 I'd like to welcome everyone to the what month is it April of 2021 meaning of the advisory panel on racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. I am Eitan Nassred and Longo the Chair. Let us introduce ourselves. I will go down the handy list that I have here on the right-hand side of my screen and begin with of course I can't read it because the program is designed for someone with the eyesight of a two-year-old. 802-505-9147. Hi it's Robin from crime research. Hi thank you. Karen Gannett. Hi Karen Gannett from crime research group. Loretta Sackie please. Loretta Sackie, policy analyst from council state government. Thank you. Sheila. Sheila Linton. Brattaburra root social justice center. She her pronouns appointed by the current community attorney general community at large. Thank you. Abigail Crocker. I am Abby Crocker from the National Center on restorative justice and the University of Vermont. Thank you. Tyler. Good evening everyone. Tyler Allen DCF. Jessica. Hi everyone Jessica Brown. She her pronouns. I'm the supervising attorney of the Chittenden County Public Defender Office. Thank you. Chris Loretts. Chris Loretts research associate with crime research group. Susanna. Hello Susanna Davis racial equity director for the state. Jen Furpo. Hey there Jen Furpo. She her representing the Vermont Police Academy. Judge Greerson. Good evening everyone. Brian Greerson, chief superior judge representing the judiciary and I don't know if Pepper's going to stay with this group. I just want to acknowledge how much he's brought to this organization over the years he's been involved from day one. In my view you know a very central significant player in this entire discussion and I'd like to think he's going to stay but probably not I don't know but I just wanted to push him well and thank him for all the work he's done for this group and I've enjoyed working with you Pepper. Thanks for that. Elizabeth Morris. Hi Elizabeth Morris juvenile justice coordinator at DCF. Thank you. James Pepper. James Pepper from the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs. Thank you very much Judge Greerson. Thank you very much to all of you for your dedication and I assume that I will stay on as a public just a member of the public and be able to follow the work that you all are doing as I transition to my new role. Thanks Pepper. Representative Coach Christie please. Hello. I'm Representative Kevin Coach Christie and I represent you all. Thank you. Representative Lalonde. Yes, Martin Lalonde and I represent South Burlington. I'm of the Judiciary Committee and just generally sitting in but I understand I also will perhaps share some information about the use of force belt so nice to see you all. Sarah Bastomsky please. Yes, this is Sarah Bastomsky and I am a new researcher a research manager at CSG Justice Center working with Sarah Friedman and Loretta Saki just sitting in tonight. Great thank you and Sarah Friedman. Hi everyone Sarah Friedman also with the Council of State Government's Justice Center. Great. David Cher. Good evening David Cher assistant attorney general representing the attorney general's office. Thank you. Captain Scribner. Captain Julie Scribner of Vermont State Police co-director of fair and impartial policing and community affairs representing Commissioner Shirley. Julio Thompson. Hi I'm Julio Thompson I'm really here as a member of the public but I am an assistant attorney general director of the civil rights unit in that office. Rebecca Turner. Hi everyone Rebecca Turner from the Office of the Defender General. Olivia Bach. Hi I'm Olivia I share her pronouns and I'm an AVM student and I'm also an intern with the Attorney General's Office and I'll be taking minutes tonight. And thank you for that. Of course. And last but not least as they say Monica Weber who without whose help the technical side of this would have been quite a disaster this evening. Hi everyone I'm Monica Weber I'm the administrative services director at the Department of Corrections. I'm not an IT specialist and I am the representative to the commissioner from the Department of Corrections and I use she her pronouns. Thank you. Anyone whom I did not call this would be the moment. I'm looking at my list and it says I got everyone but this would be it. Like a wedding speak now. Okay let us move on to the minutes from the 9 March meeting last month. You all have them. I sent them out the other day. Are there any concerns questions additions changes errata etc. Hey Tom this is Sheila I just noticed that I was not mentioned in the minutes but I am mentioned in the document so I was named to be in attendance in the minutes to reflect that I got it. Okay I think I have that. David do you have it because you said last month. Yeah I have to make sure I understand Sheila she wasn't in the list of these but was your comments were accurately recorded. You're muted. You're muted. So sorry. I think there was only one comment in there there was lots of other comments I didn't see but aside from that and trying to remember all of what that was I just noticed that I wasn't in the attendance list. All right thanks sorry. Anything else shall we move to accept the minutes then. Don't move Sheila. Okay second. Second Monica. Okay all in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. All abstaining. Okay the minutes are approved. Thank you. Announcements. The two that I would begin with Jeff Jones and Chief Don Stevens will not be able to be with us tonight and then of course as Judge Greerson noted pepper has been elevated. Is it elevated pepper? It sounds like elevated I don't know I was getting all ecclesiastical. It depends on how you how you think about it I suppose depends on where you're sitting. What is the actual name of the position you're taking. I'm gonna be the chair of the newly created cannabis control board. Right okay and so I just wanted to note that publicly for the minutes and thank you and we look forward to keeping you in some form. I can't imagine ever leaving this group honestly so I'm sure I'll be here. Good. Does anyone else have other announcements before we get going. I have others but I want to get anything else in before I dry on for a little bit. Seeing no hands I will dry on for a bit. First the developments with H317 an act relating to establishing a Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics and a Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics advisory panel. I gave testimony on this last week as I emailed you all. I also submitted names of a bunch of you as people who would be good as please testify in other words. I believe it was Wednesday last week that I did this. It should be on YouTube if you're interested. I was not entirely caught off guard. I just thought we'd have one more meeting to be able to look again at our list before I was gonna speak about it but that didn't happen. It's fine. So I presented the list that we came up with at our last meeting to a joint Senate and House Judiciary Committee meeting. I thought it went well. Rebecca Turner also testified at that particular session. It looks like it's the thing. It's that it's going to go through. There's a lot of energy behind it. I did my best to impress upon the committees the list of concerns that were stated in the minutes and I also presented the thinking of various ones of you who I just sort of I wouldn't say quoted but I paraphrased. There as I say I spoke that no I spoke then about the importance of independence because that had come up as a very important theme for the housing of the Bureau so I spent some time on that. Others are coming soon I believe. Judge Grierson, Sheila I know has been invited and David Cher at the very least. Pepper I don't remember if you were on the list that I got or not but in other words there are a bunch of people from the channel who will be testifying about this. So that that's the first announcement or whatever third I guess that I just want to give you an update on where H317 is at this point. I would go on to the state of action items that were described at the last meeting in our outline in the minutes. I also spoke in support of repealing the sunset of this panel. That too went well. That will likely pass. People in the legislature want us to continue the work that we began with the 2019 report and there seems to be a great deal of affinity for the idea that we have had of the deeper dive into the issues that that report raised and in that testimony I was using both Pepper and Chief Stevens ideas but again as I parapraise them. The last action item from last month had to do with the 2019 report and the Racial Equity Task Force and looking at points of collaboration with them and rather than hear me blather on about that I would ask that Director Suzana Davis will fill us in on that. Suzana the floor jurors please. Okay I will use it responsibly. First apologies everybody for being a Black Square. I am assured that IT will eventually fix this but for now please just try to imagine me fully clothed because I am. So yes so the Racial Equity Task Force met last night and our assignment from our previous meeting was to read the RDAP report if we had not already and to try to so I guess I'm sorry backing up to when I and a couple of other RETF members came to your last meeting the March meeting we sort of landed on looking for points perhaps upstream factors that may be relevant to some of the topics that you all discussed in your 2019 report or any other other ancillary items that maybe you didn't have time to cover that the Task Force may be interested in covering. So with that in mind the Racial Equity Task Force reread the RDAP's 2019 report and you know with a series of thought questions including but not limited to what has changed since the writing of this report what are the upstream factors contributing to this that we may want to address etc. So some of the feedback that we got last night that kind of helped our helped set our direction or what appears to be our direction were highlighting recommendations C in particular which appears on page 5 of your report having to do with a better and more expansive data collection noting that 317 appears to be moving that's something that Task Force doesn't necessarily think it needs to focus on. One of the suggestions during the conversation last night also was including things like pedestrian stops when we talk about data collection and traffic data and then there was a whole lot of discussion about mental health supporting people at all stages through the system from intake all the way through things like parole and what I appreciated about it was that our members were looking at