 Okay, I'm only turning the one because the other one I haven't played me anything in yet. Okay. My voice my voice is Registering okay. Thanks Doremi fossil lot, okay, but we have a lot of visitors here today. I understand we haven't it's a really wonderful pieces out there um first item of business is Do we have any additions or modifications to the agenda? I have one Sunny From Burlington Police Department is going to talk to us about the police wellness program. So we will do that I Make a motion that direct to make a motion and make a motion that we do that after the chief's report Yeah, I'll move that. We add that to the agenda. We there also was a city council resolution last night Chief are you covering that in your report? I can make passing. I would was going to make passing reference Okay, if it doesn't come up in your report, we can always go into it in commissioners updates and comments So I think we could not add that. Okay, so I moved to amend by adding the presentation by sonny Proveto, okay a second motion all in favor hi I Want to welcome chief del pozo back It's wonderful to have you back here again. Thank you and I also want to say thank you to chief right for Standing in and being active chief while chief del pozo is out you did a great job and it's Next we're going to move into public forum so far. I have two people who have signed up to do to speak to the commission So first on the list is Richard Hilliard from Ward 1 so Welcome Richard. Thank you Award for the last two meetings in August and in September and he had been asked to come to talk about the section of problems with speeding, ignoring the rules of the road, whether it stops signs, red lights, stopping at a stern right on red, etc. And he was great and it's interesting that we're down during the period of review crashes that were injury-free remain the same, so that sort of raised questions as to whether that is due to improved safety with better seat belt, better vehicle design, etc., but obviously pedestrians and cyclists are much more vulnerable and if some of these incidents or crashes with no injury resulting had hit pedestrians or cyclists instead of there was a clear reluctance from the chief to assign traffic enforcement. At that time questioned, I quote, how much enforcement really impacted safety. He noted that a traffic stop was one of the worst interactions the public has with the police and I quote again, he was not completely sold on increasing enforcement and the traffic is the safest strategy and that really like more discourse on is what happens between the public recognizing a safety issue and in the cases that we documented in two years ago they were all corroborated by police and I've got all the documentation here and traffic engineering actually taking place. There's a situation on East Avenue at the moment where petitions were raised sent to public works, police corroboration was documented but still we don't see any sign of any traffic engineering that might possibly correct the problems that residents have identified on East Avenue. This is not a typical day but I travel a lot whether by foot or by vehicle area. Last Monday, the 13th, I was traveling towards Colchester Avenue on East Avenue at the speed limit and I was passed by someone in a red Jeep from on plates trying to beat the red light. Passing on East Avenue is pretty dangerous. He almost didn't make the corner as on turning left onto Colchester. East Avenue was a problem. Later we observed in the same trip just a couple of minutes later observed a lady going straight through a stop sign on Colchester on Prospect and Numus and then when I was walking with my wife later on that afternoon we were on a cyclist almost hit us and I yelled at stop sign and he said it doesn't apply to bikes and he swore. So where does the public go on a situation like that? That's not a typical day and people can miss stop signs. We've all done it. Not seeing the stop sign has been obscured by a tree or something but it doesn't help if the person hits someone. So I think what the question is, East Avenue is well documented as a, I'll read out a little bit from a police report. The residents of East Avenue were correct in their assessment. I'm not going to go on because I think it's perhaps inappropriate but you made various recommendations none of which have been properly conducted and we still don't have any dates for any traffic calming on that particular part of the city. It's a main thoroughfare access to the city. So the purpose of my appearance here is to respectfully request as a community to bridge the gap between the certification of a safety issue and case public works actually doing something about it and I'll leave it there. And I think it's a big issue. Do you mind if I ask you a question? Yeah. Have you checked with public whether you're on their list because I think there was just a news recently that there is a list three years, three years long. Has anyone else heard this that there was a neighborhood? I don't want to be mistaken. So I should be careful what I'm saying. So the Tute committee, the city council's TE a few months ago with Le Provenham on East Avenue. As far as we could see it wasn't in the plan for next year either. Because I think it's a first in time type of prioritization. So obviously with the commission we can't compel public works. No, I understand. I'm looking for a... Well you did mention public works so I would make sure that you're on the list at least. And we're trying to do that. We've been to public works, been to obviously police commission. We've brought it up at MPA meetings and as I'll say we went to the Tute committee just before the last election. So that's probably six months ago. So anyway, the point is there's a gap between identifying a safety issue and the traffic engineering that I think the chief is spot on in saying that's the real answer. What do we do about the gap? Is it traffic enforcement? Is it something we can do in an interim? I'll leave that to the experts. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Trish O'Kane. Welcome Trish. Thank you for bringing your class. Thank you very much. Yeah, so my name is Trish O'Kane. I teach environmental studies at the University of Vermont. Thank you so much for the work allowing whole class of students to come in and listen for students to understand how they can participate and be active citizens. And this assignment they're doing is to understand what is a commission and what does a city commission do? Some of them will be for commissions in the future, maybe even this one. But tonight, this is the first time most of them, if not all of them have ever been to a commission meeting. They don't know what a commission does. And so I'm asking you the question to take up taking this time to do that instead of making a statement to ask of the mechanics of how the commission functions. You meet once a month. Do you meet in between? How do you communicate with these issues occurred? You know, so how is the commission's work changing and concretely? What is a come? I'm going to take it. That's too much tonight. I already have so I'll just I'll start and then let folks jump in. So we are an advisory commission. There are seven of us. We are not from necessarily from different words. So it's not as though they have to have one from this word and one from another. We are appointed by the mayor and city council together. And it's a three year term. We select our chair. We do that every year. We don't use Robert rules of order. If you