 Good evening. Thank you for joining us for the Burlington Police Commission meeting. The date is February 27th and that time is 6.01. Item 1.2 of the agenda, majority of the commissioners are here and we have a quorum. Commissioner Hanson is not present. Is the chief present? I can't see. Not quite yet, no. Okay. All right, so hopefully he'll be joining us shortly. Also joining us today, perhaps as the meeting progresses, will be police commission attorney Anthony Arapino and city attorney Haley McLanahan. Item 1.3 is the modification of the agenda. Are there any motions to change or modify the agenda? Hearing none. Is there a motion to accept the agenda? Motion to accept. Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay. All in any discussions? Just one discussion. Are we taking minutes or is Shannon taking minutes? Mr. Naroski, I'm taking minutes for y'all. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. No one to check. Okay. Thanks. So no discussion. Thank you. All in favor of the approval of the agenda, say aye. Aye. Item 3 is public forum. I don't know if there is anybody, Shannon, in the public forum who wishes to speak. Counselor Grant is here. Okay. Is there anybody else besides Counselor Grant? No, ma'am. Okay. All right. Counselor, recover, recognizing Counselor Grant. Thank you. I wanted to cover a few things. I might be showing up more often just to have a connection between the commission and the city council's public safety committee. Even though this next election will most likely bring change because we know that there are several council positions that are open where incumbents aren't running. It is my intention to continue to serve on that committee and see how we in city government can do a better job about giving members of the public information. So one of the things I've really been trying to focus on is to get people to what I call adopt a meeting, especially around public safety, either adopt the police commission meeting or the public safety committee meeting. Sometimes there is overlap in the information. Sometimes the commission will discuss something that's not being discussed in the public safety committee and vice versa. This past year was kind of difficult with regards to the discussion around oversight and accountability. There seemed to be confusion as to when feedback was due, even though there was a stated procedure and meetings were posted, etc. So what I wanted to do was just to make sure that there isn't this gap for other serious issues because the lack of being able to put something regarding accountability on an oversight on the ballot after numerous promises were made has been really difficult for some members of our community. So I'll be popping in with different information and I might also be emailing you some information as well. The things I want to talk about tonight I have to do with the chief's report and I will not be able to stay on unfortunately for the whole meeting, but I'll be listening to it later because I am curious about the conversation that you'll be having about body cam footage, which I believe is extremely important. If you're not regularly watching the body cam footage of use of force incidents, if you're not seeing how use of force is used correctly within procedure directives and policies, you won't be able to recognize when it's not. And with another lawsuit, unfortunately over the head of our city and our department, I think this is more important than ever. Going to the chief's report, the page eight of 20, when you get to looking at that, I thought this was extremely interesting. The graphic is meant to highlight the achievement of hiring 15 sworn officers in 2023. We all know how slowly rebuilding has been going, but we've had some success in 2023. But we also still had an issue where nine left. So we only have a net of six for 2023. This data goes back to 2014. One of the things that's been talked about numerous times is this idea of a vote having forced officers out, which is not true. Our department regrettably has had a long history, a very long history of turnover. And I have been involved in public safety now going on for five years. And I have been trying to get this to rise to the top in that I feel that the city has not done the best job possible to get the root cause of why this is happening. So when we look at 2014, you had 12 and eight out. 2015, nine and six out. 2016, 13 and 13 out. 2017, nine and nine out. 2018, 12 and 18 out. 28, so that was a net of losing six. 2018 is not highlighted, red. I assume that's just an oversight. 2019, 12 in, 12 out, net zero. So this data is really important because it is supporting the issue of a long-term problem, having to do more morale, culture, what is it? The lack of appreciation, why is it still feeling that way? Where is the community engagement to actively tackle that? So I just ask that you look at that data and understand it because it is counter to a narrative that quite frankly is political. And we need to get away from politics and be honest with the people of Burlington so that we can have proper solutions for them. And the last two items I wanted to talk about was that when I look at the incidents, it says the incidents are up for 23%, but the selected incidents don't reflect that volume at all. So I would be interested in having the data team like pull everything so we can see where is this 23% coming from? Because it's not reflected in the selected incidents. And the last thing is these pages, page 11 and page 12 and page 13, taking a look at authorized on page 12 in the upper right-hand corner, hoping to be, we're authorized for 87, hoping by FY26 we'll have 81, for FY25 we will be budgeting for 77. And the reason we're budgeting for 77 is the city is going to have a $9 million deficit that we have to work on. So why budget for more officers than we're able to hire at this time? So that if anyone asks why are we budgeting for 87? Well, we're budgeting for 77 because at the rate that we're building back hiring and still losing people who are leaving, that's where we believe we'll be. With regards to slide 13, authorized for 100 in FY27 question mark, I really think it's inappropriate to put a slide like this. There is no discussions at this time going that far out. I really strongly disagree with something like this being added. Because it's just not appropriate. It's not being talked about. We don't know where we'll be with regards to the amount of incidents that the professional staff will be able to handle. We don't know where we'll be with the drug crisis. We cannot afford to have this drug crisis continue to just be out of control. We're all aware now of Decker Towers. I am really going to be keeping my eye on Decker Towers and hopefully be one of the people to help monitor what's happening there. And bring back more information to the commission about that. But we can't just put something in there that is a fly in the sky. A thought and then have people in the community start to talk about it. It's just not okay. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for listening. If you have any questions about any of my comments, please feel free to email me at MEgrantsatberlingtonbt.gov. That's MEgrantsatberlingtonbt.gov. Sometimes people just go MGRANT and it will not get through to me. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Grant. And also thank you for sharing the report on gun violence among new American youth in Vermont. I know Commissioner Hanson responded to you, I believe via email. And I'm hopeful other commissioners also took some time to read that report. It's not a very long report. It's a relatively short report, so I encourage people to look at it. And I guess you will answer any questions if people have any questions about that. Am I right? Yes, absolutely. And I think it's a really good report because one of the things that, you know, there are some things that are, when you read it, it's upsetting, right, because it clearly shows that among members, some members of our new American community, there remains a deep distrust of our department. So we need to be coming up with ideas to address that because our department cannot be the best it can be if it doesn't have the trust of the community because the department will be at its best when people in the community cooperate with and work with the department. And I still would like to see the department engage more with what the public can do to help the department. I think there's a certain level of not wanting to admit that there are things that police can't solve, but that is the fact that people are expecting too much from our department. Our department cannot solve the homeless problem. Our department cannot solve getting people into recovery. So our department cannot prevent certain types of crimes like a lot of these crimes related to the drug crisis can't be prevented. Now, the department can come in afterwards and help and, you know, if a car gets stolen, try to get that stolen car back, but the community has to be vigilant, not victim shaming in any way, but just saying, you know, there's still too far too many cars that are left unlocked, packages not delivered in a secure place, things like that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else has any questions or thoughts about that report? You know, you can just, I guess you can email Councillor Grant if you do. Thank you so much for coming. The next item, oh, if there is anybody else in the public forum. Shannon, I don't know if you can see anyone who wishes to speak. There's one other person. If you would like to address the commission, if you'd kindly raise your hand and I'll promote you to speak. And I'm not seeing a hand, Co-Chair Rao. Might we go back to item two just to approve minutes before we move on? Is that? All right. Go ahead. What are you going to say? Ask something about that? No, I think we went from approving the agenda to public forum. Yes. I think we skipped over. Just want to make sure it doesn't get lost. Okay. Did it go exactly as we did? I did actually. This is, I took extensive notes, but of course I have to read those notes. So you're talking about item 2.1, which is approval of the minutes from the regular commission meeting of January 23rd. Yes, please. Correct. Thank you. Any changes to that? Hearing none, is there a motion to accept the minutes? Accept the minutes. Is there a second? All in favor of the approval of the minutes, as they are, say aye. Aye. All right, move your hand. Okay. I think that, thanks for noticing that Shannon and sending me back to 2.1. Okay. If we don't have anyone else to speak on the public forum, then I will continue. I see that Chief Murad is here. He has two items on the agenda. One is 4.1, which is the chief report followed by departmental directive revision. So Chief, the floor is yours. Thank you so much and thank you all for letting me be with you tonight. I am going to share my screen, if that's all right. So this is this month's chief's report. Sorry, just a couple of zoomy things that were on the screen. Now they're gone. So this month's chief's report, we of course, let's see. There we go. It was right around the time of our last month's meeting, but it wasn't included in last month's report because we didn't do it. I did not do a January report. I used instead the year end report for 2023 as the substance of the chief's report for the January meeting. And we talked a little bit about it, but didn't have an opportunity to sort of include it on a slide. A hostage situation at T-Rug's Tavern on North Street and Elmwood. And that did end ultimately with the arrest of the subject and the safe rescue of the two hostages who were inside. We were very grateful to the Vermont State Police for their teams' arrival and assistance. We had been on that scene for about five hours at the time, by the time we actually transferred control of the scene to the Vermont State Police. And it was a very, very cold scene. Just then a month later, since that was January 20th, and this is February 20th, we encountered a man with a knife first on the waterfront. He moved into the downtown area, ultimately ended up on Park Street. This is a person whom we had encountered in this way before. There is a use of force video on our site that shows a previous encounter with him and a long negotiation with him on the waterfront near the apartment buildings that are up above the skate park. In that instance, he again approached officers with a knife and despite a long period of negotiation, officers did ultimately have to use a less lethal impact munition, specifically a beanbag shotgun in that previous incident last year. In this incident just last week, he was, again, not cooperating incredibly cold. A beanbag shotgun was used, it did not result in an effect on him and then ultimately a baton round was also used. That did incapacitate him sufficiently that he was able to be taken into custody and he was arrested on disorderly conduct charges and also taken to the hospital. The hospital refused to hold him because they decided that his substance use made any mental health issues impossible to assess. As a result, as soon as he had been treated for the exposure, he had cut off his