it really in terms of how do we create an accommodations plan for people which kind of reframes the way that we think about mental mental illness. So it sounds like that's kind of the direction that the Task Force wants to look is to focus on mental health issues and how they relate to the upstream and downstream effects of criminal justice disparities. Some of the questions we had were what kind of support for post incarceration was the ARDAP maybe thinking about if you all had considered it things like housing and employment which are issues that fuel recidivism. Some members were interested in looking at the the non-consensus items that you all had at the end of the report to see if any of those were items tales that that we might be interested in picking up on looking closer at team two initiative and whether the what you know where it is if it's working and what we can do to beef it up. And I think those are kind of the highlights. I don't want to spend a lot of time talking at you but that's kind of where we ended up. So our next steps are to distill that conversation from last night and come up with a couple of high level bullet points for the potential work products around that which which a few of us are going to meet on next week. So again I mean it's not necessarily set in stone that that's the full breadth of what we're going to look at but that appears to be some of our most immediate feedback following reading of you all's report. Thank you. So we're all going to I mean we the ARDAP I guess I'm saying here we'll look over this I hope beginning with our next meeting. I know things keep cutting in partly because of the legislation and has needs of us but I'm hoping that next meeting we'll be able to start taking a look at that collaboration with the Racial Equity Task Force. Does anyone have any questions of any of this? We talked about the H317, the repeal of the sunset of the ARDAP and then the collaboration with the Racial Equity Task Force. Does anyone have any questions of me or Susanna on those items? Pepper. Thank you. Yeah. Susanna did you guys I mean this kind of fundamental question that we've been grappling with that you were privy to from our last meeting is just where to house the Bureau of Racial Statistics Justice Statistics and I'm wondering if if you all in your group the Racial Equity Task Force last night tried to tackle that at all and you know I know that you know one of your mandates is trying to identify data reporting and identify kind of sources of systemic racism throughout all of the state government and I'm wondering if that kind of if that intersection with H317 means that you know you and the Racial Equity Task Force feel like it should be housed in your shop or if that was even a topic of conversation. No we actually didn't even talk about it but I know that's the big question on the table and I think most of the conversation around it that I've had has probably been just listening to you all talk about it and I remember a couple of meetings ago you all had a rundown of all the possibilities I think you Pepper had a pros and cons list and I think that the group felt strongly that independence would be important and I tend to agree for any kind of watchdog entity I think that independence is big. I know the admin has proposed putting it in legal aid and there's a few other options on the table so no the Task Force didn't talk about it last night and I don't think we're any closer to having a real idea of what we think is best unfortunately than than anyone else. Yeah that's fine yeah I know it's a tricky conversation but I just was curious but thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Yes? Here. Oh go ahead. Would this be an appropriate time to interject a few thoughts? About HB17? Sure why not? If I may be so bold. Reviewing the notes from the speakers that have presented so far including your chair Rebecca and others and then looking at the supporting statutes around RDAB 338 section 19 the racial spent a lot of time in the green books in the last couple of days but what the short version of what I started to see is it kept coming back to RDAB's ability to possibly be at least the umbrella advisory agency you know for the bureau and thinking in terms of not creating another wheel because it already exists and you all are here and there is a direct link to all of the data points that are talked about in 317 and so taking that to the to the next level you start saying okay that might sound okay so how could this maybe be implemented so you start to look at our partners uh in this work and we've got the national restorative justice you've got UVM right VLS and just you know the list just goes on we've got CRG and and its strength we've got CSG that's been helping us through this process and so maybe to allay some of the difficulties around creating a whole nother entity taking a look at you know how could we get this work done if RDAB decided to be the focal point on getting that done and then what would it take and the possibilities are pretty limitless you know like actually you look at justice reinvestment and the work that you know we've been doing and then those outcomes and the supporting legislation that's come out it keeps re-pointing back to this group in a number of different ways and I know it's it's it's different the thinking the perspective but sometimes different is good when you're looking at shifting the paradigm but the thing that I find most interesting in it is the people in this group and and that's where the strength comes in in this process we we probably still you know like need to you know well not probably you know there's a lot of detailed pieces that would need to be to be nailed down but I think that that the the general scope you know of the concept has has merit we've started to reach out to the key partners in this the spoke with professor sand we've made some initial reach outs to UBM we've made some initial contacts with CSG you know still yet you know nothing formative you know as yet but I think the the concept has merit so that that's the cliff notes version okay more to mr chair go ahead I'm sorry no no no I was gonna say more to follow mr chair okay um this was I thank you coach I wanted just to sort of point out to people this was sort of going to be the brief discussion of housing of h317 at the end of the agenda my suggestion is that we go back to that but I also want to say that hearing what coaches points are this is I think clearly going to be at the top of what we're doing next month if not before in fact um when this was brought up to me I spoke to the panel's sense of reluctance around this issue that if we were to take this on I spoke to first of all our tremendous need for administrative support and also a need to kind of reconceive at least a part of our work um I those are issues that would have to be taken up and that's a discussion that is lengthy and needs to happen and I would be perfectly happy for it to happen right now but there are two other things that are absolutely pressing because one of them I have to convey your thoughts to another committee on Thursday morning so I'm coach is that all right if we sort of put that back for a little right now oh sure you know it as as you can imagine this isn't you know looking for a final answer okay all right and so I'm bookmarking that thank you and we're going to get back to that um but I do want to move on to race and sentencing data um this is a report pursue it to act 148 of last year um you'll recall pepper always speaks very well about that um first numbered paragraph of section 19 of act 148 that would be the part that we didn't do by the way um and I want to also point out we didn't do it because we looked at it and went this can't be done by the first of December let's do what we can do and that's what we did however let me read that paragraph to you we were asked to perform an initial analysis of sentencing patterns across the state to identify where the use and length of incarceration may result in or exacerbate racial disparities and make any related proposals for legislative action including recommendations for further study unquote um you all may remember that crime research group and of course rob and joy were specifically going to turn their attentions to that task and robin has done exactly that sort of work and you've gotten those files from her this afternoon and she's now going to present that to us so karen robin robin karen take it away okay karen and i start i apologize to everybody first of all this is robin i'm on the phone because i live in vermont and the video thing isn't really a thing for me um so karen is going to be the person who does the slides and i'm going to be the person talking about it so karen when you are ready i've got the first one up the powerpoint yep okay good so um just to tell you what i sent you i sent you three documents this afternoon uh one uh should look familiar already to you that's the pdf um and that was actually in your um appendix to your report uh that was uh similar to what connecticut had done uh and so we just pulled together the same thing that connecticut did um and submitted it to you if we have time we'll get to that um i think the highlights of that um are how many people go through the system and don't ever end up with a guilty charge and um the distribution of um defendants between felony and misdemeanor charges but we can go over that later um the data that we're going to go over now comes from the judiciary that said the judiciary um doesn't create some of this data so the police department data the the race of the defendant that's all coming in as we've talked about before from the state's attorneys and the police right it's coming in from the police departments into the system they are not independently collecting that data um the data that i get from the judiciary we get a monthly uh extract from their system i am not subject to the um expungements so these data includes um those cases where the where it's actually been expunged um because of that and a few other reasons we do not um report out when there are five or fewer people in a particular category because you might be able to identify them i understand shila that you have an objection to that um and that i'm not going to try to paraphrase it but um i because of my user agreement with the courts um we really try not to identify anyone so if there's five or fewer in the data you will see an asterisk um and that just is to tell you that there were five or fewer people uh in that um group in one other caveat about this so this was just um this is the data that we always get um this was