 The other item that came out of the meeting for where it goes, because it's an idea that the Chief's had for a while, is the thought of having more information available to officers so that when they are responding to someone who needs help, that they know more about it and they can respond in the best way they can. Can I interrupt you for a second? I can give you a really great example of this, which is at one point in time, my son was found by the state troopers up on the interstate, naked at night in late October, and they brilliantly asked him who we should call, and he said, call my mom, and so they did, and they said, what do you want me to do with them, and I said, we'll take him to the emergency room, and I'm going to be there, and I can see that they were a little stressed, because I guess he caused like a minor car accident and someone trying to avoid him or just being frightened by a naked kid up on the interstate, but it was sort of that they just weren't readable, so I called my mom and they knew what mom said, and it seems so simple in a way that they would do that, but how often does the situation not get hammered that sensibly? So we're coming and it says if this is an idea that we can give this viable and we want to pursue it, we're resources that can help them and try to do some of the legwork in, you know, working through the disability rights Vermont ACLU issues to work through those before it comes to a problem, you know, like deal with the problems right up front of you, where we, you know, go too far. But then this is really a, it's really the ball, you have the resources to pursue, and this idea that we've had pretty much set up about even more about them, is there a countering them in crisis and saying, there's a person, I mean, I'm summing up, medication call their doctor, don't call their mom, their mom's the trigger, whatever, but the person would have control over that, so that they would ostensibly, I mean, hopefully provide us with the right information to make the right call to help deescalate. It got stymied at the city attorney's office worrying about, like you alluded to with the ACLU where folks might say about, I mean, frankly, I don't know about labeling people in a certain way, to be honest, but I don't quite understand, like, is this voluntary? Well, and the thing that kind of makes it an interesting conversation is there's already something called an advanced directive for mental health. So people are already, it's, you know, voluntarily disclosing. So it's very similar, it feels very similar to me to saying, you write your advanced directive, you do that in an appropriate way and decide what you want to share. That's really his response, yeah. So they're going to be like an attachment or a writer or something that if you wanted to also do this, and we just get the police department then. And it's of the, it would be under the control of the person while they're healthy, saying this is how I want to be treated. This is the information I want to share. It's not information that mom provides, it's not information that any relative, you know, it's what that person is. Your spouse gets mad at you and then reports you. It's not that. So there's certainly questions, and I'm acquainted with, you know, Mia Ernst at the ACLU. So, you know, if we, so I could go that way, it's legwork that we would do, you know, to get her list of issues and check them off and say, look, we've addressed every issue you have. So you're off the table here, you're not going to be a problem. We're pretty good at solving these kinds of problems. This, like, this interface exists somewhere in the ether right now. The guy who wrote it is like two analysts gone already. So we have to go find it. But it's worth looking at again, especially, you know, we'll get to it in a second. But March 12th, we're going to do analysts, so write coding and stuff. Point taken. Community Police Academy. Several of us would really like to be the Community Police Academy. And I think, you know, like, I have 27 years in the Coast Guard active in reserve. And so we're a reporting party, and I have some very interested in the Coast Guard. But I don't really know what it's like to be community police and what these people do every day. And so I'm really interested in that. I think we have four or five people. That's going to be next year. We just finished one. When you came to visit me, we'd love to have you guys. Definitely. That'd be great. What is it going to start again? January. January. And then one other thing that we have. We have some small, very small module trains that we can put on. Right. That we do all the time. And there's some that are specifically oriented towards police. And there's some that are more general. So for example, like knowing, like my son, for example, hears voices out of his symptoms when he's out of symptoms. And when he's hearing voices, he really can't hear any things. And so kind of learning some of the subtleties. I think police understand how you're interacting with the person. Like you have to get them de-escalation in that sense, then getting them to a point where they can even hear you. And so learning some of this. I think it's a really helpful thing for police officers when they're responding to a call. So your assistant gave me the email, your training officer sent me an email saying we could get on your monthly training. Sure. And we did kind of jump into it, but we have created a, what we're calling a subcommittee to address mental health issues within Chittenden County, which means we're talking with a lot of people within the county. On crisis response. So it's not just that we're coming here we're, you know, interacting with others. We see that as a team effort with the community, the mental health facilities, hospitals, doctors, Howard Center, you know, all the different people has mental illness and needs support in these communities. We're kind of lucky in that sense. Okay, so let's do some cool things in this community and see what things that we can invite them. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Thank you for your time. Hi. I'm Laura Caputo. I'm sorry, I just came from work. I'm not here representing the Viverman National Guard. Well, thank you for your service. Thanks. Any time to change. I'm here in the capacity of a Burlington resident and I'm a parent of a sixth grader and a fourth grader. My priority in our schools is of grave concern to me and then shooting in Florida was sort of the tipping point for me where I said it's time for me to become more civically engaged in this. I'm concerned because in the military we train run-hide-bite for an active shooter scenario, but the schools are not teaching that and we continue to train lockdown and I feel like it's putting the kids at risk if there is an active shooter and I know that the chances are very slim that it's going to happen here but then the arraignment in Rutland of the 18-year-old who had the plan, so tomorrow I'm attending a session at Christ the King School because they're training Alice, which I think is a security technique that Intercom and the event the principal gets showed so that the kids can evacuate to dealer.com. Techniques in this private school are more progressive than the security techniques we're looking at in our public schools. So I wrote an email also to our superintendent and he said that a safety officer was hired and that the security protocols are being reviewed, but it's not enough for me and I know that I have availability to help as well. So I guess question number one would be how does law enforcement integrate with the security in our schools? Because I don't understand that and how can I help as a citizen? Search, do anything. I know it's spent on a situation likely to not happen finding my resources to do something because I am concerned about it. Sure, so thank you. Just as an aside, one of the things I understand the suspect did was pull a firearm. Specifically, it's hard to know whether you should run, hide, fight in an office or stay put and do a lockdown. Ultimately, schools have a great say in that. I think we entire high school at once would result in a higher or more deaths than we responded in a matter of years. So I agree, there are different answers. Kids on the lower floors may want to I'm saying kids on the upper floors might want to hide. It's a problem that we're having these high school students in elementary school and junior high schools have to contend with the fact that somebody with a weapon made for the infantry can come in and start killing all of them. And it's happened. It's happened in elementary school. It's happened in junior high school. It's happened in high school. And it's happened in high school. It's happened in high school. That's right. We have a school research officer who is permanently assigned to the high school and then we have a school research officer