 Thank you. This is, we've just come back from a break. It is still February 10th, Thursday, and this is still Senate government operations. And I'm going to welcome everybody here. We're going to run through, do a walkthrough of S250. And I am going to say that we are not going to, we are not going to, there is a section in here that, it's section two that deals with the private right of action, which is the same as the qualified immunity. We're not going to walk through that at all. So Ben, you're probably just, I don't know if that frees you up or not, but since the judiciary is doing that bill, we won't be, we won't even walk through it in here. Okay. That sounds great. We'd love to have you stay, but I don't know if you had input into any of the rest of the bill, but thank you for coming. But I think that it doesn't make sense for us to walk through it when it's been, had hours and hours and hours of testimony in judiciary. So, okay. Thank you. But we will walk through the rest of the bill. And so thank you. So, who was our drafter? It was Ben. Oh, Ben, did you draft the whole thing? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. So I'm sorry. So I just almost dismissed you and I shouldn't have. Thank you. Okay. So Ben, if you would like to walk us through the rest of the bill without that section. Sure. Thank you. Sorry about that. No worries. My name is Ben Novograsky. I'm from the office of legislative council. And I did have a question for you, Chair White. As far as the walkthrough, I can give sort of a broad overview of each section or I can also go line by line. I know that there are a lot of witnesses on the slate. So it was just being mindful of everyone's time. I wanted to ask what you would prefer. I think maybe a broad overview makes sense. Hopefully we have had the opportunity to read it and we will, and this isn't the only day we will be doing this, but I wanted for us to get a broad understanding of what it is and have some testimony on kind of the broad understanding. So I think that that makes sense. Does that make sense committee to do it that way? It's 20 pages. If we do line by line, we'll be here until a long time. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Ben. Okay. And with that, Ben, do you know everybody on this committee? No, this is my first time appearing. So we're going to introduce ourselves. I think everybody else knows us, but I'm Tannette White from Wyndham County. I'm Anthony Polina from Washington County. Ryan Collin more representing the Rutland County District. Allison Clarkson representing the Windsor County District. Aisha Romhensdale, Chinden County and Ben, you helped me write this bill, but I've never seen you before. I really appreciate all your hard work and inheriting pieces of it from Ben and all those things. So thank you. And when did you start, Ben? Ben, when did you start? Just this... I started in November. So I had to hit the ground running with a lot of things to get it all in place before bill deadlines. But that's how you learn best, right? So it's been good. Right. Ben has quite an impressive background. Yeah. Prior to my time here, I worked as a prosecutor for OPR for almost two years. And before that, I worked in civil as a litigator in private practice for just over five years, focusing on some complex litigation, but really ran the gamut between, you know, low level criminal cases to complicated securities and commercial litigation as well. I was here in Vermont. Yeah. I worked at a small but mighty firm in Stell. Small but mighty. Thank you. Okay, so if you would take us away. Sure. And since I'm doing a broad overview, I'll refrain from sharing my screen for now. Yeah, that's great. We all have it, I think, in front of us or on a device. Great. So this is S250, which is entitled an act relating to enhanced administrative and judicial accountability of law enforcement officers. The purpose of this bill, it proposes to provide greater accountability for law enforcement officers, including the creation of a private right of action against law enforcement officers that prohibits common law and statutory munitions of defense, which we will not go into today. This bill also provides specific parameters concerning independent investigations of police misconduct, anti-bias training for law enforcement officers, and the creation of a law enforcement officer database with related disclosures during criminal prosecutions. The bill also provides the office of the attorney general with authority to investigate complaints of a pattern or practice of discriminatory conduct by law enforcement agency and initiate civil enforcement proceedings if necessary. So starting with section one of the bill, section one of the bill would add a section 169 to title three of the Vermont statutes annotated. This would empower the office of the attorney general to conduct pattern or practice investigations of discriminatory conduct by law enforcement agencies. As part of the investigation, the attorney general is authorized to issue subpoenas to relevant witnesses or for the production of documents. After an investigation is complete, the attorney general must issue a public report detailing its findings. However, the content of the investigation, including witness identities and evidence gathered is confidential subject to certain enumerated exceptions. And any state or local employee that discloses a pattern or practice of discriminatory conduct is protected from retaliation. Ultimately, the AG is authorized to file civil enforcement action against the law enforcement agency if an agreement to cure or eliminate the pattern or practice of discriminatory conduct cannot be reached or needs to be enforced. Moving on to, well, skipping section two and moving on to section three. Section three would amend section 2358 of title 20 which concerns law enforcement minimum training standards. The bill would increase the amount of anti-bias and partial policing training from four hours to 10 hours. And that would go into effect before the end of this year. And then also law enforcement officers would be required to receive a 10 hour refresher course in each training and such training every odd number year. Under the current law, there is no hour requirement for the refresher course. And I just interject to say the first section is something that AG's office did request and this section is something ATON requested. So I just want to make that clear as you if you want to build a witness list or get more curious about any of these things. Thank you. Moving on to section four. Section four concerns data collection of law enforcement encounters resulting in death or serious bodily injury. This would amend subsection 2366 subsection E of title 20 which currently concerns race data collection. The amendment would expand data collection from only roadside stop data to include law enforcement encounters resulting in an officer involved death or serious bodily injury. An officer involved death or serious bodily injuries defined as the serious bodily injury or death of an individual resulting directly from an action of a law enforcement officer while the law enforcement officer is on duty or while the law enforcement officer is off duty or performing activities that are within the scope of their duties. Serious bodily injuries has the same meaning as in section 1021 of title 13. The substantive changes to the law though concern the data required to be collected for law enforcement encounters involving death officer involved death or serious bodily injury. These, the data required to be collected would include the age, gender and race of the decedent or injured person, the grounds for the encounter, the grounds for the search and the type of search conducted and any evidence located whether physical force was worn or threatened, the type of force used and whether a written warning, civil violation citation or misdemeanor or felony citation which it was issued or if no action was taken at all. May I ask a question, Ben? Yes, Senator White. So currently this information is not collected on all stops and this would just be those stops for resulting in officer involved death or serious bodily injury. So I guess my question is this is after the fact. After the fact, so how do you collect the data? Because you don't know that when the stop is made if you didn't collect the data then and then there turns out to be, I mean, I guess I'm a little confused about the logistics, not the concept itself but just the logistics of how that would work. Sure. Well, I may not be the best person to speak to logistics but so I'm a little hesitant to get into the details on that. Okay, well, I'll wait then and maybe Jennifer or Chris Brick-Kyle or somebody