a quick analysis nobody's going to make public policy based on this because it's not cleaned um it's a quick quick look at stuff um and included in this is the way um and for sarah b from council state governments um one thing i forgot to tell you yesterday when we chatted was these data also include probation violations so the way the data are structured in the files probation violations show up as a charge with a docket but they don't show up as a probation violation so i haven't gone through and done the math to extract all those so these numbers aren't final this is just a general um general look uh at some of the way the distribution happens the two files that you have that will cover these data are the uh powerpoint and then the excel spreadsheet just follows the powerpoint but also gives you some of the individual numbers um that are used in this uh what one of the things i just want to go over so caren the next slide about the prior research yep it's up thank you the um what we know and you'll see in this presentation as well that descendants of color are not equally distributed among the counties um and this is going to lead to disparities and that's um not distributed uh within the crime categories as well and we'll explain that uh black descendants are the largest non-white race in the data and that you'll see that for five years worth of data for example um only about 35 uh charges were disposed of or dockets were disposed of um that had an indigenous defendant so five years worth of data 35 potential people um so these numbers can get really small and then we did a prior study that um council state government is also looking at which is on the role of criminal histories in impacting the sentences and we know that these out of state criminal histories and the uh in state criminal histories are driving some of these incarcerated sentences i did not pull rap sheets this time for this look at it um but we do suggest that this continued use of of the rap sheets and the criminal histories in sentencing um is acting kind of like a stamp on the system and it's saying even though we know about all the systemic racism we're still going to use these records that are generated by the system to continue sentencing people and so we've been saying you might want to look at that practice of um where we use criminal histories and what the goal of that is so any questions before i go on i think not okay so next slide so the um um the court data contains the agency that made the arrest uh and what i did is i just looked at you'll see the the numbers on that spreadsheet if you want to look at the raw numbers um eight police departments accounted for 61 of the dockets with a black defendant in these five years burlington was up there as number one with 1 000 dockets and then it goes down the next rattle burrow pd 279 dockets uh south burlington 2014 rutherland 2012 um sorry 2000 212 wnuski 198 and it goes down but these departments accounted for like i said 61 percent of the dockets um but only 33 percent of the dockets with a white defendant so this looking at the uh chinton county representation here that's going to be kind of skewing whatever whatever numbers we look at yes i hear a question it would be me rob and it's caron would you just explain to them what a docket means sure so what i did here is um um in vermont's and not every state does this we're lucky data wise that we do generally one person is on a docket and that will have all the charges related to um if they're known at the same time of filing um uh related to that incident so if i am arrested for domestic violence and arrested for um interfering with a um with emergency services i'll have one docket with two charges um and so i was just counting the dockets the total number of dockets that can include many charges but this is a way to get at what a case is and that's there's a lot of definitions that people use in in these studies so just for this i just looked at the dockets all right next slide can you i'm i'm sorry i just want to make sure that i'm understanding what you're saying in that slide and are you saying right i can't see any left though yeah are you saying that the 61 percent of the docket so docket could be seen as a person in a way it's their it's their docket and that out of all of these dockets added up throughout these eight departments which are like you know 2000 almost 3000 or something 61 of that 2500 dockets were black defendants basically is that what you're saying i'm saying that the out of all of the departments in the state these eight departments accounted for 61 of the black defendants so why are i guess why is it these eight departments being teased out is that because in the other areas it's less diverse i'm i'm confused i'm making no statements about why that's what further researcher what further research would say i what i did is i looked at what departments over a five-year period um were arresting at least or it's not arresting what departments over this five-year period had at least 100 dockets associated with a black defendants so they that was the minimum um so this gives you an idea of what departments are making arrests of black defendants what and that it's heavily skewed so one of the departments that's not here is the state police and the state police and the data show up on their individual barracks but none of the individual barracks were arresting enough defendants of color to be in this category so the only statement i'm making is that eight per eight these these departments are responsible for over half of the dockets in the criminal court of black defendants thank you yep julie you have your hand up yeah i just can you i just want to clarify i think um i think you just clarified it enough with sheila but um so any of the departments that had if if one of the if one of the vsp barracks had say 95 arrests of or i'm sorry i accounted for 95 dockets of a person of color over that five-year period that wouldn't show up here is that correct in this slide i can get you the number i just was trying to narrow down and when you look at it and you say wow these eight departments are accounting for over half um this is interesting to me may not beat anyone else but it was us okay so but that's what i think and that was what i was looking at is but if it's one particular barracks has 95 but out of the 10 barracks there could be 950 but they don't show up because i didn't add you guys up right so i did not take all the barracks and add you up i can i just again this was a really quick analysis something we could do in a few hours got it thanks yep rebecca robin did you say and i missed it i'm sorry if i did miss it how many departments there are in the state to compare the eight uh 84 i want to say caron we should know this by now yeah i think it's i think it's closer to like 78 and are you counting because i heard you say that the individual state trooper barracks are counted separately or is that one counts as one that would come in in the 78 that would count as one so if you add their their barracks to the 78 but this also includes um you know fish and game um are represented in here department of liquor control are represented the attorney generals when they make an arrest so eight out of 78 these eight departments here do you have a comparison of the demographics of um black adults i guess would be the comparison or the department or in the town or what are you i guess yes i guess some of these towns are are they in the same county i guess some of them are but it'd be interesting to see i mean in terms of a contrast too in terms of not only is it interesting that eight has 61 capture 61 but it'd be interesting to see the counties that they fall in the town specifically what are the what's a demographic um breakdown yeah so far away um and you can um but we know that not everybody commits crimes or gets arrested in the towns that they live in um and so i think you know but yes i mean one of the um i think that's you know part of one of the things that you guys looked at um was adding census data over this um so we can um to those extent that it that it works um i think you know as we're kind of talking this through um it becomes kind of clear and we'll see on the next slide as well um and this may help uh you know kind of clarify people's thinking a little bit so Karen if you go to the next slide wait can i before we do that there's one other question before we move on oh i'm sorry from that um julio yeah i i guess my question was aren't these with the i think the only exceptions maybe being wanouski aren't and the omission of Essex aren't these the largest cities in burlington aren't they all in the top eight um i don't know off the top of my head um i do know though that and that was one of the reasons why i looked at are they also contributing the same amount of white defendants sorry it's very busy time for the dog right now um and these same departments only account for 33 percent of all the white defendants in the five-year period but yes um certainly looking at um you know how um how the larger uh cities are comparing uh to the smaller ones um you know i think the only thing that surprised me here and it just you know it's nothing for state police just i was just surprised that none of the barracks showed up so so um williston doesn't show up and willson's a very busy barracks um but that doesn't meet this threshold okay now next slide yeah go ahead okay stop here what i did is i just this is dispositions this is unique dockets by county during this five-year period 2015 to 2019 um and you can see what i highlighted were just the top three counties um for um the non-white race categories so you could get a sense of how um people are distributed throughout the state um in the criminal court one you'll notice so first i want to say that these data this race data is coming in to the courts from the police report right um so the the courts aren't actually um collecting this data and these are the categories that the um cat rms system has um missing means that nothing was recorded um it's supposed to be um self identified race and um not reported or other is different than missing not reported means that the defendants supposed to mean that the defendant did not report his or her race um and other means that they chose to identify other than the options that we give people so if you look over that missing category um you'll see there's a lot of numbers there um we don't use the court data um for determining um for doing like a hefty really good quality race analysis we would actually use the criminal histories and we've audited those and the criminal histories the