know what that is in terms of, you know, motions and seconds were less formal than city council. We do have motions and seconds. And that's about it. We don't make it overly formal because we want this to be somewhere where folks can feel comfortable coming in and speaking. So we have public comment at the beginning. And for example, in city council, the comments can come to the city council, but you don't hear dialogue. But back and we meet once a month every month of the year. Unless something comes up, we do meet. We do have to abide by open meeting laws. So we communicate as a group on substantive issues by email or when we're not in a in a noticed meeting, we have to be very careful about that. So we can distribute things to each other as a group, but we can't send an email on something that is police commission topic that goes to the whole group would have to know about that and have like so we'll be involved if there's a promotion. One of the commissioners will be invited to participate in that policies and directives those will be brought to us and we'll have say and we'll go back and forth and and and it's not just I don't feel like we're talking head back and we'll see complaints. Everyone that comes in eventually after they're reviewed by the department, we then will participate and give our advice on what the recommendation gratitude come to the in terms of reviewing disciplinary man. That is during our monthly meeting. At the end of this, if we feel like there's something I shouldn't say disciplinary, but personnel issues or other matters we will convene and it's not open to the public. And that's where we discuss issues that impact staff members. If anyone else wanted to add to the class to understand, I would just say just one thing really quickly, which is that according to Department Directive 01, the first Department Directive, the police question is ultimately the source and the authority over all the department directives and policies. So, ultimately those are we are those are true to us, although those are not been provides to the law. Okay, hopefully that does any of the do any of the students have any specific questions? I know this is your first commission meeting. So is there anybody else for public comment that I haven't spoken to? And it's fine. If you're not on the list, we'll just add you next to have chiefs report. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to thank everybody who continued the great work in the summer. While I was on leave, you wonder when things are going smoothly and effort, you're not necessary. I'll have to go and figure that out. But the point is, I'd like to thank the commission as well as chief right as well as chief mirad and everybody who runs this police department on a day to day basis and protects the city. So thank you for that. Just a few things by way of update, consolation of different issues. One is I guess staffing wise, where it approximately where it you know, change day to day with 95 sworn officers. We did have a few folks leave though, we were up at 100. Lieutenant Dan merchant or excuse me, Sergeant Dan merchant, our narcotics sergeant retired a service retirement. He got a job at the state. He did 20 years and exited. So that's like a standard, you know, leaving with a full retirement. We also had one of our Coussi investigators. It's she's about to leave. She Coussi is the Chittenden unit for special investigations. She got a job with the federal government doing forensic victim interviews, ostensibly different places around the country salary. It was a very logical job choice for her. She's grateful that she got such good preparation from the Burlington Police Department to Coussi to go there. And then we had two people quit. Frankly, there are new officers who said just this the city in the department wasn't the right fit for them. They're looking at other agencies. One a county sheriff, one another local police department, they cited the just the busy, you know, high volume urban dynamic of Burlington as just not the fit that there will be. And that's important. If you feel that way, don't do that for three years and then decide to leave like you want to leave fairly soon. And then we had an officer leave from the police account brought us back down to 95. That's that's where we are. So with that officer, one of the three or one of the three individuals who went to the academy last night? Yes. That's right. So to to earth academy, of course. And then we also just hired a lot of general from Atlanta, who said Burlington is very different from Atlanta. And almost many different ways. But he's anxious to why he's a Atlanta police officer who's come up here to cast a lot in Burlington. So we have folks coming to go on. I'm sorry. Yes. And what would be what's our optimal author strength is 105. And I think, you know, we remarkably, if you look at the news, there's consistently policing recruitment challenge in America for various reasons. And I think we'd like to be at 105. I know I prefer personally prefer to be hired, not trying to sugarcoat it. But I think their agencies are 1520% below staffing for us to be, you know, 5%, 10%. I think reflects well on the city and also the environment of the police department. But we're like to have another 10 cops. Yes. We had a note in the last month. In fact, it was this weekend, a home invasion, stabbing in the vicinity of Perish Street that we're investigating. We had two suspects come into an apartment, get into a dispute with people who they suspect have drugs and cash, those people resisted being robbed. They ended up getting stabbed. That's an active investigation. We also had a fatal, we believe overdose of a undone assault on the homeless individual down at the waterfront this weekend. If that is in fact an overdose that will bring our yearly overdose total reduction as compared to frankly, a 20 something percent increase in the rest of the state. We're you know, that did not in our analysis seem like it was due to chance in any way, it was statistically very robust. Our hope is that we can continue with these gains. And so far, we're actually slightly below where we were in 2018, if I want fatality. So our interventions and drug policy and access to treatment and coordination with jail and the syringe exchange and all of that, I think has all come together to maintain and maybe even increase the overdose fatality reduction in our city. So I think that's, like I said, cold comfort, but in light of this death down at the waterfront, it is it is something to to be aware of. The total depends on how you measure it was deaths in the county was Oh, it's 70 was 34. At the end of the year, now we'll be 13. So we'll see where we end up. What are two more things? Speaking of procedures that do or don't get revised, I don't know if you want to say anything about this, Eric, but vice dignity related directive. So yeah, so we've been working with yourself. I'm sorry, I'm corporate credible. I work with the chief on projects and policy. So we we saw that the Philadelphia police department had recently come out with a new directive and how their department interacts with non binary and transgender. And that kind of caught our eye during pride month. And obviously, we had that kind of sad beginning to that month with the burning. But that kind of gave us some energy to look and see if that was the directive that we could benefit from within our department. So we've been working with the pride center and crafting a directive. We've gotten feedback from them. I