who circulates elementary schools out on patrol. Anybody who's not qualified on patrol there's a few who are qualified on patrol rifles or shotguns. But almost everyone is right. Very small number. So virtually every officer in the Burlington Police Department is qualified on and deploys with a rifle frankly similar to what the infantry uses because we have to fight people with those types of weapons in the school shooter situation. So if the school is hiring a security person to review their security I'm curious to hear what they say and I'm not blowing off your concerns. I mean I think they're just right. I watch what's going on and I get sort of infuriated. I don't have an easy answer to you except to say that anybody who's not a convicted felon and not on a watch list for mental health can buy any of those rifles right now in Vermont minutes away. And you don't have to go through a background check to buy a third party at all. You could be a Brady disqualified felon or a mentally ill person and there's no background check to sell the weapons. Don't worry that's civic engagement part too. Yeah yeah so I'm saying what I'm saying by way of it's very very very hard for the police to stay ahead of that. We're just hoping to respond to that as quickly as possible. The officers train for it and they know what's going on and they know our instructions to get in there as fast as possible to get that person back to the death. So I guess what is your recommendation to me on how to help? Yeah please go ahead. I'm wondering and I'm going to give you my personal manifesto. I'm young all my kids went through school here I graduated from middle school and I really am touched by what you're saying and I share your concern. I have grandchildren in school here and I'd like to talk to you more about it. And one of the thoughts I'm having as you guys are listening to you speak is I wonder if there's a way that we might be is there ever a time where all the security needs to be I hope there is. But I mean it just seems like you know maybe presenting because I think people I think that people at least need enough information about what's possible because I think people respond to a training like that like oh god we gotta do this training so we're doing it safe and if they don't know the difference between the different types of approaches or trainings then they're making decisions without enough information. So I'd really like to talk to you more about that and maybe I'll try to figure something out. I mean to reiterate I think in the back of every cruiser every police car there's a vest not only the officer's normal vest but this vest meant to stop rifle fire and held it meant to stop rifle fire and no city or municipality or police jurisdiction in the state in fact in northern New England for that matter can get more police officers quickly to a place where people need help and grow to police and I'm not saying that out of stubborn pride it's just a fact that first of all there aren't any municipalities around none of them are as big as we are and none of them have the resources in the field like we do and that might be cold comfort I don't you're asking me and I mean this not in a resentful way asking me to solve the insane man shooting epidemic that only afflicts our country other countries to a much much it happens in other countries to a much much lesser extent believe me I would love to my gift to our nation would be to help solve that I don't have an answer for you about that I just know that we train our cops to be de-escalators and to be negotiators but they all know in their heart that if this would have happened they will be extremely aggressive and extremely quick they will try to get to your children as fast as possible and they're going to put their bodies in the way myself too and the men and women right here in the back we're all going to go as fast as we can I think the truth chief is that if you could solve it you would I don't really hear her saying that I hear her saying let's figure out how to be as prepared for sure please no I'm not I understand but what I'm trying to say is I guess when you when she says like how can I help if I said that these are the seven things you can do to help we'd be halfway towards like solving it you know what I mean there is more that we can do I think as a community when community members are willing to help right so what partnership what drills have happened law enforcement in the schools on this what communication has been done with the parents on what these security protocols are incidentally I can tell you that not a lot or if this communication has happened it's been very very hard to come to it so I don't need you to solve it but there I represent many parents that are concerned and it's a growing body of people that are willing to help at no extra dollar cost to the city so I don't need anyone to solve it but I also need to know that action that we can help that we can do something better we can review security I have something for you well this is I think that everyone's frustrated everyone's saying our hearts are broken and I'm not to turn this into a political conversation but the most inspiration that I've had has come from the high school students in Florida who have actually said like enough is enough we've got to move the guns and we've got to get to instead of keep putting a bandaid on the problem we've got to go deeper so that's where I think the real solution is is in we've got to say we've got to get these guns off the street because we're going to have much of a real human and we're arming them and giving them the ability to hurt a lot of children so a gun do you have a training that you're doing if there's someone for instance at the high school yes we've got to have the lockdown rules at the schools but that in an office situation normally when someone comes into an office they're not just looking to kill everyone in the entire office complex they're usually looking to take out a grudge against the people in that particular firm so run high fight is because if the 20 people that work and get out of the office the person who holds the grudge or has come for revenge is not very likely to just go start killing people in the next office for no reason he's not he or she doesn't have that mostly he doesn't have that in mind school shootings it's different because there's hundreds or a thousand or however many kids in school and it's an inexhaustible supply of targets instead of creating chaos everybody's running everywhere they say just to barricade ourselves in and you know the cops will be there in 2, 3, 4 minutes to fight we do give trainings to to people in offices and we do coordinate lockdown drills with the schools so yes and they're available and we can't tell the school this is how you're going to do it we insist if a push comes to shove it was always defer to the police but lockdowns run high fight is pretty much the doctrine for most offices and lockdown drills is pretty much the doctrine for most schools and they seem different but there's a lot to them and I'm not saying you will not be satisfied if you're not satisfied this is no it's suboptimal no matter which one you choose but one way to think of it is something at least in the in the army called the decisive point the decisive point is where it's that moment it's that act or that place or that development where all of the momentum shifts away from the defender and is in the favor of the attacker and so if you think about it you can I'm trying to think of I mean I know all these military scenarios but when you're going to bomb the subway the decisive point is when somebody gets through the turn stop of the bomb it takes it would take a miracle to stop it at that point we've lost all of our advantages and now we're just hoping the attacker does minimal damage for a school it's when that attacker enters school grounds with a firearm that moment is the decisive point now everything's in the attacker's favor and nothing is in the we're just reacting at that point so if you want to think about my advice to you is to we need to think long and hard about places we can intervene in ways to stop this from happening all the way up into the the decisive point a lot of what I told you run high fight Alice lockdown police responding from a distance that's all after the decisive point that's just that's just damage control that's just trying to get the attacker to either suicide or get shot before he or she kills any more people it's everything leading up to that all the way from talk about gun control to identifying mentally ill kids and taking their threats seriously to you know people reporting suspicious activity I mean those are those are all the things that that happened before the decisive point that we stand the best chance because my second question that I had tonight is I'm the day after the shooting there was an incident in my