own pants on the waterfront and was wandering around in just boxers and boots. Another very, very cold day, he was released by the hospital. We cleared out the Battery Park encampment since our last meeting on January 29th. On December 28th, there had been a pretty serious fire in the encampment that really put a bit of a emphasis on making certain that we could find new locations for the folks who were there. By the time we conducted the operation to clear it out, there were only two people in the site and the rest had either found alternate shelter or availed themselves of work that was done by the Assistant to End Homelessness Sarah Russell and by AD Kate Lacey Smith from the Burlington Police Department and were alternatively sheltered. But the two who were there, people worked with them including Parks Director Cindy White came out herself to assist with this and both find places to safely store the things that were in their multiple tents, disassemble those multiple tents and clear the site. You can see those in the top picture you'll see propane tanks which were both the source of the fire and why it could have been so really devastating including to there are apartment buildings just on the other side of this ledge they call it the shelf. It is a sort of flat space on the bottom on the downside of the hill. Had those exploded that would have been pretty bad. You can also see of course the ubiquitous bicycles and the detritus of dismembered bicycles that we see at every homeless encampment. We run those that we can if we can find identifying numbers or information. The vast majority of them are not reported stolen. People in the encampments will tell us that they have purchased them oftentimes for improbable amounts of money. I bought this for $10 off someone else indicative at the very least of it having been stolen property when they purchased it if not they're having stolen it themselves. But we're not able to prove that absent a registered serial number for a crime report and as a result these all end up being trashed. And then you'll see also frozen in a block of ice a piece of Narcan which is another piece of this story. We obviously have the challenges we have with regard to unhoused people and the degree to which unfortunately while being unhoused is not a crime it definitely creates environments for crime and an increase in certain kinds of crime as the bicycles are indicative. It is characterized by a lot of substance use disorder as the Narcan indicates and it is not a safe way to be. And the idea that closing encampments is somehow cruel in and of itself is the act to act opposite of the objective of the city and of the people certainly at AD Cape or at the assistant to end homelessness. It is cruel to allow people to continue to live this way. And that is an incredibly dangerous unhealthy and ultimately untenable way for people to live in our city. However the clearing out of that encampment over the course of a month absolutely aggravated the situation at 230 St. Paul Street which are also known as Decker Towers. Decker Towers is the tallest building in the state. When I was a kid I was told that it had illegally been built as tall as it was and that the state had then taken it and turned it into a subsidized living facility because the developers had broken the rules. I don't know if that's true but that's the story I remember when I was a young person growing up in Underhill. It is a community. It's the tallest apartment building in the state. It's a large apartment building has a lot of residents and those residents have absolutely been victimized over the past year by an untenable number of incursions into their building. It began with primarily drug activity and we were in close contact with members of the BHA staff that's the Burlington Housing Authority that owns 230 St. Paul. We were in close contact with their staff. Our narcotics unit or our drug unit worked very closely with them. Shared camera access was able to track incidents. For example we believe that people who were in the apartment where a murder occurred in the end of 2022, a murder that was then followed by another murder by the same murderer in South Burlington and then that murder returned to Burlington to try to dispose of his weapon. We believe people at that apartment fled to Decker after that assault and that's not the first time that we had seen those kinds of movements of people leaving other drug locations or locations where either arrests or search warrants etc happened and going to Decker. What we did see in Decker with regard to drug activity however was that we weren't able to determine that there were significant drug sales in Decker to the point that we could execute search warrants there but we did work closely with their staff. In the past several months however the situation has changed. There's a photo there of me at an August meeting that I attended with members of the Decker Towers community talking about the conditions they were facing at the time were primarily drugs. Now the issue is primarily homelessness and trespass and the problems that brings with it. People who do steal from their package room, people who attempt to get into apartments, people who accost people who do live there as well as people who use drugs in the hallways, who defecate, who you know have bodily fluid out in the hallways and we're concerned about that. You'll see that the number of calls for service at Decker has never been high with regard to priority ones. We respond to every single priority one at that location as we try to do everywhere in the city. The idea that no one is coming, which has been said by some executives at BHA as well as members of the public there is not true in the confines of our priority response model. Our priority response model functions the same way at Decker as it does it anywhere in the city and we did respond to every single one of the priority ones that occurred in 2023 with exceptions that are listed in the small print there. There were hangups, 911 hangups that we were able to determine did not need an in-person response and then there were overdoses where BFD responded before we got there and determined that we did not need a response. Those are the only incidents in which a priority one incident occurred and we did not go, otherwise we did. But did we go to all 381 incidents recorded in 2023? No, we did not. Have we gone to all the 109 that were, actually I'm looking at a slightly different page than you. I updated this page to reflect, excuse me, February 15th. I think yours says 81 or something, the one that's posted. This one says 109. That's how many incidents there have been through February 15th. Of those 100, there have now since there have been even more and that's not because more calls are necessarily coming from Decker, although I think they are. Decker is a significant topic of concern right now, both because of media attention and because of the tenants and the residents feeling at which end. But we are also going to that location far more often to conduct proactive vertical patrols, which are essentially a foot patrol up and down in a building. As an example of that, as this shows, there were 109 incidents at St. Paul Street from January through February 15th of 2024. From February 16th through tonight, there have been a total of 41 incidents. And that basically works out to 2.4 incidents from January 1 through February 15th and 3.7 incidents. So we've increased our presence there. And the bulk of that increase is officers calling out foot patrols in Decker, because we are attempting to go there and to address the situation that they are experiencing. These are vulnerable members of our community. These are neighbors who don't necessarily have to wear with all themselves to eject people. And we are trying to be responsive to that, although it does not fall within the priority response plan. And when there are only four officers on a shift, the ability to actually host people there, for example, is not possible. I see a hand from you. Yeah, there are two questions. One is from Commissioner Cox. What is a baton round? You mentioned this was used baton. Am I saying that right? Yes. You mentioned this was used after the bean background for the guy in Park Street. That's question number one from Commissioner Cox. My question to you is, as far as Decker Tower is concerned, what are the options for BHA? I have dealt with BHA quite a bit for their 185 Pine Street location. And I feel like their own presence has been very limited. In fact, when I call them and complain about a tenant, they almost never respond to my calls. So I don't know what you would suggest for people in this neighborhood who are impacted both by Decker Towers. I think I could speak for some of the people around here. And also the two properties, one on King Street and one on Pine. What we can do to sort of talk to them and have them be more proactive, because I feel like the opposite has happened. It's almost like the incident volumes are going up there and they have withdrawn from the property themselves. So can you talk a little bit about both of these? Sure. So a baton round is a foam round. It's a cylinder, a cylindrical round that goes into a device that looks a little bit like a grenade launcher and functions in a similar way. It too is a form of less lethal impact ammunition. So a beanbag shotgun is literally a tiny beanbag that goes inside a shotgun shell. A shotgun shell looks like this. And instead of being loaded with either a single slug or with either buckshot or bird shot, as would be the case for a lethal shotgun round, it is loaded with a, there's a tiny little woven bag inside with bean material and it expands when it leaves the barrel of the weapon and flies. It's not accurate too far out. You cannot use it at the same distance that you can use a pistol, much less a rifle, but it is accurate to 20, 40 yards and it delivers a wallop. It can be, we call them less lethal because they're not without risk. A less, the baton rounds are a little different. They don't come out of a shotgun, they come out of a device that has this rotating canister that holds multiple, it looks like the cylinder of a revolver except it's much larger and it holds multiple baton rounds and they fire down the barrel of a launcher and they do the same thing. They are not meant to be lethal. They are made of foam, a hard pack foam, and they deliver an impact to an individual that generally stuns that individual or takes the fight out of that individual. So with regard to the other question, I can't speak to, you know, BHS presence or the level of presence. I can only speak to the degree to which we were working well, very well with their staff in so far as cooperation went with regard to access to Decker, particularly access to their video, etc. I do believe that the city is hard at work negotiating, I think there have been some changes to the BHA board and what really needs to happen and the mayor and I had a meeting with executives from BHA in the spring of last year in which we said this is what was needed, access control. We cannot place police officers there with any frequency. They don't want to pay, and I understand full-time police service or even security service can get expensive, although a short-term application of that kind of money may be necessary in this case, but it's all of it moot if there is not also access control. You've got to have an ability to keep people out who are not meant to be inside, to allow people in who are legitimately inside and to make certain that if guests come to a residence that they're somehow recorded and that people cannot abuse this by, for example, turning the apartment that they are a legitimate tenant of into a place where everyone else comes to flop or use drugs. And the way to do that is to have access control and then some kind of system at the bottom that is a gatekeeping system, both figurative and physical, an actual engineered access control or gatekeeping and also a process administered by a person, a sign-in sheet. These are things that any building with a doorman undergoes this all the time. You cannot just walk into a, I don't know, take your pick of fancy buildings on the Upper West Side or the Upper East Side. You just can't walk in. You have to have an appointment or be signed in as a worker or a delivery person or a guest. Even tenants, tenants get to know certainly the people who operate the door, but even they are required, if necessary, to show proof that they are in that building. And I don't know why people in a subsidized apartment building who are vulnerable and poor deserve any less than folks who reside at some Tony or Tony address on Fifth Avenue. Right, I mean, I think it's going to be tough to do that in 185 Pine, which as you know historically, BPD's presence prior to Decker Tower, that was one of the properties that you all visited quite often. So I think it would be good to continue to have the conversation that you have started with them. And if you can express the same sentiments of the people around in the neighborhood and maybe have somebody there, when next time if you are meeting with BHA, I'm happy to participate in a conversation like that