 September 27th 2022, and I'm calling this meeting to order that it's meeting of the the board of police commissioners. We have a Full quorum tonight of all corners of the globe and we're all yeah Well, we're all here full quorum moving on to agenda item 1.03, which is the adoption of the agenda I have no modifications to make and I'd entertain a motion to adopt the agenda as is I'll second moves by Commissioner Hart's seconded by Commissioner Grant all those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously Moving on to agenda item 2.01 and 2.02 Which is the approval of our meetings meet of the minutes of our last two meetings Our regular meeting that was scheduled on August 23rd 2022 in the Executive session from September 6th 2022 and I guess I will do them separately certainly with regards to approving of the minutes from August 23rd 2022 Any discussion any amendments or changes to those minutes seconded All those in favor of approving the minutes from 20 from August 23rd 2022, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye That passes unanimously Motion to approve the minutes from September 6th 2022 All those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye One side Just for the session I confirmed that I commissioner Keith was in attendance My name wasn't listed at the attendees All right What was that noted? Awesome on that case and I moved to approve the minutes from September 6th 2022 with with Commissioner Keith some amendments All those in favor raise your hand or please say aye. Aye. Aye That passes unanimously Moving on to agenda item at 3.01 should public forum Is there anybody in the in the in the tendency that I like to speak and Online they just know anyone online There's nobody online as well. Okay. Thank you If there is anybody that is tuning in via zoom, please raise your hand and we'll acknowledge you We're not seeing any so we will close that agenda item moving on to agenda item 4.01, which is the chief's report So it was posted to board docs pride pride of which and Was not sure if any commissioners had any questions over the chief's report Commissioner, so we know wasn't able to attend the meeting, but did send the report his report in advance and And just a couple of comments one is that at a previous meeting we had talked about the issue of bicycle thefts And he had alerted us to the fact that that there would be Something done to allow Community members to register the bikes and in fact we just received a communication the community received the communication for citizens on how to Register their bikes and so the commission just wants to recognize And express appreciation for that initiative And Also just to note that the chief on this recruitment trip is In line with best practices in terms of In terms of recruitment and wanted to also just extend our appreciation for him conducting the trip and Noting that we recently the city council approved A position as a for recruitment Officer for the BPD and the commission provided input on that and finally just to comment to know looking at the report itself With the chief notes in there is that there are now 62 officers and that is up One from I'm sorry one up from one from last month. So there's some modest progress in Rebuilding the number of officers I'll leave it at that and see if any other commissioners have comments The floor is open for any commissioners to make comments and please Take take the floor I just wanted to mention a couple of things One mention and then a question for DC LeBreck Concerning bike registration it I Would recommend that not only people use the city's website, but also bike index There was definitely a segment of the community and it was increasing that was using bike index already before the city sent out information about their registration Process and also I know that the University of Vermont and their notice that they sent out to all students Because of a number of bike thefts they had on campus within the first week or so They recommended to the students that they use bike index. So I think people should do both and Essentially anything that has a serial number that you own you should register it and have a current photo of it So that would be I think recommendations that we could all agree upon and then I just had a quick question for DC LeBreck concerning TRO's When those court orders come down they are priority one I had emailed you about an incident where someone was reporting that one was not being served Were you able to find out about that order and confirm whether or not it was served? I believe I sent you an email about that the gentleman that it was we were trying to serve it on was wanted And he knew that so he basically was avoiding contact with us so Mary McAllister reached out through his wife And tried to arrange the service of it As far as I know she had gotten it served that way, but we weren't involved in that Okay, thank you. I'll check for that email appreciate that. I sent it right after you Had sent me that email so it was weeks ago I'll go back and double-check that because I don't know if you didn't get it I will definitely double-check that and get back to you. Thank you. It's just we know I Think commissioner Cumberford was first My apologies. I didn't see other hand race. I was simply going to share the information Milo did around the UVM communication on bicycles. I just wanted to for the public to note the press release from ATF with regard to the formation of a gun violence task force with BPD and surrounding agencies and if you want more information on that I