 now live. Thank you, Ms. Moisten. Good evening, everyone. And I am going to call the meeting of the CSWG for April 21st, 1921 to order. Start with a roll call of the membership. And I'm just going to go around the screen. Mr. Vernon Jones. Here. Welcome, Ms. Ferreira. Here. Ms. Walker. Here. Welcome, Ms. Bowman. Here. Ms. Pat. Yeah. Ms. Owen. Here. Is that everybody? Mr. Cage is not on right now, correct? No, I do not see Mr. Cage and he's not in the attendees either. Okay. Okay. Thank you all. And good evening. And good evening to folks who may be attending this meeting from the community. I see we have a few people here. I want to pre-acknowledge the fact that we do have at least one member of our consulting group in attendance here. And I want to thank them ahead of time for their work. I want to quickly go through the agenda for tonight. And, you know, with the group's permission, I would like to first thank Ms. Moisten for continuing to articulate our minutes, both on the website and to our meeting. And we have a few items, a few minutes items on it to approve. But with respect to the time and starting late, I'd like to postpone those to the next meeting and go forward with just an overview of what our meeting is going to be for tonight and go from there. So typically for those of you who may be viewing for the first time, I think some of you may not be viewing, but our agenda is going to be, it's going to start with reports and comments. And in that particular segment of our meeting, we do the public comment segment, which we, where we allow and welcome certainly people from our community to make comments to this committee within the opening of the meeting. We, as a group, typically listen and welcome your comments. We don't engage, but we do take your comments and input very seriously and integrate it into our thinking as a group. In addition to that, I will open it up to our members of our working group who may from time to time have some opening comments that they want to make that have relevance to the work they're doing currently or relevance to the work that the community safety working group is doing. And we allow that to happen as well. Following that, we're going to get into our, the meat of our agenda. And that will be this evening a conversation with the Amherst Police Department. And at that point, I will welcome them properly. And we will have a conversation about a motion that was created with respect to community responders, our Crest Program that we will discuss as well. In addition to that, we will cover upcoming events and establish our next meeting date. And as always, if there are other items that are coming before the chair that did not get into the agenda, we'll consider those and make a determination on how to proceed with those particular items. And then we'll take the motion to adjourn. For all those in attendance, our meeting typically lasts two hours. We try to keep to that schedule as much as possible. And I just want to re-welcome everyone to us. Welcome, Mr. Cage. Glad to see you're here. Glad you got in. Are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Okay. I have one question for you real quick. How's school? It's doing good. I'm getting ready to go back in next month, I think. Good. How's football? It was not as planned. We lost a lot of games, but it was good, good exercise and good fun. That's what we want to know. Are you having fun? Yep. Good. That's the bottom line. Glad you're here and thank you for all your work. Thank you, all of you for all your work. And so I want to open it up to our members of the community safety working group. Any opening comments that not agenda items, but things you'd like to mention in advance of our discussion and action items, I'll just open it up to the group. If you can raise your hand, I'll try to recognize you. Ms. Ferreira. So this is to our group. So you're skipping the public comment right now? Yes. This is to our group first. Yes. All right. Yeah. I mean me, you know, obviously I've made some comments prior, you know, you know, this week it was the George Floyd, the verdict against police officer Chauvin. Obviously it's been a very tough week for everyone. Everyone was on pins and needles. In regards to it, I was on pins and needles. My kids, I have a 17-year-old black male and a 11-year-old son who have been basically traumatized through this whole process. And obviously we're very anxious about what we're going to inspire. So now we're going to see, you know, it's going to come out of it. Obviously this will be vigilant. You know, for me, thankfully, there was a verdict that we were all expecting. But it's continued to be vigilant and we'll make, you know, some changes, some positive changes. Also, I did start reading the draft that the 7th generation did a report on, which I had a lot of good information in there just in terms of informing our work. But obviously, you know, at the end of the day, it was just a very emotional week. And that's what I want to say. Thank you. Appreciate the comment. Other members of the group? Ms. Bowman? Hi. Yeah. So I agree. It was very, it's been a very trying week. I refuse, like I said last week, to watch the trial at all. Would get occasional updates from the news, but really even try to stay away from that as much as I could. And then I burst into tears when that verdict was, when the verdict was read. And I held my breath as they read each account. And I made my kids come and watch this, watch the verdict as well. Because I, you know, even though they were like worried about it, like I was still like, we have to be on this, like everybody has to be on the same page with this verdict. And if it's not what we want to hear, like, it just sucks. Like I had to prepare my kids that, you know what, you know, this is not the first time that police brutality was like filmed and that the police have got off. Like they know about other cases, but they don't know, you know, they don't really know Rodney King, the Rodney King case so much. And so I was like, you know, you have to understand, like, if he, if he, if this man gets off, it's going to be bad. And, you know, and that's what I was holding my breath for because I was, you know, I saw the verdicts for the Rodney King case. And that was like, and then I saw the result of the verdict. And that was really, really, really hard for me. And I think that a lot of that came up. And I'm sure that a lot of that came up for a lot of people. So as much as I am like sitting here being like, thank God, that is the verdict that came through, I'm still extremely sad that one, a life had to be lost for this. And two, I definitely don't think he's going to be handed down a sentence that seems like appropriate for what he did. So, you know, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bowman. Thank you. And Ms. Herrera, Ms. Pat. Hi, everyone. In addition to what Ms. Herrera and Ms. Bowman said, as most of us, it's been a difficult week and month. And as a black mother that I have five black children, three boys, and a black husband, black nephews, brothers, in-laws, I have just been numb since yesterday. I have not concentrated at work today. For me, it's not, I don't even feel like celebrating, celebrating for what? I continue to ask myself, what will make a human being take somebody else's life? It's just beyond me. What would hate in people is beyond me. So, I'm struggling. Let's put it that way, just like most people are. And then I just want to also comment on the work that the subcommittee, budget subcommittee, where we did this past weekend. We won't have enough time to discuss it tonight, but I just want to acknowledge people that helped out. The subcommittee members, Ms. Alicia Walker and Ms. Brian Owen. We also got substantial input from Darius Cage and also from community members, including Ms. Vince O'Connor. And thank you to the town manager. I had to bother you during the weekend to give me some formula, to give us some formula about the budget. So, I don't think we will have time to discuss it tonight, maybe next week. I could be wrong. I'll defer that to the chair and see what he says. Thank you. I have a comment, but I will defer to my membership before, and I'll make last comment before we go forward, unless there's another comment coming in. Ms. Walker. Hi, I just want to echo what a lot of the other committee members have said. I apologize. Background noise. But I just want to echo what a lot of the other committee members have said and feeling mixed emotions of relief with the verdict of the trial, but still feeling very much like this is very small baby steps. I went to sleep a little bit relieved and then woke up to the news of another young black child being killed at the hands of police. And so, I just want to remind everyone that our work is far from over and that this is continuing to happen. And so, that accountability, if that's what the verdict is, does not stop it from happening. And so, we still have a lot of work to do and I feel very thankful to be able to meet with you all every week to discuss these things with like-minded people. So, I just want to thank you all for your time. Thank you for the comment and I don't know how we got another attendee in this meeting, but she's really cute and that transformer was incredible. Okay, I want one. Thank you very much. And I would like to make a comment unless someone else on the committee would like to go before me, then I'd like to move into our action discussion. And Kate, thank you all for your opening comments. And in light of this, if you haven't noticed or don't know me, I identify as an African-American man. I've been in the work around diversity and social justice for years. And to see this verdict come through today is monumental. But in reaction and response to what Ms. Walker and others are saying, I was kind of numbed by the decision, numbed in this way that this is the first time in my lifetime that I've seen this kind of a verdict in this fashion go forward as it did, which said for me that one, we reached a different pinnacle with accountability. And this is just a moment of justice. There are a number of other places where justice need to be served. There are a certain number of places where other places where accountability has to be called into play. And I don't want to dwell on that as much as the saying that while I have different feelings about that as an African-American man with four black children who are all adults right now, we've had that conversation in our family. We've been having it for a number of years and we've had it since that verdict. I think what for me is, and I'd like to pass this on as hopefully an encouragement to folks who are working with me on the community is that we understand that how this world works. We understand how systemic racism works. We understand that yes, there are good people and yes, there are bad systems that put good people in bad places. And I can tell you from experience that systems win, systems win over good people. So I don't want to dismiss that necessarily and just say like, hey, we're going to be good. But one of the things that the charge of our group is to look systemically as what is happening in Amherst. What can we change in Amherst to make it more just? What can we make it and how can we make it more safe? How can we make it more like a community that is integrated and cross supportive and understanding of each other than what potentially could or is happening within our own town. So I'm mixed like Ms. Pat said. I don't know how to respond to this. At one level, I'm excited about it. On one level, I'm saddened about it. And on the third level, which I'm at right now coming into this meeting, is I'm energized by it. Because my energy tells me that this is, we are at a point as a community safety working group and in conversation with our community and conversation with our police department that we have an opportunity to make some substantive change for all people, but particularly for BIPOC people. And I think this is our moment. And I hope we can stay the course on this as a group and meet our charge. I am hoping that happens, praying that happens, and bringing all the energy I can to that, even in a moment of sadness and celebration and everything all mixed together. Sometimes you just don't know how to react to that. So that's my comment. And I appreciate all the energy that everybody on the screen and in our audience brings to this particular moment. And you know, I'm happy that the, very happy that to welcome the police department here to begin our conversation. So I thought I saw a hand, but then it disappeared because I want to move to our invitation to the police department to speak. If I missed something, was Ms. Bowman, was it you? Yeah, it was me, but I changed my mind. So it's fine. Okay. Appreciate you all. Thank you. And Ms. Moisten. Mr. O'Connor is in the audience and has his hand raised. That's definitely the next question I almost forgot. I said like, where is he? He's got to be there. Please acknowledge him and we'll welcome Ms. Bowman. Hi, Mr. O'Connor. Welcome. Yeah. Hi. So is this appropriate time to comment? Yes, it is. Okay. So, um, yeah. So I guess my concern is that, you know, if you view the police killings of murders as a public health issue, you know, a subset of the gun violence problem that the United States has, which, you know, that's a good way to look at it. Um, then, um, convicting what amounts to maybe one, I mean, even though many officers are dismissed, but convicting one officer out of every hundred who commits murder, for whatever reason, you know, every officer, every police involved shooting that's inappropriate has got its own components. But convicting one out of hundred and spending millions of dollars to do it, I think is, needs to be viewed as a way to approach this situation that needs to be changed. We, we need to do prevention. And prevention involves removing armed police officers from as many activities as possible in the community and putting up rigid controls over, you know, eliminating as much discretion as possible from police officers for the remaining activities for which we employ them. Um, prevention is what saves lives, not prosecutions. And, you know, just as with any other public health problem, you have to get to the source and eliminate the source of the pollution, you know, um, whether it's the pollution in a civil action, the book, or air pollution from, you know, in Louisiana, the pandemic. And the, and the problem is you have, you have the police in every community in this country involved in too many things. And the police need to be barred from many of those things. And the remaining things that they are engaged in, their conduct has to be strictly overseen and circumscribed so that there is no discretion when they stop somebody. And so forth. No discretion. And, um, and this will eliminate people who, who act inappropriately. But anyway, I look forward to, you know, hopefully to the, to the reports of the, the two committees and, and to some very substantive change in, in, uh, how the police department in Amherst conducts itself. And, and the introduction of a new group of people who can deal with social problems in the town without guns. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. I, I think I'd like to, to, to move forward right, right now. Um, Ms. Moisten and Lester, if there are any other hands, I'd like to, to move forward and get going. We're good. Um, no. So Crabtree has her hand raised and Lauren Mills had her hand raised first actually, and then so Crabtree. So I'm going to bring in. I missed them earlier in the comment. No. So I don't know, Lauren Mills hand went down. So so Crabtree. Okay. Welcome to comment. Thank you so much. My name is Zoe Crabtree. Um, I just wanted to say that I read through the draft motion that's in one of the versions of the agenda for today. And I know that you're going to be reviewing. This is the, one of the main things on the agenda for this evening. Um, I just wanted to let you know that I'm really excited about it. Um, and I really hope that we're able to make this program happen and that it can be fully funded so that it can be successful. So thank you so much for all of your work. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any others? Ms. Moisten? Yes. Ms. Lauren Mills? Is there any others beside Ms. Lauren Mills? No. That would be the last one when I'll take them. I'll move to our action items because I want to invite our police department into the conversation. Yep. Yes. Great. Um, I'll be quick. I, um, readings, I just wanted to um, say that, um, being a resident of Amherst or about, I can't even, sometimes I can't remember the exact years, but it's been less than five years. Um, but I've always been a resident of, um, Massachusetts. And I've kind of gotten thrust into, as all of us with, you know, these events that have occurred, you know, into activism. And honestly, um, my first, um, like, jumped into, like, feeling like some change has to happen is when my son was injured at school and the response to that injury. And so I am bringing that up because I feel like when things are not addressed, when small issues happen, this is why, you know, lives are taking, taking the way they are. Um, you know, with just no, no conscious, no, no, um, no, no, no, you know, humanity. And so I, I recently presented a survey with the school equity task force, um, to the school committee and recommended that we declare, um, systemic racism a, um, health crisis. So I was hoping to just, again, share that with this group and also, um, in the future with the human rights commission so that, um, we can, we can move together and realize that, you know, as was said, systems are put in place that not one person can dismantle. And so we need to continue to work together, um, the different entities in the town to really address, um, systemic racism. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Okay. So, so thank you. Um, I guess that's it, Ms. Moisten. Yes, that's all. Okay. I, I want to take a moment to welcome our, our Amherst police department. I want to welcome Chief Scott Livingstone, um, Officer, uh, Ron Young, Officer, uh, uh, Gabriel Ting to, uh, to this meeting. Uh, this is, this is the meeting, um, and an opportunity to begin a conversation, um, with the department about their work and also how this work interfaces with what our charge is as, as a working group. And rather than going through the, the actual, the list of our charge, one of the things that this, this community service working group is charged with is to be able to examine all aspects of our community. And I'm generalizing here, but we are charged with one, taking a look very carefully, a careful, deep look in fact at what is happening in our community with respect to policing, with respect to potential alternative, uh, safety initiative we might take and looking at currently what we're doing and where we are. Our goal as a community service, a community safety working group is to be able to recommend to the town manager, um, and the town proposals for how we see community safety working in our community. I want to acknowledge the fact that, uh, the seven generation movement collective is also, uh, currently involved, even as we speak in this kind of research in our community, they are all reaching to, to our community and, um, getting information. I want to acknowledge the fact that we, this community safety working group has also been in contact with the Amherst police department prior to this conversation on two separate occasions to seek written information from, uh, from the department and with the support of the town manager, which we've also received, but at this point as we're starting to funnel down into proposals for what our budgets may look like, what proposals may look like, it would be, uh, irresponsible. Let me say that for us to not include certainly the, the conversation with the police department. Um, I do want to say that, uh, it, it, it's almost, it's, it's a little odd that we're having this conversation with the police department at a time when we just came up with a big decision, uh, at the worldwide level around Dr. Chauvin and, uh, in full disclosure, I had a conversation with, uh, uh, Chief Scott Livingstone about this earlier and, uh, we shared our sentiments about this, but I think hearing from the police department at this particular time would be important. What you'd have to share with us, Chief Livingstone and members of your staff would be important for us to know and what would also be important, uh, for us is how we, um, can interact with you as we go forward. We have a number of questions that we want to propose later, but we welcome you and your staff and thank you for making the time for us and, uh, we'd like to open it up for you for your presentation, uh, and, you know, we'll go from there. As you said, I won't, I won't, I won't let you, uh, ramble on too much. So, thank you, Paul. Appreciate your presence and, uh, Ron Young, thank you. I'll give you a real thank you. Glad you're here. Welcome and we're ready to hear from you. Right. Great, Paul. And excuse me. Thank you, you know, to you, Paul, and the discussion we had earlier today and to all of the members from the community safety working group for having us on tonight and making time for us. I truly appreciate that. I would just like to say, you know, this discussion that Paul and I had earlier about the Chauvin Floyd murder trial verdict. I can't imagine or understand completely what it would feel like as a person of color to have to go through that. I can tell you as police officers, we were traumatized probably in a different way, but I think, you know, recognize that the verdict of guilty was what we had all hoped for as well and the right verdict as well. Um, it's the beginning. I certainly recognize that and there's a lot of work left to do and continued conversation about how do we improve policing not only just not across the country, but in our community of Amher. So we're hopeful that this, you know, gets us moving in the right direction as far as having these conversations and making things better across the country and specifically in the town of Amher. So I certainly echo what a lot of the members already said probably from a different perspective, but certainly feeling the same way that we were very, very hopeful for the guilty verdict and really respect that decision. So thanks for that. Um, you know, I did promise Paul that I would not ramble tonight because I know you guys were on a time schedule. So I'm going to try and, um, you know, have comments and a little bit of overview about the very specific first paragraph, uh, and an opening presentation and then Captain Young and Captain Ting can maybe touch on some of the questions or topics in the second paragraph that was presented to us, you know, earlier in the week. So, um, you know, I'm going to try and follow the agenda, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So, you know, looking back at where we are now as a police department and as an agency, I've been a police officer here in the town of Amher since 1978, believe it or not. I don't remember in, you know, I said 1978. Um, I don't remember it. Members of the committee here probably, we're not even born yet. So I've seen a lot and I've seen a lot of changes, some good, some have not been so good, but, you know, the evolution of policing has changed a lot since I became a police officer and, you know, we're transitioning into things that society really hasn't been able to figure out and solve. And what I mean by that is, you know, the types of calls that we're responding to are very, very different than the types of calls I responded to as a young police officer. You know, issues of, excuse me, homelessness and unemployment issues that people call the police for issues with mental health and people in crisis. You know, those were never issues that we previously respond to do. Landlord, tenant issues, you know, substance abuse issues with drug and alcohol programs or problems that are extended. You know, 911 and the communications lines that we have really have kind of become the catch all for people to call in times of need. And, you know, we respond in the best of our abilities, but we've certainly had to adapt as those requests have become more on the agency. You know, I told Paul this and he thought it was kind of weird to hear this, but I told him a while ago that if we never had to respond to another mental health call in our careers, we would probably all be, you know, dancing in the streets because it's burdensome and it's difficult calls to respond to many, many times. But, you know, with that being said, we've done our best to adapt and to train our officers in having to respond to those types of calls. You know, we've created crisis intervention to have very specific training and roles and how to respond to those and do follow up when people are in crisis. And that's not something I would have ever believed we would have done as an agency. You know, we have very specific officers who are trained for drug and alcohol response and follow up in that venue as well. You know, we have liaisons that are specific to the Craig's door shelter who we work very, very closely with. So, you know, those are some of the things that we've been doing as an agency to try and adapt and do a better job. I happen to think we do a really good job. We are certainly not perfect and we continue to evolve when it comes to responses of that nature. You know, I know there was some questions and wanted me to discuss basically, you know, about our BIPOC citizen commuting members, you know, how to better respond to their needs. And I think the important thing that I'm going to need to know and our agency is going to need to know is what is it that makes the people feeling unsafe and not feeling safe that they can call us with issues and or concerns. So, I mean, the communication part in the outreach is going to be important to us moving forward so that we can understand, you know, why it is that they are afraid to call us or don't feel comfortable reaching out to us. Because I don't always know the answers and the reasons for that. I know that we have scheduled future listening sessions post COVID and, you know, those are going to be organized from our facilitators from our recent racial justice and anti-racism training. So, we look forward to being able to have those conversations and see how we can be a better police officer to respond to those types of concerns that they have because, you know, I don't recognize and I don't always know what it is those citizens and those members of our community need from us. So, those listening sessions are going to be very, very important to us as officers and as agencies. You know, we're also looking at expanding and reintroducing our citizens police academy. We used to run citizen police academies for many, many years and the interest in those kind of waned. So, we're going to bring those back as well post COVID and, you know, tailor those academies that are specific to what people want to hear and they want to understand about why we respond to calls the way we do and what we do as police officers so that there is better understanding and potentially where we need to change as responders to those types of calls. So, those are other things that we're looking at to reach out to our BIPOC citizens and community members. You know, we started a ambassador's program several months ago. It's been extremely successful. The COVID ambassador's response roles were just that. They were very specific to dealing with issues of COVID and just educational type thing, but it's been so popular and so successful that we're looking at methods to expand, you know, their roles in responding to calls. So, it may, what other types of things can they be engaged in? And I was speaking with the town manager, you know, would it be possible to have unarmed civilian people responding to things like noise complaints and that sort of thing. So, you know, we're really having those types of conversations about what else can they do? You know, can they be facilitators for response to mental health? And I know you have a draft that's going to be voted on, if not tonight soon, about the Crest responders. And I see this as a team effort. You know, whatever comes of your recommendations to the town manager for civilian responders, you know, we as an agency want that to be successful. And we will assist and facilitate that as best we can with whatever requests are made of our agency. So, you know, we look forward to those conversations and potential of what that may bring as an agency. I'm very familiar with the, you know, with some of the other roles that are being brought about in other parts of the country, whether we're talking about the STARS program or Eugene, Oregon, you know, I've spoken to the police officers that have been charged with overseeing some of those response teams as well. And they've talked about nothing but positive things about that. So, you know, we're looking forward to having those conversations as well. You know, I'll kind of stop there. I don't want to keep going on Paul. And I know you were going to hold me to a very specific timeline, but I'll more than happy to be willing to turn this over to Ron and Gabe so that they can talk about, you know, the questions and topics that the other members of the community safety working group had as well. But also, I'm more than happy to entertain questions with anything that I presented or said tonight. So, Paul, I'll turn that over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Chief Livingstone. And thank you all for being here. Just so you, the three that you and me and your others, staff members who are here. The community safety working group had worked on some questions that we have for you that, you know, pre-presentation that we want to talk to you about. And we were going to forward those initially when you're done. I do want to respect the time that both Captain Young, Captain Ting, I can't believe Ting's a captain already. But anyway, I've known him for so long I can mess with him. But anyway, that they're here and I want to honor their time and what you expect them to present to us that might be in form or work. And then I wanted to give full attention to the questions that our community safety working group has come for. So with your permission, I'd like for you to just acknowledge and recognize either Captain Young or Captain Ting to go forward with this. I'd like to, since they're here, hear from both of them. And then we'll dive into our questions if that's okay. Here. And again, we were just kind of following your agenda. So the bullet items that you had specific to protocols and practices about community outreach and traffic stops and search of types of things. And Captain Ting would be more than happy to talk about those. Thank you. Appreciate it. Captain Ting, welcome. Thank you for having me, everybody. Good evening, first of all. And, you know, in taking a look at the agenda, one question here was that was asked was to describe the challenges currently facing the Amherst Police Department as it seeks to serve the Amherst community. So I'm just going to give a quick overview of some of those challenges that our agency faces on a daily basis. And some of these challenges are our ongoing challenges. And some of these challenges, I think we'll always be here because of the nature of our town and community. And some of them, hopefully we will have a resolution to. So first and foremost, I just want to mention the challenge that we have our department is maintaining our accreditation process. You know, we are an accredited agency and we have been since 2003. And for those of you who don't quite understand or know what accreditation is, what that is is a three year assessment from from the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission. So it's a state governed agency. They review our policies and procedures and our rules and regulations. Essentially, it's a process to professionalize and standardize best practices and policing. And that's something that that we are very proud of. We try to hold our agency at the highest standard. So that's something that we are consistently working on. Again, we are assessed every three years. So that's something that is a challenge. Certainly this past year, one of our largest challenges was dealing with COVID-19 issues. And we've had to create a lot of different protocols to keep everyone safe and healthy as well as our agency so we can help our community. One thing that's a constant is quality of life issues. You know, this being a college town, that's a constant, you know, from noise complaints to large parties to public drunkenness, OUIs and disturbances. That's something that's a regular occurrence due to us being a college town. We've worked really hard. You know, the chief had touched upon, you know, the evolution of our police department, you know, something like quality of life issues. We used to kind of use arrest as our as our main form of education. And we've learned over the years that that's probably not the best way to go. And that's kind of how we view a lot of our issues. You know, we used to arrest our way out of it. That's kind of the terminology that we utilize. And we learned that there's other ways of doing that. So we've partnered with the university to try and create other positions. We have a neighborhood liaison officer, community outreach officer to try and educate versus going through punitive measures. And that's been highly successful. That's just one snippet of some of the evolution changes that we've been going through in our police department. Another staple is homelessness. You know, we've partnered up with Craig's Doors. We do have officers who are liaisons to our homeless population. And we also coordinate with the bid and the local businesses that might be affected to try and mitigate some of the homelessness issues. So that's something that's been at the forefront. And coupled with that, certainly we've already discussed that a little bit, dealing with the uptick in mental health related issues. It seems like, you know, in the past, the chief had mentioned that, you know, we never really want to cause like that. Although the problems were probably there. It's just that it's a lot more recognized these days. So we've been trying to find better ways of trying to handle in those calls to try and minimize physical contact and minimize use of force. So coupled with that comes with a lot of training and a lot of recognition of of de-escalation processes and whatnot to try and make sure that we come up with a better product. Another challenge that we have is making sure that all of our schools and our public buildings and private entities and religious congregations are all trained up for active shooter training. So we have a process called Alice. What that is, it's a system to try and coordinate with the police department, as well as our dispatch center and our fire departments in the event of an active shooter situation. So that's something that's an ongoing challenge to try and get everybody trained up on that. A couple other things. Certainly traffic enforcement is a huge issue in our town. The chief didn't allude to it, but that's probably one of the largest complaints that he gets is for traffic issues. And that could be from our main roads, Bay Road, North Pleasant Street, or specific neighborhoods. You know, one neighborhood that we've been dealing with a lot for traffic issues is Grant Wood Drive, Elphill Road, and that association. Certainly, like I said, Bay Road and Amity Street are big ones as well as Amherst Woods. A couple other challenges I'd like to mention is certainly recruiting. It seems like nationwide it's been really difficult to find quality candidates. It just seems like nobody really wants to have any interest in this profession as much anymore. So that's really a challenge. It's also a challenge to basically enhance our agency to be a lot more attractive to the BIPOC community. That's something that's at the forefront and it has been for a long time. A couple of that is our retention of officers. You know, there's a lot of competition out there. Certainly nowadays in this field, if you want to become a police officer, there's a lot of opportunities out there. You know, we just can't, we have a hard time hanging on to them. We have a hard time recruiting for them. So those are some of the issues that are challenges that our agency is facing on a daily basis. So that's just a quick overview. And the biggest challenge I think we have is something that I learned from one of our past meetings. In our past meeting, somebody had mentioned that a lot of times community members find it difficult to be able to communicate with the police department. And that's something I don't understand because I am part of the police department. So my question is, you know, if that's the case and if there are barriers, I want to figure out what those barriers are. I want to try and open up those lines of communication and give everyone the opportunity to come in and ask us questions and to collaborate and try and figure out, you know, what those problems are and what solutions we can find for them. That's why I truly appreciate, you know, being invited into this process. Thanks, Gabe. Thank you. If you see our heads down, folks, we're not ignoring you. We're writing furiously at this point. Thank you, Chief Livingstone. Thank you, Captain Ting. Captain Young, you are here as well. And I would defer to Chief Livingstone introduce you to see what your offering might be for this evening's meeting. Yes. So specifically, Captain Young, part of what he's responsible for is an administrative captain is all of the training that goes all inside this agency. And it's pretty extensive, so he can talk about briefly how an officer gets trained to be a police officer and what follows up with that. And but he's also very, very important role. He oversees a lot of our grants and is the facilitator for our crisis intervention team members. Those are the guys and gals that specifically respond to crises for those individuals who need it. And he also sees our, you know, drug and alcohol response team members, our liaisons to the, to the Craig's doorshelf. They're pretty much everything, you know, goes through Ron when it comes to next steps and trainings and being responsible and overseeing those types of things