think we're getting pretty close to having one ready for the mission. We're just talking about bank is sort of like, I mean, give up. Yeah, there's so you know, there's some, there's some historic mis-treatment by police members of non straight sexuality. So there's there's there's issues of trust. There's also issues of how they're treated if they're in custody by other people who are also in custody. And so this directive looks to protect them while they're in custody, but also to ensure that we don't treat them any differently because of transgender non binary, or other sexual characteristics, you know, some of the things that, you know, you wouldn't normally think it might come up. But the do are, if you're doing a search of a person, you know, some transgender people will have anatomy that's prosthetic. And how does that come up during, you know, a Pat down search. And so I think that in addition to having policies on paper, we'll also be some training and the Pride Center is excited to work with us. Yeah, I mean, to sum it up, so there's vulnerabilities that that population has just based on the stigma that they still face. And so we worry about when they're being detained, if they're being detained in a safe way or in a more general population, when they're being transported as well, the manner in which they're searched, for example, but also using the right pronouns and addressing someone. And then how do you number one, like, establish somebody's legal identity so you can properly describe their history to them and make sure that their court record is consolidated and everything versus also acknowledging the names that they use to identify themselves with maybe different from their their their legal identity. So it's a procedure with stakeholders out in the community. So you'll be seeing that soon. Thanks. I guess one or two more things. I also like to thank Councilor Karen Paul for coming here tonight. So your presence is acknowledged. In that vein, I know last night there was a resolution passed by the seven to five by the city council, acknowledging the just the hard work and dedication of the police department. I know that wasn't a unanimous resolution. But I I know the officers were palpably many attended. They were grateful to the the counselors who full thoughtedly gave an endorsement to the resolution. And I think also when we talked about reasons for dissent, they were it was a high quality discussion as well. I think people in their dissent were were very thoughtful and that conversation was fruitful. So I think the outcome was great, at least for the officers. And I think the ensuing discussion was useful as well. And lastly, I know we're going with the task force will be a task force update. But I wanted to publicly thank police officer Vincent Ross, who's not here right now as being one of our representatives on the task force. I'd also like to thank Sergeant Jesse Namdar, who is here right now as being one of our representatives on that task force. Deputy Chief John Mira to rep as well. And I know that there are members of the police commission who are giving their time. So thank you for doing that. That's all I have for the chief update. Thank you, chief. Okay. So next, we're gonna hear from sunny. Welcome, sunny. And sunny's gonna talk of Burlington Police Department. Good evening. Thank you for having me and and for putting wellness on your agenda. It's obviously very dear to my heart being a former Burlington police officer and for I've been a therapist now for almost 20 years. I've also been a 9 11 therapist as well. So I was at ground zero at September 12 and had the privilege of working with the New York City Police Department from 2003 to 2009, where I really honed my craft in working with police officers. Being a former Burlington police officer, I actually know first hand some of the strains and stresses that officers face on a daily basis. I can tell you from my the stresses and such greater than it was in the 1980s, even in the stand at the crossroads of every crisis, they're seeing more become mental health workers and first responders in terms of protecting mental health. I've said this in behavior and what I mean by that is that there's no other person that I would want crisis other than a police or people safe. In 2011, I was asked by the former chief Mike Shirley to help the organization get through a tough homicide that happened just a few blocks from here. Mike Shirley actually pulled me out of retirement and we started what was called a cares program. The cares program is an acronym for career assistance, resources, education and support. And tonight we've talked about retention. We've talked about trying to hire police officers. One of the biggest things I think that is a challenge is it's a long career. If you can think that some officers may expose themselves on a daily basis to two or three traumatic events just in one 10 hour shift. You can do the math and compound that by 10 years. You can see what kind of strain and stresses it puts on the officer's psyche. That being said, we have a rate of 35% of post-traumatic stress disorder within the profession. That's almost double of what the military experiences have 31%. So there's a real big incentive to provide a robust and effective wellness program for our officers. One, we want them to be healthy. We want them to interact with the public in a healthy manner. We want them to get to their retirement because they deserve it. And we also want to help them keep themselves and their families intact. We talk about retention and the wellness program in my estimate is a really important piece of retention. It costs the city about $100,000 to train a police officer to go through the police academy and then get through field training until we can actually use them. It takes about eight months. And so we have a great investment in keeping these officers sane and quite healthy. In 2017, the chief and I spoke about developing what would be the considered the gold standard in police wellness and that is creating a peer support team. Today we have 12 trained peer support officers from from the department. I happen to be the clinician that's embedded with with that that team. And actually today we did an intervention for one of our officers who had gone to an untimely death process really works. And so the probing, we train and educate all of our new officers that come prior to going to the academy. We have a post basic training class for them where we educate them in understanding stress and trauma. And the Berlin Police Department has one of the only peer support teams that is trained and certified by the EMDR Institute as paraprofessionals. And I don't know if you know what EMDR is, but the EMDR is a highly effective form of psychotherapy that treats trauma. They're international instructors and they trained our peer support officers as paraprofessionals in EMDR early intervention techniques. And as a clinician, those would be the kind of techniques that I would use in the in the recent wake of any traumatic event to help people stabilize and help prevent the development of PTSD. So we have a highly trained organization here. It has the full support of the command staff and more importantly, even the support of human resources. And when we're trying to support officers through this long career and help and support them in many different ways, that collaboration or the ability to work at all those different levels, I think is extremely important in making the department a program of success. There