Would assume you can contact at the chief mirad or Locate the press release but in any case there is a a gun violence task force that has been formed With several partner agencies to utilize various investigative techniques and to leverage the collective resources To address the increase in gun incidents in our community And do we have any further questions or comments with regards to the chief support? I'm not seeing or hearing any and with that we shall move on to agenda item 5.01 which is a presentation for the Vermont Interfaith Alliance with regards to a well policing guide and they'll be Presented by Debbie Ingram and Bill Neil and Thank you very much for being here with us. It should be a little green light. Oh, it's brighter. It's brighter when it's on Yeah, thank you for the time this evening. I am Bill Neil I'm a retired clergy person moved back to Burlington and to Vermont at the early days of 2021 and One of my first interest was getting involved in a faith-based community organizing project And Vermont Interfaith Action had formed about 20 years ago. It's currently a faith-based community organizing project with about 64 member congregations throughout the state of Vermont and Working together for systemic change around issues of social justice our approach is to go to the community and find out from community members what issues are of their concern and then identifying those issues organizing working groups to Seek to address those issues by doing research finding out information and possibly coming up with some proposals for positive changes to our communities and Racial justice as a significant piece of the work in which we are currently engaged. We have groups working on Racial justice in the areas of housing racial justice in areas of business and economics and Also in the area of public safety and policing There was that group that I joined early on in 2021 and which I speak to tonight We conducted a variety of conversations with several individuals throughout the state participants in law enforcement participants in the criminal justice system residents and members of the communities be going on behalf of racial justice and As we went through our research We discovered the president's task force on 21st century policing, which was released federally in 2015 So refer briefly to that and then we came up with a what we were calling a Vermont guide to community engagement with local police departments. We released this in April this year It's designed especially for smaller communities various sizes throughout the state and in a sense it's it's Designed to assist local communities to end up with something of their version of the police commission here in Burlington To get citizens involved. Yes, this is aware What what questions to ask what these tales to look into how to engage in dialogue and communication with their policing agencies in Their local communities. So just briefly. I'll run through what we have. I believe you received Email copy of the guide. So I don't want to overdo your your patience and time And then of course the question at the end would be well Is there any way that this particularly imply applies to the Burlington community? And I just have one thought on that which I would like to end with from the president's task force on 21st century policing latest they identified six primary pieces of work building trust and legitimacy policy and oversight technology and media community policing and crime reduction officer training and education officer safety and wellness all of these Invite the development Locally in the in different communities and in different ways in those communities some form of civilian oversight agency Which they call a coa in its efforts to reduce racial disparities and police violence over a length of time and This development of a local entity a local group of citizens Interacting regularly with their policing agency. Hopefully would increase the level of trust and participation throughout the community so in order to Pursue that larger agenda. We come up with several specific Areas of interest which a local community might want to engage their policing communities with and Just basically run through these and then You know bring it to an end So there are quite a few we start with an awareness of explicit and implicit bias There are tremendous training programs in Vermont. We we've talked to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council representatives and various other people that have followed We're entirely convinced that the training that is available is awesome as excellent and We're concerned to see that training result in the implementation day to day today and Interactions between policing folks and citizens a training and de-escalation practices discover discovering ways of de-escalating potentially violent situations Performance expectation and review This is a significant area because upon those occasions when there is a possible incidence of Less than best behaviors. How are those discovered and addressed? What tools and processes are in place for performance reviews? How can accountability be brought into the situation and who's involved in investigating complaints? What response is provided to the complainant? What possibility is there for meaningful citizen input result in regard to resolutions or consequences? The next big areas we're involved in data collection To what degree our detailed data being collected it with aspect to racial identities ethnic identities ways that involve stop searches use the force Looking for possible Im