with them, because it seems like they don't listen to the community around here, which is impacted by what's happening at Decker Towers or at least at least I haven't had gotten any response. So, but thank you, please go on. I'm sorry. No, no, I appreciate what you're saying. I think that one thing to do, one thing that I will do commissioner is I will make certain that the new members of the BHA board are aware of your interest in this and the fact that you are an affected party based on where you live and I'll let them make that connection. I think that's a valuable one. This is something that is happening in April. So it's still two months away, although only one meeting will happen in between this and that. On April 8th, there will be a total eclipse in Burlington. I think a lot of people have heard about this. The so-called path of totality runs through a number of other cities, Austin, Texas, Dallas, Texas, Indianapolis. We are not the largest city, but we are almost close of all sort of, I think, let's say high quality cities. We are closest to the center of the zone and that does make a real difference for how people are able to see the totality of the eclipse. And we're expecting a lot of people. Now, it is also true, however, based on history, there's only a 25% chance of cloudless skies on that date and that is probably going to outweigh our closeness to the center for many people who are willing to travel and make a big deal out of a celestial event such as this. Nevertheless, even with that caveat, we are anticipating upwards of 100,000 people in the region and possibly much more than that. Whether they will all come to Burlington or not is open for question. You'll see that Jay Peak is even closer to the center than we and would probably be a beautiful place to observe from the top of Jay, if you're willing to go up there. But for Burlington, what we will be doing is working with the Burlington City Arts. Zach Williamson has the lead. We've been working with Fire, Police, DPW Parks to try to think about how we are going to direct people to specific areas, how we're going to deal with the huge amounts of traffic that we're going to experience and how we're going to deal with parking and how we're going to deal with putting people into places that, frankly, in very early April are probably not places we would want them to be if all things were equal. We would not want upwards of 20 or 30,000 people. The number that we have, for example, at the Marathon or at the 3rd of July on the waterfront at the very beginning of April, it will turn into a mud slug when we're going to have to figure out how whether we can re-sod that for summer events, et cetera. But it is probably the best location in the city. We're assuming that that's where we're going to put people. We're probably going to change directions on some streets, close some streets off. But we're also going to have to just let traffic go because we do not have the kinds of resources necessary to address crowds of these size. So all of this is stuff that we're working on. We're thinking about and it's going to be quite an event and quite something. Hotels are already largely sold out. Those that are not are asking what are completely abnormal rates. People are Airbnb-ing. Even people who've never done it before. And there are a lot of those fancy glasses that allow you to see the penumbra that are being sold. Here is our sworn officer count. And I'd like to point out that, yes, there has always been an in and out in the Burlington Police Department. But it is true too that the point of any entity, any agency, is to have as many people coming in as you have coming out. If you have six, you want to lose six. If you know you're going to lose eight, you want to be able to hire eight. For the most part, the Burlington Police Department was able to do that over the previous decade. The notion that there has not been a change in that since 2020 is frankly absurd. Anyone can look at this chart and see that something changed. It is absurd to say that it was not that. What we see here is, in fact, mostly what we would call headcount homeostasis. As many in as out. Or occasionally net growth. And that was a positive. There was a year in 2018 where we did lose a number of people. That stemmed primarily from a large number of people who were retiring and who actually were hitting their 20s. And then we brought in a number and frankly weren't able to recruit as many as we lost that year. The subsequent years that have lost, those losses were driven entirely by the fact that we could not try to even engage in creating headcount homeostasis by bringing in as many as we lose. That's what an agency does in any given time. The agency was largely successful at that, bounced around a little bit. But what has happened since 2020 was unprecedented and markedly different. The notion that there was something akin to what happened before is simply disputed and I think dispelled by this graph. However, we are working hard at trying to get back out of that slump. We had a swearing in in February. Some of the members of the police commission were there very grateful for your attendance. It's very grateful. Very grateful also for city counselors who were there and members of the Queen City Police Foundation. We only brought on one sworn officer. So with regard to that particular goal of hiring, it was we did not get what we wanted on that. But we brought in a lot of other sworn professionals, people who are excuse me, not sworn professional employees, people who are integral to the way we are structuring the police department today, including dispatchers. We had gotten perilously close to being non-functional as a dispatch center, including members of our CAPE team and community support liaisons, including new members of our tech team and new members of our community service officer team. So we are working hard to rebuild all of these entities are seeking to grow. And I think Carolyn Irwin, Corporal Carolyn Irwin and Recruitment Coordinator Bajwa have done amazing work on that. We have a new video to share in our video series. These are created by our Public Information Officer, Sarah Tim, and by Shan Shan Chen, the Redaction Specialist. We have a new video about the community service officers that's out that joins other videos that we already have about the community support liaisons, about our Emergency Response Unit, which is the team that is responsible for the work at T-Rugs and on Park Street, about our use of force training, specifically grappling as opposed to striking and really trying to decrease the number of the risk of injury to parties when we do have to go hands-on. Our observance of Memorial Day and of Police Memorial Day and our recruitment advertisement. And that joins, of course, the literally dozens of videos that are now up that show uses of force. So insofar as being able to witness body camera and see uses of force, both physical or other things like pointing firearms or the display or the use of OC spray, there are literally dozens of videos available to not only this body but to any member of the public to assess those and look at them and see uses of force that in all of those have been deemed appropriate, lawful, and within training by the police department. These are, this is a graphic representative representation of our sworn assignments right now. And there are a lot of people who are asking for what the thoughts about this agency and where it goes. I believe it's actually incumbent on a police chief to talk about what his or her strategy is and his or her plans for growth are. This is where we are. It's absolutely inadequate. The notion that we are policing a city of 45,000 people and 16 square miles with four people is absolutely inadequate. We have additionally faced tremendous numbers of shootings and homicides over the past three years, unprecedented numbers for our cities with a terrifically talented DSB that is not staffed the way it should be, staff. And then we are asking our officers to do more than ever before, not only because we are working more calls for service than we have in more than half a decade with fewer officers than we've ever had but also because we're asking to train them in new and different ways. And that's an administrative role that we do not have sufficient personnel for either. This is what the department would look like if the current mayor and my plan for rebuilding is achieved. We talk about getting to the 80s by FY25, excuse me, 6, sometime in fiscal year 26. This is a more functional agency and it's an agency that does have the ability to do certain things that we're not doing. You see there seven on the day shift, three on the midnight shift which at least allows us to not be automatically in the priority response model the second the midnight start. It also gives us some additional resources in our drug unit and our detective unit and administratively. This is what we had prior to June 2020. We staffed 96 to 97 on average and this is essentially what we had with them except there have been some tweaks to this because this envisions the creation of two officers assigned to CAPE. We currently have a domestic violence prevention officer who sits with CAPE but is not assigned to do CAPE work. She does instead domestic violence prevention work. I think that what we need there is a supervisor and two officers who are able to augment the work CAPE does to go with members of Burlington CARES team which will be created by then, members of the CSL team with the domestic violence officer and be able to work on issues around that. I believe we need SROs again. I think the loss of the school resource officers was a terrible blow to our ability to connect with students to understand what's going on in the schools and to make certain that we are better integrated into the community. I'm eagerly looking forward to going to the championship game on Thursday night but in older times we would have been at those games and part of that part of the community. This envisions marketplace officers specifically assigned marketplace officers on both sides of the shift who are able to say that we are we're handling that part of the city and can be augmented as necessary by larger groups of officers who are on the regular shift. And it envisions a midnight. We used to have five on midnight. This envisions four but it is a functioning midnight that doesn't go into priority response. In fact, at this stage we would abandon the priority response model. I probably would abandon it by the time we get into the 80s. And I see a hand. Commissioner Oskie. Thank you. A couple of questions about this chart I just don't understand. One, the first question is does this, do these numbers include the normal number of officers that are out on, that are injured or on military duty? That's the first question. And two, like on the bottom where it says mids, are those two units? Why are they separated like that? And it looks like there's eight officers and two supervisors on but you keep saying there's four. So I don't understand. I just don't understand the way to lay down. Sure. So I know we've talked before about the fact that our officers work four 10 hour shifts a week. There are seven days in a week, not eight. When you have two teams of four they overlap one day. And therefore you have one side of the shift four days of work. And you have another side of the shift which is four days of work. In the case, for example, of the evenings they work, Friday is their double day. So one team starts on Friday and then works Saturday. So starts on Friday, works Saturday, Sunday and Monday and then goes home and has three days off. The other side goes, their last day is Friday. So they don't, they go home and they work instead Monday. Excuse me. Yes, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The Friday is the overlap day. But on any given day there's only one side in, except for that Friday. Now what we use the Friday for is twofold. If we do not have training needs then it's great to have double the number of officers available on a Friday night. And that's always how the agency function. But most of the time we don't have what's called a double shift because we are training people. Or people know that I can take, you know, I can take the Friday off because there's going to be more people and I'm not going to leave anybody in the lurch by taking Friday off. So as a result, we have two sides of the schedule and this shows you those two sides. The lieutenants don't hit with sides. That's why they're centered. Same thing with school resource officers. Same thing with the cape and the DVPO. They're centered. But the two sides which go down on days and eaves and mids. So the rows that are designated days and that's why it says times two. It's one and eight. One sergeant and eight officers times two sides. It is one sergeant and eight officers for the eaves times two sides. And it is one sergeant and four officers per mid for the two sides. That is happening now as well. Here's the exact same. This is just what we currently have as of February 15th. And this is with 55 officers. So this does account for the question you had of people who are out. We do not, we