are less than 2% of police departments in the United States that have programs like this. And so, you know, it really relies on the support of the command staff to allow me to do what I think is clinically sound and clinically ethical to protect our officers. And now that we have a very serious homicide going back to trial, my job is actually starting to work with some of our officers who have to relive that horrible day and that really intense experience for them that get overwhelming. So it plays an integral part in keeping this department. Right now on the drawing boarding program, it's a six week training program that are going to teach to all of our officers, as well as all of the support staff that works in the program. The biggest challenge with that is getting a group of people to come, you know, every week at the same time, especially with rotating shifts. So we're leaving that up to Deputy Chief Wright to kind of figure that out. We're also instituting what's called biofeedback. And I'll explain biofeedback really quickly. So with technology today, our computers are capable of monitoring the balance of some of what we're really measuring what's called heart rate variability of a balanced or an imbalance in our ability as somebody that can handle stress and poor heart rate variability as somebody who can handle stress. We have a mechanism that we want to at some point run all of our offices through the biofeedback program to see how they're doing, especially pre critical incident and then post critical incident. And another key component of the biofeedback program is that mindfulness is one of the best practices to balancing our nervous system. So even for those skeptical cops, and we have many, right? When you hook them real time that how breathing actually changed the way their heart responds to the respiratory system and how the heart sends signals to the brain, you have cops now who are more relaxed, right? Less frustrated, right? And who can handle more stress. So I think the mindfulness program is the next initiative that we actually want to put forward. Three weeks ago I was in Geneva at a World Health Organization training where I was trained our police officers here are going to be called in early intervention techniques. And more importantly, I think it's important for the discussions to be had behind closed doors with myself and the chief and his command staff around in the unfortunate and unimaginable event of a mass shooting. And it happens every day in America. You know, how are we as first responders prepared for that? I've lectured with the FBI. I've gone over protocols. I've written protocols. And what I want to share with you is that the Burlington Police Department has invested in making sure that even this aspect of what we would do in serving our community as a police department, we're trying to cover that piece as well. Anybody have any questions? I think I have one, maybe two. What what are sunny? Thank you so much for coming. I think it was I who suggests you come last last month. So I'm glad to see you. Thank you. I hope to see you more. What are what are the deficiencies that you're facing? I know that with the good news, there's always some news that's not so palatable. And the reason why I asked that question is I just want to know how we can help. So did you say what are the deficiencies? So where are we lacking? Well, this program. Yes. Yeah. So when I was doing this by myself prior to the peer support team, I was doing about 300 with the peer support team. Those contacts have gone up to in excess of 500 contacts a year. I think where we're deficient is one is that we can't organize the organization in a way that we can provide consistent training, whether it's mindfulness or whether it's practices that allow people to enhance their health. And we've tried that. So the fit program has been in existence since 1998. We've tried bringing yoga in and doing it at roll calls. And it just it's just one of those. The the the police department is a mechanism that that goes on 24 hours a day. It's hard to grab enough people to provide the kind of training we think would be really helpful. And so that's really, I think, something that's a challenge for us in terms of coordinating stuff like that. In terms of what I think is effective or what I think would be really helpful for the police department, I've really been getting given a green light. And so any ideas that I come up with that I think would be a benefit to to all of the members of the department, not just the police officers. I'm icing and getting enough people to take advantage of stuff. But I think we have a great program. I think we can always grow. I think, you know, we can what I'd love to see and the chief has started this is that the peer support wellness turns into an office of safety wellness and development unit. Maybe you assign somebody to that unit full time so they can really invest their energies into recruitment, retention, and then providing all of the workshops that would be helpful not only for police officers, but for their family members. So there's and, you know, I'm always open for suggestions. Thank you for that. And the other question I had is, is there a component that addresses family needs? Family leave. Family needs family needs. Yes. So in the beginning, we would try to bring in all the new officers and their families. And then one time I mistaken somebody's mother for their wife. And then I got a little bit of trouble for that one. But you know, I think it's an ongoing process. Sometimes when we have, you know, two or three people and a lot of people from out of state, we realize there are not a lot of family members come in. There's another component that's connected to the police department. I'm not here to talk about what I do, but I have a trauma centers called the Vermont Center for Responding Wellness because we're contracted with the police department. Everything at the center is free for officers and their families. And that includes free yoga classes, free mindfulness classes, free meditation, coaching, free nutrition workshops, financial advice and so on and so forth. And so we do have workshops for family of this job as well. And, you know, there's one condition with trauma that's called, you know, people who experience a lot of trauma and people who develop subclinical signs of post-traumatic stress become a lexothymic. And the lexothymic means the inability to put feelings to put words to our feelings. And so a lot of times, you know, the officers will go home and they'll talk to their spouse or their partner. And they say, how was your day? They say, oh, it was okay, it was fine. And we identify that as a condition because there is a lot of challenges in police marriages. Right. And so we're teaching new recruits and veteran police officers that you've got to find that balance in your life. And when you can't, you know, be able to know that I sometimes can't find the words, it's important. It's not only important in terms of relationships, it's also important in terms of internal investigations. When we're interviewing these cops because they may have done something wrong, a lot of times they can't define what really is going on for them. It's really helpful for the person doing the internal to understand a little bit about trauma. You know, we train officers and allow them to tell their story. It's also important for our investigators to treat each other with that same kind of trauma lens because, you know, it's, it's, it's how we interact