responsible for all of the requests that he gets for records requests. And there's a lot of them right now, Ron. Well, he used to have hair, but he's been pulling it out lately. So in any case, Ron, I'll turn it over to you now to speak a little bit about, you know, your responsibilities. I appreciate that, Chief. He's been pulling it out more than lately. I've known him for a while. Mr. Wiley, I haven't had hair for 30 years. Tell me. Thank you for being here and thank you for, you know, helping us understand this whole context and we appreciate all of you being here. Please, please present. I thank you, sir. And just to echo what Gabe said, I thanks for the group. I know that your time is precious and having us here is important. And it's, it's kind of humbling a little bit to be very honest. So I'll be very brief. And then, you know, perhaps you can answer follow I can answer follow up questions. In terms of training, as the chief alluded to, there's a process when we hire a new police officer. I think everyone's familiar with, you know, the academy process here in Massachusetts that takes 26 weeks. So it's about half a year before somebody can actually get out of training. We also have a 14 week field training program. So once, so once we've hired somebody, once they've been vetted, they've gone through the hiring process, a background investigation is completed, a psychological process has been completed, then they go to the academy and then subsequently they have a field training process. We really don't get somebody out on the street for about a year. It takes about a year from beginning to end. But that's not really where the training ends. And quite honestly, I think that's really where it begins. You know, the MTC mandates specific trainings that we have to do on an annual basis that amounts to somewhere between 36 to 48 hours, depending on the fiscal year, and they do run on the fiscal year. We augment our training here based on departmental needs. So, you know, there are certain skill sets that people need. We try to rotate through and keep it fresh. Like this past year, we spent a lot of time talking about people who have disabilities, elder abuse types, things like that. We try to rotate it through so that the people actually out on the street have some work knowledge about how to better sort of the community. Training is tough sometimes simply because we have to make certain that we adhere to what the MTC requires of us. And that's, as you would know, that that is a state mandate. And it can be challenging sometimes because we do a lot of our training in-house, but we have to farm it off to people of a better skill set or a more deserving skill set to bring to our agency. So, it's kind of training in a nutshell. Like I certainly would answer or entertain any questions about it in more depth. And just to kind of parallel onto that, the chief alluded to the fact that I oversee CIT and DART. So, CIT really, I've been a cop a long time, not quite as long as the chief, but a very, very long time. I'm in my fourth decade of being a cop. It's probably the biggest paradigm change in our agency since I've been here. Gabe alluded to it earlier. It was the old cliche. We go to the vast majority of people who suffer from behavioral health issues or more specifically substance abuse type issues. We would respond and we'd arrest our way out of it. You know, a lot of those calls come from or the genesis of them or underlying criminal acts. They may be minor in nature, disorderly conduct, disturbances, things of that nature. And when we got there as a young cop, I really was wholly unprepared on how to deal with that. My training was limited. I had no training at all. I'm not a clinician. And I just knew I had to solve the problem. And quite frequently, we'd investigate minor crimes and make a rest for very minor crimes. The CIT program is the antithesis of that. It is more appropriately, it's a jail diversion program. We train a small number of police officers to respond to those calls. And we train the entire department to recognize the symptoms for when we would need a CIT officer to respond. The idea behind it is that it's a resource driven program. We don't want to arrest people. We actually arrest a very, very tiny number of people who suffer from behavioral health issues and drug abuse issues these days. Sometimes we can't help it. You know, the crime is so overwhelming that an arrest is deserving, but it happens very infrequently. We try to outsource that. We call our clinicians, we call our crisis response people to come or if need be, we bring them there. That's the whole substance of the CIT program and it's what we try to accomplish. Dark kind of falls a similar programming. Well, very infrequently, that's actually a crisis situation once it's an overdose or a medical type problem. We farm those out pretty quickly. We work through a variety of different programs, most notably Hampshire, Hope and Northampton based in Northampton, where we hook people up with resources. We hook people up with recovery coaches, things of that nature. We do do follow-up sometimes, but it's more wellness type follow-up. As we know, the state is to criminalize a large portion of the narcotics laws anyways. And those that haven't been decriminalized unless it's really, really a flagrant violation, we tend to not bring those to court any longer if we can outsource it to somebody who could follow up at the medical end. So that's kind of CIT and DART and training in a very, very short window. As I said, Mr. Wiley, I'm happy to answer any questions if the group has them. So Mr. Young, thank you. CIT means? Our crisis intervention team. So in JDP, when I say, I'm sorry if I speak quickly, JDP is jail diversion program. Just want to be clear and make sure we're all in the same page. May I have an understanding about some of the acronyms that come forward and DART? DART is a drug resistance team. So drug recovery team, I'm sorry. So people who are suffering from substance abuse disorders, most notably people of ODEED, we have various resource avenues that we can provide for those folks. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the presence of all of you here this evening on behalf of our group. And as you know, we have some questions for you and some of them, you know, there may be some additional questions I want to say ahead of time that may be sitting with people right now based on what you just reported. So they're not pre known questions, if you will. But I'd like to take a moment to just go through some of the questions we had ahead of time to see if we can give some very, you know, hopefully succinct answers. And if these any of these responses need more time, or maybe we need another conversation beyond this meeting, we'd happily defer to that. But just so you hear from our community as a community safety working group, and hopefully it reflects some of the input that we're getting from our community through our seven generations movement collective with some of these questions are coming from them as well, which I'm going to present. So I'd like to devote some time to this. And I would say maybe we'll put a cap on it at seven o'clock, if that's okay. And see how we go, we can check in with everybody at that time. But again, thank you all for being here. And let me just dive right in one of the questions that came from our our consultant group is what is the number of people? And again, some of these may be very discreet. So if they are, if there's something you can answer, find something you can't, we'd love to get the response from you as quickly as possible after your research. But what is the number of people booked into jail, who have a suspected mental illness, slash addiction issue? What is the average length of stay when booked? Ronnie, you want to take a stab at that? Certainly chief. So I don't have a number for you, Mr. Wiley. I can tell you it's a very small number. I could certainly probably mind some of that out of our system. Regardless, the one part that I can answer definitively is very few people stay in our custody for very long. Whether they're either bailed or more likely than not, if it's discovered that there is some type of underlying issue, whether it's behavioral health, mental health, drug disorder, we will want to get them where they need to be. They don't need to be in a cell. They need to be in the emergency room. They don't need the cell. They need to be with CSL or at the living space down at BHN or something along those lines. I will tell you that a vast majority of people that we discover who have behavioral health issues, it comes in with an underlying crime first. So we don't just encounter people. We actually receive a very few calls that come in as a medical problem. More often it comes in as some type of disorder. And there are as frequently, if it's not recognized right away, those people may be arrested. But we try to divert them. And we can divert them and to do, in fact, to divert them out of practice after we discover that that's the underlying root cause. So there are very, there are varying ways to handle that. It's a very complex answer. I can try and help mine that, but I don't have, I can't tell you if it's three a week or three a year. I can tell you it's not three a week, but it's a very tiny number of people. And I understand. And I'm speaking, you know, to you directly, but please understand also this is coming from these questions that come in from a different, from different folks on our, on our community safety working group. Sure. Get it. All these things are unanswerable. But if there's some data mining you can do on that, that might be informative to us. We'd appreciate a response to that. So, so one of the things that I'm required to do on a monthly basis is I have to report to the Department of Mental Health, the people whom that we, that we divert. So that's one number that I could, I could provide pretty readily. As you discussed earlier, there would have to be some discretion, of course, because we're talking about people's medical backgrounds. But if we're talking strictly numbers, that's a number that I could find pretty readily. Thank you. And I'm going to, I'm going to work through this in sort of linear fashion here, but this is our first bucket. This was on protocols and practices. And the second question that came from, this is a combination of my question, as well as our consultant group that's working with us, because they're not on our community, but I wanted to, to funnel this question to you on their behalf, as was the first one. What, what is a percentage of people with suspected mental health slash addiction issues who are then connected to treatment? And I'm going to throw something in there rather than you know, arrested, put in jail, you know, retained, detained. How quickly does that turn around to treatment? Pretty quickly. So more often than not, it comes right from the street. You know, there, there are a large number of people that we offer services to that don't want them. And that's, you know, that's fine. But they're, I can't give you a percentage, we could try and figure that out. But the, I can tell you the vast majority of people that present in that fashion are somehow wired in. And sometimes it might be at the very lowest level. Sometimes we, as I said, we might actually have to transport them to a place where they can receive services immediately. We have, we have, I heard the term recidivism in there. We, there are several people that we have brought numbers of times and they come back and we bring them again, and they come back and we bring them again. It is just a different mindset, you know, culturally, it's a completely different animal than it was even five years ago. Thank you, Captain Young. And by the way, the, the, the background context for this is we have a particular interest as a community safe to working group to be conscious of the impact that this is having on BIPOC community. So as you're, you're thinking about this and responding to this, any information that can be filtered through that lens as well would be important to us because that we're, we're finding is a community that is, is disproportionately impacted by the interaction with police and that, you know, systemically, the way it is structured, that's what happens. So as you, as you're collecting this data, you know, that's, that's an additional filter, I like for you to come and think about as well if you would. Also, I'm just, I'm going to go right through these questions because these are questions that people raised and they came, they came to, to me beforehand. Does the APD track, keep track of a rearrest recidivism rates per person suspected of confirmed or I'm sorry, suspected or confirmed to have mental health addiction issues. So, so we do track all those numbers. You know, I think that we, I think if there was something that jumped out that we would utilize that as a way to try and force, and force, perhaps force the issue as opposed to somebody who didn't want treatment readily. So we've had a very few number of people, usually people that not only have, they have a, you know, they have a coexisting mental health issue as well as a substance abuse issue. We've sought relief through the courts for that. More often than not, we'll work with the family members because quite frequently that's, that's how, how we, we end up quite, you know, honestly. So, but that number's tiny. We do get some recidivism, but it's, it's usually not criminal conduct. It's, it's more, it's more just trying to reacquaint them or get them wired back in with a service that might help them get somewhere where they want to be. So the data's there, it's captured. It's, it's not, it's not really anything that's really driven the program, so to speak, simply because we try to deal with each individual case on a case-by-case basis. Thank you. For those in, in, on the group, I want to remind folks in the group and, as well as people who may be in the public and listening to this in addition to our consulting group, we have had written communications with the police department prior to this conversation and it's been an email exchange of questions and answers and responses. So the police department has responded to a number of questions that we've had. Admittedly, and Chief Livingstone knows this too, there, there were gaps in those responses. So we went back a second time and there were, there was a second response as well as some narrative response from the chief around this. And so we do have lots of information that we've received, context change, situations change, circumstances change. And so this, this conversation also hopefully rolls into a more contemporary context of what's going on with the police as we approach budget time. And what we have to do relative to proposals that we have to present to the Tom manager who in Trump presented to the town. So just a background information of people listening in. This is not a first conversation with the police department. And, you know, we're, we're continuing to deepen and dive in deeply with this, with this conversation. So this is what this is about. I want to just go through real quickly. I just miss Bowman has her hand up and it's been up for a while. I don't know if you would like to address that. I would like to continue with the questions that I received beforehand. And then I'll come, I want to get through these because I want to honor the questions that people submitted. I will make time for the folks who were having their hands up right now. No, but I can I ask my question though, because the next question is my question. Can I ask? Well, I'm sorry to hear my voice. I'm Miss Ferreira. We need to get other voices like I want to hear Miss Bowman. I think it'd be good to have other voices. I don't have the names at this point that the different voices. So go right ahead. Feel free. Go ahead. And then I'll wait. So I don't know, Miss Bowman is trying to say something first. Okay, go ahead. All right. So basically, I'm just going to be forthright and very honest right now. This whole part of the meeting has me extremely triggered. And I just need to put that out there, because it's just so complex why I'm triggered right now. And I'm not going to get into details about it, because I know we have so much to get through. But I need you all to know that I am extremely triggered by this part of the meeting. I am extremely unhappy about this part of the meeting. So that's all I'm going to say right now. But I need to make that statement. Thank you, Miss Bowman. Thank you. Miss Ferreira. All right. So yeah, so the next question I was the one that had put in the question. But I guess before I ask that question, I did want to kind of make a comment in terms of some of the things that Chief Livingstone as well as I think Captain Ting had kind of said, which was something like, you know, we want to, and I don't obviously correct me if I'm wrong, but like, why do BIPOC people sometimes you're not understanding why you're not totally being able to be responsive to, you know, what BIPOC people need and everything. And I just want to kind of bring up two examples in terms of that. When you ask those questions, you know, as a BIPOC person myself, I want to say that, you know, one is that I remember being at a function where it was majority people of color and and there was a noise complaint, right? And then two police officers showed up and this was people of color, you know, all, you know, 40s in their 40s and things like that. And, you know, and we were trying to explain, okay, this, you know, we're having a party, this and that and the other. And instead of the police officers, you know, just engaging with us, it became you all better shut it down. If you don't, you're going to get arrested. You see what I'm saying? So, and I was there, you know, I, you know, I came up, I was like, I'm an attorney, I'm just, it doesn't matter who you are, you know, was that type of communication, right? So, so when is that type of communication without any type of conversation? That's why, you know, BIPOC community don't want to reach out to you all. They don't want, and they're afraid, right? That's what it causes illicit fear in us. And then another one was even more recently, when I got a community member who contacted me, who said that, I guess, in town, in Amherstown, there was this, this BIPOC family, so I'm, you know, black family that was stopped by the police in the middle of town. There was not only just one police officer vehicle, there was several police officer vehicle, right, that had stopped them in the middle of town. Then there was little kids there too, because they had kids, then the kids were there and everything. And so everyone was looking around. So this community member contacted me because they were like, that looked just crazy. That looked just inappropriate and not okay, you know, to have a police, a family of color be stopped in that way, not just one vehicle, but several vehicles so that they look like there were some type of, you know, terrorists or criminals or I don't know what it was, but it just, again, not a way to communicate with BIPOC people. And that's why BIPOC people are very afraid to communicate with you all and don't trust