNA committee update and policy update that's a pretty healthy agenda so we can cap it out that right now all right then find a note so I can't find my note that I used to enter executive session so Haley can you help me with that sorry to entertain a motion to enter into executive session pursuant to reaction against the public officer or employee awesome thank you with that I make a motion to enter executive session pursuant to one BSA A4 to discuss disciplinary action over city employee do we have a second second by Susie discussion I think you want one BSA 317A4 it's actually one BSA 313 I'm sorry one BSA 313A4 quite all right no discussion all right raise your hand to say hi hi that passes unanimously it's 809 say let's for people that are in house let's reconvene at 820 so we're going to use the bathroom all that jazz and sorry Shannon we have you have a laptop there to is that what we're doing someone has a laptop with them or I think it's probably going to have to be on cell phone I've always been able to get city internet downstairs but as long as Chanel definitely got it working so unfortunately she's not around but I definitely saw her getting it working on Tuesday so I wasn't quarantining I'd be down there to help y'all with that my apologies I'll be back in action on Monday yeah alright then well it's alright so yeah it's 810 so yeah let's reconvene in 10 minutes for the next session everybody that's in the public thank you for joining us we don't have a time certain for our next meeting but we will post it out once we have that settled upon and everybody thank you so much we'll catch you next time