are not counting here the officers who are on field training. We are not counting officers who are on long-term military leave. We're not counting officers who are out on injury. We're not counting the one officer who is at the police academy right now. In this drawing here of the 90s, excuse me, in this one, no, this envisions everybody being there and not having, but it used, we did not used to have nearly as many people out at any given time as we currently do. That is a function of exhaustion. It is a function of officers who are, who are stretched thinner than they ever have been. When we, when June of 2020 happened, we had two officers who were not available. In other words, I sometimes talk about, and it says it here, excuse me, in this slide, we talk about effective or total versus available. And there's 68 total. And that's because we lost one between this chart, which was the very, this is pinpointed the first of every month. And we were at 69. This is pinpointed to the 15th of every month, which is when I cut off the chief's report to present it to all of you. And we were at 68. We lost an officer in the very beginning of February. We are authorized for 87. We have 68 total, 55 of whom are available. This graph shows you those 55. This doesn't count all those positions I talked about. In 19, in 2020, we had a total of 92 police officers on our roster, 90 of whom were available because we did not have anybody in the academy at the time of that. And we also didn't have anybody on field training because we'd had a very small, because COVID had meant that we did not have a field training class. We had only had COVID had shut down the academy. So we didn't have anybody on field training and we didn't have nearly as many injuries. We had one long-term injury and we had one long-term person who was on terminal leave prior to her retirement. And so those 92 became 90. For us to have 68 and only have 55 effective, we've never seen this before, having that many people who are unavailable to us. It is a function of them being stretched too thin and too tired. They break. So this picture also envisions a larger drug team, a larger detective team, and is what we could do with an authorization of 100 or so. If we do have people who are out because of either injury or more likely because we're cycling people through, for example, training programs, whether it's field training or the academy, then the days turns into one and six rather than one and eight. And at this stage, one and six would feel incredibly full to us and fat to us. So we'd feel pretty healthy with that. This is where we are currently, another graphic representation of where we are, the 68 and the 55. And again, that ratio of the green pie slice to the light blue pie slice of patrol to unavailable, we've never seen those kinds of ratios. We usually see patrol being unavailable, usually was two, maybe five. This is new territory, but it's been new territory for the past three years. So we've unfortunately become somewhat accustomed to it. The 23% increase. Yeah, it is true that this slide here, these incidents are not up nearly as much. Some of them are in fact down to the good thing. So what is it that is causing that 23% increase? It's a tremendous increase in call volume for people, for things that don't end up being incidents necessarily, suspicious events, the trespass incidents at Decker Towers, for example. As I said, we've had 109 incidents between the first of the year and February 15th, 150 incidents there as of today. And that's just for the year. And the vast majority of those are not priority one. And the vast majority of those are not on this sheet. They're not included in this, but they are still happening. And they're very important and we need to go to them. And the idea that because there's a discrepancy between the 23% increase that's seen here, versus the fact that some of these figures are either flat or even down, that it is not indicative of an increased need for a police is doesn't hold water for me. We have stacked fewer incidents this year than we have previously. So we are decreasing the frequency with which we stack calls for service. Last year, we averaged about 15% and that was throughout the year. We're at 11 right now. We also averaged about 12 to 15% online reporting last year and we're at seven right now. So our efforts to prevent people from making online reports and to move more reporting either to directly to dispatch is working. And what we want is for people to call 911. If they have a crime to report, if they have a situation that concerns them that is in progress or happening, we want them to call 911. I'm not certain why there's such an aversion to it. If you see a stolen car, what you believe to be a stolen car blocking a driveway, that's a 911 call. That's a 911 call in any other municipality it is and it can be here. Why? Because when you call 911, there are two layers of vetting. There is the PSAP usually at Williston, the public safety answering point and then the reference to our own dispatchers, all of whom can help figure out what this call really is or is not. Whereas when citizens, when neighbors self-identify what the calls are, unfortunately they frequently get it wrong and they either go to the wrong sources or they attempt to make an online report for something that isn't what it's supposed to be. And our online reports as this priority response model shows, they're really only, it's a very small number of incidents that are supposed to be reported online. So we're having some success as this number shows of decreasing the frequency with which online reporting is happening. Here's some categories that are not going in the right direction still. I mean, barely. There is a slight increase, excuse me, a slight improvement with regard to stolen vehicles from 2023 to 2022 or excuse me, from 2022 to 2023, but it is still tremendously, tremendously higher than it ever had been. And the same is true of, I'm sorry, the same is true of issues around our larcenies from a motor vehicle as well. So not just theft of motor vehicles, but larcenies from them. And that has taken off in the past few years. And this is absolutely driven by the drug situation. It is driven by houselessness and it is exacerbated by the court shutdown and the current that lasted too long and the current backlog of cases. People who are arrested too frequently have very little in the way of consequence. And while we are eventually, we do get some degree of consequence, it takes far too many, far too many opportunities for that person to commit crime. I had a few press releases that were made recently around an individual Silas Benoit who was arrested for a number of crimes in the parking garage and at Decker Towers. An individual named Katelyn Charbonneu also arrested for a huge number of several car thefts and also in Decker Towers and an individual named Tyrone Pinder. Multiple car thefts and an incident in Decker Towers. All of those individuals had been arrested, seen, arraigned and released multiple times. Multiple times. Mr. Pinder, I believe, is still held. Finally, he was held. But he had to assault officers for that to happen and he had an open knife when that assault occurred. Whether he was going to use it on the officers or not, we don't know. But he was in possession of an open knife that he had opened himself. It was a multi-tool. He'd gotten rid of a lot of other property and had chosen not to get rid of that piece of property as he struggled with the officers. The Miss Charbonneu is out despite having stolen at least half a dozen cars over the past month and a half. And I don't know Mr. Benoit's current status. Today, we arrested and I will be doing a press release about that. A gentleman, he'll be identified in the press release, Michael Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds has 1,616 engagements in Valcor. 1,400 of those have happened in Burlington. He has been trespassed over the past several years from 145 different addresses in Burlington and in other cities. He assaulted a police officer today and he was released at arraignment. If we continue to do this as a city and as a community, we are going to continue to experience these harms. People who have that many encounters who have victimized that many people belong in jail. There may be substance use issues at hand and at play. There may be mental health issues at hand and at play. But we know those issues are not getting the treatment and the help that they need out of the system. And we know that people are being victimized when these people are out of the system. We remain hiring. We're working hard to make that happen and to make certain that we are bringing aboard good people. I'm confident in the young woman that we sent down to the academy. I hear she's doing well. And I am confident that we're going to have a strong cohort of new officers come August when the second police academy of 2024 begins. And that's my chief's report. I see a hand. Commissioner. Yes. This question is from Commissioner Cox. She asks that she recently read a news article saying that there is some way that people can steal keyless cars more easily. Is that a factor in Burlington? So we actually did have a car that was broken into. So my little anecdote about calling to report a car that somebody believes to be stolen was based on an incident that recently happened. A person observed a car. The person believed to be stolen and first attempted to report it online called our dispatch rather than 911 characterized it as a parking issue and then was referred to parking which wasn't prepared to assist with a possibly stolen vehicle on private property. That's not a parking issue. Had the person called 911 that would have been understood. The dispatchers would have said would have worked it out with the individual and said no this is something we'll send an officer over which is what happened the next morning. And we are so that is an example. Similarly the idea of I'm sorry I was looking at something I'm sorry. The second part of your question commissioner was around what? I apologize. Keyless weather. Keyless. Yes. So when we responded to the location where that stolen car was and began to recover it we were flagged down by a person at the location who said there's a car over here that looks like it's been vandalized and it had been broken into it was a Kia and a person had attempted to get it started. What we see here is different than what Toronto for example is seeing in the big New York Times article that hit over the weekend. Toronto is seeing a massive amount of car theft that is designed to get those cars into containers and ship them overseas. We do not see that. We see two types of car theft predominantly here. The first are targets of opportunity of people who absolutely are leaving their cars open unlocked running at times and those cars are stolen by people who happen to walk by and say hey a car then they are used for transport for shelter and for a place to do drugs and then they are abandoned once somebody finds out oh hey somebody sees it and says there's a stolen car it's left when it runs out of gas and the people who stole it don't have gas money and it is abandoned where it where it breaks down. That is one type the other type of crime which we saw a lot of over the summer and have not seen as much of recently a knock on wood that's that we're not going to involve Kia's and Hyundai's which are able to be stolen with very simple means you do not have to be the kid who excelled in shop class and knows how to hotwire a car you can do it based on a YouTube video those cars were stolen by young people and they were driven to destroy the young people would drive them on literal joy rides where the joy was destroying the car running it into things making the airbags go off getting in high speed wrecks how none of them were hurt themselves I don't know this was primarily young people doing it very young people and we were quite concerned the fact that we just had another car that sort of met that description I don't know what that one was is that a young person who's part of this group that was out stealing and that means they're going to start doing it again now that the weather's done a little nicer was it an adult trying to do it I don't know but what we don't see for the most part are cars that are stolen and then parted that is taken someplace else and either sold as is or chopped up for parts we've put out a number of notices advising the public not to leave their keys in their car and not to leave their cars unlocked and unintended we've done a lot of notices of that thank you does anybody else have any questions about Chief's report before we get to I guess we have to discuss the directive so I don't know I don't see Commissioner Carmarford's hand is up okay sorry I didn't see that go ahead many people have gotten the message over the last you know several years not to call you know that no one's going to come anyway you know there aren't this priority kind of a system what are you doing to get the message out that you do want people to call now I say it here and that message was promulgated primarily by then by Police Chief Shirling Police Chief Shirling's 