with everybody, right? So thank you so much. Thank you. Sonny, I have a question. You go first. Go ahead. Thanks for coming out. First, so what's the size of the team that you're working with, with respect to the Department of Services for DVDs? And then also, you spoke to us already a little bit, just more about your training credentialing. So what, you know, the size, the police training to talk about with your training credentialing. Okay. So I'm hard of hearing if you haven't figured that out yet, right? Too many sirens in my, in my lifetime. So one is what's the size of the team? So we started out with 15 peer support members. I think we're down we're down to 12 people rotate out, they get different assignments. Some people retire. And so we're always every year we put out a call for new peer support members. We try to train at least six times, six times a year with the new training I just went to, we're going to be training once a month for eight hours a day. And we're training from everything from learning, you know, breathing techniques and stabilization to actually what's called eye movement desensitization. So teaching our peers to be able to desensitize a traumatic event for the officer within hours of the event. And I can get into the, the, the foundation of EMDR therapy in and of itself. And then was the second part of your question, what's my training? Sorry, you're training credentialing, that's correct. Okay. So I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I've been doing trauma work since 2001. My graduated UVM in May, May of 2001 and was in September. It was down to ground zero September 12 2001. I am a trained EMDR therapist. We, I was also awarded the 2018 award by the Emdrier Association for treating first responders. The way we treat first responders over the center is we treat them intensely for many hours in one day. And we treat them from a top down approach would be psychotherapies and also a bottom up approach, which being yoga and mindfulness. And so the center has a yoga studio. And we so we try to treat first responders in a way that's holistic. And we do sometimes manage them with medication, but that can get in the way of them getting back to work. In 2017, I testified as a subject matter expert in front of the Vermont legislation. We changed the law and Vermont was the first state to have a workers compensation law that recognized post dramatic stress in first responders as a compensable injury. And was my testimony that that day then we even do depression. And we really know effective ways of treating trauma. And that's how we've been treating people at the center. The early intervention which we do with the PD here so instrumental in preventing tension I did today with the officer, the officer had an association to a past trauma that was triggered by a police related event. And if you understand the police training, we train officers to really become task oriented when they're exposed to high levels of stress and sometimes grotesque trauma. And so the officer will complete the task that's assigned to them. However, at the same time, they can overexpose themselves to the trauma. So trauma having PTSD myself taught me to be a better clinician and to sometimes realize that treating trauma is not always the goal, but doing the best thing that I can do to help these officers feel better is really the the overall arching goal of what we do. I just want to follow up on on a question. So when you said and I would frame it like in an ideal world, what would you need more of? I think what I heard is resources to bring more training in. Did you? Is that so in an ideal world? I would want more trained peer support officers. The peer support offices do the day to day support work. They know what happens on every shift. And so if we had enough peers on every shift, we'd be able to cover all basis of what's going on. And the other thing is, is just that we'd like to bring so much more programming to the organization. But the way that we run the shifts and trying to get people to come is really problematic. And we've tried this for years and we've we've come in at 10 o'clock on a Friday night when there's a double shift and we've come in at 6 a.m. on a Monday morning when there's a double shift and, you know, to have officers do yoga before they go out and work, it almost puts them to sleep, right? So that's not ideal, right? The FIT program works really well because the FIT program is an individual thing where the officers can sign up and they can do their physical fitness while they're on duty. And they can do it themselves. Thank you. Just a minute. But when you mentioned the biofeed, similar to what the Heart Math Institute? Yes. Yeah, we have to kind of re-calibrate their program for police officers. Having new officers get a base ability is before they're exposed to all this trauma. It gives us a really good idea, you know, for instance, an officer is involved in a really critical incident or a shooting. At what point do I say to the chief, well, how can I convince the chief that that officer is ready to go back to work, right? Well, I can look at it if I have a baseline heart rate variability reading and then I have a post-event heart rate variable reading that falls within guidelines that we feel comfortable with. Great. Thank you. I have one other question. Sure. Just a clarification. So did you say that part of your work involves desensitizing, attempting to desensitize an officer from a traumatic event as early as possible in the process? Sorry, you have to repeat that. Did you say that part of your work is desensitizing officers from a traumatic event as early as possible in the process? Yes. But not desensitizing them, desensitizing the traumatic event is a difference, right? So trauma's all about integrating the experience into me being a police officer. I've got to be able to put my vest on and my gun belt on and feel like I'm safe and I can go out there and I can handle my calls in a professional manner. When we talk about desensitization, it's what the therapy calls it. It's an eye movement desensitization that we're desensitizing the emotional effect of the trauma on that particular person. Now, we don't want cops to be desensitized. You know, we want them to be very mindful and in the moment with every call that they're at so they can act appropriately and we want cops to be empathic. You know, I think that's that's critically important to the public's trust and I think it's critically important to them, you know, keeping their humanity, right? When you see the worst of human behavior for 20 plus years of your life, it really challenges your ability to think that the world is a safe place and people are good people. And so like the wellness piece of what we do is critically important to keeping our cops balanced and healthy. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, we have the Task Force Update. I know that Sherri knew you sent in for Jebu when he was traveling and I think and Randall's on it. So if you could please give us just what's going on and give us a little update. Sure, so the Task Force met, I believe, last week. It's planning on meeting every other week currently. The current deadline is we're expected to provide a report to the city council in November. There's a thought that might be extended. And this meeting was largely just deciding what was going to be covered in future meetings. And can you give us a sense? What's, you know, was it was or anything new that's going to be covered in future meetings? Or is it really? No, so the Task Force wants to set its priorities for what sorts of things could be done the amount of time that we have. They want to look at issues about how often the BPD are trained about issues about regarding how the contract, the union contract governs interactions between command staff and the officers, how discipline happens to the police commission. Those are all the topics that will be covered in the future meetings. Sure, sure, yeah. So I just want to add the meetings right now are set for every other Tuesday. So next Tuesday, 545 to 745 here for now. But I would recommend anyone from the commission who wants to know more about the union contract to attend a week from tonight because that's the topic they're taking up, right? Onto this coming meeting is the union, is the contract. So it's open to the public and I'm going to try to attend that. But I just think, you know, having a better understanding of that contract is important for what we do. And a week from today? 545, thank you. And that's here. Yes, we'll let you know if or they will let us know if we get notice to the contrary. Great, thank you. The next item, notifications from Burlington Police Department. I sent, hopefully all of you had a chance to look at the email. I sent everybody an email on that to give some history and also just kind of the three buckets that we're looking at as a way to notify the public of crimes that are happening and also the sex offenders being released in the neighborhood. You know, just to, I'll just go through each one quickly. One is, and actually, I'm going to look to Laura to maybe add some depth to each one of these. For really urgent matters that we really want to notify the public on safety, there's something called Vermont Alert. And it sounds like that's a couple of months out from being rolled out. Yeah, so Vermont Alert is statewide but the city is basically establishing a city kind of focused using the same system. So you can go on Vermont Alert anytime and sign up for different areas of the state that you want information on. But BTB is really kind of going to promote this and various departments will be making alerts as really the top urgent things, the water issue that happened really in the summer. How do we get that out as fast as possible? So it'll be kind of those really high level urgent matters. And then we did at one point as a commission talk about putting announcements out and notifications out on the front porch forum as an experiment. And what we found is, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that we're not allowed to, first of all, the Burlington Police Department is only allowed to do so many per month. And then the feeling was, and I personally agree, that perhaps the front porch forum, which is really like what's going on in the neighborhood, you have a couch for sale, people go on that to kind of check in, might not be the forum where we just say, here's all the bad things happening in the community and here are the sex offenders being released. That may not be something that everybody wants to see. So I think that Laura had a very good idea she's going to put out on front porch forum several times a month a reminder, visit the website of the Burlington Police Department and check out when the commission meetings are, check out the minutes, check out the agenda and we'll have notifications when the press releases will be on there. So people that want to get that information can do that. And then the other piece is, we do have a few people in the community that really want to be notified every time there's a crime, every time there's sex offender being released. So they can get on the email distribution list that goes out to all media outlets and they'll get the press release sent to their mailbox and commissioners, we all get that. So that's what people get information for. So what is the parenthetical mean not for broadcasting? Well, so, okay, so let me just go, I missed them, forgot to add one thing. So I'm just going to cover a few topics. Vermont Alert, that is probably, I would expect that in the next month or so to be, you'll see stuff in social media and around the city to encourage citizens to sign up. So that's coming soon, you'll see that. As far as the press releases, the front porch forum, we have about four or so posts a month and of course we also want to use them for things like creamy with a cop or the barbecue and also to notify people about police commission meetings. So we can't promise that we can, even if we did agree it was the right forum, that we can do that. Front porch forum doesn't really want that. So what I will do is try to time posts when like recently we had two press releases that came out within a couple of days. So I did a post and said, there's new press releases up on the website. They always are put up on the website as quickly as possible within 24 hours of coming out. So you can always check back there for those but we'll try to send reminders to get people used to that. And then the email sign up is kind of a separate thing. The city has a system that hasn't really been utilized too much. So we've been trying to figure out the right platform. It's called Gov Delivery, but there's like, it's like an email chimp or a campaign monitor where you can blast out emails. So we are working with the mayor's office and other city department heads to really establish that and what citizens can do is go on and sign up for what they want notifications on. So parks, beach closings or a new event that's happening on church street. So you can sign up for whatever you want. So for folks that are looking to get those press releases right away, they'll be able to sign up for that. That may be a couple of months out, but we're just, we're trying to figure out the best price, obviously to reduce costs to the tax payers. So we're trying to figure out how to really establish that and make sure it's not too much coming at citizens. So figuring out the best way to roll that out. So that should be the next few months. So Laura, when four press releases, what does it mean not for broadcasting? We're not trying to encourage people to get on that distribution list. We want to have this email group. That was for us. We're working on an email system that will release those. Currently city officials, local media, department heads, the commission are on the distribution list that gets press releases right away. So we're trying to set up something that is similar for citizens. I think that covers it. And so I guess the question is if they're, you know, for you, if individuals are asking you, you know, why didn't I find this out? I mean, we need to gather information. All of this is, we're kind of setting up a new way of letting people know we're not using Nixle. And this is obviously separate from social media. None of this is social media, but people want their information in all different ways. And it's hard to keep track with all the new technology. So we're gonna have to, again, see how it goes and take in information about what people aren't getting that they want to get or when it's too much. And if there are topics we're missing, like the committee meetings or the public, you know, I just start got into the habit of reminding people about police commission meetings. So any input we can get, you know, you folks can gather from community members about how to manage this information flow is gonna be useful. Is there, is there any thought of maybe leveraging the mayor's work that's happening on