rap sheets um don't have this level of missing data in fact i think it was uh less than two percent of all race uh data was missing when we when we did the audit of that and we audited all 14 counties um so there's other sources that are better um and this is just to you know keep in mind is as you're looking at the these data connections and these data um you know how to do analysis by filling in missing data and then where do we really have to as a state get better at collecting data um and clearly these missing categories um are concerning but if we look at chitenden county and black defendants for example right so there were 1,914 dockets disposed of it disposed does not mean guilty just means that the the criminal court closed that case in in these years um 1914 were from um for chitenden county and about 1500 of those were from those police departments on the on the previous slide so you can see how those police departments in particular are kind of you know um swaying this um any questions on this slide none seen okay thank you all right next slide karen yeah it's up all right so there's a list um for those of you that have never seen like the raw data um there's um every subsection of a statute has a code that's in the data and this is called a charge code and what we do is we have a master list of this charge code that the defender general the attorney general's office and the court administrator's office and I all sat down five 10 years ago and we um categorize crimes into these larger categories because um it's helpful if you we just want to know about drug categories that we assign you know this label um in the data for all the drug charges and we can just talk about drug charges or we could talk about domestic violence charges without having to go ahead and um you know pull each individual um charge code for those for those statutes so these this is an agreed upon list of crimes and every time the legislature adds a new crime I kind of check in with mary at the defender general's office um and somebody over at the attorney general's and say do you guys agree with this and we just categorize it so these categories show you and this was just um so overall these are charges not dockets so charges again to go back to the domestic violence example if I am arrested for domestic violence and interfering with a um you know emergency services I would be in this chart twice I would be in the domestic row and I would be in the public order row um so I would so it's not individuals this is total number of charges and in the power point sorry in the excel spreadsheet you have the raw numbers of this um and I just highlighted here where for non-white defendants their representation in these bands was higher than their overall representation um in the in the in the sample so um charges with black defendants accounted for overall 5.17 percent of all the charges disposed of during this time period but if you look at um the the categories where over represented um robbery weapons drugs and it's different you can see for some of the other non-white races as well I want to highlight this weapons stuff here um this is a new crime I was actually um this is and I'll defer to one of the um practitioners uh this was in 2015 you guys passed this and it's basically like a felon in possession um or along those lines um of prior violent crime I think what stood out these are really no low numbers so this 10 percent um for weapons of black charges uh charges with black defendants um I think it's actually only 14 people and there were 101 um charges with white defendants um so this is a new law I don't in order to see if that's being um administered fairly that is that everyone who's eligible to be charged is or you know that um that people white defendants aren't not being charged with this but defendants of color are you'd have to pull the criminal histories um what kind of shocked me about this is that we are a heavily armed state um and so I was surprised that white defendants weren't higher um and so I don't know if any of the practitioners want to kind of shed light on that or what this law is is how it's being used um but that was that's a flag for me anyone not really I just wanted to this is Sheila I don't have an in your question but I have a question and I I had a question of what is actually considered a weapon it what I was curious about and I was actually curious about the same thing that you said and you know I can make my own speculations that um a lot of people who are black and brown that tends to be weapons and it tends to be for white folks it's their hunting it's their everyday right and it so it does make me um question um how that weapon has been interpreted and and how it's been used and how race might play or what I think clearly plays a potential huge role in that so I don't know if other people have any thoughts or comments to that but my question is about what is considered a weapon so this is a firearms charge so it has to be a firearm if I if I'm correct here Julio has his hand up okay so he may be able to go ahead Julio I mean you're the law that I'm aware of uh I'm not talking about decisions to enforce the law but just the actual law in the books is entitled purposes persons prohibited from possessing firearms conviction of violent crime yeah and so it defines everything you would think of as a firearm excluding antique firearms like replicas and flintlocks muskets that sort of stuff but handguns and rifles and shotguns um and then they list a number any number of violent crimes you know range and not all of them I would you know there's an argument as to whether it's violent or not like I would see um like one of them is conviction of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance in another jurisdiction if that jurisdiction uh you know if if that offense is prohibits you from carrying a firearm under federal law so there are a number of uh drug related offenses uh that are included as the category of violent crimes and then the rest are ones that you would recognize things like uh sexual assault um you know the the usual what we would consider you know leak causing bodily injury to people um but there are there are a couple of provisions in it that might warrant um discussion among this group because they really are or the legion Vermont legislature construed a number of drug transaction related violations within the category of violent crime uh Rebecca a different different question for Robin uh okay I see that you highlighted a bunch of boxes and I take that to mean that you highlighted anything that was above the grand total in that respective column is that right that was my goal I may have missed a few here or there but yes that was my goal that's helpful what one thing that strikes me because it is striking how many are lit up um but I would also be interested in finding again a comparison to these categories of race based on demographics in the state because this is a statewide analysis of offenses right because I think that this only gives you a sense of proportionality within but I think even more significant for us to understand these disparities is to see how this compares with the demographics outside the state um generally thank you I agree do you have do you have that sense do you know offhand what is um the demographics no and so I just want to be um so one of the things that we would have to do here is this is charges not people so um let's say I get busted with um some pot oh no I can't do that anymore um some um cocaine and some heroin I'm in in the same arrest I'm in there twice in that drug category um so we'd have to so this we have to first we'd have to get down to single people like just let's get down to the actual number of people and then these numbers may look different um does that make sense yes thank you um which actually one of the things and I just want to point out Rebecca you have on that on the pdf and we can talk about this another time but I did look at um the number of uh unique individuals when I can determine that and that's a it's a guess um by the number of dockets and the number of charges and the number of cases so that it you know it generally doesn't look like for example defendants of color are getting stacked with a lot of charges compared to white defendants but we would need to kind of sort that out so this isn't number of people this is the number of charges statewide Monica has a question hi robin hi I'm having I'm I'm remembering the time when when the department of corrections had to file a report to try and answer some of these questions with the the data that we had um and and all of the questions that we got that um you're getting a lot of the same right yeah and so thank you for um for doing this because it's really interesting and one of the things that we did which again I'm not a statistician um like you are but one of the things we did do when we were thinking about the same question that people are bringing up around well comparing it to what's the geography the breakdown in the in the county or the town um is to try and do like a study of what would be expected versus just sort of saying there's a there's a percentage of this many people of this category in this town and this is how many of them were you know arrested or charged but to do that and I don't know if that's a I know that's a much more um you know and I that's a methodological thing that maybe people don't want to get into but I do think that is an important thing to consider so I just wanted to put it out there right we would want to know like what the expected uh distribution is um for example of domestic violence offenders um because we know that these these are going to gender them as male tend to come back a lot right um and so we um I think that one of the reasons why I generally don't kind of put all that information in is that this is something that uh the bureau that you're recommended or this is something that you as rdap we need you you need to sit down and decide this going forward are like the three measures of um that we want to look at all the time so we want to look at the measurement of people in the town all right so as as that but then we want to get at right so um in that pdf you have and that was just for 2019 there were 449 zip codes uh for residences of the defendants um so what does it mean to be from a town um and what's another measure that we could look at in addition to that measure so I think those are discussions to be had and that I know it's been it's often helpful when there is this kind of a read upon definition and then that way the judiciary is doing it the same way to corrections