10-year ended in 2015 so I know that Chief Del Pozo never said to do that to call he actually absolutely wanted people to call 9-1-1 because he wanted a regional 9-1-1 system and and he it was he who instituted the phone tree in an effort to prevent people from being able to easily call dispatch so the agency has been saying for quite some time now nearly a decade not to call the agency direct it is pretty much a prevailing feeling around the community that you don't have enough police and so it's not worth calling because no one's going to show so I think if you want people to call which you've said several times tonight I think there needs to be some plan the communication plan behind it that lets people know that we're in a different place a sort of different place right now and we want you to call that's all sure I can I can I jump into that I actually agree with Commissioner Comerford one of the things that I have myself experienced is just and just you know calling and then getting a very corp response like there's no I don't even know how to describe it it was just very quick they were ready to get off the phone so I think I feel like you are saying chief that there is a shift in the way in the in the entire in this entire communication process so I wonder how we can communicate to the larger community that you know it's when they feel unsafe they should call that there is no reason to not call so I think I think that's a good question I wonder if we can do something beyond just having a discussion here you know even having a press release might not be a bad idea but I don't know how you would phrase that it's like how do you encourage people to call 911 it's a strange wording but yeah go ahead yes I we could absolutely do a press release about that I've been pretty consistent saying it in public venues but happy to do a press release as well and in so far as you know if a dispatcher is being rude that's unacceptable if they're being to the point and matter of fact which is sort of how they process that's a little different a call about again one of the reasons to have it processed through 911 is that 911 is able to answer to ask initial questions and get a sense of what the what the issue actually is and then relay it to dispatch the dispatch can then further the conversation with the caller sometimes callers do drop out after the 911 call if they say oh I didn't okay and now I understand something a little differently and I it's not a call that I need but I one thing that we never ever said was don't call because there are because we're too busy with other things or there are too few of us to the extent that the public sort of felt that or thought that I guess on some level I'm almost appreciative of it in the sense that thank you for thinking of us but we never said that and I have been saying ever since we even put the priority response plan in place we need the calls people have to call us because we need the data and even if we can't come we need to know that these things are happening I don't believe there's been a time I haven't said that it may not be words it may just be the your words people have I remember from two years ago when people would call and the dispatch would say we don't have enough people we can't handle this I remember talking about this in meetings so that message did go out not from you but it maybe went out anyway so I'm not trying to find fault with anybody I'm just thinking we have an issue that needs a communication response because I know people just generally that I talk to they basically feel like they shouldn't call unless it's you know like a graphic emergency because there's not enough police that's the that's the basic understanding I think in the community yeah I disciplined the dispatcher that was doing that and she resigned and it had been my intention to go further with that discipline prior to the resignation I don't think we've had an issue with that since that dispatcher's resignation but I hear that it was occurring okay any other questions I don't see any hands um if not we can move oh it Commissioner Comerford did you want to say something else I thought I I don't know who's voice I heard I do want to say one more thing I don't think yeah go ahead the assumption that we have to dislodge at this point among people in the community not every single person but there is an assumption there that we need to dislodge if you want to you know basically meet your goals in in this area an assumption that we have to dislodge is that what you were saying ma'am yes dislodge the assumption that you shouldn't call unless you know the earth is ending as we know it friendly suggestion okay um hearing no other questions I think we can move on to 4.2 which is the departmental directive revision I think chief has already presented to us the wording I don't know if people have any discussions any thoughts any suggestions commissioner roski we'll move to accept the proposed language addition in rule 19 which is failing to maintain custody and control of weapons criminal justice information services systems or encrypted technology may also constitute a violation of rule 18 neglect of duty I just have a question whether to amend it to and slash or because or suggests mutually kind of exclusive whereas and to me could be all of those somebody could could could be doing all of those I don't know I'm open to and slash or or leave it at or but I lean towards and or so that it's clear to the officers that it's not just one it could be any number of those together I don't object to that I think however what that says what it says right now is if you fail to maintain a weapon or a CGIS system or encrypted technology you may be subject to a violation of rule 18 and what a change would mean is if a person were to lose her weapon and her encrypted technology that she would be subject to being held accountable for by according to rule 18 which I think already was there I know there are instances where and or really does change the meaning when you are limiting something that otherwise wasn't limited but in this particular instance I don't think that's the case nevertheless I don't mind making that change at all I don't think and or is favored in legally binding documents that was a moment of academic speak yeah I think or or okay I I can I can live with that so there's a motion on the table to accept this okay the motion to accept dd1 rule 19 is as as it's written and submitted by the chief is there a second to that motion a second okay right so no changes all in favor to accept the revisions to dd1 rule number 19 say aye all right it passes chief okay all right item number five oh sorry I just said thank you oh okay item number five which is the list of review of use of force reports we received two if people have any questions or they wish to ask request a to see any of those I'm seeing if no I don't have anything from Commissioner Cox yet so I don't know if people have had a chance to review those use of force that use of force reports well I did request last month and never got a response of whether they would be provided so perhaps I believe there's been some discussions maybe an update would be in order okay I I don't know if DC Lavage is here he's the one who handles these requests so I think it was it was made in the last publicly last public meeting at the at this juncture in the agenda and I made a request and provided justification I was told discussions were ongoing and there was no response to my request so I understood that members of the commission had met with the police union I've yet to I hadn't seen any update so I would before we put another request and I'd like to know what what transpired and what would happen to such request right Commissioner Oskie I believe that's on the agenda and there is we did receive the union's response to our proposal and I would point out that in the minutes it does say from the dissent from the January meeting that councillor Keith requested body worn camera video for incidents 3 5 and 23 as they pertain to DD 13 persons of diminished capacity and councillor Keith also requested body worn camera video for incident four as they pertain to the state the use of force policy regarding OC spray and DD 05 so he made his request on the record clearly with justification and he didn't receive it I would say that we're going to be talking about this shortly but the union has not we haven't reached a meeting of the minds with them yet they made a proposal which we're going to review and if we accept their proposal or we decide to do further negotiations then that's where we are right that was my question I'm not sure where we are I don't see any of the any of the city attorneys where we are in that process I we agreed to a voluntary pause if I understand correctly from Anthony Irapino's comments no that's not my recollection my recollection and I and chief Murad at the time agreed that any requested for video really related to a complaint would be granted and also if we provided cause which was done I received the ambiguous response and shortly thereafter I understood members of the commission met with the union and was expecting some update or some resolution so it was made it was made in the spirit which I understood in previous meetings was to be agreed and nothing happened so if we can get an update or we can table this until the next point of the agenda when it comes up we can do that but I don't really understand why we're being asked if we want to request a video since I don't know if that's even a request that would be if that would be accepted at this point Attorney McLenahan do you have any thoughts on that because I have the same question as Commissioner Keith though I met with the BPOA me and Commissioner Cox met with the BPOA this the request made by Commissioner Keith was based on what was being proposed and what was being discussed so I don't see any reason why Commissioner Keith can't have access to those or is being denied access to those body worn camera or at least the commission is not Commissioner Keith the commission and it's on behalf of the commission as a body on the on the behalf of commission yes I stand corrected so in terms of of what the status is of a request for body worn camera I would I would have to defer to BPD on that I'm not sure where things are with the status of their of the specific request what I can say is generally my understanding is the last time that we met as a full commission on this issue before we agreed to send the proposal to the union then they had a chance to review it now we have a counter proposal that's one of your next agenda items to review is that the commission was essentially going to take a pause on its practice of reviewing all body worn camera for use of force incidents during the the dependency of the time where we were in the negotiation process with the union and so that had been my understanding of where the commission had left things and that it was sort of reverting to its its prior practice of of only requesting certain videos for certain articulated purposes that's my understanding of of where things had been left so to the extent that the request that mission or keep is referring to was made under that sort of prior practice I think that's consistent with how the commission decided to proceed in the interim period and kind of where things stand from acting on that in in interfacing with BPD I would have to defer to BPD on that okay I can certainly send a note to to DC La Barge and request again and say that the commission is interested in there's been a request from the commission that's what I'm getting from you attorney McClanahan and I know our attorney is also here and we will get to that shortly Commissioner Oste I would just say that I think that Commissioner Keef's request is consistent with the policy that we put forward and it's consistent with the amended policy that the BPOA proposed um he clearly stated a reason for wanting to see the videos that were related to the the charge that we have as an oversight body so I would be curious if the chief is still here if he knows why Commissioner Keef and other commissioners were denied these videos I don't believe it was a purposeful denial I think it was understood that we were about to have this meeting with the union and the police commission and the decision would be made in that and then I don't know what happened after that meeting uh both Deputy Chief Labarge and Deputy Chief LeBrecht are on vacation this month excuse me this week it's the school vacation if the city attorney's decision is that this should be provided at this stage I think that's what we were waiting for was a discussion between the city and it's LeBrecht it's goes to LeBrecht not LeBarch but it is a it was waiting for the city attorney to say whether or not this was something that was going to be or was not going to be within the the contract and it was the the fact that the union was still working it out with the police commission yeah thank you chief that that that's how I recalled it as well it was left have been ambiguous so hopefully we'll have clarity after tonight so thank you okay are there so so I guess we can return to the review of use of force