can answer that question. Thank you. Sure. And then finally, this section of the bill would take effect on September 1st of this year and moving on to section five, which concerns independent investigations of law enforcement use of force. This would create a new section 2370 in title 20 and concerns investigations in law enforcement use of force resulting in serious bodily injury or death. The section requires that the Vermont Criminal Justice Council launch an independent investigation whenever a police officer uses physical force in the line of duty resulting in death or serious bodily injury. The council is required to form a three person panel with certain requirements aimed at ensuring independence. Specifically, the panel must have at least one member who's not a current or former law enforcement officer and no panel member may be a current or former employee of the law enforcement agency under investigation. Additionally, the law enforcement agency subject to the investigation must pay for its costs and at the conclusion of the investigation, the panel must provide a report to the council. The report must be made public if the panel determines that there is no basis for prosecution and this section goes into effect in on October 1st of this year. Moving on to section six, this is the creation of a law enforcement officer information database, which is more colloquially known as a Gileo database. This would add a section 2371 to title 20. The database would catalog potential impeachment information concerning law enforcement agency witnesses or afiance. It is designed to enable a prosecutor to disclose such information consistently, appropriately and pursuant to legal obligations. The Vermont Criminal Justice Council would be responsible for maintaining the database. The information stored in it would include any finding of misconduct relating to the truthfulness or to possible bias of a police officer, any past or pending criminal charge brought against a police officer, any allegation of misconduct bearing on truthfulness, bias or integrity of a police officer that is subject of a pending investigation, any prior findings by a judge that a police officer testified untruthfully, made a knowingly false statement in writing, engaged in a lawful search or in seizure or illegally obtained a confession. It would also include a finding or pending allegation that either casts substantial doubt upon the accuracy of any witness that a prosecutor intends to rely on to prove an element of any crime that's been charged or that might have a significant bearing on the admissibility of prosecution evidence. The database would also include information that may be used to suggest a police officer is biased for or against a defendant or information that a law enforcement officer's ability to perceive and recall the truth may be impaired. The law enforcement agency must report any information required to be catalogued in the database within 10 days of discovery. Each state's attorney and the attorney general must have access to the database for the purposes of complying with their disclosure requirements during prosecution of crimes. Otherwise, the database is confidential and shall not be accessible by any other entity, including the Vermont Criminal Justice Council unless access is in furtherance of the council's duties. The entities with access are permitted to produce information pursuant to a public records request and any exceptions that may apply. And then this section would go into effect on January 1st of 2023. Section seven of the bill concerns law enforcement agency internal investigation requirements. So this would amend section 2401 of title 20, which is the definition section. And it relates to the agency's investigation of a law enforcement officer's violation of an agency rule or policy or state or federal law. The bill requires that a three member investigative team conduct an investigation rather than the current requirement of a single investigator. The three member team must include at least one non-law enforcement civilian, not more than one member who is not a current or former law enforcement officer and not more than one member employed or previously employed by the agency employing the officer subject to the investigation. The section of the bill also expands a definition of what invalidates an investigation of a police officer to include a violation of the three member investigative team requirements. Moving on to section eight, this bill adds a section 6608 to title 13, which is essentially a codification of Brady disclosure requirements. Those requirements require a prosecutor to make a timely and appropriate disclosure of exculpatory and impeachment information to a defendant in a criminal prosecution. Exculpatory just means that it tends to negate guilt. Prosecutors are already subject to these obligations. They typically happen fairly soon after a charge is filed. However, this would codify those obligations and give some uniformity to what is expected. And specifically, a prosecutor will be required to disclose information known to the prosecution team, which would include all prosecutors and all law enforcement officers that participated in the underlying investigation of the offense that tends to negate the guilt of the defendant of the underlying charge. It may reduce a defendant's sentence or any material information that casts substantial doubt on the accuracy of evidence that the prosecutor will rely upon in the case. The disclosures must be made as soon as is practicable after a not guilty plea is entered in a criminal case and the obligation applies to additional information that is discovered prior to or during trial. This section of the bill would take place or would go into effect on October 1st of this year. And finally moving on to section nine, this is a prohibition on involuntary confessions based on false information provided by a law enforcement officer. This would create a new section 6609 in title 13 and specifically this new law would prohibit any written or oral statement or admission made by a defendant from being received in evidence if it was made involuntarily. A statement would be considered involuntary if a law enforcement officer knowingly provides false facts about evidence to the defendant and such false facts either undermine the defendant's reliability or create a substantial risk of false incrimination. And unless I made mention of it specifically in each section all of these provisions go into effect of July of this year. And so I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, yes. Well, I just, I thought in this bill, but I could be wrong because it had a lot of moving pieces. There was also the, you couldn't coerce a confession based on false information. Well, that would be covered by this last question time. Oh, sorry, I missed it, okay. That it would not be received into evidence if it was considered involuntary. Okay, sorry, the words didn't. It's okay, there are a lot to go through. Yeah, so I just have a couple of technical questions and then I do have some questions about how it fits in with some of the sections fit in with what's currently happening under the professional regulation committee at the criminal justice council and some things like that. But so in section one it only pertains to municipal and sheriffs. So that it doesn't give the attorney general any ability to investigate any pattern of discrimination or bad act practice of discrimination by the Vermont State Police or Fish and Wildlife or DMV or any of those, it's just. Yeah. Yes, that's correct. Okay, sorry, that was a concern of mine too. The attorney general wanted this power that exists in other states, but obviously like fish and wildlife wardens and Vermont State Police and others are the attorney general's clients. So it couldn't necessarily apply to them, it wouldn't make sense. So this is where we located this, which currently if someone calls the AG's office and says they have a concern about a local law enforcement agency, there is nothing that could be done after that. But, Okay, if they call the AG's office, but if they called the, anyway, okay, Senator Clarkson. So who does, then who, who does? That's not a technical question for Ben, I don't think. Okay, sorry, sorry. That's curiosity. I think we're going to get into some of the policy issues and how that currently works and what this does. But in the, so that was my question, but then in the rest of the bill, when it says law enforcement agency, is the standard definition of law enforcement agency, is that right? Well, it would, each section would have its own definition. Yeah. You know, and then so that's a lot of times it refers back to the definition under 2351A. So for instance, and not to bring up section two, but that's what it refers to in section two is 2351A is definition. So it does vary throughout the bill. Yeah, okay. I just needed to clear that up in my own head here. Are there other questions of a technical or drafting nature for Ben? Okay. So I think what we'll do then is jump. I am loath to try to look at my agenda to see who's next on the list because when I did that before I got completely kicked out of the meeting. So I'm not going to do that. I'm going to ask, I guess I would, I'll start with the commissioner. And then I think go to Mr. Surrell, is that, or did you, do you have a preference of how we would do this? Me? No, the people who are testifying. Okay, commissioner, I guess I'm going to start with you. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Mike Shirley, commissioner of public safety, thanks for having us in on these important topics. I think because it's walkthrough day rather than getting in the nuances of the bill, I'll just speak for a couple of minutes sort of from a satellite view and then turn it over to other witnesses. There are a number of things in here that are areas that certainly warrant further exploration as we continue our statewide efforts to modernize and improve operations in the law enforcement sphere. There are a few that are a little duplicative of some of the existing systems. So trying to figure out how they weave into some of the work that you've already done and some systems that are still in an evolution will be important. A couple of sort of global observations. One, while there's a couple of really good nuggets in here, I think it's important to note that the policing in Vermont is in a period of extraordinary evolution in terms of pace. We've always been evolving but the pace of that evolution has accelerated, of course, in the last couple of years and there's a number of things that are still very much top of mind in terms of things that are evolving today and a lot of it based on work that you've done in the last couple of years. So I worry about adding a lot of additional complexity without letting some of the things that are in play today settle a little bit because the more complexity we add, the more chance there is that we will not do a satisfactory job of ensuring that the modernization efforts that are in play are executed well. I think so far it's been, things have been executed extremely well but we just have to be mindful of that. The second thing is that, while there's some good things here, I do wanna caution the committee and the General Assembly as a whole that the approaches taken well, they have been constructive, have all largely been at the back end of the system to try to hold officers accountable for this perception that there's widespread misconduct and problems occurring in Vermont law enforcement and there's been not a lot of focus on really supporting the critical work of our law enforcement and public safety professionals investing in hiring and training and good supervision, good supervisory training, investing in communities to help them select the best executives to lead their law enforcement organizations, et cetera. So it's a bit of a plea to restore some balance to the conversation to ensure that they feel valued that we're investing in them for the best outcomes and we're not exclusively looking at the back end of the system and trying to figure out how to hold people accountable when misconduct occurs or mistakes happen. So I just provide that as an important piece of context because as we get into the weeds on some of these bills they're almost exclusively addressing the back end and if you use a healthcare analogy which we like to use in public safety, prevention is the best tool we've got, education is the second best tool and by the time you're at the stage where we're trying to fix problems you're spending a lot of money, it's really complicated and the bad outcomes have already occurred. So I would urge us to take a view that balances the front end of the process of good outcomes equally, if not more so than where we've been focused over the last 18 months or so. So I'll pause there. I'm happy to do a little bit of a walkthrough of the sections but I think that also can wait in favor of allowing the other witnesses to weigh in. Thank you. I think I just changed my mind about where we're gonna go next. Sorry, Bill, I saw you just unmuted yourself but I think because a lot of this is applicable to everybody who's here but the first section seems to be applicable to the Attorney General's office in particular and I see that Julio is here. So I think I might jump to Julio to comment on section one. I'm happy to defer to Julio, Senator in order. Thank you. Hi, yes, let me make sure I'm connected fully here. We can hear you, we can't see you yet. I'm working on it, thank you. There you are. Hi, yeah, I'm Julio Thompson. I'm an Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Attorney General Civil Rights Unit. Section one, I could talk a little bit about section one of Act 250 as it's drafted here and also talk a little bit about pattern and practice. Investigations generally, which this basically confers the power that the U.S. Department of Justice has had since 1996 and invested in the Attorney General or a designee of the Attorney General. So as drafted here, there is a provision for the Attorney General's office not to do the investigation, but to designate someone else. And I wasn't involved in the drafting, but I would presumably that would be where there might be a situation of conflict. My background, I have a little bit of a background in pattern and practice investigations. I've participated in several. One, I started in the 1990s for Los Angeles County. There was a six month independent commission pattern and practice investigation of the LA County Sheriff's Department, which led to an agreement between the county and the sheriff and the creation of the country's first police monitor that would report on the progress of reforms. That was about five years before the federal law was enacted. I've also served as an expert for that are U.S. Department of Justice on pattern and practice investigations of the Metropolitan Police in Washington, D.C. The Chicago Police Department, the Baltimore Police Department and the Louisville, I'm sorry, the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department. I'm currently working with U.S. DOJ on the Minneapolis Louisville and Phoenix Police Department pattern and practice investigations, which are just underway. A couple of things about how these actually work. They are cases where the U.S. Department of Justice or the investigating agency receives information from various sources. It could be media, it could be local law enforcement, it could be members of the community and organizations as members at large or local prosecutors about actual or perceived or suspected systemic violations of legal rights, usually constitutional rights, but also some statutory rights and privacy rights and so forth by a police department. They are significant FF investments in time. They take a long time. Some of the U.S. DOJ investigations lasted 18 months. They involve a lot of collection of records, interviews of witnesses, town meetings, forensic review of records, medical records, body-worn camera, typically the hiring of multiple subject matter experts on issues relating to de-escalation, communications, tactics, search and seizure, preservation of evidence, responding to sexual assault complaints reported by the public and so forth. So I think that the Attorney General's office in Vermont would not be the first office to have this authority. There are several states that have enacted statutes, California, Nevada are the ones that come to mind for me right now. I think this bill has some features of the Nevada system. Their Vermont's bill here is a little bit different than those other ones. And the other ones, the authority for the Attorney General is to investigate any government body. It isn't limited to law enforcement. And I don't believe any of the statutes exclude state law enforcement. So this one is a little bit narrower in that respect. Some of the statutes do not have subpoena power. This one does, which I think would be appropriate. We would expect cooperation by any agency that was facing an investigation or even just a preliminary inquiry. But for the purposes of some records that are held by police departments under state or federal law, you might need a subpoena in order to authorize release from the department or maybe state's attorney's offices if they have those materials in hand. And there may be medical records and telecommunications records and so forth that