daughter's middle school that my daughter was a witness to and that the police responded to and police department aside we didn't get a notification from the school at all and then when I did get to speak with the principal she indicated to me that because they couldn't get a hold of their parents the child would be let back in school next day and the kid ended up being locked out of the classroom for being disruptive and he punched the window out and my daughter was standing next to him when it happened and she assured me my daughter was safe at all times but I thought well because he chose to take his anger out on the window and not my daughter's face so I guess it just begs the question you know that was all she was allowed to tell me and I guess why she had already told me there's a mental health component there why does that child get to be let back in school I guess it's all wrapped together right mental illness and tips and indicating and making sure our security postures are good I guess that was the other reason I came today I guess a little bit I'd like a little bit of insight on when law enforcement responds to an actual action in the school I mean most adults we can't take into custody for more than it takes to issue a recitation I just didn't think you should be that controlled I don't have some more particular insight about the incident or the policies in general the state of Vermont is very forgiving for the students in fact we just had an hour long meeting with the school board today with one of the reps from the school board they said why do you ever have to take anyone out of school period the criticism was that the police take police action against students at all I mean there are folks on the school board that say the police should not be taking police action in schools period like someone so there's a difference of thing in the next stop not clear if we're going to control school board meeting next no I'm not being I'm only being partially facetious there's a very very high bar for police action in schools taking a child out of the classroom is considered you know invasive and traumatic it has to be legally justified and accept unless it's a very serious it's a very serious felony there's very little we can do to seize a juvenile alright thank you we appreciate it and I ask kind of a follow-up question there's a lot of activity in the legislature related to childhood trauma and another term called aces and I'm curious just to take a sense of people who's familiar with the term aces and what that means so it's fun that you know it's something that if I could share information with Christine last week I attended a conference at UVM where the people within the state were teaching the first year medical students about aces and childhood trauma and just the impact that that has on a person for their whole life and there's actually a correlation to something like substance use you know substance use behaviors for sure heart attacks numerous illnesses caused by and aces is the term adverse childhood experiences but I'm not going to delve into it right now but I may share some information to share as you feel appropriate so Chief Wright was mentioning that they are looking at one of my resolutions is to minimize checking the phone during meetings but you did want to let me know that they are looking at ALICE training as part of the review that you were talking about with the new safety person our officers are looking at going to ALICE training whether they're going to be instructors or not on that shore but that is one of the things there's a different way of doing things compared to what we're currently doing and we're always looking to see what the national vibe is to see what's good and what's bad what the best practices are can you just explain is ALICE an acronym? yes ALICE is an acronym one second it is alert, lockdown informed, counter and evacuate so don't ask me about anything else about it but I know it's been around for quite a number of years I know some people back in the Midwest who are instructors they think it's the greatest thing and I think it goes along what Chief Del Pozo said about especially the smaller schools to be able to do something different to alert other people in the building rather than just either locking down or leaving inform a lot more people of what's happening and then try and find the best way based on their circumstances which may be different from another area of the building about what to do and how to act so to this side I wanted to say when I was assigned to the Intelligence Bureau in the New York City Police Department living in the Middle East I was assigned to the rest of the aftershooter attacks in India but there are cases where people acting decisively were able to evacuate for example Victoria Terminus Transition fast enough to save dozens and dozens of lives it was an instance of a man working at the station in a control booth that he could see the terrorists coming in from his right and so he told everybody to flee to his left so decisive stuff like that does make a difference it's hard to I bristle at the idea we want our kids to survive the idea that we have to train school children and students and administrators make assessments about gunfights and what exit to evacuate by it's frankly insane if we can do it reliably we should do it when you look back at these it's always been a hard show it's always been a disaster Sandy Hook was a disaster Las Vegas was a disaster I just think it's once that person reaches a decisive and I can go on and on I'd love to find the instances one or two instances where someone rammed someone with a car gets out with a knife or something that quickly gets shot by the police and that's just the grace of God that's not Alice or lockdown I really think you're talking about going to Montpelier and the school board and all those antecedent things it doesn't happen in other countries it doesn't happen here to any shadow so it's not like this is plague sweeping the world and no one knows how to solve it's affecting everybody who types it's not like Colorado it just happens here to the extent it does so there's got to be a way to solve this and I mean God, good luck thank you I'm dragging you along gotta ask the mayor permission Colonel thank you for coming I'm very frustrated regional dispatch you wanted to talk about that very briefly just so you know there is something coming up on the ballot it's a referendum and by the way if you guys get bored and want to leave you can go ahead and leave the idea is that right now in several different locations can you familiar with this batch we'll spend a few minutes talking about this we have Burlington Manuski Dispatches with whom Jen? what was that? Manuski Dispatches with whom? Manuski Dispatches for themselves and Sheriff's Office Sheriff's Colchester, Shelburn without just keeping it simple they all pretty much have their own separate dispatches they all pretty much are obligated to work 24-7 there are certain times of the day where it's busy and you might need you might profit efficiency-wise there are a few different radio frequencies to talk over but right now if a copper is free for help in Manuski maybe two cops would hear it on the Manuski frequency he could be right over in the circle and our cops in Burlington could be at the Domino's Pizza they wouldn't hear it until somebody jumped over to our frequency and let us know what was happening same thing with somebody could drop the TV bank in Manuski and be fleeing into Burlington down Shelburn Road into South Burlington and we wouldn't know it until in the middle of coordinating if somebody changed the frequency to tell them there are times at night the value proposition goes where many times, not just at night where there's a low enough volume of traffic that we can actually operate the police departments on the same frequency so that one voice on the radio about where it is for argument's sake in South Burlington Manuski would get heard everywhere and a dispatch could dispatch all of those assignments and you'd have situational awareness about big stretches in the county and the same thing goes for the fire department fire apparatus are much more important to concentrate in many cases of police apparatus and seconds do matter so it would be profitable life saving line it would be a good life saving strategy to be able to immediately and quickly dispatch, it could be a fire on the Burlington border and a South Burlington ladder could get there just as quickly or more quickly than a Burlington ladder like in some cases I'm not the expert the idea would be to be able to aid each other in that seamless way and lastly right now the only way that when you call 9-1-1 you pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1 you talk to a state police service or something called public safety answering point PSAP and they'll ask you a series of questions