the public engagement process? I know that Olivia's been doing some work on that. And I was, I had a conversation with her about it. I mean, it sounds like there's a larger issue here because communication goes in both ways. You know, how are we finding things out? How is the public finding things out? I think it's pretty critical. So my thoughts are, is maybe we could, as we're doing this work, because it's great work. Maybe what we could do is maybe leverage some of the stuff that's existing and or maybe figure out a plan where we can really create a more, it sounds like we're kind of, you know, conducting an in-flight plane. Well, it's a moving target. I mean, you know, the technology's changing. I mean, Dexel used to be used and now that's kind of, you know, updated. And I mean, UVM students don't even, we're trying to, it's, it's, it's so, yeah, we're in a gathering information and figuring out what's the best route. And I haven't heard a recent update on the public engagement process, but I do know that that was part of it. I know for Vermont Alert, for example, we've talked a lot about how do we get to people who don't have an email or people who don't have a phone or people who are, you know, English is the second language. How do we make sure they know? So we're certainly trying to think about those things and taking in any thoughts on how we can kind of make sure we're reaching out. And then I'll also add the committee is also looking at how they can do outreach to the community and get more information about as they proceed with the process of the committee. So that's another avenue where, you know, folks associated with the police department are going to be reaching out to community members, perhaps doing listening tours, et cetera. So it's another effort in the coming months to kind of gather info from, from the community. And that, I'm certain, will come up as well. Any other questions? Thank you, Laura. Use of technology and assisting investigations. I think, Randall, this was something that you had wanted to discuss. That's correct. So, all right, I'll just say a number of police departments across the country are facing various issues with respect to kind of how technology is being used for investigations. I'll just focus on two things right now that I'd like to make sure we're paying attention to. The first is, you know, partnerships that police departments have with, you know, private, essentially private surveillance companies. I'm thinking of like Amazon Ring, for example, right? You know, things which allow people to record, you know, record, you know, passives by. I think that at least one municipal police department in the area does have a partnership with Amazon Ring. I believe it's Essex, but I'm not positive about that. The other concern that I have is just the use of facial recognition technology beyond just kind of individual sighting of photos, et cetera, which might automate the process of identifying faces based on video data, video feeds. Both of those, I think, raise some concerns about privacy and some other concerns. I just want to make sure that if the department is either using any of those methods right now, or think about using those methods, that they'd have some process for deciding what's appropriate to use and what's not. So it's just a request first, kind of, what is the department doing with respect to technology, either Amazon Ring partnerships or facial recognition software technology? And second, does the department have any interest in, have any plans or interest in adopting such technology in the near term future? Yeah, so those are great questions. As you know, they're of interest to me, both for professional and scholarly reasons. The principal people we contract with technology-wise, period, are the AXON Corporation for the body cameras and also Valcor for our records management system. We don't have any contracts with anything, for example, Vigilant Solutions is a worldwide aggregator of licensed plate reader data. We do not work with them. We don't work with Amazon Ring. We have no such contracts. And if we did, contracts are a public record with the city. I mean, we can all go verify that. As far as facial recognition goes, that's an interesting question because I think I mentioned to Randall, just as a philosopher, I was at NYU Law School about a week ago meeting with the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, about facial recognition technology. He's very interested in how this technology is going to become a critical part of not just policing, but commerce and everything else. And they were looking for some ethical insight and legal insight into how to proceed with it. So it was interesting to be part of, honestly, a fairly small group of people that were talking to the president of Microsoft about this. And there's no consensus, right? So there's professors, so there's no consensus. And it was, but the thought is that my instinct is to be, again, prophylactic approach if you're scared of where it's gonna go and it's going to you. However, on the other hand, I don't think that jurisdiction technology without input from the commission but also something like the city council or the state legislature about its role in, its role is evidently do you need to, if necessary, in what range of cases would it be used as evidence? Should it be something like technology that's always humming in the background and always collecting information and then tells you when it found something? Or should it be something that's only used when you know, I'm looking for this particular person, Brandon, the opponent is wanting. And then you go and do a narrow search for Brandon. The other thing to think about is that the accuracy of facial recognition is not uniform across race, for example. And so right now it's a less reliable technology for race. One of the things that the New York City, meaning a less reliable technology if you want to positively identify, for example, black Americans. And that is a huge problem with equity. So one of the things that, for example, the New York City Police Department has done has been very transparent about the way it uses facial recognition. And it's unequivocal that it does not provide probable cause. It is just something that has to contribute to suspicion that you need independent probable cause. So, and then they're clear about their evidentiary rules. We're not even there yet, because number one, we don't have plans to procure facial recognition technology. And number two, we haven't had this very acute need where I think it would rear its head is I can't see how, for example, like a body camera company won't want to have facial recognition running in the background as a software add-on shortly, right? And it'll become as option you can get. I think we're nowhere near that, but that's how I see it coming to, for example, to Burlington. Now that we procure it separately where it comes, it's like part of suite. And it's interesting, it's, you know, not to say one of the reasons why it takes so long to redact body camera footage, facial recognition technology in our body cameras. You can imagine is a witness. So we need to redact his face and just telling the software wherever you see Randall's face, just blur it. And then in literally seconds, it would blur it. You know, the press and the public would get that footage right away. But then we have facial recognition, so we have the positive transparency interest being honored, right? But at the same time, we have facial recognition