would have to be subpoenaed. So subpoena power can be useful. This bill like the other state pattern practice bills contemplates the entry of a settlement that typically referred to as consent degrees although sometimes they're just MOUs filed with the court without the filing of a civil complaint. And also a public report regarding its findings one way or the other, that's pretty typical. The committee members if they haven't had an opportunity to look at that, I'm sure alleged counsel or I could provide you links to any number of reports there over two dozen that have been done relating to police departments throughout the country since the federal law was enacted. Some of those are longer than others. Some of those make a finding that there's no pattern in practice but issue something called a technical assistance letter where during the course of the investigation they might identify shortcomings in equipment resources or training that the departments may place the departments operations at risk. And sometimes DOJ works with the agency collaboratively sometimes that the agencies own an invitation. For example, for metropolitan police department back in 1999 then chief Ramsey who was new to the department asked DOJ to take a look at the department he was then heading. I guess what I would say about consent decrees also I've also worked on a number of the consent decrees Washington DC Seattle. Let's see what else. There's an injunction for Maricopa County Arizona where sheriff Joe Arpaio used to work and then I'm currently serving on the consent decree team for Newark, New Jersey which recently crossed its fifth year. Consent decrees, the length of them can vary by the size of the department, the resources to make the needed changes and also just the difficulty or intractability of some of the issues that an apartment might face. For the consent decrees that I've worked on they have been larger departments, larger. I don't think there's, yeah, I think larger than any department that Vermont has. But they're multi-year affairs. It's a process of identifying gaps in policies, procedures, resources, working with the community and the department and experts to change those in alignment with what the departments agreed to do, getting court and monitor approval and then moving on to training and if there are additional resources to be provided, new personnel or reassignments you work through that. So I think they are very worthy projects but I also just want folks to appreciate that neither the investigation or any agreement after is an overnight success or progress because it can be costly. Some departments simply don't have the money to staff their 911 centers let alone deploy as many body-worn cameras or other resources or add training or civilian personnel. So I think I just want to add a bit of realism there. I haven't worked on any consent decree that's been less than five years but again, those are departments that are bigger than any in Vermont. So I think that if we're going to move forward with this which when our office thinks it's a good idea to have this authority, doesn't mean we're going to use it frequently but I think it's a good tool to have as part of the overall accountability system. I think there needs to be testimony and examination of what resources are appropriate to make sure that this kind of program and being added to an attorney general's office isn't set up for failure or diminish expectations because of lack of resources. I'll stop there and answer any questions if you'd like. Thank you. I do have one question just of and maybe it's too much into the weeds right now but we do have the bill in front of us and I. Sure. So the number two under E and on mine it's on page four but I think what I have is the final draft not as introduced so it might be on a different page. It's an investigation concluding that a pattern or practice of discriminatory conduct could not be substantiated but then it says that it will be closed but shall be archived and may be used as an aggravating factor in any civil action but if it was not substantiated how can it be used as an aggravating factor in a civil action? If it was found that there was nothing there what's to use? Well, it could be that facts that are identified in the report not a legal conclusion of a pattern and practice of a violation of law but there could be practices by the department which the investigation notifies the department creates a heightened risk for harm to the public or officers. I'll give you an example from the Chicago police department investigation where I looked at one of my, I had several areas of focus one of them was deadly force and the DOJ findings public findings noted that Chicago police department had for certain parts of the city and certain units a culture of what is known as jump outs and jump outs are, it's not that it's kind of an older term but it's essentially the practice of going in an area where the department and the community of city thinks there's high drug activity a street corner with a lot of people on the street corner and an unmarked car screeches to a halt accelerates towards the corner and screeches to a halt as a practice to provoke people on the corner to run. And then the officers chase the person they're in a high drug area and they're gonna chase the person and sometimes those pursuits go through alleys and involve fence hopping and then the officers are in a situation where they may end up using force against an individual either deadly force or other kinds of force because they're alone they may be separated from their partners they may be at a tactical disadvantage they may be physically tired and so the investigation might find that the cases that they identified that you couldn't have substantiated whether the force and a substantial number of those cases was unconstitutionally illegal but it might point out is the DOJ report did point out that that practice was associated with a high rate of deadly force and significant force incidents of serious injuries from a baton or improvised weapons like boards the officer ended up using because they were in a fight and if you have that evidence and you put it on notice that you have a cultural practice that may be consistent with stated policies about interactions with the community later on if there are cases where the department is in a civil action regarding a case where there's a ledge unconstitutional violation from a future jump out and foot pursuit and deadly force. One of the questions for liability for Chicago in that case would be is this the sort of behavior that the department countenances do they endorse that sort of behavior? That's a link that you sometimes have to establish to have the city on a liable beyond the individual officers. And if there's evidence in a report that this practice was well known to the department it was discussed in interviews and it was published in a report and yet the city persisted in that conduct. It could be that that information and the city's and the department's knowledge of that practice which they then continued notwithstanding the stated or identified risks could be relevant. You would have to decide in a case by case basis. So the mere fact that you identify a practice another one in the Baltimore investigation which I also participated in Baltimore police officers in the public report were noted that they use tasers on unarmed or suspected unarmed suspects who were fleeing for minor offenses ranging from shoplifting to jaywalking. And when you deploy a taser on someone their muscles lock up and they can't in most instances even put their hands out so they could suffer a lot of injury when they hit the ground called the secondary injury could be broken teeth and bones and so forth. And in some cases the DOJ report identified uses of force in those contexts which they thought were unconstitutional and other ones they couldn't substantiate based on some ambiguity or ambiguous or incomplete record. But the fact that that practice exists and presents a risk and is inconsistent with the notion of using a taser for someone who's aggressive and assaultive rather than fleeing might be admissible in a future case to show that if it were the case as it's not at the case in Baltimore that they would continue the practice notwithstanding having this information shown to them and reported publicly. So I didn't draft this, but I think that's what that might be relevant to as noticed to the department. Yep. Thank you. Committee, does anybody have any questions for Julio? And then yes, Senator Raul Manziel. I wasn't sure if you wanted to go in section order versus witness order because I was hoping that Attorney General's office could also comment on their past