is doing it the same way the cops are doing it the same way everyone's putting out that same statistic I just really respectfully suggest that it not be the statutory definition of recidivism that wasn't helpful um but everything else you know like so so kind of agreement among all the um among all everyone but these are the numbers that we want to see and I am happy to be part of that conversation but might be helpful um but I think that's something that the bureau should do um and that the individual players should be a part of yeah I appreciate that and I think that's a really good suggestion because otherwise I think that the the questions could take take us in a million different places they're all really interesting but and and we all you know everyone keeps their data at a different level so the the police are generally incident-based um and that incident is uh you know the the me getting arrested for the domestic violence and and the um and the interference with emergency services I show up in their data on one line I show up in the court data on two lines I show up in in DOC's data on one well depends on but two lines right um but you're counting me as one offender um so you know even getting down to what unit are we counting and when we are looking at these individual units of whether it's incidents or people um or offenses um what measures do you want with those with those measurements brahman this is a ton yes I am what I'm looking what you're presenting to us let me is this correct and all it our results looking at a rather shall we say disorganized not very well coordinated system of data systems as it were these are the results from that consideration um well these are just the results from the judiciary I right I'm not merging with anyone else here except for the fact that the judiciary has taken information from the police and put it into their database so but I didn't go back and look up the incidents in neighbors for example and cross-reference any I didn't do any of that I didn't pull anyone's criminal histories and I didn't follow them into department of correction so this was just a quick this is what we have in the court database let me give you a chart um that might be of interest to you yeah um any other questions before we move on to sentences not that I see and it's about seven ten so I we've got a couple other things we've got to do tonight yep and I will go through this one pretty quickly okay this last section um so again every charge um you know most of our statutes have several subsections in different ways to violate them um and for this next analysis I just picked four crimes that only had one that I just had to pull out one subsection to do um and and we could talk about and that's because some of the other ones would require a conversation an agreement between the judiciary and and everybody you know the the attorneys etc that these offenses these subsections are similar enough that we can analyze them together and these subsections should be um you know taken out and analyzed separately and that's a discussion that that you know should happen but we didn't have time and this is also um crimes that I looked at when we looked at race and sentencing in that report just because they were large volume crimes and at least had a sufficient number of non-whites who were convicted at the time and this was a while ago that we could do some sort of analysis so these sentencing numbers come from the judiciary um these are charges not people again um so for assault and domestic if I had if I came back during those five years um I'm in here twice if I had several if I you know have a charge on an incident um where um the spouse is the victim and a child is a victim I'm in here twice so not people charges and what I highlighted so that you could look at is just where charges with black defendants um were sentenced disproportionately to white defendants for assault domestic you definitely see that with um deferred sentences and um incarcerated sentences and um the same with um assault assault simple one big caveat here um is that in these in the sentence to incarceration includes um pre-approved furloughs so that could be work crew or I don't know what else we do now um but so that shows up as a sentence to incarceration doesn't necessarily mean anyone did um a day um but it's hard to tease out of the data that's a free text field so that's something that has to be kind of um that's always been an issue next slide because this one's interesting let me just ask any questions on this slide before I move on seeing none okay here we go all right so here uh for uh uh 2.5 grams of more of cocaine chintenden sentenced no white defendants to incarceration um but 12 charges for black defendants to incarceration and then for less than 2.5 grams chintenden and windham both sentence nine charges of black defendants to incarceration so if you go down to the lower right hand corner where you see cocaine possession less than 2.5 grams and you look at that incarceration number of 29 black 29 charges that had black defendants 18 nine came from chintenden nine came from windham um and then this issue in chintenden county where no white defendants during these five years were sentenced to incarceration um but 12 charges for black defendants were questions seeing none okay eight on looking at this is martin I apologize are we looking at the right slide because I don't see the number 12 or the number 18 that was referred to by robin um so 12 should be up at the top it should see sentence distributions chintenden sentence no white defendants do you see that at the top it's the couple sentences at the very top of the page yet and then if you go down to the bottom right hand side um and you see incarceration number 29 for charges with black defendants we're the right one we're the right one sorry about that okay yeah that's okay it's okay yep hulu has no yes oh no hulu no the representative that asked the same question I was going to ask so I'm fine okay yeah who uh robin can you remind me of the timeframe for this 2015 to 2019 okay thanks yep yeah so the so robin the the key takeaway from this slide is what um well I think again going back to this geographic disparity um and you know one of the suggestions that we make at the end is um while you're waiting for the bureau of racial justice statistics to get up and running um and beginning collecting all the data and filling in all the data gaps that doing um an audit um of case files um that you know we've done this before um where you take a certain percentage of you know sample the cases um and you sit there and you code the you code the files um and try to get a you know a qualitative analysis of what's happening especially in chinan county um that's one of our you know that would be one of our suggestions is that we clearly we have now like this county difference going on um that uh you might want to look into and and figure out why okay um then the next slides karen you can actually just kind of um these are the measures of central tendency so um on the minimums um and I won't go through them for time um but there was nothing really outstanding here what you can look at is on um the only one that was karen if you can go to the last slide of those not the last side of the presentation but the last slide of the bars incarceration minimums for cocaine possession yeah over 2.5 grams yeah here you'll see that so again this is the same it's the same crime where we had the um the disparity in chinan county we also have a disparity in the mac in the time that somebody is sentenced to um in the minimum like the the the highest number there right so it was 4.5 years for black defendants was the highest minimum and it was uh four um years for white defendants so black defendants had this higher um threshold um on all of them for uh the minimum sentence for cocaine possession over 2.5 grams and here unlike all these other crimes for incarceration we actually have like you know an equal amount of black defendants and white defendants and these are charges of uh black defendants and white defendants not necessarily individuals um but something to look into and then the last analysis I did um to the next slide karen on dispositions by age group this one just actually came to me we're doing a recidivism study for dcf and I noticed some funny numbers there um and just got me thinking um and so what I did is I grouped uh the defendants in these age bands and then um just kind of highlighted for the non-white defendants what the top three percentages were um and you'll see the wrong numbers again I've given you the wrong numbers in the um um in the excel spreadsheet thank you um so here if we look at this age band of 17 to 20 the good news is is that these kids are now being mostly sent down to juvenile court so the um the disparities and the um the you know the the collateral consequences of getting a criminal conviction at such a young age um will now be minimized if these kids are convicted or or found to be delinquent um by pushing them by pushing all these kids into the into the younger um into juvenile court so this is um this was just an interesting um so this disparity and and I think it's a good thing that overall the state is doing this and that this will at least have some um positive impact on uh defendants of color going through the system um so that this is where the age the the percentages were um and that the raw numbers you'll see are uh below that in the in the excel spreadsheet and then just finally for the last slide Karen yep um you've got a couple questions I don't know okay yeah sure no that's fine sorry okay first is Julie um Karen and Robin can you go back one more slide to the greater than two and a half grams that one so um my question on this is is this for is this would this have been for if this was their sole um charge or their sole I guess conviction is probably the right word if they were convicted of greater than two and a half grams plus a weapons violation or is it just this is only uh one no so this is um this is their sentence for the 2.5 grams or more this is not the sentence so the person who has a conviction for the weapons violation and the cocaine possession is in this data um they are here for the cocaine possession and this is the sentence that they got on that they are not here right so this is another analysis that you would do going forward is kind of what other charges were it were associated with this and what upward or downward pressure did those other charges perhaps put or exert on the on the sentence on the minimum and I just you know so we report out the minimum sentence because