the police and don't trust that you're going to take care of what it is that we need you to take care of, right? So I just want to put those two things out there. Now, in terms of my question, because as Mr. Wiley had said, as Paul had said, we had asked several times in terms of the data, you know, like really get into the nitty gritty, I want some examples, right? So how, so please give an actual example of how APD would respond to a call involving someone who has a mental health, a homelessness, homelessness or substance abuse problem, but an actual example. So what would you do? So you get called, you know, you get a call dealing with any of these issues. What would you actually do? So sure. And thanks for those comments, Ms. Fiera. So as Captain Young pointed out, the way these calls typically come in, it doesn't come in as a, hey, there's a mental health problem going on at this location or that location. There's usually something else that triggers it. It could be something as simple as a shoplifting call or a disturbance or a fight or something of that nature. And when the initial officers are dispatched and respond, and they start to recognize, okay, there's something else going on here, that's when they would call in a member of the crisis intervention team who would deal with those issues specifically. So that they have the additional training, the recognition, and the resources to get these people, these individuals, the help they need. So, you know, it doesn't initially always come in when officers are responding that they know what they're getting into as far as a mental health crisis call. As a matter of fact, it's very rare that they would go and know ahead of time that it's that type of a call. You know, some of them are very specific. Somebody may call and say, you know, I've been talking to my friend and they're out of state and this individual is not doing so well. You know, those are easy to understand and respond to, but the majority of those types of calls when we initially get dispatched to them, we don't have that type of information that that's what we're responding to. We've come to learn because there are some individuals that we deal with multiple times. So if there are names associated with it, we definitely know what we're getting into or what we're dealing with. So and again, those are easier ones to get officers to respond to who have that specific training, but it's not very frequent that we do know that. I hope that answered your question. Kind of, but if you can provide like more detail in terms of like once you do know what some mental health, what do you do that? Yeah, I think Captain Young can jump on there. I'll give you kind of, and I'm going to, Ms. Ferrer, I'm going to kind of talk in general terms because it's about a real case that happened a couple weeks ago. So, you know, for obvious, for privacy reasons, right? But so there was a call that came in for somebody who was loitering around the back of a building here in the center of town. One of the officers gets over there. He's an experienced officer. He's not a CIT cop. He's an old guy like me, to be honest with it. So he sees what's going on there because he's had mental health first aid training. He recognizes this isn't a trespassing situation. It's not a disorderly conduct problem. It's a CIT problem. It's somebody, he's not a clinician. He calls another officer that comes to the scene who has CIT training and more importantly has some very real experience dealing with people like at BHN or over at CDH. The guy recognizes the cop because they've dealt with one another before. They have a dialogue. He goes on and on and on. He's clearly in crisis. He's disheveled. He's dirty. I'm going to tell you, when I was a young cop, that guy probably would have been arrested. I'm being real, right? I'm being honest, knowing who I was when I was a 25-year-old cop. They ended up, it took a long time. Our policy dictates that the shift commander has to give them enough time to solve the problem. They ended up getting in touch with somebody in Florence at CSO, clinical support options. They had a spot for him. He didn't feel comfortable getting into a police car. He didn't want to get into a police car. We didn't have a civilian person to do that. So we ended up getting an unmarked car, putting him in there, bringing him over to Florence. He ended up being admitted at a later time because once he was with the clinician, they were able to get him wired back in with his team. He'd had some other medical issues in the past, as the story equates to. But I guess my point being is, from a philosophical standpoint, that probably would have resulted in an arrest even 10 years ago. Again, he didn't belong in jail. He needed to be at the hospital. That's my goal. That's the goal. If a good JDP program takes off, that's what it has to be based on. I'm going to echo what Mr. Wiley was talking about earlier. If you're familiar with the CIT program at all, it comes from anything that's decent. It comes from tragedies. It came from a shooting of a person, a person of color, by the way, in Memphis a number of years ago, who was suffering from behavioral health issues. So the CIT model that we use here in Massachusetts is loosely based on and is sometimes referred to as the Memphis model. So that's typically, in my perfect world, that call went the way it's supposed to go. And a call that probably would have taken 15 minutes when I was a young cop and locked up somebody who didn't need to be locked up, took an hour and a half. Time well invested, right? To me. Thank you. Ms. Walker, I'm sorry I was muted. I have a couple of different questions. One, I know one of the officers spoke about the standardized policies coming from the state in terms of, and so I'm wondering if they govern the training processes, like if they decide which trainings you guys administer and implement, or if you guys yourselves have discretion as to which trainings you will implement or require. And then that also leads me to wonder, because you did state that when hiring a new police officer, you guys have a background check, psychological assessment. And in terms of like making bends with the BIPOC community or looking towards trying to smoothen the communication that happens there, have you guys ever considered implementing a racial bias assessment before hiring new officers? Or have any of these things ever been considered or what other things have you guys considered as a police department to make amends with the BIPOC community is my first question. And then my second question is, in terms of the CIT training, what does that entail and how long is the training? Chief, you want me to handle? Yeah, go ahead. I'll take the CIT end of it, sir. So the CIT, so mental health first aid and CIT is required by 100%. It's a 40 hour training. And it's not done by police officers. It's handled by clinicians that are that are outlined in and are trained up as part of DMH. So we get our training from the Department of Mental Health. It's a 40 hour training. Sorry, Chief. That's fine. And then I'll talk about the annual training that's mandated by the state. So, you know, after a police officer becomes a police officer, and they receive the initial training, there's a committee that's a state committee that I happen to actually sit on and represent the Western Mass region. And I've been on that committee for 11 years now. It's called the Municipal Police Training Committee. It's going through a lot of changes right now based on the police reform act that was just recently passed by the governor by our legislators. But what that committee decides annually is what trainings all police officers in the state have to go through. And, you know, that's called it's called the annual training. And it changes from year to year. We try and find topics that aid the legislators sometimes make recommendations. So our legislator, you know, being either Joe Comerford or Mindy Dohm would reach out to us and say, you know, citizens are interested in officers getting training in this. So they'll make recommendations. Other recommendations come from police officers or police chiefs and say, we need additional training in this, you know, specialties and that sort of thing. And those those mandated annual trainings, it's typically mandated at 40 hours, right. And so every police officer in the state has to get that. And it's very specific topics. And then our agency, we go above and beyond that and we'll do additional trainings. As Captain Young and Captain Ting said, we're officers who have interest in other things, you know, and it could be something as simple as an officer has expertise in crime scene. So, you know, if they go to a crime scene, they will fingerprint and photograph or as crisis intervention team members. Those are volunteers and officers who have interest in that one of our officers before the police officer was a social health specialist. So that was his interest. And that's what he gravitated towards. So that's kind of the annual training that all officers get and that that that is continuous. So it takes the full year to get all of that training accomplished. And then you start over again, with some different topics and that sort of thing. Was there something else we missed or something else you wanted to add? Yeah, sorry. So that was helpful. But the second piece of my question was, have you guys ever considered something like doing a racial bias assessment before hiring an officer or what other practices or policies have you guys implemented, trying to make amends or smooth out communication with the BIPOC community? Gabe, you want to take a sting at that as far as accreditation and hiring process? Yeah, I just, I guess, Ms. Walker, I just want to understand what you mean by a race assessment during the recruiting process. I'm not quite following what you mean by that. So I was just wondering because you said you do a psychological assessment and what that entails and if it looks for racial biases within the officers that are applying to be working with the department. Yeah, I think that's a part of it. Part of their psychological exam. We don't conduct that. You know, we found that out to a specialist to them. It's it's actually a psychiatrist that meets with each candidate for several hours and they have a battery of tests that they go through. And at the completion of those tests, they get analyzed and make a determination if if they're a good fit, you know, certainly mentally and they do take that into consideration. Absolutely. I'm sorry, what was the other portion of your question? And then if you specifically for you guys the Amherst Police Department, if there are any policies or trainings or anything that you've done besides the anti-racist training, looking towards making amends with the BIPOC community or smoothing out communication with the BIPOC community? Yeah, you know, the thing is, is we are constantly seeking that type of training. You know, annually, we try and find trainings that have to do with bias training. A lot of times the training that we have found is kind of like, we call it a box check. What I mean by that is that something that's required. And we're always constantly looking for something a little bit more than that. Just recently, we actually had a training with Mr. Wiley and his group. The reason why he was chosen was because, you know, we wanted something a little bit more meaningful, something that was going to be localized as well. And that was that proved to be extremely, extremely successful, in my opinion. So that is that definitely at the forefront. I hope that answers your question, Ms. Blonder. Ms. Bowman. So, there's a lot of opportunities for race training out there. I know Harvard has projects implicit. Also, there's UROC, which is undoing racism. I mean, there's a lot of things out there that could that the police department could do for themselves to really have an understanding. I'm also just going to point out, or actually ask the question, what kind of historical teaching do you guys do in order to understand what the reason, the original reason for police was and how that impacted BIPOC communities? Because the thing is, it's like you guys are saying that you don't understand or you don't know why BIPOC community is afraid of you. There's this thing where everybody has cellular memory. And we pass that down generation to generation. You can look it up. It's all scientific stuff. But when you have generational trauma, and it's at the hands of people who are supposed to serve us and be of service to the community, but those same people who are supposed to be of service to the community are not only killing, but maiming and being part of groups like the KKK and lynching and so on and so forth to community members, why wouldn't we be scared of you? I lived in this area for a long time. I've known officers in this area that I've had absolutely no problem with, that I know that if I was actually being traumatized some way that I know, but I have specific officers that I will ask for if I ever had to deal with something. And I'll tell you right now, those officers are all people of color because of the fact that at the end of the day, I don't feel safe in this community. And there's never been anything that I've done to get in trouble. So I would think that I might have like literally just driving by a police officer's car. It causes me to have my blood pressure raise, causes my hands to sweat, and it doesn't even matter if, like I'm talking a good car, everything, like there's no reason to be pulled over yet and still, even driving by officers who are directing traffic for the electric company or you were dealing with wires caused this very visceral reaction. So that's what you guys need to be looking into. And that's what you guys need to understand because you guys aren't going to understand the BIPOC community until you understand the trauma the BIPOC community has gone for. And that is a history lesson. And that's not for the BIPOC community to teach you. That is for you to learn. And you as you guys as police officers to take initiative to make your business. So that's if I may, Captain Ting, let me just go back to say where I want to reel back to where we were. The plan going forward here was based on the fact that we had some questions that were submitted by our committee who were asked to submit questions. We have questions that were submitted and we were going to give those to you as we have them. And then, you know, certainly because of your comments and as a result of your comments, we would have other questions coming from our committee like the ones you've just heard. But I also don't want to dismiss the opportunity for you to hear the questions we, you know, some people have posed already. I don't have the names of the people who actually proposed them at this particular point. But I want you to hear those questions. We certainly, as I acknowledged before, will have other questions to ask beyond the questions we posed ahead of time based on your responses. That's understood. And I think, you know, I'd like for you to hear those right now. I'd like to give those to you. As you remember, you know, Ms. Ferreira said, I know this next question because it's mine. So that's fine. She asked it and we've had other questions come up as a result of that. I think the residual questions coming out of this conversation, I'd like to defer to we get through these questions that people have thought about and wanted to respond, wanted to respond from you for. But also, I'm unconscious of the time and the fact that it's 710. And we've had it, we were supposed to be having a conversation in addition to your presentation, which is, you know, has been helpful to us. But we may not get to that at this point. And we're going to end up deferring it. And we were, you know, I hate saying this in a very in a stickler way, but we're on a timeline to get some things done here. So I, you know, in terms of the committee itself, the working group itself, I'd be happy to go through these other questions to be, to be sure we get them on the page. And because people thought about them, or either that, or I'd like to suspend it at this point and summarize, because we do have some information we have to discuss as an emotion that people spend a lot of time creating for a community responder thing. So I'm just trying to get us back on track. I understand that people have these things they want to share. And this would certainly not be the last time we talked to the police department, you know, Chief Livingstone, I've talked about that if we can't get through all this tonight, we can get through it to another night. But I don't want us to pass off the time that we need to also get information, put more information forward that we need to get to the town to advance our charge and commit to our charge. So we literally have 15 minutes based on our schedule. So I don't want to, if we have any information for the police department, at this point, I would like to say let's defer that conversation to another point in time, thank them for their commitment and their presence here, and have all of you, you know, Chief Livingstone, captains, you know, Young and Ting respond to what you've heard from us and give us some feedback on that. And we can present another time to go forward. I'm feeling like we're way over and as extended ourselves in a way that's going to undermine our purposes for getting toward our own charge. So that's what I'd like to do right now. And you know, we as a group will have other opportunities to talk, but I want to thank you for being here. And we'll be in touch and set up another time for you to continue this conversation because our community has more, our working group has more questions for you going forward. So thank you for being here. And we're going to move forward with our agenda. Thanks. That sounds great, Paul. And I appreciate, you know, all the questions of the panel and of the group and also all the comments. And I hope my statement about not understanding the BIPOC community was, was not taken the wrong way. And I didn't mean it at derogatory. I meant it as we need to hear more of the comments that we heard so that we do have a better understanding about how we move forward. So Ms. Bowman's comments, Ms. Fierro's comments, you know, those are good good for us to hear that stuff. So that's what I'll say. And I again, thank the working group for having us on tonight and look forward to future meetings and future discussions and future answers to your questions. So thank you, Paul. I appreciate you all for being here. Thank you very much. And we look forward to hearing from you. And I'm going to say on this line, if you again, to our community safety working group, if you have questions that you want to pose, please submit them so that we know going forward what we're getting into and what kind of information we need to get from the police department or anyone else. So thank you all for being here. And you know, we're going to move on to our other agenda item. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So what's most are we clear now? Officer Captain Ting is still here, but the rest of us are here and we can move on with our meeting. Thank you. I would like to move forward. We have a couple of things I want to acknowledge one that and Ms. Pat alluded to this earlier in the meeting. And I want to reiterate the appreciation of the community safety working group for the work that Ms. Pat and others did. I'm moving the names on those Ms. Pat right now on the budget information that came forward. But there are a number of documents that need to be read and discussed. And I think we have to move in some way in collaboration with our town manager to determine where the next steps might be relative to budget in our proposals. And so circling back to our proposal, we have an emotion before us from the folks who work on this Cress proposal. And we were planning to bring this forward to folks. You've had an opportunity to read it. You've had an opportunity to review it. And as it is a motion to present it to the town manager, I don't know if Ms. Moyes, you're able to bring that up if necessary, but like to as this is a motion, I like to bring its content forward as a motion and get it seconded and to see if there are any questions related to this motion. If not, then I think we ought to move forward with this so we can move things forward with our town manager and our town council. And thank you, by the way, those who put together this this motion in the time, Mr. Vernon Jones, Ms. Owen. Ms. Pat, you had a question related to this? Are you asking for someone to second the motion? I want to just put it up there, just if Ms. Moyes, I was giving her a moment to see if she can find it. It's in our packet. I know I just don't know which screen it's going to pop up on in just a second. I think the purpose of it is a motion as it exists. I don't want to read through the entire motion, but as it exists, I'm going to get someone to second it and see if there are any questions about it. I think the crafters of this motion were keeping close to the language. And can you see that? Yes, I can. And I'm old so I can see it. But it's they were keeping very close to the language and intent of the group. And so as this is a motion before we have any other comments or questions about it, I would like to entertain a second to this as a motion as it exists. I second it. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Are there any questions or comments relative to this motion before we take a vote on it? Ms. Ferrer. I have questions about this. One, I want it to be explicit that this is a separate program, not a program within the police department that they have their own building. It doesn't have anything that's as far as I can tell unless it is and I missed it. I am obviously pointing to that part in the motion. But I want that stated that this is the separate in terms of the crest. And then, you know, and then the other one too, I don't want it to just be and I know that that's something that we have we had talked in the crest grid because obviously we were trying to get through the grid because we weren't even able to get through the grid for several weeks. But the other part too that I'm not in total agreement with is crest staff will be the first responders to cause rate mental health issues, homelessness, substance abuse, abuse, trespass, fluency, wellness checks, youth and schools. I want it to be more inclusive of just like all nonviolent incidents. You know, I want I want disturbances. I want, you know, noise complaints. I don't want the police responding to any of them. So I think that this is too this is too exclusive. It's not inclusive enough. And it's to be more inclusive. I would even go so far as to say traffic violations. I wouldn't want them doing traffic but I know that obviously that might need more discussion. So I'm good with being more inclusive thing. No, all non incidents that do not include that do not have any violent or nonviolent incident. This does not go far enough for me. Okay, thank you, Ms. Ferreira. The crafters of this motion. And I know you were acting on behalf of the the community safety working group after reading it myself. A lot if not majority of this information that that I see in here is coming from our conversations and discussions. I I want to hear from you if you'd like to comment Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Miss Owen on your response to Ms. Ferreira and then I'll go to Ms. Walker. Well, I can just say that we believe direct charge was to write a motion that captured the things we had talked about last week. And we stuck very close to language that everybody had agreed on. So we were only moving things that we felt everybody had already agreed on. I have no disagreement with what Ms. Ferreira said. I mean, in the introduction, it said in nonviolent non criminal situations. But if if we want to add to the list now, that's okay with me. But in general, I think there may be any number of additions or further things we'd like to specify further. But given the press of time, I guess I might have some preference to pass this and then make additions as we refine the program. And because there may be all kinds of things we'd like to add. Miss Owen, you worked on this as well as anything you wanted to add to that. Yeah, for me. So I just went over the notes from our last meeting and followed it really closely. I also don't have any objections to the comments made. I do think one thing that wasn't as specific, but I don't think we talked about it as much last week was it being separate. I thought that we were all on board with it being in a separate place, separate cars, but I do think that we should go back and make sure we're specific in the motion. So it's in writing. Ms. Walker. I just wanted to speak in support of Ms. Ferreira and say that I agree with all of the things that she brought up. I do understand and appreciate the work from Mr. Vernon Jones and Mrs. Owen. And they did follow pretty closely what we discussed. But I think because this is our only motion, like we're not going to vote another motion for recommendations that we need to make sure we address all of the recommendations that we want to have in here. Because I know it's a little bit difficult. We didn't get to talk or come to an agreement on everything, but there's not going to be another chance to. And so I think we need to be as specific as possible. But I also agree with Mr. Vernon Jones that it could be a possibility just to eliminate the specificities completely and leave it as nonviolent, noncriminal situations. And then specify later when we either do the budget recommendation or the full outline of what the program will be, what exact calls will go to the Cres program. Because I do think it needs to be more inclusive. And I think it would be helpful to go through the police budget. If you go to the budget that Mr. Bachmann sent us, the community safety budget, there is a breakdown of all calls received by police last year and what those types of calls were in order of the amount that they received of each call. And so I think it would be helpful for us to use that as a guide because that specifies what kinds of calls we would want to go to the Cres program. But I think that can also be done at another time. I'd like to make a comment to both Ms. Owen and Mr. Vernon Jones about, I think I've read this and it is very, very close to the intent that is come forward from the group and the language and articulation of the motion is on point. I agree with Ms. Walker and Ms. Freer and others who may have some particular deep dives we need to go into around particular things. But I think the whole idea behind the motion was to put something in place to move forward so that we could begin to move into other areas around budget, around the more discrete aspects of program development. But I see us having an opportunity to do that. But I also see that this is an opportunity for us to advance the motion. And because we have an obligation to the town, certainly in addition to our deeper discussion we needed to have and our commitment to working with our seven generation movement collective who are also bringing in information for a report. So I think movement on this would be important for us to get through at this point with the agreement that we would go into further discussion of the more discrete items. Ms. Moisten. Yeah, I do believe that if you guys can agree quickly on or know exactly what the terms are that you can do a motion with amendments, correct, Bob? That's correct we can. I don't know which poll you were asking, but I think that's true. I want to recognize Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Pat. Let's have Ms. Pat go first, please. So I want to thank Ms. Sarosman and Jones and Ms. Breanna Owen for developing this. As a subcommittee that worked on the budget and because we've been talking about press being an independent agency, Department of its own, I thought people assumed that this is going to be an independent of police. There is nothing in this document that stays under the direction of the police. I'm okay with what Ms. Breanna had suggested, but I think the sooner we, you know, approve this, maybe we can do an amendment or add more, but time is of the essence physically. There's nothing here that says it has to be under the police. Mr. Vernon Jones. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Breanna. Well, as, let me move to amendments and see if they will help. That we add a sentence that says the Crest Program will be independent and separate from the Amherst Police Department and housed in a separate location. And that we change the line, the second bullet under Crest, we'll have the following features to read Crest staff will be first responders to nonviolent, non-criminal calls. We'll need a, so I move those two amendments. We'll need a second. I'll make that one amendment. One amendment. Yeah. Yeah. So let me go back. Thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones, with those amendments to the motion asking for a second to that amended motion. I can do it. I think I actually got two seconds. I think Ms. Pat was also Ms. Pereira. Yeah, Ms. Pat, just put Ms. Pat down. It's fine. That's okay. All right. Ms. Pereira and Ms. Pat, community effort. Yeah. That would be in that amended motion. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Let me, let me do a vote by just give me a high sign or the way I can recognize all those in favor of that motion as amended. I see Mr. Vernon Jones. I see Ms. Ms. So and Ms. Pereira, Ms. Bowman, Ms. I think I see Ms. Walker. Do you have your hand at Ms. Walker? Yeah. Ms. Pat, I got everybody. Is that you, Mr. Cage? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Cage, Ms. Bowman. Okay. So the motion as amended is passed. Thank you very much. Mr. Vernon Jones. One, this motion didn't attempt to include everything, but we were trying to at least mention everything that might need a budget allocation. But one of the things that's not in there is the civilian oversight board. And I don't know whether we need a motion, but I was hoping that we might at least through some sort of consensus or agreement indicate to the town manager that we do want funds in the budget for a civilian oversight board. Well, it is in the motion though. It's number two. Oh, it is number two. Maybe that maybe that takes care of it. Yeah. It's just that I don't think it's in the budget though, in the budget that I saw that Ms. Pat and Ms. Walker and Ms. Owen worked on, but that we could obviously put that together. But yeah, it's in the motion. Okay. All right. So we're in agreement that we need some budget allocation for that. Yeah. Right. And I want to just, and I'll go to you, Ms. Pat. I think you had your hand up and Ms. Walker after you, but just want to acknowledge the fact that too, there's a lot of information that came around the budget side of this. From Ms. Pat and others, and they did a lot of work beyond this committee to solicit information and input from folks. Your folks said you don't probably, I know Mr. Cage was involved, Ms. Pat, you can help me with that. Other folks who we have some community input. So this was not an idle kind of thing, but there was a lot of feedback to this. And there is a place for us to, you know, I think to really talk more about this, certainly because it has implications for the budget. And I don't want this to, you know, sort of fall by the wayside and not get the attention it needs from the community safety working group. Ms. Pat, you had your hand up and then Ms. Walker. So I just want to mention very quickly, I know we don't have time tonight to discuss the budget that Ms. Ferrara, we did discuss the oversight, Civilian Oversight Commission Board, and we're recommending some sort of stipend for whoever, you know, the time manager, you know, appoints. So we're recommending 10K for each member for five member commission. And A was also suggested we walked closely with the seven gen as well in developing the budget in general. I actually did see that. I just forgot. Thanks, Ms. Pat, for bringing it up. Ms. Walker. Thank you, Mrs. Pat. I was actually going to say the same thing that we did. So thankful for the work of Mr. Vernon Jones and Mrs. Owen, they got us this motion very quickly. And so we had this with us when we went and made our budget recommendations. And so we made sure to discuss every single line in this proposed motion. And there is allocations for every single thing in our budget. Yes. Agreed. And I want to also add, I'm glad we're coming to this confluence of agreement around this because there are, you know, I don't want to be ignorant of the fact that we are working with our consultant group, seven gen movement collective. And these folks are, you know, they're out there working 24 seven. I see at least one of them on the line right now. And I think our next step is to really engage in a conversation with them about how we can merge this information, merge these motions and the direction we're taking as a group. And invite certainly and include and hear more from them about what's going on in the community, because that's an important piece that's happening right now. And also, we just recently received a pretty extensive report from them, which needs to be read by everyone here. So that includes a lot of different information. I think at this point, as we're having reports becoming coming due, they have a responsibility to deliver something to the town manager, that we have this conversation at some point, very soon, even if it has to happen before our next meeting. And even if it may not include all individuals, but I feel there's an important coordination and collaboration effort that needs to happen to bring this together. So that we can get a coherent and meaningful report to the town manager. And so I'm saying that out loud only because we have some deadlines coming up. I think ours is, you know, I guess, what is it? Mr. Bachman, May 15th, you're expecting it to get something from us. And at the end of April, we're expecting to get something from the from Seven Gen. Is that correct? Right. Is that a yes? So just saying that and, you know, next week, well, it's the 28th. And I don't know how much time that gives us, but certainly we have to have some conversation that we can come together at least on the 28th and have something about ready to submit to the town manager. So that's the context I'm presenting. And I'd like to hear from folks to see if, you know, what your thoughts are as well at this point. Ms. Herrera? Yeah, I guess I'm just reading what Dr. Chavez and Seven Gents sent to us, their kind of update. And they're just saying that they're going to give us a draft by the 23rd, which would be this Friday, but that they would want us to provide some feedback to them beforehand. So they want some feedback by the 25th. So that would be this Sunday by 8 p.m. So that then they can present to us, they can have something for us on the 28th, a presentation for us by the next meeting. So that they can finish the report by the 30th. So I think those are the important things for us to kind of be mindful of, make sure that we're giving them the feedback. Ms. Pah? So a couple of things. I don't think one more meeting next week, Wednesday, will be sufficient for us to be ready to submit something. So I think I will very much, I hope we're planning to invite Seven Gents next week, Wednesday, for them to do some sort of presentation for us. I'm almost thinking maybe we should have one additional meeting next week as well, at least to discuss the budget, to make sure that everybody is on board, or if they have suggestions or changes, but to jam both Seven Gents' presentation and the budget for one night for two hours is unrealistic. We need to do this right. And for people to understand the work that has gone into everybody working so hard. So that's all my two cents I want to put in. Other comments? Ms. Walker? And I have a couple of comments. I just want to agree with Ms. Pah. Thank you. Oh, that was easy. Other comments? So can we, as a group, agree to get into that time frame and give those folks the feedback they need in order for them to have a conversation with us on Wednesday? Thumbs up. And I think that conversation would be in addition to the conversation about the work that the people did on the budget for next Wednesday. Question, Ms. Walker? So I'm just wondering, I have no problem with the deadline for getting feedback to Seven Gen. I'm just wondering, is it just that we each will review it on our own and send them personal feedback? I think Ms. Moison can advise us on that. It has to go through some particular funnel here for us. And I think we have to funnel this information to them in a timely manner. And Ms. Moison, would that go to you per individual person to Seven Gen? I think the important piece there is that it's done individually versus hitting reply all. If you could CC me, that would be great. Any objections? If I send you some feedback, how do you want to receive it from me? If I have feedback, I'm going to be very clear. If I have feedback for Seven Gen, what's the path? You send it to them and CC me? Got you. Okay. Just want to be clear. Yeah. And I have a question. Ms. Pat. When you say send it to them, are you saying send it to Dr. Kate? Katie? I think you should use Seven Gen. Seven Gen. Okay. And we would expect to receive that as quickly as you can, but when do they want it by? 8 p.m. on Sunday. 