support for a Giglio registry and Brady file disclosure. And I didn't know if you wanted to wait on that piece and see if there's still supportive of that or hear from Julio now. Well, I guess we could. If you, do you have a comment on that one Julio? Yeah, we support a way for there to be consistent information regarding impeachment material. That's the Giglio case or exculpatory material or relating to officers. I think there'll be testimony as the commissioner mentioned earlier relating to the details of those. But I think in general, the idea is yes, because I don't think any prosecutor in the state wants to put on or fail to disclose to the defense information that they're constitutionally required to disclose simply because that officer may have worked at another department in another county and have material that was disclosed in prior cases in the other county, but wasn't available to them. And I think it all, I think, so providing mechanisms and again, the details of how that's going to be done, I think is probably for a later time. But I think the idea of preventing that kind of error oversight or inconsistency, you know, it's consistent. It's just, it seems like it's a mechanism designed to avoid any inadvertent violations of due process rights because even it's the constitutional standard doesn't require intent by the prosecutor. It's just the failure to disclose the information may end up in a mistrial and, you know, with resources for maybe never being able to retry a criminal case, but also expenses associated with retrying a case. Yeah, thank you. So now I think we'll jump to Bill Sorrell. I think that a number of these concern the Criminal Justice Council and around the training, the independent investigations. And I don't, I'm sure there's other things here when you're charged with keeping this file. So if you would like to go next, that would be great. Thank you, Senator. I think all in the interest of time and what you're trying to do today or what I think you're trying to do today, I'll kind of follow the lead of Commissioner Shirling and perhaps try to stay away from engaging in a way on any policy reasons for two reasons. One, I have a number of questions I want to pose in the draft as I read it several weeks ago and how it might impact the council and its proceedings. And secondarily, this is not a matter that we have put in its specifics before the full council. And so I'm the chair, but I don't want to pretend to speak for the council on various substantive parts of the proposal. So some, a few concerns or just questions in looking at a few different subsections or subsections. One F is on confidentiality and it talks about information that's developed from that investigation of patterns and practices and such. And because we have statutory authority over professional misconduct by law enforcement officers, it is possible that a matter that is referred to us that involves an allegation of professional misconduct by law enforcement officer, we can send it back for further investigation if we think the investigation isn't as an adequate, we can do our own investigation. But then we take a look at the punishment if any imposed by the law enforcement, the employer. And we have ultimate authority to revisit the punishment, if you will, when there's a finding of misconduct. And those matters are handled confidentially by our professional regulation committee, but an officer who's the subject of an allegation of professional misconduct has the ability to not be satisfied with the decision by our professional regulation committee and may ask for a public hearing by the full council, where the full council essentially sits as a jury, if you will. And in an abundance of caution, I wanna make sure that the confidentiality guarantees about information developed during these investigations under that first section, that if any of that information makes it our way in a case or cases involving professional misconduct, our hearings when it's a contested hearing are public hearings. And I don't want the council to run afoul of a prohibition or a confidentiality protection in one F. So it's possible depending on how this bill goes that we might want a specific mention of the council's professional regulation responsibilities not being hamstrung by this confidentiality provision. And maybe that's too much caution on my part, but I raised the issue. And then just a question. Can I just go back? I think that that section only refers to the investigations of law enforcement agencies, not law enforcement officers, I believe. Oh, but an investigation of an agency looks at specific instances of conduct by officers. Yep, got it. It's entirely possible that one or more issues that's in that investigative report would come to us through this other different mechanism looking at an individual officer or more than one. Okay, got it. Senator Rom-Hinsale, did you have a... Yeah, Bill, how many investigations have you all done so far? Uh, last I knew, Senator, I thought we had somewhere in the area of 40 active cases. They might have been pared down some. The truth is in order, we have a few members of the council who are on that professional regulation committee. And if and when someone appeals and wants a hearing before the full council, those members of that professional regulation committee would not be able to vote on guilt or innocence that essentially because they're an investigative entity. So for example, I do not attend, participate in any meetings of the professional regulation committee because if there's an appeal to the full council, I want to be able to act as chair of the council in the hearing before the council. So I don't know chapter and verse on how many of the active cases before the professional regulation committee are likely to come to the full council. Many of them sort of get settled at that level, but it's possible that you should ask either Chief Prokkel, who's now our deputy executive director of the council, excuse me, of the police academy, but he was until recently when he came to work for the police academy, the chair of the professional regulation committee and his position as chair of the professional regulation committee has been taken over by Trevor Whipple, the former South Prokkel police chief, who's a representative on the council from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Those two would have more information for you that I don't have now and don't want to have because I want to maintain my ability to participate in full council hearings in contested cases. I thought that the co-chairs of the professional regulation committee were Sheriff Anderson and Susanna Davis. They are. Yeah. Yes. So we have Sheriff Anderson with us here today. So when we get, when you are done, we can ask him those very questions because I think they co-chair it. I didn't know Trevor Whipple. They're co-chairs of the full council. Oh, I thought they were of the professional regulation committee. No. Okay, got it. Okay. Okay, I got it. No, I was on his, I was on a team's call with them this morning. No, they're not on the professional regulation. Senator Clarkson, if you have a question, I realized that we interrupted Bill's testimony here. So is your question about that? My question is a follow-up for Bill on investigations. I understand we're short on investigators in the state, so I'm just curious, who does our investigations in these 40 cases? They're done initially, typically within the department where there's the allegation of professional misconduct, but sometimes the department will have an independent investigation done. They notify us when there's a complaint, then we get access to all of the information that they developed and the determination they made of either responsibility for professional misconduct or not, and if so, what punishment? And we are able to send back to them, asking them to investigate more or to conduct our own investigation of a matter. And we are, as soon as we get the clearance from the Department of Human Resources, we will be advertising a funded position as our own investigator, which you and the legislature approved last session. Right, because I've heard, particularly with some of our smaller police departments and actually with some of our larger ones that they don't have the capacity, have had to spend a lot of money they didn't have on investigators doing this work. I mean, this strikes me as sort of a thorny challenge for some of our departments. And of course, Senator, if the allegation of professional misconduct is against the head of a police agency, a police chief or a sheriff, then that entity really can't do the investigation and have it appear to be impartial, you know. So then we would either