that seems to be driving what DOC does um you know there's also the maximums as well and we can look at that some other time too okay thank you yep just go ahead Robin you wanted to go to that last slide I guess so then the last slide so this is just our suggestions um while everyone's working out the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics and everything that's going to get to get up and running um we have really been saying constantly that that um some qualitative analysis might be really helpful so this audit of selected case files to identify themes capturing people's stories through structured interviews text analysis and focus groups and then analyzing that for ways that we can pinpoint areas in the system that can be changed and then this is just you know my own kind of uh legal analysis you know maybe for the law school there on uh you know what laws do we still enforce that were passed because of racism or with the help of racism and so we know that there are laws in the books that were passed because of racism um and uh to further white supremacy but we still enforce those um and so how do we as a as a as a culture or community reckon with that and what do we do um and that's just something the law school can do and that's what I got thank you other uh julia now I can't read hold on give me a moment julio you have a question yeah I also had a question on the same slide that captain scribner had if I could go back to slides so for the um for the comparisons here it's 2.5 grams so that could be three grams or that could be five kilos is that right it's like it's I think at five kilos you're into the trafficking subsection of that but I'll defer to the like what's the uh do you know what the for the offense like what the upper limit is I'll defer no there is none in the statute but I'll defer to the attorneys to say what happens in practice but yes there is a wide range of I don't know the weights uh unless I mix it back in with the other data um to get the weights um okay and I didn't see anything here because I know you were looking at state and local data but when we're talking about drug offenses for the higher amounts you know there are prosecutions that occur out of the U. S. Attorney's office yeah and I wonder like that's kind of selection effect in terms of quote big time offenders because I think at least uh and we don't have any of the representatives of federal government here but I I think they would generally tell you know a pine that they go after they try to go after the bigger fish and so yeah I just don't know how that uh how that plays yeah also the upper end offenders that you're looking at um and so I do want to put a flag and say uh sorry that you bring up a really good point that we didn't actually um that wasn't included in the rdap report but I think should be discussed at some point um is that we don't know about that decision for the in Vermont about when the feds step in and take a case where some of the punishments are much harsher um so uh that that isn't it that's something that we haven't studied um and working with the U. S. Attorney's office to get them on board to share data would be helpful um so that people could look at the disparate impact if there is you know of what happens when the feds come in are the feds picking up certain cases and only picking up um cases of non-white defendants or you know is there a disparity there I mean it's beyond um perhaps what the what the Vermont legislature could do but um yes that's something we would very much like to study someday um but I'll leave it also to for the attorneys to answer that that question about what's your general upper limit on the 2.5 grams um Robin on that last slide and I say this kind of well hold on I'll table that for a moment any other questions or comments okay Robin I want to ask you about on this last slide is this something that I could help work with you with or something where we can get these broken down a bit more because I'm not sure that everyone's going to get what structured interviews text analysis what those tools of qualitative analysis that I know way more than I want to know right um I do know we use actual computer programs like you know when you analyze the like there's still computer programs involved but I but I think that we may want to break those down more get these out then to the panel and take this is obviously a beginning conversation what we've just done and bring this up again okay yeah yeah I'd like to work with you on that yep okay because I'm feeling like that's the next step here is that this needs to be broken down more um or filled out I guess would be more the proper term okay yeah awesome great anyone else before we move on thank you so much yeah and I knew that I knew that craft was going to be a nightmare yeah it is it is um you know and I think that we're certainly I think one of the things that you know I hope the committee can you know really considers is that conversation that Monica and I had about getting everyone to agree these are at least you know three measures that we always want to see um that help you know and to have that discussion okay great thank you I'm gonna stop sharing now there we go great thanks Karen sure okay I would like to move on to the discussion of h145 an act relating to amending the standards for law enforcement use of force um just as a preamble here we have been asked to comment as a body upon h145 as I said at the beginning of the meeting I will be testifying testifying about this on Thursday morning at nine o'clock in front of the senate judiciary committee it it's on the agenda because I need to get a sense of the panel's thinking I need to know what I'm saying because at the moment I have no clue um representative LaLon has very kindly offered to present this bill to us as he has been instrumental in um getting this legislation moving through the legislature this session and so now without further ado just gonna turn it over to you sir thank you aton um so this bill h145 it actually has a few amendments to a bill that we passed last september in fact most of the what you see if you've looked at the bill h145 is language that is good would go into law in july if this bill does not end up getting passed and signed by the governor just fyi i so i'm going to take this by just explaining a little bit about what that bill does and then point specifically to uh where the amendments are in 145 now i don't know if the senate is going to ask you to just comment on what those amendments are or if they want your view on the whole thing so i'll go ahead and kind of give you the high level of what what this bill does so last year we passed two bills involving police use of force s219 which became act 147 established a criminal offense uh holding law enforcement criminally accountable if they used a prohibited restraint on a person and caused seriously serious bodily injury or death so a primitive prohibited restraint was defined as a maneuver that impedes the flow of blood or oxygen to the brain in other words it's a chokehold so the second bill s119 which became act 165 established a statewide statutory standard for police use of force including the use of deadly force and act 165 tightened the existing restrictions that are found in common law and court law on use of force in a number of ways and i'll just hit the high points first in determining whether a use of force was justified act 165 requires a court to look at an officer's conduct and decisions leading up to the use of force so did the officer seek to de-escalate the situation to avoid having to use force or did the officer instead escalate the situation making the use of force inevitable so without those these new standards you know to determine if the use of force was justified courts generally would look only to the moment when force is used not what led up to the use of force so that was a pretty significant change from underlying court law uh second the law says that any use of force must be reasonable necessary and proportional in order for it to be found to be justified third and this is a very important change in the law as well when an officer knows that a person is impaired due to a mental illness or some other factor the officer must take that into account in determining what if any force to use in the situation fourth for use of deadly force to be justified it must be objectively reasonable and necessary to counter an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury if there is a reasonable alternative to the use of deadly force to counter that threat the officer has to go with that alternative also the force has to that is applied has to cease as soon as there is no longer a threat and that also is a little bit different than standard case law is particularly the requirement of there being a reasonable alternative it doesn't that what we put into law really doesn't stretch what we have in case law right now it does follow really a number of cases but it picks those cases in the in those precedents that really I think have the tighter restrictions so fifth act 165 along with the other law that I mentioned act 147 banned choke holds and this is an important part although their use could be justified when deadly force was justified finally the act act 165 it had an effective date of July 1st 2021 to allow the Department of Public Safety to produce a policy to put the use of force standards into effect and DPS has dutifully been taken up the task and it continues to work on those implementing policies but to assist it in drafting those policies DPS came to us and asked for some clarifications of certain parts of the use of force law and that's where H 145 comes in it provides the necessary clarifications at least the ones that the House Judiciary Committee agreed to there were a couple suggestions that we we did not agree to because we thought that they moved away from where we were trying to go with with the standards so so under the laws we passed well first of all you know the primary need for the clarification involves prohibited restraints or choke holds so under the laws that we passed last year an officer again who uses a prohibited restraint or choke hold I'll just call them choke holds that results in death or serious bodily injury can avoid criminal liability by invoking the justifiable homicide defense that defense applies of deadly force was justified under the standards that we have put into place so the laws that we passed last year provides this indirect way of getting to the conclusion that use of a choke hold is permitted if deadly force is otherwise justified so H 145 the amendment is more