implicit or explicit bias And possible replacing So collecting the data then the data analysis looking at exploring it. How does it work? Who's just who's doing that interpreting who's doing that and From just briefly attending a couple of your meetings in this past several months I realize you have a whole system in place But it's in the computer somewhere and somebody has to be able to get to it get it out Then in terms of hiring discipline firing policies And I'm obviously you're right in the middle of a big recruitment Effort and from watching the news The entire state of Vermont is mostly looking for officers Officers to be trained offers to be deployed the ways of Continuing to keep and support the officers that they do have Community involvement looking for ways that citizens have input as well as you know participating in with the policing unit and Then a couple of key issues around meadow health and substance abuse These areas require special tries training in many cases and in Burlington I know there's working with other agencies or with individuals who are not sworn officers, but who are have a specialist area of Support and capacity and dealing with meadow health or substance use issues So then in the last three the attempt here is to acknowledge the challenges that our officers face and to Look at ways that in relationship to the community the community can also be then more broadly educated and aware of What it's like to be a policing officer in our local communities What are the positive stories that can be told? Examples where a police officer was able to intervene or make an influence with a positive result These these are the kinds of things that don't get often counted or recognized and yet are probably happening every day What are the challenges of policing? that the stresses the levels of Trauma that are experienced how are those officers supported and their work recognized and then what is the motivation that brings officers to this job and In what ways can they be encouraged strengthened and supported? In the area of training and and retraining and ongoing trainings Again, I think we've shown that the state has an excellent policy in place but Clearly there have been times when the follow-through has has fallen short Reflecting about what does this mean in Burlington? You you're already here We have a police commission you're you're engaged you're involved you're doing I think an incredible amount of work Especially I've volunteered members of the community When we spoke to acting chief Marad earlier on in our interview times He pointed out that Burlington is divided into five sort of policing districts or areas the far north end The near north and the Hill district the downtown area in the south Area it occurred to me as a possible way of perhaps implementing some of this Work that that we have done that we're hoping will be applied throughout the state of different localities But it might be possible to invite residentials residents of these five different areas to gather with some kind of support or some kind of guidance You know coming from the the commission as a whole in order to Discover their particular interest concerns and cares and perhaps to bring the kind of that level of community policing closer to their specific neighborhoods and locations Obviously the the district of the downtown has a whole different set of concerns than the district of the far north end where I live and yet the goal of Developing stronger relationships of trust between the community and the policing folks might be Strengthened it supported By having some of these more localized conversations in the in the five areas where the policing is being done And I only just say that because otherwise I think you're you're on the job. You're doing it. You're doing great I as a resident I'm just I just couldn't be more proud to be Living where I am and knowing that folks like you are doing the jobs that you're doing and that are policing folks They're doing the jobs that they're doing. I'd be happy to respond if there are any questions. I'm not the best Resource even on behalf of our committee. The reason I'm here is because I was available and I live in Burlington But I would try to respond with any questions if you might have Thank you very much, and I very much appreciate that presentation I believe Commissioner Comerford has a question or a comment Thank you so much for your work and thanks to all the committee and also for being here this evening Two things the first is I'm wondering what motivated you to do this work The the larger state are national white issues of racial injustice and policing The Black Lives Matter movement and the the on just the ongoing You know how often can you get through a whole week without we're hearing or reading about some terrible tragedy that has taken place? And I did not live in Burlington at the more recent times when I know or believe that there were some kinds of incidents I don't even know what what happened or when so I came you know arrived in January of 2021 but the larger issue of racial justice and then the specific focusing on policing is a way of Reimagining public safety For the benefit of all of our people recognizing that if black lives matter then truly all lives matter I Also wanted to just let you know that prior to the onset of the pandemic Commissioner Milo Grant had made the suggestion that we take our Commission meetings out you know into the districts So we had had that thought and hopefully you'll be able to move on that in the future Thank You Commissioner Grant