and the PSAP is able to communicate with our dispatcher right through those walls, it's by land line it's by phone so they write down the information they enter it into their system and please chief I know what you've been doing that's correct me for anything I get wrong and then they then have to pick up a phone and call our dispatcher and explain over the phone to our dispatcher where to send our cops in many many other more advanced places that's a computer transmitter it's just as the 9-1-1 operators taking the report they're entering into a system they press send and it just goes over instead of it literally being a telephone game some estimates say that that adds about 70 seconds to the dispatch time now in the middle of nowhere in Vermont where it's 15 minutes to respond anyway 70 seconds or an extra minute 15 minutes to 16 minutes not the biggest deal but here our response times are between 2 and 3 minutes an extra minute is a big deal another thing is if it's a very very high priority job a shot's fired or someone's shot or an officer needs help with newer systems you can start dispatch in the 9-1 dispatch you can start releasing information to the local dispatch immediately as he or she is taking the call it's almost it's a matter of seconds so the proposal that's on the balance to form a municipal entity here to coordinate with other municipal entities to have a balance on town meeting day that would authorize going forward to it's a purely exploratory just to go forward to create an entity that would regionalize dispatch in Chittenden County for all the participating agencies it would probably be in somewhere in South Vermont because they have the space and one of the things that's important to us is at least to begin with if we save staffing it would be not by letting go any of our dispatchers who've been very good loyal workers but by attrition if they decide to retire they don't want to go to South Burlington maybe over time you wouldn't hire new folks but not diminishing their benefits not diminishing their salary not letting them go it would be a change of working conditions for many of them and frankly the union of dispatchers when are we going to New York? tomorrow morning some chicken meat so one of the things you're trying to do I'm sending five folks down under the leadership of slippery chief right tomorrow morning are you going? they're going tomorrow morning are five people going? three people going okay we got to talk about this probably sooner than that so we're going down to New York City dispatch to look at not the scale because the scale doesn't apply but the workflow is the same so it's not about like there's 300 people taking their own calls but in New York City they'll typically have they'll easily have one, two, or three dozen more than it does they'll have dozens of police resources on the same channel across different precincts so you're looking to be like so they can see that one of the arguments here is like Wellington, South Wellington, Manuski there's too many police officers on one piece of air but it's fewer than the number of officers typically on the air at any given time in New York you can see wouldn't work here with the way they communicate work here and also the workflow of the 911 call taker is going into the communicating by computer not by phone to the dispatchers would also be something they can witness and ask a lot of questions so that's what we're that's what we're looking at I mean I'm not going to be able to answer any other questions but as you can tell I don't think it's a bad idea I think it has to be done right I don't think it's going to save us money but it will lower response times and it should make us more situational and it should help the fire department as well and it'll be on the ballot in a few weeks Do all of the towns have to approve it to work at all? No there needs to be a critical mass of towns three and it looks like as far as the level of interest among not the union and not the citizens we don't know but the municipal governments in South Burlington Burlington Colchester are interested as well as Well it will be Colchester Milton because they go together South Burlington Burlington So again that's not how the folks that's how that's the interest on the part of the government What would the employees decide? It would be the employee of the municipal entity The county of the municipal entity The county of the municipal entity Some of the fear of union is that it becomes a new entity and appears to be somehow dissolved It might be, yeah, I mean there's concern the concern, the main concerns there's that good faith technology and workflow concerns that hasn't been done this way before but I think we can work our way through those by being competent and careful and deliberate and then there's just genuine labor concerns, people don't want change and they also are worried about their positions they're worried about their new benefits that's all real, I mean it's not a trivial thing any other questions? Alright and I'll just be real quick with the chief's update because I know it's a long meeting We just finished our implicit bias training many of you had the chance at least a few of you had the chance to go or at least meet Dr. Marks The final tallies are about 260 police employees that are at Vermont training implicit bias, I know 4 classes of about, well all told it was 50 something to 60's so 240 people, all of our employees which is somebody may have like someone probably didn't go like because they were sick around vacation but for the most part that's like onesies or twosies so the 100 or so employees from outside Vermont, outside of Burlington and then 50, even the middle of a snowstorm about 50 people from the general public you that you weren't there The two people that I was going with they were like chicken and chicken and I'm like, I thought it was all It was, I think it was a success it was for the most part very well received and I don't know, I just think it had an effect on the folks that have been training Dr. Marx and then we're also Chief Brook and I are planning another kind of community thing to follow up and just maybe look at a little bit of the video and just have some conversations about how that went we'll do that in Dr. Marx something like that That's good though, I'm glad I hear that I guess that's all I have for now if you have any questions No, the federal government still hates our policy and giving them a stink eye and we're waiting for a final revision of the state policy to come from the Federal Justice Training Council I mean, sincerely this There is a latest version if you want to send it to you because I've seen that there was something that was recently changed from the state from the training council I had sent it to you I mean, our police have not we don't have interaction with ICE and we haven't had any notable interaction with undocumented folks I mean, in a way that we know that they're undocumented there's nothing that's caused us to be facing it alone not simply happen, but it has to happen So the next thing on our agenda is do we have any correspondence? Yes, I sent them out I please step in they have additional contacts that I may not be aware of Officer Moyer spoke at the Kitsafe legislative forum she excuse me a battle role as a domestic violence investigator and we had numerous letters and recognition of her work one person wrote it's been established that your presentation stole the show, people are speaking so highly of your contribution to it and the impact it had on them I mean, there was three or four letters over the course of a week and a half, two weeks coming in in regard to speaking Yeah, it's a little over a year Yeah, it's been great So that was several of that I'd love to share that but I know we're short on time Sergeant another person was trying to I know we talked about having more of an option for people to offer compliments or accommodation this person went to the complete section to put him a compliment for Sergeant Lebray he was on Clark Street a woman was blocking the lane they had some kind of interaction oh, sorry, this was for Officer Seller he immediately remedied the situation it was not an emergency but he was willing to pull over and help and then we had Officer Renzi who helped this person wrote, helped one of my car installed on Cherry Street our husband lost the keys so another one just about she was pretty distressed about it and he stepped up to help out so there were several of those just for the general officers there's more than a common sense but I had already sent out these so we're going to have a accommodation five onwards so they don't have to use a big one I don't see why not I'm soft on that I mean it's almost got to make it so we'll add it to the list no, I'm not trying to be no, I'm not you can keep the complaint button and then you're genuinely pleased that's true and