see that another law enforcement agency would volunteer to do the investigation, or once we have our own paid investigator in-house, he or she will lead such an investigation like that. Thank you. Do you want to continue with your, Senator Romhansdale, did you have a... Maybe Bill was going to address it, but I just, I mean, I think the independence is the thing I've had the issue with for a long time that there are cases where people have reported feeling like someone way too close to the department was involved in the investigation. So I just didn't know if Bill had qualms with that particular piece or could address his feelings about the independence, the need for the independence of the investigation. Well, let me go back if I made to my time as attorney general, we received any number of law enforcement investigations into cases involving death or serious bodily injury by law enforcement officers. And typically there's an understanding that within a department that you really can't do your own investigation on those matters, you're investigating your own. And so frequently state police will be looked to if you name the town that has an officer involved, shooting for example, then typically state police would do that investigation and then send the results of the investigation to the AG's office to determine whether criminal charges are warranted. In the state police, the commissioner can correct me if I'm mistaken. If there's a trooper or troopers are involved in a deadly force incident, then within a department, within the large agency of the state police, they will have investigators from other parts of the state participate in those investigations to try to at least temper some of those concerns that it's an in-house investigation is gonna be a fair investigation. I understand when we get into the investigations that are further on in one of the sections here with this independent investigation that that's an attempt to have more avoid the concerns or appearances that this really wasn't a thorough, fair investigation of an incident because some one or ones too close to the matter at hand, the department at hand were conducting it. I understand that what you're trying to accomplish there or I think I do. So I'm gonna a little torn here about whether we should let Bill continue or I think Commissioner Schirling has a response to that, Commissioner? Very briefly, Madam Chair, just to add to General Surrell's information, all correct in the instances where a VSP is investigating serious bodily injury or death, it is done by a team from another area of the state unrelated to the barracks. And I also just wanted to note for the committee that the Vermont Association of Chiefs of Police put forward a proposal now about 18 months ago to create teams of investigators regionally that would do exactly what's being described here. Thank you. So Bill, would you like to continue? Yeah, and I'll try to speed up but I don't mean to take too much of your time here. I did have a question under section 2B which talks about liability in certain cases and I didn't look at it. Section two, we're not doing section two. Oh, is that not in the draft you're looking at now? It is, but we're not gonna do it because that's the qualified immunity. Yeah, that was my question. I was wondering if it was an understatement. We're not addressing that at all because judiciary has taken hours and hours of testimony on it, so. Good, thank you. Section three, we note the increased hours of anti-bias training, but you mentioned Susanna Davis and Sheriff Anderson and we were on a call this morning with the executive director of the deputy executive director and among the topics we were discussing is just in preparation for future council proceedings and actions of the council and training is whether bias issues in policing should be under one committee for fair and impartial policing or whether Susanna raised the question of whether they should, that issue should be essentially embedded in all aspects of our training curricula and something for the full council will be on the plate for full council discussion going forward. So this is, you know, a change from four hours to 10 hours. If we do this embedded thing of fair and impartial is more broadly part of virtually all aspects of the training curriculum, it might be a little bit difficult to mathematically say, okay, we got our 10 hours in or something. I just point that out that fair and impartial policing issues and training and appropriate training are very much a concern of the council. The section five, the council when there's a use of death or serious bodily injury, the council is to designate a three member independent panel to conduct an investigation. And just my own notes, unclear whether the panel is to be constituted in whole or in part by council members or it's just that the council is to a point three independent investigators, none of whom are council members. One question. Secondarily, just because of the standard procedure in use of deadly force, the investigation that we've been talking about or in the last 10 or 15 minutes, I'm curious what is envisioned? There troopers are involved in a shooting. They're from the St. Albans Barracks. And as the commissioner said, the ESP will have investigators maybe from the Rutland Barracks investigate that incident and give the report to the AG's office and to the relevant state's attorney's office where the incident took place. But this three member independent investigative panel that's envisioned in section five, does that wait for the investigation of whether there was criminal conduct? Is it run in parallel? Is it, does it go before the law enforcement investigation of the incident? I can just see some concerns there about who goes first and who controls what and access to the witnesses and just wanna think about those things a little bit. And then the council just gets the report. And I guess if that independent investigative panel thinks there's nothing no misconduct then the report is made public. But there are provisions, there are also confidentiality provisions there is the clear statement that the council can use the information from this investigation or these investigations in furtherance of our official duties. But then it's immediately followed by confidentiality protections for release of the information requiring the relevant law enforcement agency and the officer in question to, I think give permission before or release of this information. And I, going back to my initial concerns earlier, Senator that some matters of professional misconduct might be part and parcel of this investigate of an investigation under a use of deadly force or one with death or serious bodily injury. And same concerns about I wouldn't wanna see the council's ability to act under its professional regulation responsibilities be impacted somehow by unintended consequences that tie our hands to use certain information in our decisions or deliberations and such about whether punishment is warranted, suspension of license, whatever. So raise that question and those are more questions which don't have to be answered today but I'd sure like to know or we would like to know at some juncture here. And then just under section seven I just not certain how the three member investigative team that's under section seven relates if at all to the use of force investigative panel that I was just talking about under section five. And then I, oh, I see that oh yeah, that last thing I was saying where concerns about the use of the materials from investigations that was under section six. So hopefully I haven't made things too confusing here but these are questions or concerns that from my reading several weeks ago I had as it relates to council matters. I think that what we'll do is we've been getting kind of an overview today. And then I think that what we'll do the next time is hone in on the sections and see where we wanna go with each section. Okay, well, I apologize if I took too much of your time. No, no, no, that's fine. Thank you. And we kept interrupting you with questions. So Senator Romhenstil, did you have a... Well, I just wanted to say in the meantime, Bill I'm happy to get together with you and Ben and maybe some other folks who have looked at how independent investigation happens in other states. I think this section is a victim of figuring out how you create true independent investigation without having a kind of independent investigation unit. It shouldn't really live with the attorney general's office. It shouldn't be internal to law enforcement. That's not independent. So, looking to you all but also recognizing we've heard a lot of concerns about if you have an all law enforcement panel, if you have someone in that group who has had ties to that particular county's law enforcement then it no longer feels independent. So that's the overall intent. And I'm sure the language could probably be clearer and make sure that there's not duplicative pieces. Happy to have such a meeting with you, Senator. Thank you. So I think that maybe we'll jump next. Thank you, Bill. You're welcome. I think we'll jump next maybe to Sheriff Anderson who is one of the co-chairs. I was thinking that you were the co-chair of the professional regulation board but now I see you're the co-chair of the whole shebang. So if you would like to give your thoughts on this to start with. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, committee for the record, Mark Anderson, Wyndham County Sheriff. I am here in my capacity as president of the Vermont Sheriff's Association. While I'm not here in my capacity as the co-vice chair of the council, I'm happy to speak from that perspective. I'm also happy to speak from the perspective of the sheriff. I am joined by Sheriff Harlow from Orleans County who's the second vice president and she's actually gonna be taking the lead on this bill. So originally I was supposed to be in fair and impartial policing training today during this committee hearing but the instructor was injured and so I decided to join Sheriff Harlow as support. I'm happy to speak to this but I would like to defer to Sheriff Harlow if Madam Chair will allow. Very happily will allow. Thank you. Thank you. So Jennifer, do you want to? There you are. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome. Hello, everybody. I'm for the record, sorry, I'm Jennifer Harlow with the Orleans County Sheriff. I have a little bit of a sex sinuses so I apologize for my voice. So as Sheriff Anderson introduced me, Vermont Sheriff's Association, we wanna be part of this conversation about professionalism and accountability. We also wanna be very supportive in providing funding and resources to initiate what's already underway which you've already heard a lot about which is already a lot of good things that are happening. We wanna support the council's professional regulation subcommittee's work that's already being done and is continuing to move forward. And we are in much support of the training and support more education for agency executives and things of that nature. So I don't wanna continue with them, stuff that's already been duplicated but I'm happy that we were invited to be part of this conversation. Thank you. I guess when we get into more detail, we will get into more detail. So I think with that, does anybody have any questions for Jennifer? And then I'm going to jump to Chief Pete. Are you representing the police chiefs or are you here for yourself? In any case, welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening members of the committee. For the record, Brian Pete with the Montpelier Police Department. I also serve as the first vice president for the Vermont Association of Chiefs of Police. I don't see Jennifer Frank on. So I can just quickly give just an overview as from that representation that the VACOP does support the work that's being done and looking at accountability systems and mechanisms that we also do support additional training. They're just questions revolving around the funding and the resources because there's lots of additional training that's in the pipeline and seeing how that falls and where the dust settles and where we want to make sure that we're not being redundant in certain ways. And again, the resources aspect of it is a big thing. And then just to again, like Sheriff Harlow had said, we're happy and hopeful to be part of the process and to look at honest collaboration to figure out how we can do this in a good way that's going to continue to build upon trust and move us forward as we're doing in 21st century policing. Thank you. So yes, Senator Romhansel. And just for context, we may want to have Eton in because I completely hear Chief Pete on resources. I believe Eton went originally to appropriations with the request about additional training and this was an attempt to give it another hearing in the policy committee of jurisdiction so that it didn't get lost is a budgetary matter. So it might not have the right appropriation attached to it right now. Yeah, I think that, I mean, we will have Eton in and we'll also have Susanna Davidson because I do understand the idea of embedding the discriminatory, the racial justice training and anti-bias training in all the training instead of saying this is then and now we're going to check off the box and instead having it embedded in everything that all the training. And I think we heard that before when we were talking about anti-bias training that that was one of the issues that was brought up then. So I think I'm going to jump, I see Sheriff Anderson has his hand up. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just, I did want to speak briefly to, I believe it was section eight. Yep. Correction, section four. This is on garrison parcel policing and data collection. I'd like to flag for the committee a body of work done by the racial disparities at RDAAP. I'm not going to say the full acronym but by RDAAP I have a small acorn of technical information to share about how data is currently collected in Vermont, how it is researched. I'm not a PhD person. I am not a researcher. And when I do talk with researchers such as Robin Joy from CRG, Stephanie Saguino from UVM and others. I was just in a training with Dr. Johnson from I believe it's a university of Toledo, somewhere out west. The hard part with racial data is that we want to make sure that A, we are measuring what we want to measure and then B, that we are using the correct benchmarks to measure it against. And this is, we have learned a lot over the last five years that we have been capturing this data. I also serve conveniently as a mechanism to help deploy or I should say submit all Vermont law enforcement agencies race data to the council, which is required by law. That's just because I know how to use a computer not because I'm anything special. But at the end of the day, it puts me into the nitty gritty of this data, how it's captured and then working with the researchers of how they process it. So I would like to flag that RDAAP has a strong body of information. There is a bill with regards to, I believe it's the Bureau, which would fall under the, under Zuzana Davis's office regarding storage of race data across the entire enterprise of state government to make sure that we are using similar definitions. In fact, the federal definitions differ from state definitions. And so it can create difficulties in communicating. So just wanted to put that out there. There's other committees talking about this as well. And I think that we should be capturing this data and we should be reporting it out in a way that's useful to committees such as yours, but also to law enforcement agencies. We don't currently get education as agency heads or supervisors, managers within law enforcement agencies on how to read these reports. So it's based on what you come to the table with and how you're able to work on it. And I would encourage that we also consider resources for providing what's not law enforcement training. It's how to use Excel. It's how to use statistical programs. It's how to understand data. Thank you. So maybe you can answer the question that I asked earlier about the logistics of this because the way I read this, this is data that's supposed to be collected if there is an officer involved death or serious bodily injury. But you don't know that when you stop the person. So how does this data get collected after the fact or am I not understanding how data is collected? So with roadside stops, this data is collected and it's the systems that we use to collect the data is based on input from the law enforcement author who's conducting the stop as part of their reporting requirements. So we do collect this in terms of the officer involved death or serious bodily injury. We've been collecting it without the officer involved death or serious bodily injury. So to add that extra layer, I don't think would be an issue around collection unless we were just simply not aware that an injury occurred or a death for that matter, which I don't see happening, but I'll leave that out there. Did that answer your question, Madam Chair? No, I'm not sure because are you saying you already collect all this information? With a quick review of the list, yes, Madam Chair. All right, okay, so that's collected at the stop at the time of the stop. So if there's an incident afterwards or then it's already there, it's already collected. Correct. And I mean, this