technology in our software. I think this can be really interesting questions and we haven't resolved any of them. Yeah, all right, I got it. I just say, you know, I would hope and expect this. Should those plans change in the future to be for the discussion about that? No, we would not introduce something like facial recognition to the city or the police department without a formal process with the commission and the city council. Yeah. And so again, we have the other things you were concerned about or as we do, we don't have them where we contemplate. Next on the agenda are the accommodations that we all received this month. I love reading through those. I hope all the commissioners take the time to read through them. And just for the class that's here, what those are, are letters that come in, mostly from the public, just really wanting to say thank you to an officer that responded to a need that they had in the community. Any commissioners have any comments or about the recent letters that we received? Yes. I had a comment. Recently at BHS, we had a lockdown drill and they changed how we're supposed to deal with them into the hit run attack. And a lot of kids were wondering after our teacher brought up that when he was in high school, probably a while ago, not to bash on him, that when he was in high school in South Burlington, that the South Burlington Police Department trained the whole, all the students and teachers on basic self-defense. And a lot of the kids in our class were wondering why we also did not have that. And I was wondering if it would be possible for that to happen here? I mean, first of all, I think it's, thank you for asking that question. I made a note that when someone is above a certain age, just acknowledge your age is bashing on them. That is so wrong for me. You should have struck all the specs out of your face. That's okay. It's just a little bit of a, okay. With age comes some wisdom, hopefully. So anyway, the upshot though is, number one, like the fact that we have to do lockdown drills and the fact that high school students would come to us and say, can you teach us to fight? It's like extremely lamentable. And I'm sorry that we're living in that world. And I just think as a public servant and also as a police officer, I prefer that we live in a world where we're not even thinking about that. On the other hand, when I was, I thought you were gonna say this, but when I was young, if you wanna bash on me, this would be completely wrong, it's everyone in this room, but they taught us to hide under the desk in case a nuclear bomb went off. Because when a nuclear bomb goes off, it will shatter all the glass and the glass can kill kids. So we used to do these drills where you'd hide under your desk, literally the event of nuclear war. So, and then you have to know where the fallout shelter was. So now we're in a world where we have the luxury of not giving much thought to that. But then we have this terror prospect of someone we might even know coming into our school and shooting. I suspect, and I don't have the city attorney here, but there would, I suspect there'd be a lot of liability associated with the police department teaching students how to fight. Number one, I mean for obvious reasons, number one, if you fought not in self-defense and you used the city's tactics, you might share some liability in that. And number two, even in the event of a crisis if they ever failed to share some liability, that's just my hunch, right? But you're right about a change in lockdown drills. It used to be just shelter in place and waiting for the police to get there. Now I know in a lot of schools, if you're on the first floor and you're a door, you run. If you're in an isolated place, you shelter. And if you're confronted, you fight. Like I can't, ultimately what we're trying to do, and I guess I'm dodging the question a little bit, is just buy some time, buy a few seconds, get as many people out of harm's way as possible. I think ultimately it'll be the most terrifying experience of anyone's life. I think they'll react based on instinct, and hopefully that instinct is informed by a little bit of the drill. And hopefully it just buys us enough time to keep as few people getting hurt until the police can get there. I don't know if I've answered the question to your satisfaction, but that's where my head is at. Appreciate it, thank you. And just for everybody here from the public, I just want to let you know that Landon is a youth commissioner. And the city of Burlington has taken on the initiative to try to put youth commissioners, high school students, on all of the commissions. So if he's ever in the place where he's sitting in a class where you all are, I think he'll be able to add a lot of value to that class as someone who's participated, and we're really glad to have him. Thank you for that question. Any other commissioner updates or comments? Now we need, you know, any comments or changes? Okay, the minutes of the previous commission meeting, looking for consent on those, or any changes that anybody has? Yeah, so I would move to, except for the couple of changes, okay? So, okay, these are, I should just email you days before Laura, I'm sorry. So, the suicide on the marketplace, I think it was actually just in the parking garage, it was not on the marketplace, but under chief's report. I think it was in the parking garage. I don't know how much that matters, but you know, people might be wondering when was there a suicide on the marketplace? Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, because it was. Right, it's silly. Okay, and then under review, the role of police commission. It's just a typo, it says chair, ash, answer, but it should be asked. And then on the last page, there were two motions that are brought, consent minutes and to adjourn, and those both say ash, but they should be hard. Thank you. This is why it's good to have an attorney on commission. So I would move to accept those as amended. One second. All in favor? All right. Okay, next meeting's agenda items. I think Chief Del Pozo, after talking about the use of force data, that should be available for the next meeting. So we'll have that on the agenda. I'd like to keep the task force update on the agenda so we can stay in the loop on that. Anybody have anything else they'd like to add? And it's, and if there's- Is it possible that we could, maybe not next meeting, but at any point, hear from the union? If for no other reason, we just- Sure. And it's important to me. And maybe the task force meeting next week will form a little bit on that, right? I think we can see what we might want to hear from them. Yeah, good idea. Both good ideas, okay? Okay, our next meeting is scheduled for October 22nd. Does anybody have any conflicts? With that date, I'm gonna make sure that we have a quorum, okay? Face checking, we'll wait a few minutes. Good, good. Cutter team, that's a pretty nice meeting. Maybe I'll show them to you. You can come with a nice pack on, that's a pretty jello. Okay, so we'll still meet October 22nd. And then I, Chief Del Pozo, unless there's something, I don't believe we need it, as I've mentioned. I don't, if you, you wouldn't mind just two updates on confidential investigations. Okay, so personnel? Yes. So does someone want to bring a motion? We'll give you your executive session for the purpose of discussing personnel. Is that good? All in favor? Okay, we'll move into executive session. And again, thank you everybody for coming. Especially the students. Especially you.