8 p.m. on Sunday. So it's Wednesday now. I would encourage us to get that to them as well before Sunday. Well, they're going to give us the draft on Friday. So we got to wait for the draft. Right. Yeah. So if you can get it done earlier than Sunday, I know it's a big demand on this committee, on this group, but given the demands we have, so if we can agree that we will do that and get it to them by Sunday as they requested, let's give that response and CC that to Ms. Moyston. I want to go back to the budget piece. That, Ms. Pat, I want to go back to you and others who worked on that. What is your expectation on the budget piece of that? So the way our meeting has been going, if we are having seven gen come next week Wednesday, I'm just concerned that we may not have enough time to answer people's questions around the budget or even present what we work on. I'm almost thinking that we need additional meeting before we submit whatever to the town manager. Some people may want us to tweak the budget. Like, oh, wait a minute. Did you think about things like that? So I just want people to fully understand the budget, our reasoning, what we did before we put it together, and if people have suggestions. But if people are okay to just rush through it, we just submit it to the town manager then, if that's what people want. But I'm thinking we should have another meeting next week in addition to the Wednesday meeting. In addition to the Wednesday meeting. Yes. Ms. Walker. Thank you. I agree with Ms. Patches once again. And I want to say that there was a lot of meticulous thinking and planning and other documents that we used and analyzed in order to come up with the budget. And so I think that upon first glance, it's a little bit hard to figure out what's going on and that it may even be helpful for us to give like somewhat of a budget presentation as to how we came up with the numbers that we came up with because it's not very clear just by looking at the papers. We did try to add notes so that you guys had some type of idea about the conversation we had while going over the budget. But I think that it would be very helpful. And then I'm also just wondering in terms of the budget, if we would present it in a motion also to the town manager or how we are passing that through. Hold on one second. I guess I sidetracked by a screen here. There's a lot in that. I had a chance to scurry through that those spreadsheets and everything. There's a lot of information in there. And not only to be read but to be understood. And I do know from some conversation with folks that there are questions about why this is opposed to that. So we're going to need some time to work with that as a working group. What would Ms. Walker, Ms. Pat and others, Mr. Cage, what would work to help us get to that point? What would work for you in terms of meeting and getting feedback to help with that point? And I'm seeing you in the corner of my screen, Mr. Bachmann, because I'm thinking about we have to come up with something by May 15 to you. So I want to be sure that we're, you know, we're well ahead of that mark. Comments. Mr. Bachmann. So the May 15th is a deadline for the full report. So that's the time frame. So I just want to make sure that that's what the report is. But the budget is submitted on May 1. Right. Okay. So that, so that's Yes, Ms. Pat. So that's my concern. So I know we're already putting a lot of time in this group. If people feel that like their schedule is very hectic next week, if it's easier for people to send questions to Ms. Moisten and forward to our committee, we can try to respond. I'm not sure if that's the most efficient way of doing it. But I just want people to feel comfortable and that they understood the reasoning why we did the budget. The only way I can think of is for us to have, even if it's an hour meeting, or if people are willing to stay till 9 p.m. on Wednesday, I can compromise. We can do a three hour that day. It will be a long night. You're my hero. Oh, I don't know about that. I mean, did I say? I want to go to, I want to recognize, I see a hand raise from Ms. Ferrera and then Ms. Walker. I think I got that the right. There are a lot of screens going on here. If I'm not correct, you can switch places. But Ms. Ferrera and then Ms. Walker. I think it was Ms. Walker. Did you want to go first? That's fine. Yeah. Basically, I'm just saying whichever one I think we should do like an hour meeting, at least, and, you know, either figure out a day or just tack on the hour afterwards. I'm fine, either way. I agree with Ms. Ferrera. So I think we need another meeting for the budget because May 1 is next Saturday. So I honestly believe that if we can't add an extra hour onto our Wednesday meeting, it may be helpful for us to do a Monday or Tuesday meeting for an hour, because what I think would be helpful is that if we can present our thinking behind the budget before asking for questions and feedback from the group, and then that way we can make changes or edits to the budget, and then it can be finalized and ready for Friday, which is when we need to have it to Mr. Bachlemann. So I think that we need to figure out which one of those options will work for everybody. I think he needs it sooner. But when do you need it, Mr. Bachlemann? Yeah. That was good. Thank you, Ms. Ferrera. That's what I was going to ask the same thing. Yeah. So tonight was the night that, you know, this is where the motion was tonight, which is what you voted. And that's, you know, that document is what, you know, we are in the final throes of the budget. We're into the formatting almost. We were waiting for this action tonight for you, which I think is really great. It includes all the content that you've talked about. And so with that, at this point, we're moving into formatting stages of the budget. Swalker. And with those comments, I propose we just pull up the budget right now and go over it. Say that again. I think we should just pull up the budget right now. I know it's late, but I don't know. Can we have a meeting on Friday? Like, I don't understand if they're saying he needs it before then, and they're already in the final stages of formatting. I just don't know. When do you need it, Mr. Bachlemann? When? So we are literally finalized. I was going to take the motion tonight, and we are going to work tomorrow to take, and I have been following you. I know where you're headed on this. So looking at the elements that you voted tonight and say, how do we address these tomorrow? This week, you know, we have, we're literally moving into formatting stage on Friday, you know, so. Oh, wow. But I think, you know, I have the documents that you have, that you have. And, you know. Here's my question, and I'll go to the answer, Pat. We just received, through a lot of work, and this is, you know, it came in, when it came in, a lot of work on folks working on numbers relative to this. As a group, we had not have a time to process this as a group. There are questions about even some of the stuff that we, information we've collected. And I think therein lies the need for maybe another conversation. That's one thing. I think we have a response that we have to make to the seven gen by Sunday with respect to what they need. For me, and I'll speak for myself. I saw this information. I do have some questions. I do want to take more time to look at the detail of these, the budget information that was sent to us. We just recently got it. I'm thinking that we need another meeting, certainly with the budget numbers to have a coherent conversation with a community service working group before we just sort of just pass up on, on, you know, kind of willy-nilly to meet a timeline. So, well, that's my comment. And let me go, let me try to get these in order. Mr. Vernon Jones, Ms. Bowman. Ms. Bowman had her hand up. I'm sorry. I parted a lot of this. I didn't want to order. Ms. Bowman. Okay, so we need to look at the budget tonight. If you go back and look at last week's meeting, we agreed to have that done for today. So, if people who looked at the budget already have questions, then you need to present them tonight. We cannot be holding other people up because we voted on it last week, and we had people working on it so that it could be presented to us today. And if we have questions like, none of the numbers are solid, but the numbers are there. And the numbers, like, if you want to vote against it, vote against it. We don't need to be, we don't all need to agree on it. But I think we need to present and see what's being presented to us at this point because we are hymning and hawing constantly every week, hymning and hawing and pushing things aside and pushing things aside. But you know what? Mr. Bowman has a date, the deadline, and he's at the end of his deadline. And we're not going to hold him up. We're not going to hold him up. And I feel like I want to call to motion saying that, like, I want to hear the budget right now. And I don't usually stand these meetings past 7.30 because I do have a family to attend to, but I don't have time to wait more days. And I don't have time to see this budget not get put in to what's going to the town committee. Like, what are we doing? This, I don't, I don't, that's my vote. I do not want to wait any longer. Let's hear what the presentation is. We can talk about details later. At least, like, I don't care if the number is exorbitant and crazy. I'd rather put that number in there. And then we can discuss, like, because we need them to come back for something, we can discuss why, you know, okay, why was this, why was that, why was the other thing? That's fine. But we need to put, like, we need to put the numbers in. We need to put the numbers in. Like, what are we waiting for? I don't understand why there's, we're constantly are waiting for something. We're holding other people up. And we said we're trying to push things through. We're trying to make things happen. And we're not making things happen. And this is, this is, this is where I feel like the disrespect comes in, because my time is being wasted. And people are making doing things and, and, and taking their time to spend extra efforts. And this is completely disrespectful to vote last week to have it read today, and then not read it today, especially when it comes to something that's already time sensitive. So please, my vote is to read this now. Thank you, Ms. Bowman. I have a question for folks. How many have of us on the committee, I want to be very frank about this. How many of you have had a chance to, to read through the budget information that was presented by our subcommittee who did the work on this, and have some questions or comment about it, and understand what the content and trajectory of that, that budget proposal, those budget information. What, what's the content and trajectory of what that budget, budget analysis may mean for our proposal. How many of you have honestly looked at that and had a chance to analyze and look at it? Okay. Okay, I'm just asking because I think this, I'm going back to Ms. Bowman's comment because this may have some impact. I'm raising my hand. I've had some opportunity to do that, but I have questions, and I have concerns about it. So I just want to be sure that if that's something we're going to do, you know, we need to do that, you know, fine. I want us to be, have informed commentary about this. I don't want us to be just saying like, hey, we're just going to do this because it's, it was presented to us. These folks spent a lot of time doing this work. It's been a lot of time looking at it. And there's, there's some very discrete issues in there. And I know people have comments and questions about it. I want to welcome Ms. Herrera's comment, question or comment. Mr. Jones, Vernon Jones had his hand up and then I'll go after him. I'm not doing good with this. I think I, given what Mr. Bachman has said about his timeline, I think the sheen is correct that we, I would propose we take a five minute break and come back and spend 30 to 45 minutes tonight on this. Our goal may not be to come to unanimity about every number, but to have a general sense of this that we can pass on to Mr. Bachman. If that's the consensus of the group, I, we willing to do that, I, I have to not only take a five minute break, but I have to defer to another meeting at eight o'clock. Oh, okay. That's, that's how my schedule works. I apologize for that, but then I can come back, but I can, I've got a couple of computers, so I can leave this one open. It's that, it's that life. I'm sorry, but that's the, the intended, the consensus of the group. I can come back to it, but I do have to step away for a minute to extract myself from another commitment that I have. Ms. Ferrera. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm good with that. So what do we want to do? Like we want to do, you know, five, 10 minute break and then come back. And I would just say, let's just be concise though, you know, like, like let's have like a half an hour, you know, do the presentation. And then, and then, you know, let's try to keep it to half an hour, as opposed to 45, because like we all have families. I have my two boys that, you know, down there downstairs waiting for me. So that's my only plea. So what are we doing so that we have, so is Ms. Owen going to guide us through this next piece? And what are we doing so that we can have the leadership? Let's move forward. Ms. Owen. Hi. Hi, I know I've been really quiet this meeting. I think it would work the best if we pulled up both of the spreadsheets and went line by line. And if any but members of the working group have any questions, we can raise it there. And then we can defer to the budget beating notes at the end, if there's any lingering questions. Are we taking a break though, Ms. Ms. Owen? That works for me. It works for me because I have some. I have to. Whatever works best for you all. Five minutes. Can we get back by 8.10? What time is it? 8 o'clock? I'm just going to leave my screen open here. I've got to make a shift here to come back to this meeting. But let me just say, 10 minutes, if I'm not back on the screen in 10 minutes, Ms. Owen, do you feel comfortable? Yeah, of course. I will go look for the spreadsheets so I can pull them up on screen share. Oh, I have them already up. Oh, okay. The ones that CSW budget subcommittee crest program estimate of costs. Yeah. And same as Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Estimate of Cost. Yes. Yes. I got them. Thank you. Mr. Bachmann. You need me here for this section of the meeting? Yes, please. If you don't mind. It'll be good. That'll be good. I think you... I know it's a long day for you and Ms. Boyston. Yes, please. We live for this. What are you talking about? You don't have any of that life. Really don't. It's a long day for Mr. Bachmann and Ms. Boyston. All right. See you at 8.10. Okay. Okay. See you in 10 minutes. And thank you. We're back. Ready when you guys are? Yeah. I'm here. I'm going to turn on my camera for a minute while I eat. Okay. I don't know how many people are still are back, but I really feel like the conversation with the PD was getting really good. And I think that they were really receptive to that. So I really feel like we should, at another time, after we get through all of this craziness, but before you guys leave, have another one of those, because I think that they were really receptive to the things that you were saying. And I felt like the conversation was just really getting good. And then we had to break for something else. So I just wanted to bring that back. Do you want me to pull up the spreadsheet, Ms. Boyston? Oh, I can't hear you. I have it here. Sorry. Okay. So we never stopped recording. Okay. Can you see it? Yes. I want to see the picture. That's beautiful. Ms. Bowman's picture. Can you see the screen? It says it's paused. Oh, I can see it. And guys, I'm going to eat a little something. So I'm going to go dark, but I'm still here. I'm listening. Do you guys want to do the Crest Program first or the second part of our recommendations first? I think we should do the budget itself first. If that's okay with people. Is this the correct one? It is the correct one. Yes. Okay. So I will start. And Ms. Walker and Ms. Owen, you can jump in anytime you want. So basically, in order for us to develop the budget, we kind of did some research on Indeed and some salaries across the state. And then we looked at the town and salary scale. I made some comparison and we decided to go with the town salary scale, even though that will go up in the school year 2022. If I'm going too fast or people want to stop me, please do so. And so that's really came up with the salaries. But as I go on, we can also discuss our reasoning. So we, oh, I thought we were looking at the Crest. Can you show the Crest one first? Let's start with that one. I just want to acknowledge Ms. Walker had her hand up. Thank you, Ms. Owen. That was actually going to be my comment was going to be that we should start with the Crest budget. Yeah, let's start with Crest. So can you tell me which one do you see? Because I have two screens and the stuff is bouncing around. So we have the diversity, equity, and inclusion budget. But we want to start with the responder. Okay. That's just because I have the, do you see it now? No. Do you see it now? We still have the diversity one. Is that what people are saying? Now? Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. So can you make it a little bit larger? As I mentioned before, the proposal, the one that the time manager submitted to us, I believe last week stated half time, 20 hours of our program director's position. And we felt that the 24 hour program needed a full time. And so we didn't change the salary scale that the time manager wrote last week. All we did was just move the part time to full time. And that's how we arrived at 85,122. Okay. Is somebody doing like pointer so that people can follow? Thank you. Any questions about the first one? Okay. Any question about that before I move on to another one? For the next one. And then we felt that this work is going to be very stressful. And therefore there has to be a supervisor in each shift when the two responders will be working. So basically there will be three staff on duty at all times 24 seven. And so that's how we came up with the, with that position. And this is just a proposal. The level and the step six is something that we pulled from the town salary scale. And then the six full time, the next one please. The six full time is already what the time manager proposed last week. So we didn't make any changes to that. And then we felt that a huge program like this need an administrative assistant. We're calling this program a department of its own independent from the police. And therefore they have to have a full time administrative assistant. And so that's, you know, we looked again at the salary scale. And this is what we came up with. Nothing is definite. You know, the time manager has the final authority to make changes to the salary. But this is just like a guide. And then the one that the time manager presented last gave us, sent to us didn't include dispatchers at all. Again, we felt that dispatchers also need supervisor during the shift just to prevent burnout and high turnover to retain staff. And so we put in three full time shift supervisors. The next one will be six, just the same staffing pattern like the responders. So we have nine altogether nine full time dispatchers and nine full time responders. Some of who are supervisors. And then when it came to health insurance, I have sent everybody where I got that, where we got that from, from the from the town website. And I, we use the same town cost for full time employee to multiply it by the total 10 employees. So we have the program director. And then we have the nine responders. And then we have nine dispatchers. So that's how we came up with that. And then employer contribution to pension. I actually reached out to the time manager over the weekend about the formula they use. And he was able to give it to me 23% between 23% and 25% of each full time employee salary. And so we figured it out to be this amount. Next please. And then Medicare. That is a percentage that was being that is used to come up with this amount. And then with the furniture. So we assume that the town will provide space. So there is no budget for rent, rental expenses or utilities. We did not change the numbers. The 15,000 is what I believe the time manager had in his own proposal. So we didn't change that. However, the next one, please. The 15,000, we had to increase it because we considered the recruitment. If we're really going to get diverse staff to this program, we have to do a cost money to recruit and to train. And so we had to increase the amount of 15,000. Okay. The one that the time manager sent to us is one vehicle. Because this is a college town and we have students, students will be accessing services. We felt that one vehicle will not be enough on a busy night. We have to have more than one vehicle. And that's how we came up with two vehicles. And then supplies and other expenses. We put it for 30K. Our thinking around that is that some of us remember, you know, attending a webinar where a retired chief police in Georgia State, I believe, stated what his office was doing. Like if they stop a motorist who has a headlight out, instead of writing tickets to that person, this is an example, they will rather send them to a mechanic to change the headlight. So the idea of increasing supplies and others, when responders are doing their work, maybe that would be like out of pocket expenses they might do when they encounter some people. So we kind of, you know, wanted to make sure that it's enough funding to like pay for certain things that is not maybe sending people, yeah, whatever. Bowen and Belisha, if you guys want to, you know, talk about some of the reasons why we put some of the money in there. So the one thing that I just want to say is I, the one thing that I really stand by is there being two vehicles just because I did see that UMass Amherst is going back full-time next semester. So I do think that we have to make the budget for this program, assuming that there's going to be an influx of 22,000 students who are probably going to use CRS. So these numbers might look a little high to some people, but there's an influx of students coming to Amherst that are also going to use the program. So, so we can thank you. We came up with two million, a little bit over two million. Actually, we're very conservative about it because, you know, again, you know, Amherst as a college town, I think the budget will even go up, but this is a good start. You know, also another thing that we consider in putting this budget together is that most of the calls that the APB gets are nonviolent calls. And therefore, CRS will be doing most of the work for them. And we felt that the police budget needs to be cut in order to fund the program because they wouldn't be doing some of the work that they're currently doing like the mental health, like homelessness, just nonviolent activities. So that's how we came up with this. Any questions? Ms. Pereira has her hand up. Yes. Thank you for the presentation. That was very clear. And thank you to all of you for putting all of this work into things. And also, obviously, for the motion to Mr. Vernon Jones and whoever else works on that. But in terms of the budget, and just want to make sure I'm on the same page for the dispatcher supervisors and the dispatchers. So basically, it would be one dispatcher supervisor and two dispatchers per shift, right? That's correct. Assuming three shifts, three shifts. That's what we assumed, but it would be eight hour shift. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. That's what I just wanted to make sure I was on the same page. All right. Thank you. Ms. Pat, I have a question. Yes. A little bit of subjective thing, and I don't need to go into it if people don't want to go into it. But what are we thinking about in terms of what is a violent as opposed to nonviolent need for response? So that's where training the dispatchers will be very critical. Hopefully, you know, if the dispatchers are very good question, if the dispatchers are trained like properly, they will be able to figure out if this is a call that the responders should take or if it's a call that the police should take from the call. Understood. And I think part of, you know, in terms of the mechanics of it, I hear what you're saying. Thank you. That explains it to me because that is a very discreet entry level response because in some cases, something may start out as a nonviolent particular thing, and then it could escalate either by external forces escalating the incident or it's misinterpreted. So just to be clear, when our group was working on these numbers, we weren't saying that press would not collaborate with the police or EMT, you know, press will still do that, but it's an independent department. So if, like say, student party escalates the fighting, of course, they have, you know, the responders, you know, can get back up, you know, call the police to help. We're not saying that they have, you know, they wouldn't be collaborating with the police if it's a violent situation. We wouldn't be risking people to deal with violent situations. Thank you. Miss Walker and then Mr. Russ Vernon Jones and then I think Miss Moisten. Hard to figure out, isn't it? Yeah. Instead of like, you're looking at these things going off and on, but thank you for doing this. Keep going, Miss Allen. You're doing good. Thank you. So I just wanted to add we did talk about things in respect to Mr. Wiley's question and how we're going to like indicate which calls are violent and nonviolent and which calls will have to go to the Crest program. And I think that that is something that can be worked like that is independent of the budget. What kind of calls will go to them exactly? But I did take a look at the police budget, like I said earlier, and the types of calls they received. And like, if we decided that we were going to send Crest program people to motor vehicle violations or community outreach, like would they be performing these things in place of the police? Because the number one thing that police receive calls for are motor vehicle violations. The number two thing is community outreach. The number three thing is disturbances. The number four thing is reports of suspicious activity. The number five thing are medical assists. The number six thing is for summonses and arrest warrants. And then for the number seven thing was to assist a citizen. And so all of the top reasons our police are being called are reasons are things that can go directly to the Crest program. None of these are violent offenses and they can all be handled. If things escalate, if there are weapons, then that requires further assessment, which is why the budgets for the responders, we raise them because they need to have specific training to deal with these things. We're not just sending anybody out there. These people will be trained and they will be able to deal with these things without weapons. And so that is the point of not having the police be there. Mr. Vernon Jones. What's the level of calls that you assumed in deciding that this was the quantity of dispatch service needed? So that's a good question. So this because we put together, I mean, we thought about the students, but with the COVID, we really that, you know, we know the students will eventually come back. When students fully come back, definitely this budget will go up because the need will be greater. Did I answer your question? No, I just wondered whether you made any numerical estimates about how many calls a year the Crest program might get, for instance. Well, from what Ms. Walker has just mentioned, you know, gives us an idea of how we put the staffing together. It's not perfect. This is just a suggestion. But I will imagine that as more students come back, we will definitely, I mean, the police, the APD has like 44 police officers. And we're only talking about 10 employees here. I will imagine it will go off because most of the calls that the APD are getting is what Crest will be doing. But for a start, you know, this is where we came up with. Thank you. Yeah. So I'm looking at, you know, it might be up to 20 employees eventually when students come back or even more if Crest is going to be doing most of the work that the police are currently doing. Oh, sorry. Oh, go ahead. I just wanted to also respond to Mr. Vernon Jones and say that if you go to the budget from last year, they actually have the complete number of service calls to police listed as 17,483 calls. And I believe that includes when the UMass students are here. So that was for last fiscal year. And some near 2000 of those calls were for motor or those responses for police were motor vehicle violations, some near 1000 were community outreach, some near 900 were disturbances, some near 600 were reports of suspicious activity. And so those are just the top four things on the list. And as I said before, the top eight things were all nonviolent calls. And so that's just an idea of where we got those numbers for because we expect it to be a large amount of the police calls being rooted to the Crest program. That's right. Yep. So so basically, we're very conservative about this budget. In reality, it should actually be doubled. But because we're, you know, under pandemic lockdown still, and this is what we came up with. I think Ms. Morrison had a question and then Ms. Freira. Yep. This is pretty thorough. Thank you. So I was just curious. So when a call comes in, and this might, and the only reason I bring it up in the budget is because I'm looking at the staffing, do you send one person out per call or do two people get sent out per call? We will never send one person out to a call. So that's the whole point of two passing out. And you then you have the supervisor around in case they need to, you know, they need questions or help or support or supervision, whatever. So that would be no situation, hopefully, unless if somebody, even if somebody calls out on their shift, you still have a supervisor that will cover the shift. But hopefully, one person will not be going out to deal with situation is our thinking. Does that answer your question? It does. And then I'm just curious, like, what happens if there's two calls? And like, right, like, how do, how do, like, do you have, are you thinking that you're going to work with CSO or, or specific PD people? I'm just curious. That's all. Yeah. I mean, that also, we thought about that too, that, you know, since the students are, you know, I'm not back, like I referenced before, this budget, you know, should go up when, you know, we have more students in town, but obviously just 10 employees for 10, nine responders and the program director, you know, it's not enough to cover activities in this town. Ms. Raris had her hand up for a while and then Ms. Walker. Yeah. I mean, I was just agreeing with what Ms. Walker and Ms. Pat were talking about in terms of just, I think that this is actually pretty conservative and what Ms. Moisten just talked about, cases that is very conservative. I think we'll probably even need, you know, more like money for like more responders and possibly, you know, to happen place, not necessarily possibly not more supervisor, we'd have to see. But at least this would be something to give to the town right now. And then they could make an assessment in terms of add more, oh, we could add more, you know, I'm good either way. But the thing is, is that I think there'll be plenty of work for them to do because as Ms. Walker has stated and Ms. Pat have stated that, you know, the police, if we put this in place, the police, they're not going to be responding to this anymore, right? It'll be this group that will be responding to it. And so they're, you know, their budget gets decreased, their staffing gets decreased and it gets moved into this program so that we can make sure that this is fully staffed and fully resourced. We're also envisioning that this may not start right away in July because it will take time to advertise, to recruit. I mean, the fiscal year starts in July there to get the word out. And also we're also envisioning to have a simple number like people are used to calling 9-1-1. People will still call 9-1-1, but eventually, you know, the town manager will have to make a decision to, you know, I don't know how difficult, you know, it will be to to come up with like, let me say 2-1-1 number. Maybe, you know, come up with a different, you know, number where people can call and know that they're calling press directly. But it's not something that will happen overnight. It might take months for people to get used to calling press directly. But cause that goes to 9-1-1, some of them can be routed to press dispatcher. Ms. Bowman has her hand up. Yep. Ms. Bowman. I'm on, I'm talking. Yeah, I think that if we're going to if we're going to walk into this with the knowledge that the likelihood is those numbers are going to have to rate rate go up because of the students being here, I think that they're here what 10 months, nine months out of the year, we should that should be that should be inclusive. We should rate, we should even raise the numbers more and raise the number of employees more to reflect the students and also as part of like with looking at this budget and the recommendations of this budget, we say, you know, if the town of Amherst doesn't like the numbers, then the town of Amherst should put pressure on UMass police to help in UMass the state or whatever to help fund some of this because, hey, we have what 8,000 students plus that live off campus. That means we're responding to those costs. And so some of that budget should come out of, you know, come from the universities. Um, but I don't think we should, I don't think we should keep, we should stay conservative. It's conservative on these numbers because if we're looking at the numbers right now, that may or may not include, like if we're looking at the numbers now and we're saying that that doesn't really include the students, then my suggestion is to say, well, okay, we need to add, you know, two more people on each in each level or whatever, so that when the students are all here and there are partying in town and having all these like, you know, living in town and having all these breakdowns and crises that are not or like parties or whatever that are nonviolent, we still have people that can respond to them. And then we don't, because what's going to end up happening is that the students are going to take off all of our resources. They're not, their school is not contributing anything towards those resources. And then, again, people in town, specifically the BIPOC community is going to be at the, you know, the end, you know, the police end of it per se. You understand what I'm saying? Where it's like, well, we've, we've, we've used all of our resources. So now we're actually having to call the police to come in to deal with this because, you know, we didn't staff enough. So we definitely don't want to, I'd rather over staff. And then, you know, I mean, it's like any other negotiation, oh, you, you throw the number up high and then you get, you can bring it down to what something you can work with. And so I say, yeah, that's a conservative number. I would even, you know, at least bring it up, you know, I mean, I double it personally, you know, because then we have something to work with. I mean, that's the original initial thinking, but we say let's present this to all of you tonight, you know, to present this and then whatever the group, you know, wants to do, we can tweak it. And then before we submit it to the town manager. Well, yeah, my, my vote is to double it. Ms. Walker. Thank you. So I just wanted to state that the numbers or the information that I got from the town budget as to the number of service calls do include UMass students. So that was all calls received by Amherst police in last year period, not just from the town. I don't think they even organize the data in that way. And so I did base it off of all of the numbers for the entire fiscal year last year. And you can see the service calls for the last five years, and they're all very similar. It hasn't changed much over the last five years. Um, but I am also in support of raising this number. I know when we met as a budget team, we all proposed our own drafts and then combine them together to make this draft. And my personal draft had a 16 responder model because I think that when two responders are out responding to a call, there needs to be people in the center in case somebody comes in in crisis. But we are also aware of the budget constraints. And so I think our idea and presenting it in this way is that this program should be sufficient enough to start. And it's, and then the town can say that this is really working and we need to increase the budget, hopefully because we already, we're already going to have a hard time pushing this number to be completely honest. We already know they're not interested in giving us this much money. They quoted us at 700 K for this program. So I think that's where our our hesitation comes in. But I am not against doubling this because I personally do believe that we would need more responders on staff. Also, we don't want to overwork the people that are there if we're going to have the program be 24 seven and only have certain people like we don't want them working around the clock. But I, but I also wouldn't be opposed to leaving it how it is. So I would be interested in hearing more from the group. Mr. Wiley. Thank you. And thank you for indulging me right now. I moved actually a training I'm supposed to be doing at 830 to a little little later. So they give me some leeway. So I'm going to hang in. But I'm listening to all the conversations we're having. And I guess I'm one of my questions is and I'm with this conversation all the way around in terms of supporting what needs to happen in terms of a positive responder response in this community that's going to give service and support and security and safety to our Bible community. I don't want to lose that with within the numbers. I do want to ask the group if we don't know. And we didn't get a chance to police department right now. Because that was one of the questions we wanted to get to at some point is where are they willing to or eager to or needing to move away from their models of policing into crest models. And I think there's a potential there. And I think one of the things about that. The reason I'm raising that is that I think that we have an opportunity here. We have an opportunity to possibly redirect funding from the police department to alternative models of public safety. Put it that way. We also have to be conscious of the fact that we're there. They're seeing their particular issues as a structure within the town. I think that conversation with them was important because I do believe there's an opportunity there. And I think there's an opportunity in the town to redirect not to redirect money into this effort we're talking about to do the right thing for our community. And I guess my I guess I don't know what my question is necessarily but is but that I support the work of what people have done around the budget. I support the work around what people have done around