then we have the next, unless anyone had anything else on that is the officer's hiring and promotions and I think we can just pass them around for you to sign four new officers and then two civilians that were hired so is it more capacity now? are it staffing? no, we're more limited to we have some pending we have some pending retirement we have some people who may be transferring to other police departments and then we're continuing to hire more people it's just constant it's just constant please we'll authorize 105 so I guess maybe as we're just coming along is that it for those two for firing five and six? yeah, I think I just did signatures and that should do it for those but I'm sure I know I should have done this again but I'm thinking if everybody's okay with moving we can switch to CJCR and then we can just do the director thing that's great okay, so the next thing we have is the update on the process involving officer complaints how's that going? it's jammed I just passed my thing through one time we did it before last meeting and you did? yeah and I did and it was impressive to see I mean each one is taken seriously handled so as well I think that I know in part that in this facility process in the CJCR and I was talking about it earlier it just always seems like it's been an opportunity sometimes even a person who's complaining there's some in the community about it it's about how it actually works and then you were also asking what was your question about where do we do are we just going to continue doing that so what do we do in this process we'll keep doing this for a while but I think we have talked about it's a tricky case and then I'll break hold of it and the way I'm going to say this you're doing it for two or three and that's like the goal of your commission I think that we should try to do something like this I'll have the capacity to do it on the ongoing basis and agree if everybody's okay with it that this would be something get a batch of complaints a couple times a year or whatever I think that City Council not just that we want to City Council asked us to do this and we need to then report back to them in July as far as how it's going so this is unknowing until then and Chief Reich and Chief Ethel you were talking earlier but we said I think we have talked about one if a complaint comes in that's not straightforward that you might just say hey we need one or two commissioners to just be the citizens involved in this so that's sort of the ongoing I think they should be handed out in some timely fashion not kind of built up over the course of time so you know maybe a few or maybe a lot depending on where it's coming in we'll just kind of float that I'd like it to be sort of like a regular agenda we'll just check it through this month so you know does that make sense to everybody? so and then the next item is commissioners updates or comments you're all pretty verbal in terms of aspects does anybody else? just to echo I'm on the kids save forum kids save posted the legislative forum where officer William spoke and same thing we had a board meeting today as a feedback about the presentation it was very personal what she shared and I guess it was extremely moving and just impressive so just echo I just want to make sure that that's a tough job and you know the sun is still around I'm still having an effort and I feel like doing an effort I'm always concerned about loans and I think in a job like that it's really important it's really important I think a job that's designed that way especially in terms of the need for proactive loans oh oops I'll move so if are you guys the CJC my co-workers ready to do anything? so just so everybody knows these are my co-workers from the CJC and I just thought it would be really nice for commissioners and everybody to hear a little more about the staff working here at the CJC just how long do we have how long would be appropriate we originally planned out around 20 minutes of 10 minutes for questions but given what you had on the agenda maybe we have less time so we wanted to plan for that okay great excuse me so thank you very much for the invitation I think I'm okay, thank you sorry for the croaky voice my name is Rachel Jolly I'm the assistant director at the community justice center I'm Barbara Shantorso I'm the advocate for the justice panel at the community justice center I work with a program that's a partnership between the police department and the community justice center for private and services called parallel justice so we really appreciated this invitation but we expect that there's quite a bit of knowledge amongst you already so our intent today is to give you an overview of the community justice center and our programs and what we're designed to do but before we started we did want to get a sense if there's any specific questions that you might not think would be covered any way in an overview or if we should start with the overview as well of course but any questions that you hope we're targeting that we can be sure to answer alright so we'll just start out with this overview just to put it sort of in context one of the things that's really important to understand about like the CDC's all over the state is that there's like what 2020 now of course Burlington's the most fabulous one just so everybody knows all over the state and most of the time they're in an option with police department and courts and department corrections exactly, thank you the context is really important because there's some confusion even in Burlington I think one people don't know what the CJC is that it exists at all or that it's connected to CEDO so we are part of the city of Burlington we're under the Community and Economic Development Office of Burlington and we were founded about 20 years ago actually this is our 20th year anniversary to look around and look at opportunities where crime and conflict enter Burlingtonian's lives and assist with those so we've gone through a variety of forms in different locations through our 20 years but we are now a block away from City Hall not within CEDO's most of CEDO's offices are in City Hall we're a block away in the Burlington Telecom building and we're part of moving towards a safe and resilient community so we have a variety of programs that are connected to crime you know the criminal justice system but we also have broader goals around just addressing conflict with residents as well so we're going to get into some of those particular programs and since Rachel's voice is a little raspy I'm going to channel her now and do you want me to come and talk into the mic or is it okay if I project from here yes please now Barb gets to go work just press the right arrow so when you're talking about this idea of community community justice centers you might have also heard the term restorative justice by the way the peace and justice center down the street makes it so the justice is just this word where there's a lot of confusion about these two but restorative justice is this idea that to truly serve justice when something happens there needs to be a partnership between the victims who are affected by what happened we sometimes call those affected parties the offender who committed the act which are often called responsible parties and then the community where it happens so within that framework we have a variety of different programs parallel justice is the one that I work for that I mentioned first we also have offender reentry and that's our illustrious Christine Longmore has been doing that work the longest within the CJC and we will be really sad to see her move on from that restorative justice panels what Barb said next to me does a lot of work with and we'll describe each of these a little bit more later and then there's a lot of work that we've been doing with the school since you were talking about earlier what point does removing a kid from the classroom make sense and how do you work to reintegrate that kid back into the community because we know that treating people as disposable or in some way isolating them permanently doesn't actually promote her social behavior so a lot of what we do is car windows and car tires about half of the calls that we respond to each year we call everyone who reports a crime in Burlington about half of them are related to vehicles so what parallel justice does is it's this unique pilot project here in Burlington it was one of three sites the only one of the three sites around the country that was a partnership of these different kinds of entities and one of the things that's really unique is even if there's nobody caught or prosecuted they can't help. That's parallel justice offender reentry I so tempted to put Christine on the on the spot but she would hate me so so far as of support and accountability are when someone is coming out of the facility and they're high risk maybe they've committed a particularly egregious