report after we have had a discussion about the body-worn camera if that's people are okay with that or you can email me the request and we can do it that way rather than return into it the same and I can I can compile this list commissioner Keith and from everybody and then forward it once again to DC LeBrecht and and let's hope that we actually have access to these earlier than later okay item number six let me make a quick comment oh sorry I'm sorry commissioner come over I think it's important to remember that this is a really important part of our of our mandate really to be listening to the community members and we're listening to them in this case through use of force reports you know sort of indirectly but that's a really key part of what we're supposed to be doing so the longer it's not just an administrative kind of a you know kind of a slow down process it's really can affect real people who are in the community I think it's important to remember that absolutely thank you okay item number six is commendations just a note to the public before sending commendations commendations is a space for public recognition of the work done by BPD and the commission will read commendations that speak to the department and officers exemplary conduct but will not read commendations that attack or critique other community members politicians or are generally disrespectful this is just a sort of a note moving forward there are three really well written commendations that I quickly want to read I wanted to take this is accommodation number one I wanted to take a moment to thank BPD and the officers who responded to a call I made on Wednesday January 31st when I needed support for a dysregulated student with a history of trauma and record of violence who had eloped from HMS school property everyone from the dispatch officer to the officers who came to the scene including one on training were kind compassionate professional and focused on de-escalating the situation the officers came onto the scene with confidence but also with curiosity they did not attempt to take over or power their way through their with their badges and authority but work with me and the child's parents and Howard center clinician to figure out what was going on and how to move forward in a way that protected everyone's safety and the students integrity I have needed to call BPD several times in my short tenure as assistant principal at HMS and every time I've been impressed by the thoughtfulness and care with which they have approached and interacted with most with our most vulnerable students please know how much I appreciate the work you all are doing the second one is short I wanted to express how impressed I was with officer locker B on this call this particular person was extremely upset and escalated but officer locker B remained calm positioned himself in a welcoming manner he used an even tone to speak with her where the person in question even recognized how well he was doing and pointed it out there was appropriate handoff to the CSLs and I felt like I needed to tell his supervisor and administration the third commendation the most recent BPD responds to a person experiencing a mental health crisis slash north streets armed with a knife in the vicinity of the school was highly commendable I have a strong interest in interactions of the BPD with people in mental health crisis I and my family thank the chief and the entire BPD for every aspect of this most recent mental health crisis response the hard work of the team of negotiators for over two hours the calling for the lockdown of a nearby school to ensure the safety of everyone as events unfolded the use of less lethal munitions and only when this became unavoidable the calling for a team of paramedics to be on standby given both the risk of exposure to the elements and the mental health crisis so those are the three direct accommodations for this month seven points item seven is commission business seven point one is Burlington police commission's review of charter change proposal by the city council join committee I received three written responses which I've shared with everyone one verbal discussion with commissioner garrison he's here and a text from commissioner comeford I prepared a draft copy of the points of agreement and they were sort of very very hastily put together of agreement and disagreements and now we are open for any discussion on that matter I also wanted to bring to people's attention that commissioner oh sorry Councillor travers send me a long email about what we ought to be discussing or some of the things that the join committee is discussing it was just like an hour and a half ago I haven't had a chance to look at it but after this meeting I'll share it with everyone but I have that in my email but I haven't had a chance to look at it so but we can have some conversations tonight or we can just move it forward to march as well so I think we all got that email oh okay perfect I just haven't had time commissioner oski to read it so question thoughts on the commendations no this is seven point one this is the brollington police commission's review of charter change proposal commissioner oski we had laid out a schedule at our january meeting and you know ideally this would be probably easier for us to accomplish in a work session where we're sitting together kind of the way the city council does which is before their meetings they sometimes hold a work session it's a public meeting but they're not bound by their rules and they can just have a conversation I mean we can try to go through I think what what councillor travers was saying he was reaffirming his reasons for putting forward the charter change that they put forward and the comments that we've received from I didn't really understand councillor Hanson's comments but we have comments from from councillor I mean from commissioner cox and commissioner Keith and you put together a document outlining where there's disagreement we could go through that and see if there's some way of aligning or or we can move our schedule up by one month that we had agreed to at the last meeting either one is fine with me I personally you know supported the original proposal but I appreciated the comments of commissioner cox and commissioner Keith and would entertain you know additional changes based on their thoughtful comments yes in fact that was my question on how to proceed with the next step because it seems like if I'm looking at what was approved in the January meeting it was agreed that we would come up with a document that we would then share to with the BPOA chief and the joint committee and have a public forum around that on March 26th if I am understanding it correctly but we have to produce a document where we say we agree with this these aspects of the joint committee and these aspects we don't agree with and the way I produced my document I was just going to leave it as suggestions rather for the joint committee to consider rather than points of agreement or disagreement but I am willing to hear other thoughts and I really like that idea of what commissioner Oskie just suggested is that we just have a working session where one evening and where we just sit down and work on just this shouldn't take more than an hour because I feel like there are more agreements than disagreements but any any thoughts I really like that idea a lot anyone else commissioner garrison get garrison commissioner kief well my my understanding was our during our last meeting is we we didn't agree on any timeline so I'm not even sure where that timeline came from to begin with we we did in the minutes there was a motion and we approved it and it lays out the timeline for doing this work okay there's definitely a there's definitely a timeline and I can share that with you commissioner garrison it's in the minutes actually from last month so okay so I can commissioner kief yes would you be you're the only one I've heard from would you be conducive to having kind of a working session as commissioner oski said and just kind of take an hour one evening and address the our agreements and disagreements well I kind of I would have to say I'm not really sure what is on the page to be agreed or disagreed it's not entirely clear to me and really the what was the intent and the outcome of the motion that was put forward by commissioner hanson on the 26th is also still not really clear to me the our elected officials who were tasked to or determined that the way to essentially I mean going back to the city council resolution for 2020 about discipline they were attempting to move a disciplinary authority from bpd into an independent body and they determined they would do it with a charter change they'd ask for feedback we provided some but then very suddenly there was a motion as I recall from watching the video that this process would be taken over by the commission and I'm not particularly comfortable with that because I think that's the role of the elected officials that was what was clearly stated in the resolution from 2020 2020 not not believe it was the resolution 7.09 city council president reassured the commission about a year ago after the after the proposal failed on the on the ballot for establishing an independent body that elected officials would prioritize this and move forward so I'm still not really clear what was the purpose of the motion on the 26th and what exactly the commission is supposed to do at this point I provided comments on on the draft but the other documents I'm seeing I'm not really quite sure what the intent for those documents were and what we're actually going to agree or disagree and why we feel one hour is sufficient to produce precise language for charter change that hadn't been produced in the previous 14 sessions of the various committees so perhaps we could get some clarity what what the task is that we're we're going to undertake well the way I see it is from the way I understood is that and this is from being part of the or being invited to the joint committee is that there was a sense at least and I hope I can speak for commissioner clocks that the police commission actually was not that involved in it at all I went to one meeting in that 14 months and I went to two meetings I'm sorry I stand corrected and commissioner Cox I believe went to one meeting and there was really no feedback from us at all so my reading of that of that particular motion was that this would be the first time that we as a body can give some input I know you had you had talked about giving input commissioner Pief but I didn't see that in any of the documents or their discussions right so there was that that real disjuncture at least I felt that there was a real disjuncture between what the joint committee was doing and our work so the way I saw it and commissioner Henson is not here to speak for herself but the way I saw it is that I felt like it would be a good idea for us to publicly discuss those changes and have some say in it and it might be that we all agree on all of those and if we don't we say that as well and the joint committee is now made aware of that that's why I the way I saw it was a series of suggestions to the joint committee by those who are doing the work on a day to day basis I think that's how I saw it but I don't know if anybody else wants to speak on it I'm just trying to figure out what to do next and me what to do next just to finish my thought what to do next would be to come up with a document and if they if we want to leave it just as suggestions for the joint committee I'm also okay with that as long as I feel like the joint committee heard us sorry commissioner kief well I mean I feel as though there were former co-chair Siguino presented some material to the to the charter change committee you and commissioner cox had attended to provide input I would imagine they they gave you gave you the opportunity to speak we were provided the opportunity to provide some written comments on the draft which I think some of us have done but my recollection of the of watching the recording of the 26th meeting that the motion was that the commission was going to take this document over take ownership of it and and draft the charter change so I would not have and I put that in my comments that's not something I support or would have supported at that time and and still don't now it's seems like the focus is shifting away from what I understood commissioner Hansen's motion to us providing input to the charter change committee which is fine we have that opportunity and we can all provide our written comments for consideration so you know again if we could clarify what it is we really want to accomplish that would be helpful I think commissioner Cox wants to speak and commissioner Oskie okay so so my thing is going to be very short but I I believe that people are talking about two different commission meetings and and I think that the the one that we should be focused on right now is the one from last month where commissioner Oskie I believe it was commissioner Oskie made a motion that was approved by the commission laying out a timeline where we would discuss the different aspects of the of the joint committee's proposal and give