crests and everything. And I think there is an opportunity in this community to move in that direction if we do it the right way. And so I'm hoping that it's not just the numbers shifting back and forth that are going to make a difference. Not only about the numbers but what the ultimate impact is going to be for our community. I mean I think that's it. This is an opportunity here and we're in it and discussing it. I think that's you know that's a good thing. Ms. Freira, Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Walker. Yeah. So for me yeah I don't want the police to have anything to do with anything that we're talking about here. I want it anything that's non-criminal, nonviolent. I want it to be to go to a crest which will be an independent. That's why I wanted to be the first to have that in the motion independent with their own space and their own program. I think the police had an opportunity to do what they had to do and they weren't very successful even with their crisis intervention teams and everything. They weren't very successful. So I don't want them to have anything to do with this in terms of that. What would only be I guess the only thing that I could fathom would be again if something that the respond is respond to and then it becomes violent and they you know and they need backup I guess you know that maybe that could be possibly the only place besides that I want them to be the ones to respond to situations and not the police and I don't want them to have any say in terms of how they respond, when they respond, what they do when they respond. It needs to be totally independent you know and I want you know since they won't be responding since the police won't be responding their budget needs to be cut. That's basically it. The budget needs to be cut so that the money can go to the program. That's that's what I'm and so when I'm looking at this based on all the discussions that people are having I do think we would need to and I think it's probably important for us to up the the money for the responders I mean the staffing for the responders and the supervisors because yeah right now we only have two people per shift which would mean that if anyone's sick or if there's multiple incidents happening at the same time then we would be you know in a crunch there right so I think at least we need to at least have four people per shift at least and also people take vacations and stuff like that so they're going to need people to cover them during those shifts and things like that. I like the suggestion I like it. I was muted sorry Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Walker. I don't necessarily disagree with what's been said but I'm trying to watch the time and I think we said we were going to only go 30 to 45 minutes. I wondered if we could see the rest if you could walk us through the rest of the budget before they're trying to make changes. Okay. Okay. So okay. Oh wait. Ms. Walker, hand up. Yeah. I'm sorry. I agree with Mr. Vernon Jones so I'll try to make it quick. I just wanted to say that the police spoke with us and I think it was helpful to have them speak with us before this because they did let us know that they're on board. I think everything that they said aligned went along with they don't necessarily want to be responding to these calls. They want to give us the mental health calls. They want to give us those calls and so I think they'd be more than willing to work with us in terms of turning those calls over to us and then it would be up to the town manager and the town council in terms of moving the funds that they used to respond to those calls to us so that we can respond to those calls. Okay. So the next slide. Okay. Do you see it? Yeah. I will be really brief on this. I think Ms. Owen and Ms. Alicia will just explain the reasoning in order to save time. So can you enlarge it a little bit so that other people can see it? Can people see it? Okay. So just like Chris, we talked about having the diversity, equity and inclusion be a separate department in the town, separate. And so again, we compared some salary scales and that's how we came up with the director. We had a huge responsibility and then we also discussed about getting an assistant director as well because it's a department. And the administrative assistant, just like all other departments in town, have administrative assistant. And I'm just going real fast. With the youth center, we solicited input from some youth including Darius Cage. And we have to have a full-time center coordinator that will be reporting to the director of diversity, equity and inclusion. And then scroll down please. And then three or four time youth center support services. I'm just like rushing through this because of time. And then we also talked about having BIPOC cultural center. So the argument will be, oh, we have MS Family Center. We have LLC. We have all these social services in town. The problem is that they're not accessible to BIPOC families. But BIPOC families do not get adequate services due to language barrier, due to the administrators who are non-BIPOC. It's just not working for BIPOC families. So we do need a dedicated program for BIPOC folks. Also, it will benefit other residents too, a place where BIPOC families can go comfortably to seek for help. And yeah. So the cultural center, we're hoping that it will help to promote BIPOC culture, showcase BIPOC museum and celebrations like Juneteenth, Panza, and other celebrations from Caribbean, Africa, Hispanic, Asia, Hawaii, all over. And in addition to that, I'm just like repeating the support and case management. If people are struggling with paying their rent, for example, currently what the town is doing is contracting that service to an agency in Greenfield that is headed by Caucasian. And some BIPOC families have been denied the service, even though they are qualified to get a rental assistance. So we want that service back into the community. If that is a domestic issue, if somebody needs some resources and support that is BIPOC or even anyone, they can come to that center to get some help. And I think Ms. Bowen and Ms. Walker can talk more about that. So basically the insurance is the same formula that we used. Ms. Walker has her hand up. Sorry, thank you. I just wanted to say that we talked about some of the roles in this department and in this center. We were hoping that these can be housed in one building, like a one-stop shop for families and have all of these programs hopefully be under the same roof. And then the reason for the salaries and the reasoning for these programs to be separate from other programs that may exist in the town is that we were hoping that all of the staff and directors of these programs will have anti-racist training. They will be trained in cultural competency and that they will be trained in trauma-informed care so that they can meet the needs specifically of the BIPOC community. I just want to mention that with the youth center, what we got back from the youth input was that it has to be close to the school, to high school or middle school, like downtown, that it will be easier for kids to walk down to the center instead of located far away from downtown in order to attract kids to access the facility. That people will be reluctant to take the bus if it's for example in North Amist or South Amist, that people wouldn't go there, that we should try to locate space in town. One of the spaces that was mentioned was the gym at the same bridges or something like that. For the town to explore that. Anyway, so the employer contribution pension is the same formula that we use for the Medicare. And let's see. Okay, so the furniture, we felt that with the youth center, for example, they might need like gym section, they might need more equipment with the youth center so that the kids don't want just one room for everybody to gather. That would be like, people need help with homework or schoolwork or people just want to socialize and chill out or people just want to exercise so that would be separate spaces for that. And we felt that it would need more money to do that. And also of course with the director of the entire program dedicated space. But anyway, so next please. So same logic with the training is very important that we just don't hire people and not give them adequate support and funding. That is very critical that there is enough funding to retain staff. Mr. Wiley, sorry, I missed your hand. You didn't miss it actually. I was right there. Okay, I'm almost done. So we felt that. Sorry, I'm almost done. Okay, we felt that the youth program needs vehicle. The reasoning around that is thinking that the program will run from afternoon like 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday but Saturday maybe from noon time to 6. And in the evening, we don't just want to send kids off if they don't live on bus route. So the vehicle will help to transport kids home. I knew, I know when I was running my restaurant, I never allowed any of my high school kids to to take the bus home. I made sure I arranged if their parents are not able to come pick them up, that they get they got home safely. So that's the reason the safety issues are supplies, celebrations, that's the amount I'm done. So language, ambassadors, they will not necessarily be time employees, but we will hope that they will be compensated very well when they render their services. So I would let Alicia and Breanna jump in. I would be happy to hear from Mr. Wiley or other people with questions before I add anything, if that's okay. Okay. I will need to defer. I have a couple of minutes. I just want to say I had to move a meeting to 9 o'clock. That's supposed to happen to me at 8 o'clock. So I don't lose too many friends tonight. But if you don't mind, Ms. Walker, I'll be very brief. Yeah, absolutely. As I'm looking at this thing in its totality, I believe we're on the right track here. I do believe we're on the right track in terms of what we're trying to do with this particular program. And when I look at this particular piece, I see if my count is right, there's probably about 10 positions in here that are full-time positions that probably cross over into other areas of our town and our town government. You know, while we may not want to relinquish that responsibility to let's say leisure services, for example, but these are positions that would have to be hired and trained. And financed all the way through to benefits and other kinds of things, which is a cost. No problem with that. But to understand that that's what's happening in that area. And I wonder if some of those things might overlap with maybe some of the initiatives that Department of Leisure Services may be thinking about. Could this be a shared opportunity here? The other piece I wanted to say, and I apologize, I have to get off because I have to attend to these other folks at this point in time. But there's a really strong opportunity for us to do something here. And I don't know how to emphasize that enough at this particular time. But if we can get ourselves to a point where we can see that we can propose something that's coherent, concrete, and it's going to have some traction at the town level, then we're going to do ourselves well. I think that we've got to stay focused on what our mission was and is and what our task is before us. And if we can do that, and I think we're there, we're on our way. Mr. Wiley, I just have a quick question for you before you jump off. I thought we were expanding the meeting to all agree on this motion. If you leave and we all agree on these numbers, is that okay with you? I have no disagreement with the intent and spirit of where we're going. So I do have to go. I'm not in disagreement with what we're doing. I'm just saying, I hope we can stay the course around what our mission and vision is with respect to what the town is charged us to do going forward. All respect to the people who have done the work on the budget. Certainly it's supposed to have done the work on the crest piece of it. You know, I'm with you. I'm supported all the way through as far as I can see it, Ms. Walker. So I'm in Ms. Owen. So that's fine with them. Okay. Awesome. So before you leave, if you don't mind, before you leave Mr. Wiley, what I didn't mention is that this program is prevention. Crest is crisis intervention. This program is prevention. So there is two distinct reasons why we have this. So that's why we have prevention for this one. Crest is crisis intervention. Understood. Thank you. I see Ms. Moisten's hand, then Ms. Walker, then Ms. Pereira. I'll be quick too. So I'm very excited about this because I've had this whole notion in my head somewhere that we could be somewhere like the Hampshire YMCA is so successful and I understand that they have funding through a different system. And I'm not saying that it has to be like that, but I just know like the Hampshire Y to some degree works as like that one stop place. And it has all of the community organizations and like these kids need a basketball court and they, you know, they need some other places for activities. So I just, I don't know about like the merge if we can get all of the different youth programs to kind of merge together and work or how you guys would want to do that. But I just, I'm very excited about this piece of it. And I think that it could definitely work. You could utilize some systems that are already in play. As long as, very good point, as long as it's headed by BIPOC leadership, that's the whole point of creating this. If BIPOC families are getting the services that we need in this town, we won't have this. So that's the whole point. I don't have any problem merging some of the services as long as it is administered by BIPOC leadership. That's the emphasis. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I, nine o'clock was as late as I could push my other commitment. I do need to go. I totally agree that these are things our town needs and really appreciate the work that people have put in. I'm very sorry I can't stay. So should we put my emotion or should we, so let's round this up. Yeah. So I see Ms. Walker's hand, Ms. Freira and then Mr. Wiley. That's okay. I'm in favor of moving towards emotion so that we can get people out of here and I can save my comments for next week. Yeah. Ms. Freira. Yeah, me too. I just want to do the vote, but I also don't want to forget that we had also said about possibly adding more responders. Should I make changes on that? Should we make changes on that? What would that? Yeah, I would be in favor of doubling just what we have now in terms of the responders. What about the dispatchers? Just the responders? Just the responders for me. Okay. Okay. Okay. Mr. Wiley. I think my part in comment is that I don't want to abandon the fact that there have been our consultant group has been with us through this entire process and they are in our community doing work with our community getting feedback. And at this particular point, we have not fully heard from them about what resources they found or what information they've received from our community. And I think this is going to be important because it will touch on all of these items that we're receiving. We're talking about right now, but as they're spending a lot of time working on this and extended time attending these meetings and I'm speaking on behalf of them, their voice has not been heard, but they're taking all this information. I hope we can facilitate an opportunity to have a conversation with them. Perhaps the next meeting if possible to hear more from them about what they're finding because this is going to inform what happens for us in May, in terms of our formal response to the town. So I want to thank them for being here. I know they're on this meeting right now and they're listening, but I don't want to dismiss them in this conversation. And with that out, I'll let it go. I do have to prowl about 15 people right now. So can I say something? I agree with Mr. Wale. I think we should table the motion till next week Wednesday after we hear from the walk-off. Yeah, but wait a minute, but we can't do that. We cannot do that. We can't do that. We cannot do that. We cannot use the budget by Friday and stuff. So we need to do that. I didn't spend an extra 45 minutes to then table it. No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. We're voting on it tonight now. I'm not asking. I don't want to be misinterpreted. I'm not advocating abandoning the motion. I'm just saying I think we have to make space for it. But Mr. Wiley, we're going to do that for the report. That's the whole point. We're not going to listen to them, obviously, but that's what I'll be included in the report. Right now, budget decisions. Right. Got you. Two different things. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So with all of that being, Ms. Bowman, you had your hand up? Yeah. I was basically, I think I know where you're going, but with all that being said, we need to vote on this. It's after 45 minutes. We agreed to 45 minutes. I need to go. So can we, can we put this to a vote, please? All in favor to motion, should we do the, both of them separate together? No, let's do it together. But just with the amendment for the responders that we double the responders. That's it. That was the amendment. Okay. So I motion to move both of the budgets forward with the responders doubled to the Amherst population. All in favor, raise your hand. And it's seconded too, by the way. Yes. Man, I'm really bad at all of this meeting, like the format. I have a question before we vote, please. When you say responders, I have a question before we vote. When you say responders, do you mean also the supervisors or just the responders? I think just responders. Okay. Got you. Okay. Are we all in agreement of that? Ms. Walker. Oh, she has her hand raised. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Sorry. Okay. Let me pull up the reading agenda. So I'm really awful at this. Okay. So are there any events before we close out? Well, actually, so then who's going to submit that though? Who's going to submit it to Mr. Mr. Bachman? So we know that that's going to get sent out to him. Ms. Pat. The chair, right? Don't we send it to Mr. Bachman and C.C. Jennifer? Yeah. Ms. Pat, why don't you just do it? You all worked on it. Okay. Just do it and send it to Mr. Bachman and C.C. Jennifer. Okay. When do you guys want this sent tomorrow? Tomorrow. No. I mean, unless you want to do it now. Yeah. We've already voted on it. Just do it. I think Ms. Bachman is right. I think Ms. Bachman is right. We already did it. Yeah. Didn't just send it out to him. Yeah. Did we vote already? Yeah. We did. Just don't forget to. Okay. I'm tired. Don't forget to double the responders. Yeah. I went. All the responders and then send it to Mr. Bachman and C.C. to Ms. Moyston. Okay. Perfect. What do we do so? With that being said, is there any upcoming events that anyone wants to share? It just doesn't happen. No. Okay. Awesome. I'll take that as a consensus. Absolutely. We will email anything that needs to be emailed at this point. And I motion that the meeting is adjourned. It's not good. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Thank you, everybody. Bye. Thank you, everybody who came. Have a good night.