direct it's clear and it's transparent in reaching that conclusion so first H 145 changes the terminology in the law that we passed last year instead of the use of the term prohibited restraint we're calling it what it is we're calling it a choke hold second we clarify the definition of choke holds and we make it make the definition easier to use more straightforward to make sure that we are covering the actions that we want to address third it also makes clear that an officer must intervene when an other officer is using a choke hold when deadly force is not justified and finally it clarifies that a law enforcement officer may not use a choke hold unless deadly force is justified of course that means that a law enforcement officer may use a choke hold when faced with such a situation that requires deadly force so these chains I'm just about done but these changes do not ease the restrictions on the use of deadly of choke holds you know the statutory standards are still there for the use of deadly force they remain intact so before the choke hold can be used it must be objectively reasonable and necessary to defend against the imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury there has to be no other reasonable alternative to the use of that force and it has to cease as soon as there's no longer that threat so the bottom line is we understood from law enforcement that there are situations where the use of a choke hold can be the best or really the only option that a law enforcement officer may use in the life or death situation so if an officer's only option is to use a firearm we'd rather not in certain situations have that be their only option in that life and death situation those are the that's really the main thing that we did in the bill we also extended the the effective date to make sure that DPS has enough time to finish its policy making and its training and I think there are maybe a couple other clarification language but really it's the choke hold component on H145 but again I don't know if they're going to be asking you for broader input what you think of the whole thing I don't know they never tell me they just say show up right right and talk about this right right so so that that's I know there are other people who know a lot about this bill who are in fact part of our DAP and also I know Julio knows a lot about it and and so does the captain as well and I think she in fact testified if I'm remembering right no it wasn't you it was um I'm trying to remember who it was that testified any events yeah major Jonas I think yeah that's what it was that's that's who it was it was very yeah anyway I'm happy to answer questions but I was really mainly just wanted to give you the introduction of what the bill was because there's a lot there yeah but thank you so much well Julio you're bobbing does that mean like you're thinking about raising your hand no I was nodding at getting the name correct about the other witness oh okay okay what I again thank you representative um what I need from all of us is a sense so I sent the bill a link to it I'm trusting you've read it I need feedback of some form on these issues to take two the senate judiciary on Thursday morning so this is your chance to go yeah I'm gonna let me see if I pick this off to some degree because there were similar issues that have been up before us around related issues I would say um the term reasonable has been an issue for people on this body in other contexts so I'm just gonna throw that out there as bait and see if that is if that has a similar reaction in this context and if that might be something that I should be speaking about so uh it's on this judge Greer so I'm gonna take the easy way out on this one um I have not testified I have not testified on this bill for what probably are obvious reasons it's purely a policy decision and therefore I would not be weighing in either with this group or with the committee I don't believe that I have testified on this bill for those reasons so I don't think I can be of much assistance to you tonight in that regard okay thank you yes sorry anybody else yeah I guess I'll talk well please um so first of all I just want to make a point like I know there's not reactions on here like I'm used to in zoom so I just wanted to exhale because personally this is actually a hard and triggering conversation especially being a Black person what's going on in our world so I just want to make that point as I have this conversation that it's not easy for me to actually sit in this meeting and to endure the conversations that we're having and to look at the information that we're receiving and it's a lot to take in and so I just wanted to acknowledge that in that space but what I wanted to say was looking at the more bigger picture and the more systemic picture the more upstream and really concerned about what the last person said um and I'm sorry I'm paraphrasing what you said was basically y'all are still operating under white supremacy culture of policies and we're trying to figure out how to undo those dismantle them get rid of them whatever but the reality too it is is that those still exist and so I'm wondering how we can continue to operate in that container that people are very forthcoming and saying in this public meeting yet we I understand we have to sort of chip away at various different things and order sort of to dismantle or break down these systems but at the same time I'm feeling like we're either not going upstream enough or not getting down to the roots enough and so I just want to um put back into the space about that white supremacy container that we're in that other people mentioned in this in the space and not just me and that there are actually policies or laws on the books um that actually are not humane and dignified in which these um bills are supposed to be supporting I um so I would love to um have that be brought into the conversation aton a few other a few other things I wanted to say was um it's one thing to make these policies but there's another thing to actually implement them and then to hold people accountable so I'm wondering about the implementation and I'm wondering about the unlearning the as much as the learning that needs to happen is the unlearning um so the unlearning of these tactics and these uses and the learning of maybe alternative ways and communication and things like that like those two things going hand in hand so I'm very interested about what specifically we us whoever is working on this is really looking at to sort of replace that with if if that is the method of chokeholds in which people have been traded or naturally just a go to then how are we unlearning that actually physical tactic and how are we learning something else to replace that that can show up in our bodies because that is a physical thing and I think it's like really serious I um so I really want to understand more about the implementation of of this bill and what that would really what that would really look like and what that would mean and maybe even being a little bit more specific to give some direction in that I also am concerned about the accountability because as I know this is a bill going in and then you figure things out as you go down the line to be successful after implementation there has to be accountability and I really am trying to understand the immunity or the union or whatever it is that police have and it's it's hard to have these conversations of putting policies in place when they're not they're implemented in a white supremacy container and then there's no mechanisms for actual accountability when those things happen so I'm having trouble in the conversation because I want to see those things and and maybe that's another bill and maybe I'm jumping like into other things but I'm I'm I'm just concerned for that and the things that I'll say that I um like is I'm very pleased to hear about um people who might have mental illness and being able to have appropriate accommodations I'm very very pleased with that and I think that should be uplifted I am very pleased with the what I consider as the no bystander kind of ruler law of like not letting your buddy choke your choke the person out because you're on the law enforcement too I think that's a really good rule of thumb and again I think that should be um lifted up I agree with what you said Atom about um about um the um reasonableness of things and the last thing I want to say that I'm really concerned about is a lot of what I read is all about interpretation and and just like lawyers and officers as well um interpret things in the moment of how they feel and we know that they're it's implicit and explicit bias and we can set all these things up and still understand like where is that interpretation and is there something more specific or concise so it's clearer around not having such a wide interpretation of all of these policies that we're creating that um or actually can cause people's lives so I'll I'll just leave it at that for now thank you thanks Sheila representative Lalonde yeah sorry representative Lalonde you have your hand sorry well I turned off my video instead of turning on on my mic uh Sheila that was awesome I really appreciate it uh really appreciate that input but I just want a couple things just uh for clarification um so this this bill or uh or this law establishes this statutory standard uh the actually input the implementation of this is occurring through the the policies that are being formed right now with the DPS is really taking the lead to get a model statewide policy and that's where the rubber hits the road so to speak that's really where the details come in and from that is also the training as far as you know the de-escalation is really going to be emphasis how to address the situations where an individual does have an impairment my understanding is those details are are really sorted out in the in the policies and then in the training that is done so I just wanted to definitely flag that for you so so my the other point is that perhaps our DAP should be also weighing in on that policy it's not just the statutory standard and I know that that's an ongoing project probably Julio knows more about where that stands right now but certainly that's a place that that you could weigh in on that one final point I just want to note is that the criminal justice training council has not trained on choke holds for a very long time it's not something that's going to be trained on it's not something that has been trained on but what we learned in testimony is there are situations where there's a grappling situation and and that's really you know it's it's