crime maybe their risk factors for reoffending are very high maybe they don't have any supports that are going to help move them and keep them in a safe safe set of behaviors so that's one particular modality you might have heard of called COSA employment support, offender workforce development, Christine led meetings every week where folks who've been incarcerated within two years is that right could come and get a lot of help ranging from kind of the group meetings to one-on-one support interview prep the number of people that have walked through her office is really astounding and the number of people that would not frankly have jobs and that stability and that source of self-esteem is really an impressive testament to her time at the CJC and then resource navigation is you come in to the CJC you've just gotten out of jail, how do you get a bus pass how do you sign up for food stamps how do you get to the doctor how do you get signed up for mental health how do you get signed up for your treatment all that kind of stuff we have a wonderful colleague Megan Loomin who helps with that and then also the person who does work and accountability his name is Stuart helps with that as well and now a rebarb so we'll talk a little bit about the restorative justice panels and that's where I work restorative justice panels are made up just as Rain mentioned in the beginning when something happens in our community there are three affected parties there's the community at large there's sometimes identified a direct affected party or a group of parties and there's the actual person who is responsible so we try as a restorative justice panel to address the harms that have been done and figure out how to make a mend to the community and to individual victims of crime and how to make the offender in some way more confident as they lead our process so that it won't happen again can I just plug that you all having recently finally caught the two people who've been doing BB guns almost every victim that I talked to because we called every one of them over the last two years whether we got them on the phone or not said something must really be going on with that person and I said yes I know too I really hope they work through it quickly so that's an example where imagine the chance for those two guys to hear from some of the people who are affected question do you do people have to work with you will the court say you've got to go through this restorative justice process or is that voluntary? we have a number of different referrals and so one of our referral sources is the court so that might be a judge might make that a panel of probation budget that they participate in the program but we have another slide that tells where everyone comes from and just as a matter of transparency we want the police department to know about the good work that we're doing and that's one of the reasons why we do that to encourage them to continue referring cases to the community justice so if you look at this slide and you can see the juxtaposition of the traditional criminal justice system and restorative justice and if I was going to sum this up it would be if you consider that a crime is a violation of a relationship a harming of a relationship and that one individual harms another then you're probably over on the restorative end of the spectrum we consider a relationship as the core value of what we do in restorative justice panels so yeah, I guess everybody can know about this but these are our referral sources and so the police department, department of corrections state's attorney's office UDM police services Champlain from time to time and one that's missing there is REC, the rapid intervention community court and so right now I would say that most of our referrals are coming from the Burlington police department and REC those are two very prominent sources of referral what I do specifically is I work with the effective parties so the promise of a restorative justice panel is if the responsible party and the effective party can base the case and talk about the harm that has been done that doesn't happen often we find it happens about 20% of the time where people will choose to participate in a person because the effective party always has a choice but more and more years we've increased our rate of people who are using me as a conduit and so I tell their story so more and more upwards of 80% of the people who have been identified as effective parties will talk with me on the phone for some period of time and give me some insight into how they were affected think things can be made right and the stories that I hear are personalized and make the relationship really good parameters always making sure that the panel is a safe space at the community justice center giving them information such as one question I hear often is did this person single me out or was this just a random person so being able to give them as much information as I can choice of whether or not they want to participate choice all the way through giving them an opportunity to what happened to them validation from a group of their community support people and community members and restitution I work a lot with and so restitution is something that's often in there concerned I work with that's okay for the next one I work a lot with individuals I work with businesses and I work with institutions like the university in low to mid-level crimes and these are some of the examples and those are my family so much possession of marijuana but simple assault shoplifting and records of this what we're seeing most of right now shoplifting shoplifting is a specialty of mine because I've developed relationships with almost all the businesses on church street and we also have a very special retails after awareness and prevention class for adults and a separate one for youth and it really hits home about the impact that their actions have community and salaries on businesses I know in particular that went through that and has never stolen anything other than this I think if we ever were able to do the research on that I think we'd have a pretty good revenue but just saying these are our stats as you can see we have FY17 cases have gone down it's a couple of reasons that we speak about and one of them is that crime has actually gone down and it wasn't referring as many cases to us was there something else that you had? back to that slide when we ask Wreck about why they're dropping referrals from them Emmett Hellrick who has headed the program who just points to the focus on the opioid epidemic and treatment as being a priority for so many that does take precedence sometimes than referral to a restorative justice process which we totally understand the drop also just as a note in terms of completed successfully that can be a number of factors that can influence somebody's successful completion sometimes somebody refers and if they don't it is referred but if they're not willing to take responsibility for the crime even in the very base level and it's not an appropriate referral for our process and sometimes somebody just doesn't follow through in terms of the number of times that they have to show up and then sometimes it might be more overt in terms of just not completing the contract in which they may agree if you want to add anything if I could just say this actually so this restorative justice panels is all the referrals come on the offender responsible party side and it mirrors the same decrease we've seen in parallel justice so we're reading all the police reports we're contacting all those people and we've also seen a significant decrease so great job BPD, great job Burlington and addressing some of those causes and actually reducing the number of crimes happening so I mean some of the shoplifting unfortunately is that places are less likely to report it because we don't issue trespass tickets ourselves I mean I'll take credit for on behalf of my cops for all sorts of crime reduction but I'm happy to see that go down nonetheless so in terms of the work that does take advantage of the Community Justice Center being a little bit more of a resource for non-crime criminal related exclusively anyway is our work with the school district of the past three years or so especially this last year the Burlington Community Justice Center is contracted with the Burlington School District to help them in their efforts to bring more restorative practices in schools through trainings of faculty, staff and administrators even with family members sometimes and administrators and this is actually ironically maybe I have some thoughts after your presentation in terms of sometimes solutions but one method I certainly don't mean to imply that the very issues of mass shooting are isolation and that the social emotional needs of the students might not be able to emphasis on community-built sense of community at the very young age the sphere