them feedback and we would do this through a series of overs over a few months of inviting people to come and talk of of us coming to some agreement on items but since it was commissioner Oskie's motion and and thought process that that I agreed with that that it was really good and so but but maybe you have something more that you have to say about it I mean I'm on the same page with commissioner Keith this wasn't my idea I felt like there was plenty of opportunity for anybody that wanted to participate in the joint committee there was we we knew they were meeting I went to a meeting I watched a couple of meetings online you know you don't have to be invited with a special goal invitation to attend public meetings and if we didn't participate that's on us but now you know what happened in December happened and now we have to do something with this charter change proposal so what I proposed was that we gather some of our ideas and put it out into the you know invite the public to comment more and then provide I do not anticipate and I'm not interested in trying to find agreement between all of us that is not the goal the goal was just to get some feedback on these separate ideas and it might be easier if we broke down the broke down the comments into the separate issues that are presented and there's like four or five different areas and I think actually counselor Travers lays it out pretty clearly in his email to us and we can say we're some of us agree and some of us don't agree on how to move forward and it goes back I mean it's we're going to end up where we were it's going to go back to the deciders the lawmakers and they are then going to have to make a decision and all of it in my opinion all that's been accomplished is a year goes by before there's any meaningful change to the process but this is what's before us and what the what we agreed on was at the February 27th police commission meeting we'll discuss areas of agreement and areas of disagreement to narrow our differences and I think you're your document does that and then after this meeting we'll send our working document to the chief the BPOA the joint committee MPAs and others asking them to bring feedback to our March 26th police commission then we'll we'll get feedback from everybody and we'll present after that we'll present all the feedback that we got not necessarily that we've agreed to but feedback that we got and provide it to the joint committee because it sounded like from Commissioner Hanson's motion that not enough people had an opportunity to comment so what we're doing is facilitating more public comment do people agree with that generally I'm okay with that I mean I can make a two page I can write a two page document that talks about the agreements and disagreements I don't have to mention anyone's name specifically I can put together and circulated with everybody if everybody's okay and that's what would go to the public there are some points where we agree and there are some points where we disagree but I'm okay with accepting Commissioner Oskie's position that we leave it at that as suggestions and thoughts of agreements and disagreements for the joint committee to consider further how about if we don't call it we don't bifurcate it in that way and say something more like agreements and questions or concerns I was actually going to say suggestions from the commission and list all of them right I mean that could be one way of of saying it so not not everybody is I can write it a separate email which I can share it with people and say not everybody agreed with all these suggestions but these are the general suggestions but again that document which will be short will be shared by the chief and BPOA and for general public for the March meeting so these are some of our responses essentially does that does that sound right people are on board with at least that process between now and March 26th and to receive a document from me that highlights all those comments and some people have only spoken to me so which is fine I can integrate that in writing as well Commissioner Hoske I'm happy to help you with that okay perfect thank you unless there is there are some other thoughts and comments about that we will move to the next item on the agenda which is BPOA's counter proposal regarding releasing body one camera footage to the commission I just made a few notes and sorry people here you didn't we we were you said if we were didn't quite finish that point you moved to the next one I was just you had asked a question I would just say thank you first for clarifying the way forward it is definitely a more manageable approach than I think what was originally the subject of the motion on the 26th of December so thank you very much for talking us through that coming to agreement I fully support what you've and Commissioner Hoske have agreed to so just want to say thank you and I think we can move forward like that so thank you Commissioner Keefe okay so I'm moving now to BPOA's counter proposal I'm sorry I'm reading and I can't sorry Commissioner Keefe I didn't and I can't always see people raising their hands so I'll try to I'll try to be cognizant of that so BPOA's counter proposal regarding release of body one camera I felt both our face to face and zoom meetings with BPOA were productive I felt both parties had open discussions about each other's concerns commissioners have now had a chance to assess their counter proposal and I think you know I'm willing to move forward with trying to negotiate as per commission's decision collective decision in this I think we need to have some agreement on the matter of totality of experience as cause and find an effective way to articulate as such so that is the only thing I kind of left it at that with BPOA but I'm willing to hear people's thoughts comments concerns and I know Anthony also send us a description Anthony it was in an email form I don't know if you shared it with all the commissioners if not you can also speak to that I'll just jump in I for open meeting purposes I didn't share it with all the commissioners and it was intended not to be a comment on the merits of the proposal that's really the commission up to the commission to decide whether it's acceptable to the commissioner not just trying to make sense of the counter proposal and the mechanics and I'm going to sort of summarize what my understanding of the proposal is and that is essentially that there would be two categories of four cause review one category would be where the cause is related to policy concerns and those are the policy concerns that are laid out in the commission's own draft that's section one subsections one through three where they relate essentially to improving organizational culture enhancing police transparency and expanding the public's trust and also evaluating how key policies and directives are being implemented and so my understanding there is the BPOA is willing to agree that that is sufficient cause to review the videos that it's policy based and when the cause that's articulated probably on the record in your meeting in much the same way that you articulate a basis for going into executive session someone would say you know what I'm looking at the DC's description of this incident I think it is one we should review because it looks like DDO3 is implicated by that so you'd sort of say that and then that would be the sufficient cause and in that case you're looking at the video without and you're prohibited really from evaluating officer specific officer's personnel and advancing that as a complaint so they're willing to concede that that would be cause but they have to say you have to come out on the record and say that's one of the reasons why that you're reviewing it and the second category would be the cause would be would in that case actually be personnel performance monitoring and that would arise in the situation where there's a complaint where there's been public controversy or media reporting or there's been a situation where weapons are discharged and or an officer or civilian is injured and if that's how the commission understands the structure of their proposal and assuming that which I don't want to assume but after your discussion you think that that this proposal is an acceptable proposal I would just I would just want to make some minor edits to reflect those mechanics and make sure that the intent is carried forward because I think their edits are a little bit they were a little bit confusing to me. I agree with you Anthony even in the in that conversation even I had questions about their edits it wasn't it sort of it was left too broad for me of the totality of experience I mean it just it needs to be flushed out more Commissioner Oskie you're muted Thank you sorry and if you yell really loud that you're muted I still it doesn't matter how loud you yell I'm just good at yelling I'm sorry I teach in a large class Commissioner Oskie I agree with everything that um Councillor Eropino just said and in terms of I'm not I'm not so concerned about the totality of the circumstances I feel like that is a phrase that's put in there but really the important points are one, two, and three which remain that if we can articulate for the express purpose of one of those three things then we can review body use of force video I think what's confusing is saying cause and cause and I would just recommend that we remove those two headers and number one is just in general the BPC may review you know everything it says there and then and then have a number two the BPC may also review footage for the purpose of personnel performance I'm happy to send that around or or Councillor Eropino and I can look at it but I think that those the thing that got confusing were those headers that now don't because there isn't no cause and cause it's just here are the reasons that we can review body worn footage is is everybody agreeable to that all the commissioners are agreeable to that that rewriting or that change as suggested by Attorney Eropino and Commissioner Oskie I think it's a great idea I mean I would like to see it in writing of course but that could be our I mean I hate to say counter proposal but that could be our change and I have to ask you Commissioner Oskie because I felt the totality of experience of me as somebody who's not a lawyer I definitely was a little bit confused as to what that meant and I actually wanted that articulated more but it seems like you are saying you are comfortable with that phrase I am because when you read this the whole sentence it says in general the BPC may review body worn camera of use of force that's a little confusing or other footage with cause based on the totality of the circumstances for the articulated purpose of gathering information for the express purpose of it's a lot of words preceding the reasons why we can request the videos I'm not sure I mean all those words are there but I think that the real important words are one, two and three Can I add I think what I think the intent of totality of the circumstances is basically that's kind of a shorthand for what's how the incident has been described to the commission like considering everything that's been described to you we want to look at it for either or for any for any of the one, two or three or combination of one, two or three reasons so I think Commissioner Oskie has a good handle on it from both taking a stab at this policy draft in the first place that's that the BPOA has edited on top of and having participated in the discussions with BPOA so I'm happy to work with her and follow her lead but that's how I look at that's what I thought was being conveyed by totality of the circumstances that like it's really shorthand for based on how the incident has been described to you Attorney McManahan Attorney or Pino really covered most of what I was going to say I think sort of perhaps one nuances is based on as it's been described or based on all of the information that's available to the commission including the description but also based on the commission's experience with implicated directives the commission's charge etc etc so whether that particular phrase remains in or not I think we can leave to the the discretion of those that will be involved in the in the next round of drafting in terms of phrasing you know one thing I would just flag is the confusion around cause versus no cause versus what's the cause perhaps a suggestion to the drafters and when I put to this commission is just to use a different phrase that term I think got initially implicated because in the police department's rule around use of body-worn camera that phrase is used in their fore cause and that comes from our charter which talks about how police officers cannot be removed from their post without cause and that so that sort of implicates discipline so I think that might be sort of when they hear the word cause I don't want to speak for them but based on that rule and also based on what's in charter I wonder if they're automatically hearing disciplinary reasons so I would just put that as something to consider to the to the commission that's kind of a buzzword for them and so maybe there's that maybe there's an opportunity to kind of