somebody a law enforcement officer may use a chokehold in in in those limited circumstances because there's no other there's no other action that can be taken so any event I just wanted to comment and and answer a couple of those questions but I really do appreciate uh Sheila and hopefully we'll get you to testify at some point in front of the Judiciary Committee on some of the various issues so thanks great anyone else Julio yeah just to follow up with what what Sheila was saying about um I mean covered a lot of really important ground I think on some of this for folks who have not been involved in or following the legislative action a lot of the things that the leg that the Vermont legislature did it wasn't like it all just came out of you know the golden dome um so the uh for example advocacy for raising the standard for use of force and until it's a last resort necessity is really I think was the first uh demand put out last June by the NAACP legal defense fund they put out a list of police perform priorities so I just want to acknowledge that there have been a lot of voice important voices nationally and locally um who've been advocating these changes and um it's been I think in different states it's been a collaborative efforts LDF also put out demands and it's had some success in Vermont and and in other states zeroing in on on choke holds and and that restraints um so I just wanted to add that perspective that a lot of these ideas um have genesis really from a lot of the communities that have been most most affected and so it's good to see that Vermont is picking up on them and there's a lots to do and policing um and I really do encourage people to follow it more closely because every time I've heard a new a new witness testified they've added really something important to the the conversation so I would I would encourage it as much as I love hearing a ton uh I I'd love to hear more people uh I think you'd agree right a ton is that having the same and the five yes so I think that I think that's it would be really important and uh I think everybody's got got something to say and you all should know I've been passing on names of a lot of you you should know that I've been sneaky Rebecca and to uh share with the panel um of course I'm here as the defender generals doesn't mean so to the extent that I can share what the officer defender general's position has been on this bill um I was I was following this more closely last summer uh we we generally support this but echoing what Sheila has said here we had some concerns um similar to what you're you're talking about now which is about uh the interpretation of of a lot of the terms referenced there uh but what hasn't been raised here is there was a creation of a new crime um 20 year felony and again we didn't think that was the best approach for this I think the the the theme that Sheila is hitting upon that I want to just jump on and it relates to what the defender general's um criticism has been if there is it's just that it's it's too narrowly focused that we worry that it won't address um sort of the systemic issue uh rather it's so focused on individual officers in a particular type of use of force instance um but in terms of dealing with real accountability transparency I know there was some discussion I don't have them follow this where the body cam uh aspect to this peeled off or if that's still alive um whether or not police disciplinary records we're going to be made public uh while there is some references in there in terms of addressing mental health crises we wanted to see actual proposed legislation going deeper into addressing first responders to the scene of mental health crises and in fact rethinking entirely not very far afield from what our DAP has discussed in our report and Susanna Davis has referenced here this morning earlier today so I just wanted to share that a time just um for what it's worth I got locked here this is great thank you this is great anybody else have have this is wonderful thank you it's I'm going to spend a lot of time uh tomorrow crafting a good outline for what I will say um does anyone else have it yes whoever just said my name this is David chair hi David hi there I just wanted to know Julio Thompson's really been uh our office's expert working on this bill assisting the legislature with uh drafting it and making sure the various details all work together but did just want to know and I appreciate his comments earlier um wanted to note for you the chair and for the record our office has been broadly supportive of this bill and last year sort of twin if you will or precursor effort around raising the standard just so you we have I don't want to like take up too much time here because we we sort of get our own privileged voice in the legislature um and so I want other panel members to spend more time speaking about it but I just just want to note so you know for the record as a member we are supportive of the of the bill great thank you very much thank you anyone else okay representative Lalonde thank you again that was that was very helpful thanks for offering to do that my pleasure and um I want to simply quickly in the few moments we have left circle back to coach Christie's comments about um H317 the Bureau of Racial Justice statistics I cannot say that and um the possibility of our DAP playing an advisory role um in that body uh my suggestion is I guess frankly that we look at that at our next meeting because we're not really going to have time to delve I think at this point with five minutes left more deeply into what it would take if it's even possible for this body to do that we would at least in my view really as I said earlier when coach was speaking um need to talk very very dramatically and concretely about administrative support for this panel um I am I cannot tell you how grateful I am for Olivia Vaughn however we will need more um and a lot more I think um we currently meet twice I mean once a month I'm not sure and I don't know because I don't know what this is all going to take at this moment I don't know that anyone does but it would seem not beyond the realm of impossibility that we would need to be more in touch than we presently are so in other words there's there are just a lot of issues I think they've been thrown very quickly at us as coach himself says this is the beginning of a of a discussion um and I'm more than willing to outline some of this and circulate them to the panel for comments and get it going that way to sort of jump start a conversation for our meeting in May um Mr. Chair if I may representative um believe it or not I've got this really bizarre it's called uh X mind and it's a mind mapping piece of software and okay what I created is a scary map okay but but I think it might be helpful for you when you get a chance to look at it as your questions because it it's actually um fairly accurately detailed around the um the charge you know of our depth great great and so so a lot of that's detailed and then the discussion pieces that you're talking about can be ongoing just to see what partners would be available and willing to assist in developing the next stages so um that's the an additional cliff note great thank you coach I think you and I need to talk I think you and I should get together and start working on this idea I have for the panel as a whole to sort of outline issues for a kind of like white paper that I can circulate to the panel so people can comment on it and look at it and think about it and not rush does that sound all right that you and I get in touch about this it sounds like a great plan great let's do that then so um in the one minute and 20 seconds we have left does anyone have new business to raise Sheila Sheila sorry I couldn't get myself off of mute thank you aton you're welcome go ahead um no it's it's not new business I just wanted to be clear with what our task was and a director susanna I think had said that one of the things that is being asked of the our dapp is actually where to what is our opinion on placing the bureau of statistics where we want to house it is that correct I just want to make sure because I didn't really just hear that from you and so I was a little confused uh we are working on that yes but they that's already under discussion but we're working on talking about it being housed partly under this body that's something I didn't discuss in front of the legislature and what I'm talking about is that there are a bunch of issues that would be involved and starting a discussion on paper of what all those issues would be and having on that paper sort of a back and forth people put down concerns dislikes likes things of that nature so is in my understanding um I would like to understand and have more information of the different branches and where things can be placed I'm hearing a lot of conversation not just on this panel but in different um committees or panels that I'm sitting on and where we're constantly having these discussions of of independency and people wanting to be really independent and then also talking about either support or actual placement of an entity within these branches and I'd just be honest that I feel ignorant around what those branches really do and how they can really support what is going on and I'd love if somebody has the cheat sheet to that to provide that to the our dapps so that when we come back before we come back next month I can understand more about well why would I want an independent versus in the judicial or in the admin or whatever and I just don't quite understand it I don't know if that information is compiled in one place and I think it'd be really helpful for me as well as my community to um have that resource let me try digging around that's going to be interesting I'll try digging around Sheila thank you you're welcome um okay our next meeting is 11 May 2021 uh just so you know obviously there are going to be bunch of emails going around before then um and if anyone wants to entertain a motion to adjourn actually it's not actually it's not entertained if wants wants to float it I moved to adjourn Sheila thank you does anyone second that Julie I second brand all in favor unmute yourselves and say I everyone opposed unmute yourself everyone out of stating you know what we won we're done I will see you all next month thank you very very much for everyone's attention and participation Susanna coach Christy representative LaLonde all of the folks from CRG um thank you thank you for coming thank you for your help thank you for your work and participation and everyone have a good month get your shots and I'll see you in May be well thank you tonight