is where we can go to discuss what are we trying to measure and what are we trying to perform? The primary goal of initiatives such as this is to identify where a police officer has discretion to help identify if implicit or explicit bias is being used in enforcement action. So that's the intent and it's not uncommon for lists similar to this to be used, but then we start to add on and add on and add on and then very quickly the data becomes skewed in the backend side where the researchers are using the data. So what, I won't speak to policy right now. I'm certainly happy to do it another time when you have more time, but there is a lot of people with a lot more knowledge than I have were able to speak to the research. Research is changing and capturing it. I'll suggest that capturing it in legislation, the specifics in legislation might be slower to maintain pace with current research than capturing the intent of the policy and requiring an entity within state government, not law enforcement agencies. And maybe I'll say Zuzana's office just as a possible idea, but capturing a body or organization that's capable of saying, this is what we need to capture. And then we can scale up records keeping systems to do those things. And we can do it based on really smart people with PhDs who research these things. Or it could be ADS, that the policies are developed by somebody else but the information is all, anyway, anyway, okay. All right. What I suggest is that the legislature require the intent of this language while capturing the in the weeds nitty gritty elsewhere in a body that's not law enforcement, but is able to work with law enforcement to help direct the capturing of those items. Thank you. I think we will jump to where I'm looking here. Chris Brackell, there, I see you there. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I wasn't expecting to be here to testify, but I'm happy to make some very brief comments if it is helpful at all when it comes to the investigatory phase that was described by Chair Sorrell earlier. And there are some competing factors here in that let me briefly tell you if it's helpful about the professional regulation committee and the things that they hear. So when you're trying to get into an impartial investigation, the complaints that come to the council come from any source. And we accept them from any source. So they might come directly from the law enforcement agency themselves or they might come from the general public where they might even come anonymously. And so when we take that information, if it is about a specific law enforcement officer from an agency, it's initially directed back to that agency to do their own internal affairs investigation. Once that's complete, that investigatory file then comes to the committee for their review and they can do a number of things. They can send it back for further. They can ask questions. They can do their own investigation. And to make matters even a little clearer when the allegation is against an agency head, a chief or a sheriff or any type of agency head, that is a council investigation. That doesn't go back to the agency for them to do their own investigation. And as was mentioned earlier, and I think it might have been by commissioner Schirling that there was a joint effort on behalf of the Vermont Association of Chiefs of Police. And I believe sheriffs were a part of that as well to form these teams so that they can do regionalized internal affairs investigations from outside the area where there is an allegation of misconduct so that officers from a nearby area are not involved in those investigations. And I can say that as the former chair of that committee but now overseeing that committee as it sits with the council, the investigation when you question the impartiality of it. So it's made up of five council members. One who has a former law enforcement background. So one member's from the network of domestic violence. We have people from the BIPOC community so there's a very wide range of expertise that sits on this committee and very lively and robust discussion that also happens within that committee. And the law enforcement person or the person with law enforcement experience is really only to explain to the other committee members sometimes police conduct or practice or policy that they don't quite understand. And there's amazing conversation that goes on there. So I can honestly say that it's an unbiased view and many viewpoints are taken and considered and the committee is taking a lot of action that you're gonna see before the council very soon. There was also the mention of hearings that were coming before the council. And also there are some opportunities for stipulation agreements to be drafted where an officer certification might be given up based on what the committee has already decided and offers to an officer in lieu of going before a hearing before a public body. Some that have misconduct issues may choose not to go and contest that and go before a public body. So in the same context, we don't wanna lose those that information and when we have misconduct that's very clear and people that may not want to go before a public body, there's another avenue to still resolve the certification issue. And again, we're talking about law enforcement certification. That's the critical piece for us. So once you don't have your certification, you don't have a job. It's that simple in law enforcement, but that's just kind of a broad overview of how that committee works. And they do have a set of guidelines procedures that they have drafted. It's been, there's a formal mechanism by which that committee does their investigations. Thank you. I think we will jump, we have VLCT with us here and I see both Gwynn and Karen and I don't know how you wanna do this if you wanna tag team or how you wanna do this, but we'd love to hear from you. Great. Thank you committee, Vermont League of Cities and Towns here, Gwynn Zachoff and Karen Horne. We really appreciate sitting through all the testimony that preceded us because I think a lot of it covered a lot of the bases that we have identified as we did walk through on our own of the bill, having a lot of questions, more than sort of responses because there overall seem to be a lot of like duplicative language in some of the systems that have been already set up, have already been set up. And we're hoping that, moving forward that any kind of proposals will be sort of scaffolding around the building blocks that are already there to help it become better solidified rather than having duplicative processes that sort of make the process not as impactful. So there's a lot of growth happening, a lot of learning happening along the way and it's really encouraging to hear the responses from a lot of the new members of the Criminal Justice Council and sort of the learning that's going on there. And we're just really hopeful that these conversations actually lead to providing more resources and better training. And particularly I'm happy that the prior tests are only touched upon sort of the leadership training, really helping our sheriffs and police chiefs become better leaders. And so we, yeah, so we're gonna wait until we have more time to actually walk through the bill and sort of each section, but I think there's a lot of good stuff here as long as it's embedded in a way that makes sense with the processes that are already in place. Karen, did you wanna add anything? Thank you, Gwen. Thank you, Senator. No, I think Gwen has covered it for us. Thanks. Thank you. So committee, I think that the way we'll do this, the next time we take this up, what we'll do is we'll start going through its section by section, because it's hard to have somebody kind of comment on the whole bill. So I think what we'll do is start taking its section by section and you will all be invited and if you have nothing to say about that section, that's okay, you can sit with us anyway or you don't have to come. But so I think that that's the way we'll do it and we'll, yeah. Does that make sense, committee? Because it's too hard to address a whole bill that has so many different parts. So we'll start going through it and we'll take on all the sections with the exception of section two. Great. Okay. And I will, I can't, I was just looking at my little chart here to see if we had this on for next week. We don't have it on yet, but I've had to do some changes already in next week's schedule. So we'll see it'll either be next week or the next week, remembering that we only have three weeks left until crossover, but we will schedule this in, okay? Great, thank you. Okay, thank you everybody. Thanks, Ben. Pleasure to meet you. Ben, lovely to meet you. Great to meet all of you too.