is that we did representatives from elementary school students staff and administrators came to that elementary school staff and administrators in the summer level of restorative practices which is the community building and sense of belonging there has been some stories that have gone viral since the shooting in Florida around some teachers' practices around figuring out who are those students who are not included because it's generally not the troublemakers who are the shooters of the past few years it's the ones who are isolated and who nobody is giving a second thought to so restorative practices has some hope in terms of figuring out who are the students that we're just not thinking of the ones that students don't think to write down if they get the choice of who they dominate for good behavior they're just not thinking of what these profile after profile is showing are the ones who are not feeling themselves a sense of belonging sometimes mental health compounds it in terms of depression or anxiety or isolation behavior but sometimes not I don't think the research is in that these are all folks who can be classified as mentally young so that's in terms of the hopefulness of restorative practices or the community justice centers work being much way beyond crime I think our work in the schools is the best example so that kind of covers the different programs that we wanted to share we're open to any kind of questions but we didn't really cover that topic sorry the late answer thank you you know something that I didn't mention that is relevant to the police commission is that often I'm able to reach out to police officers to ask them how they were affected for example there are a lot of cases that we deal with that officers have been disrespected physically and sexually abused and so to have their voice brought back to the community to be able to personalize them also that's one of the things that I feel like I can do in my role as an advocate because I feel like I'm also an advocate for the police and more and more I'm getting those responses back when I email them and say hey when they remember someone on it again that hits home when we talk about it at the panel you keep referring to the panel who's on the panel who's that I may have been remiss in not actually setting that up so we have probably 30 some volunteers mostly from Burlington but from a public other community also and we run five panels every week one of them is a member sit on their individual panel they're on the same with the same group every week and they go through lay and I'm just I'm just going to be working with the department there's sort of practices like skills like open-ended questions those kind of skills building communication work that we can go through a process of what brought you here who do you think was affected those are the kind of questions that we have so it's when the volunteers join with the responsible party and the affected party either through Barbara or themselves in person all together in one room to talk about what happened and then there's a staff person who's kind of in and out as needed depending on numbers there's the balance of having enough people there so it's supportive not so many that it's completely overwhelming so I guess I were going to make a request to all of you having had this wonderful opportunity to work with Christine for I've been at the CJC for nine years and she proceeded me my little take home for someone and I mean it sucks you can get in touch with us through Christine and see what the CJC might be able to do especially when someone's in that they had we just do a lot of listening and then that frees up officers so that they can go out and do investigating and when you're hearing from someone like you're thinking gosh you know if this person only understood then reach out to the CJC and we can advocate to have that case be referred so when you're getting those stories that tug on your heartstrings a little bit there's a little bit more to it it's easier for me to kind of access the human element here the CJC is really a resource for you and you don't just call us and if you want she'll help you do that that one's civil we already said no for parallel justice just say it so we just want to thank you for the opportunity thank you for the invitation Christine thank you all for giving up your Monday nights or Tuesday nights to do this on a regular basis I hope this went out I can draw your attention if that's helpful or I can answer questions directly or both and the purpose first power of citizens and accorded rights so you'll see a bit to capture they're in the second where it reads the public that trusts the first edition it was just focused on the citizen and not there there's very slight changes to the policy statement descriptive of the exact intent system but then in more section 5 on page 2 we'll have a sentence uniform officers will activate their body arriving at an incident feedback from the staff was the dispatch second computer do I have to turn it on then in the dispatch too it was good to actually have staff section subsection a subsection 4 with some feedback from our detective staff we realized that not quite a few search warrant executions within the confines of headquarters to cars the body worn camera nor is there a forensic extraction of a cell phone the application of these devices so subsection 4 again a policy that's more to stick threatening subsection b we had to address the fact that some so this was another catch by our officers or like do I dispatch to an incident where I'm going to take it over the telephone no policy so we clean that up moving along on the page subsection section section rate where the cameras can be potentially turned off a tow truck at the scene of traffic crash and the and there's no citizen interaction the officer is allowed to turn officer in charge again just kind of a more practical common sense use of the device then moving into subsection e this language is prescribed to detectives so in our earlier version the detectives didn't really weigh into this equation whatsoever but we did buy sufficient number of cameras for them so e or rx.b's device is available to them and again it's similarly softening time that they're going to go out and actually make an arrest a planned arrest or but we also had as their normal wear we got this to their tie so again they're going into the field the same on four moving on the page five under subsection d where it talks about the body worn camera operation to bring the nomenclature there on offering activated and mute all that is direct technology that we're using right now so if we were to upgrade the camera that would be sort of the vendor so again that was just a nomenclature change and then lastly is in section nine subsection d and I believe Corporal Gilligan and I spoke to this in our first rendition of now when an officer will have access to the body worn camera footage we were just more explicit in our self defense they'll be afforded access to their body to their body worn camera footage but there is times if there is misconduct the department still reserves the right to control the officer's access to the video in terms if we are invented that appears to be lawful and within directive the state police practice to allow the officer to look at their video footage and to continue that moving forward in contrast an officer was going to be criminally charged again the state police would be here doing that and that the officer's access to their video would be criminal evidence in that regard so policy now that's palatable to our staff and it meets all the reasonable objectives that we set out to accomplish I don't know if this will be taken up in the legislature this year or not hopefully the camera platform itself won't change in the next 12 months so hopefully we'll live at least that long if they don't want to have any questions I know I ran through it but you want to be conscious of your time yeah in the last section there are not a lot of personal reforms and this one quoting shall not be audited so was there a decision made that when I'm reading here that there was still I'm not sure if the change was intended or it was right and if you could just help me find that Jim the last one on the last page section 9A just one sentence right so when we had this here at the commission with corporal due without cause to that sentence and to take out so there's no when we audit this film something of that nature as you signed off on all these well so after we had some reverb from the last version of this I personally went to every world call and addressed the officers and sought their feedback reconciled the fact that we didn't have drafted this and also to express the actions and not to be the stuff previously and so Union and I getting all the input working through the different changes and the finish line with this policy in its