squelch some of the remaining disagreements just by choice of language yeah but in the in the actual discussion attorney McClanahan if you remember I actually proposed the removal of the word cause itself I don't know if you remember that right and I remember BPOI representative becoming very you know I mean they were like no that's that needs to stay so I wonder I agree with you I think it seems like a word they are uncomfortable with but when I proposed the removal of the the word itself it wasn't well received so I mean I I'm okay with keeping cause but not if it is a trigger for them and is doesn't move this discussion any further Commissioner Oskie any thoughts I think if we I like the idea of removing it completely and I actually just sent commissioner co-chair Rao and attorney Arab piano a draft that removes the word cause out of it and instead of using the word cause we lay out the reasons which is essentially cause and I agree that for cause does can be a triggering in a lot of you know in any kind of employment situation and that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about you know when under what under what circumstances and for what reasons the commission can view body one camera footage so I like the idea of removing we introduced the idea of cause in our first draft I think so I'm happy to try again and see if something simpler along the lines of what they propose can work commission Oh sorry attorney I repeat no yeah I just want to say for historical context I think the reason why the word cause comes into this is because actually the the DD 14.1 section nine which is incorporated into the union contract says that BWC recording shall not be audited to monitor officer or personnel performance without cause so the clause comes into it because it's in the DD which is part of the contract by reference I I tend to agree that from a legal standpoint what commissioner Oski is proposing by way of an edit should should get us there and hopefully the the BP away would see that because really what's on the words on the page whether there's cause there whether the cause is a magic word on the page or not I think the policy without reference to that word is sufficient to show them and to show the commission itself here's when you can look at the footage and what purpose you're looking at the footage and that has nothing to do with personnel and here's when it does have to do with personnel I think ultimately hopefully that's the resolution that all the parties are looking for but I also can't speak for them you're muted you did yes commissioner Cumberford and I would also like to hear attorney McClanahan's thoughts on what you know how to proceed with BP away as far as sort of negotiating around the word cause but commissioner Cumberford first I would encourage us to use as much accessible language as we can not just for ourselves but for anybody else that wants to read it so the everything everywhere at once I forget exactly what it was but in the first line there I think we probably should jettison and have you know the more accessible language yeah attorney McClanahan I think I had a question for you I don't know if you want to answer it here or you want to answer it in the executive session you're muted you're muted oh it's the song of the evening I am I'm comfortable answering what I understand the question to be which is really just one around procedure and next steps I think what I'm hearing is that there's an appetite for you know there to be some work done to kind of come up with a counter to the counter so to speak then I would say from there it would come back to the commission for approval and then it could be transmitted to the union for their review perhaps it accompanying the counter proposal is a brief sort of explanatory document explaining why we are putting forward the further changes we're putting forward and then I guess I would leave it to the commission as to whether or not it would be productive to try to meet with them again or if we're really starting to drill down getting a bit more granular where we can just review back and forth on each side and hopefully come to something final that's acceptable on both ends thank you Anthony Irapino yeah I just wonder what Haley would think as well as the commissioners would think because just because of you know open meetings requirements and trying to move this process along without having the commission have to schedule a special meeting if the commissioners could vote tonight in principle to sort of accept the proposed refinement that Commissioner Oskie has outlined and then leave it to the small group to wordsmith and transmit that with sort of conceptual approval by the commission knowing that ultimately the commission will need to vote in public session if they're going to adopt and this you know whatever we counter propose or whatever the BPOA may further counter propose but just trying to get it to a place where a group of us can work if there is conceptual agreement among the commission it just seems like it'd be really inefficient to have to schedule another another special meeting to just approve what seems like it's going to be a very small number of line edits yeah I think that's a reasonable approach that's suggested by Attorney Irapino as long as we can come to some kind of consensus tonight on sort of the bigger conceptual changes that we would expect to see certainly I think then from there it could be circulated by either the chair or Commissioner Oskie and if anyone had any major red flags to send up then okay then then we'll schedule a special meeting if necessary if everyone sort of agrees that it looks like it it meets the conceptual approval if that's undertaken here tonight then we just move it move it forward without a need to schedule a further meeting if that sounds reasonable to the commission to me it sounds reasonable and we can we can quickly put together a motion Commissioner Oskie is there a motion well I'm happy to just quickly walk through if everyone has the document in front of them I'll walk through what we're proposing sounds like we're proposing as changes so does everyone have the document so under policy pursuant to authority granted by the city council in the Burlington city charter it is the policy of the Burlington police commission to review any and all body worn camera footage related to incidents of Burlington police officers use of force or other body worn camera footage removing with cause and saying for the purpose purposes as detailed in this policy the next line the next section is authority no changes in that section the next section is body BPC Burlington police commission review of body worn camera footage it's going to go to a number one with no heading no that's not going to say cause or for cause just going to say number one in general the BPC may review body worn camera use of force or other footage based on the totality of circumstances for the articulated purposes of gathering information for the express purposes I can really do a little word smithing there but for now the express purposes of I think it's probably could just be for the articulated purposes of and get rid of those other gathering well you could just say for the express articulated purposes okay good for the express articulated purposes of improving those one two and three don't change I'm just going to add express and then B sorry that wouldn't be B the no cause auditing of BWC use of force or other footage specifically to monitor officer or personnel performance is prohibited I'll have to figure out that's not going to be a B but the words will remain in there and then number two is the BPC may also review body worn camera footage for the purpose so I added the word also for the purpose of personnel performance focused review by city officials only in certain situations of citizen complaints public controversy or media reporting in situations in which weapons were discharged or in which an officer or civilian are injured and the BPOA had no problems with that section so really it's minor changes taking out the word cause and doing a little word smithing around all that gather just a question for you the phrase no cause remains am I am I correct in B or whatever it is no cause auditing good point I think you should just say auditing of body worn camera use of force or other footage specifically to monitor officer or personnel performance is prohibited right so you take out the word cause in any of its permutations actually if I can make a suggestion what I would say there is at the beginning of what is currently B instead of no cause you would say except as provided under section two of this policy so you're saying that's when you can monitor for personnel performance in compliance with section two does that make sense commissioner oski do you understand and others okay yeah I have to look at it I have to I have to I have to see it in writing though I understand the principle I do understand the principle and what I think I think what attorney McLean hand is suggesting is this can be circulated and then on an individual basis each commissioner can respond to the commissioner who circulated it and that's how we move it forward without creating any open meetings issues or requiring a special meeting so you would get a chance to look at this it's just we need for purposes of the motion tonight we need to make sure that we're all in conceptual agreement that commissioners are all I don't get a vote so is there a motion commissioner oski I move to approve in concept subject to further wordsmithing the changes to the burlington police officers association no to the burlington police commission body worn camera footage review policy as just outlined is there a second second okay any discussion hearing none all in favor of the motion say aye aye aye all right okay I think that sort of takes us forward 7.3 all commissioners received a copy of the complaint regarding moves the dog as of today we have a vicious dog hearing scheduled for Wednesday March 6th at 5.30 p.m. I apologize I got the day time and the date wrong so I it's entirely my fault attorney McLenahan will help us with guidance regarding this hearing she already has been very helpful and I'm meeting with her to get the logistics of this attorney McLenahan I have a question can besides the subcommittee can other commissioners attend this hearing because it's a separate body I think it's fine as long as the commission the rest of the commission is just there to to observe you know obviously to speak in public forum as is your right as commissioners and just members of the public but as long as you're not participating as part of the body if others are just interested and wish to attend I think that's fine thank you item 8 is there a motion to move into executive session before we do that do we need an executive session chief I'm not sure we need an executive session commissioner kief do we have any discussion of any of the complaints at hand yes okay and and chief was that any discussions for the executive session for you are the discussions of complaints something that I'm involved in commissioner kief or no no no no we're going to talk about the complaints do you have anything to talk to us about in the executive session I don't believe so and as I said DC the barge is not here and usually stays abreast of that better than I I don't believe so okay so you then you don't have to be at the executive session we'll just go in into discussion of the complaints is the same true for me commissioner row I think you had invited me not for any complaint reason but because of the possibility of the need to discuss the BPO a issue in executive session but I'm happy to stay if you feel you need me otherwise I don't see any reason for you to stay unless other commissioners have very specific questions I feel like we we discussed most of it so thank you so thank you everyone and we will so is there a move is there a motion to move into executive session I move for a special finding that premature general knowledge of the commission's hearing of grievances and complaints would clearly place the state municipal municipality or other body or person or persons involved at a substantial disadvantage is there a second is there a second here come referred any discussion hearing none all in favor say I I the motion passes and the commission moves into executive no no no no that was just the special finding now I move that the commission enter executive session based upon the special finding pursuant to one VSA 313 a sub one is there a second to that the mature come referred okay all in favor of the motion and say I hi hi hi so now we the motion passes and we move and the commission moves into executive session am I am I that's right and we're not going to be returning to public session after us thank you everyone see you soon do we have the executive session yes we do Commissioner Keith has has he's going to talk a little bit about the complaints yes I mean do we have the zoom for that yes it's in your email okay there's a separate email from Shannon specifically about the executive session do you see it or I can forward it to you I found it thank you okay all right see you all soon