current version so in terms of the actual footage so the state doesn't know exactly where it meanings for the most part says that we have to shield the identity of victims and witnesses so that means we have to number one look at how long the video is then estimate how long it would take to redact every person in the video except a suspect of a police officer which by blurring by manually blurring and then give them an estimate at what's the price per minute of her it's 57 57 cents per 30 minutes or no per minute I think of a senior staff so it's like no and then we give them the the estimate of how long it would take the class because the ACU says the whole people it's when we say we agree we have to give it to us I mean the worst case is that the law would somehow change victims and witnesses but you can't charge for it then we'd be literally able to cost stuff but then $10 is going to get better at the time it costs a lot of money we're not there yet I want to view the footage I want them to come in and view it which is different than releasing you know I think that was uncritical think I don't know if you need a formal vote so I guess if there's consensus that you're willing to adopt this in young children or pets that suffices I don't know I guess one thing I would say about that is that we do have something planned this organization that Jada and I started, Kaleo hasn't really done anything in the past couple of months but we do have something planned in March and as I was saying before they probably talked a little bit about attaining that Dr. March and then maybe we could potentially talk a little bit before them about this other part of it or maybe have that at like another meeting but we are going to continue to do that I mean we're doing this community engagement things at the library and Chief Burke has been great about being there and community members come out it's a nice time it's a little easier to come out at 6 and coming to the library is a way more comfortable I think and that's been really good it's been a nice opportunity to get together with people and talk about stuff and answer questions so I don't know if there's anything Alex on that topic on number 11 those are my thoughts about that topic you know what I'm saying we're slated to hire our analyst on March 12th so we have a new opioid day analyst she started this week and then our crime analyst right after the break like the one day after the winter break when we started and we can pursue these analyses and talk to people about the quarter we can take up a topic and advertise it and we can help with that especially with community engagement I think by late spring if she settles in it should be a good opportunity and of course I mean anybody's always welcome to come to those events too it's usually an hour an hour and a half sometimes two hours if you don't reach out I think it's a nice opportunity so I guess the last thing is I actually I wanted to add something I had something to add for 11 and I'm not sure if this is the place but a few parents asked me about outreach in the lore and then in the elementary schools kindergarten first grade like an officer family do we just have something like that I mentioned that to you Jan and I think he said we did but maybe we weren't communicating correctly yeah I know but just a formal to ask me about it meeting with groups of kids in kindergarten first grade kind of the first interaction in an officer family program just seeing what are you doing there was an incident on a month ago maybe an attempt to abduction and kids what do you do in that case do we do that when you have programs or is it just up to the school for the most part it's just the school but every opportunity we get we try and get out inside especially in the summertime get out in the parks with the kids get out in the streets where they're playing we don't have a specific program right now I don't know if we can talk about it I think when there was like an officer family I think that I think what has developed is that each school has their own high school has one one for the junior high schools normally because they don't need police much police interaction elementary school kids are pretty vulnerable yeah I think if I could just weigh in for a second what we have with the one officer at the high school and then the second officer responsible where we see that second officer spending most of her time in the middle schools because middle school kids really seem to be coming of age through technology, through sexuality a lot of different things that they're not emotionally mature enough for and by way of that the elementary schools get little contact unless they have an issue unfortunately does that make wouldn't that be time well spent you know just it certainly would be once a year for the first second third grade officers aren't so scary and what do you do with a certain situation and I think people have asked for it and it seems to make sense to me I can't agree more it's just at the time it comes down to resources we've had other officers that have been committed I know when Corporal Beck was active what was going on with kids was a little different because it was just a few years ago she was affected in just reading a book we have officers that do it at their own kids schools and that kind of thing I know that those are definitely positive impacts the thing that we do have on the front burner for this summer instead of absorbing the school resource officers back into the patrol force the parks department right now to embed the two SROs into the programming that they do they have like there's one in Franklin Square, there's one in Roosevelt Park they're all over the city but a way to use the school resource officers and keep the continuity of contact again I predict that the officers will probably spend a majority of the time with those kids that are struggling with however else their social needs aren't met we're trying to do the best that we can with a very limited pool of resources so the committee of three is meeting the officer and some responses to the request in the case that morning what's up we can send agenda our minutes from the last meeting is everybody on the list you're sending the motion to the staff that was a big one so do we need an executive session today or not this is one of my everything that I said should just take it away so are we next meeting are we okay with the regular time or do we have to see March 27th is that a regular time so then I guess anything left is an executive session thank you thank you thank you I know it's just a follow up on some pretty old discipline like that so we should go into the executive session for personal second thank you thank you thank you if you just I'll just hang around I'll hang around you don't have to take it all apart thank you I know it's always tempting to stick out on the executive session this is the very last thing but if you recall when Chris Lopez was terminating last year for we believe lying one of the things he said was that he couldn't make it to quarter time because he couldn't prepare for his appearance because it was snowing if you guys remember that the lieutenant that was supervising him said to him oh you know if you don't feel comfortable going to court there's a snow storm you can say that you don't have time to prepare to snow so we did discipline him for that we put a letter in his file he's on probation he's ineligible for any special assignments for a period of one year and it's in his file it's a letter from the man he gave advice to compounding in this leading situation so I didn't want you to think we forgot about that we did follow up on it maybe it happened that it was resolving right around the time of the last meeting but it's resolved just so we didn't forget that who's that lieutenant so he didn't say like why he just said like almost like he was behaving like another cop and he was like oh there's a problem with your testimony well god it was a snow storm just say it was snowing and you had a hard time preparing for trial leaving little bodies of time and he admitted he just said yeah I totally messed this up so he's he's he's not going anywhere I was worried that way I think yeah I mean I think Laura is trusted with a lot of this stuff she's not going to put that in in a few minutes they have to add to that so they got folks it's an important message you know for people it's like a mutual accountability whatever I just didn't want you guys to think we forgot about it and I just wanted to like let's get out of here thank you can I I know I know I set friends and reached out Andy and he said we of course we could How are you? Without any reaction that was the goal see you guys take care Thank you. You're going to go Eric. I'm going to go Eric. I'm going to be careful with my shirt. Oh. Yeah, I know. That's very nice. I can be able to... I'll see you tomorrow.