 All right, this is Senate government operations. It is, I believe, Wednesday, March 24th. Thank you, Senator Palomar. Yes, the days all kind of flow together when we're doing this on Zoom. Today, and I apologize for the tardiness of our start. We just got off the floor and we're actually waiting for two more of our members to join us. But to name what we asked for is, as you know, in S-124, which I believe is act something or other, but I never, I can't ever get acts straight. Some of the reports that we asked for, there's a whole series of reports that we asked for. But a couple of those reports were specifically the responsibility of the council to do. And one was on the use of military equipment, some kind of a standard for that. One was on a policy on the use of body cams. And there was, there were quite a number of questions around the body cams. And part of it was the storage and the accessibility and redaction. And so it's much more complicated than just getting body cams. And then the other one was on the, what we should be looking for. And this is not so much a policy, but just kind of a advice to local agencies and sheriff's offices and any other law enforcement agencies around what should we be really looking for when we're looking for law enforcement officers? And then in addition to that, are there other things that we need to look at when we're looking for supervisory roles? So those are the three that we asked you to come talk to us today about. And although I didn't say this when sending out the invitation, if there are in any of these, if there are legislative solutions that need to happen or anything that needs to be put in legislation, if you would tell us what those are also so that we can get those in some place. Does that make sense? It does, yep. Great. So then I realized we're kind of late today. So just do as much as you can and we'll have another time and take up other reports also. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity for the record. Bill Sheetz, I'm the interim executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council slash Vermont Police Academy for another two and a half weeks before Heather Simon officially takes the role here. So I appreciate the opportunity. I know I've been in several times. I'll take the easiest one first. The easiest one first is actually a responsibility at least first blush of the law enforcement advisory board. So that is the entrance requirement and the guidelines for hiring and supervisory promotions within organizations. Of course, this position that I'm in sits on the law enforcement advisory board. I do know that that is on their agenda and they have a draft copy ready for dissemination at their meeting on Monday the 29th. So I think that's actually nearing completion or at least a fairly revised and well-refined rough draft for their review. And how are they doing it? Are they doing it as kind of a guidance for local law enforcement to use when they're hiring and promoting? Yeah, I think a best practices guide for all of the above related to entrance personnel that are just coming into the organization as well as promotional opportunities throughout a career. Well, that was an easy report. That's my easiest one. I would love to tell you that the rest are done and complete. Here's what I can say. There's a tremendous amount of work within Act 56 and 124. I can speak about any of them. I do just if it's okay, Madam Chair, I'd like to give an overview of kind of where the council subcommittees and working groups are overall in this process if it's okay with you. No, that's perfect, thank you. So we've had three full council meetings and of course the new version 24 person and really we recognize that that's a bit of an unwieldy number and the majority of the work is happening through subcommittees and working groups. We now have 17 of those. I think my responsibility and my goal prior to departing and Heather's arrival in two and a half weeks is that we have the first layer meeting for all of these committees and working groups. We have them, they're all being asked right now to identify a prioritized timeline based on language in S124 and other areas or their work. Then we intend to create a master timeline, kind of a visual walkthrough of all 17 committees knowing the pressure, the timelines and then candidly the balance between us running a Vermont police academy with a level three full-time course coming up in the very near future and juggling all of those responsibilities. So I testified before, you don't get thanked enough. S124 is really good. It's impactful, it's meaningful. We take it seriously. We continue to take it seriously. We just in some areas we know that certain things have definitive timelines. So for example, the body worn camera policy, law enforcement advisory board just barely handed us their version of that. So we barely introduced that last week at the council meeting to solicit interest from the council members and we have created a working group to identify the work that needs to be done there. The timeline on that, for example is January 1st, 2022. That sounds like a long time. There's a tremendous amount of work that has to be done especially when it comes to the guidelines, the retention, the redaction, things like that. So we know that that committee, that working group has to get moving and has to get moving now. Here's the balance. Again, is running the day-to-day operations and doing it in its intended fashion which is nothing but the best. That's our intention is to deliver the best training and create the best product with our law enforcement allied agencies in Vermont. And we are a family, as you know, the vast majority of instructors here are from outside agencies that come in and do subject matter expertise. So we wanna deliver that at the same time. We wanna make sure that these 17 subcommittees and working groups are getting the job done and meeting the requirements and timelines of this committee and the legislature. Can you tell us what the 17, do you have that at your fingertips? I do and actually I was hoping but again, based on pace, I have been joking and I actually got it on the record in the house site so I should get it on the record here. I believe that if either Lindsay The Verge or Cindy Taylor patched the two directors, if they murder me, it might be a justifiable homicide based on the pace of work right now. That, I should get that on the record because my intent is, and our intent is to not only get this information to you and I can cover it with you verbally but is to on our website, have a page dedicated to each and every subcommittee that will have a marching orders, kind of a charter, have the language specific to S124 or whatever the driving language is, the list of subcommittee members, a place to warn and post and list meeting minutes and essentially keep track so anybody in the public can actually look and determine what progress that we're making and an independent page for all of those. So the subcommittees are long-term committees that we know have to exist and they're always gonna have to exist for all the right reasons. Working groups we defined as they have a finite marching order with a timeline and once they're done, then we can use those resources elsewhere. So I'll start with the working groups. So the council rules, council rules are something that really do not match up any longer with our 24 person council. So we are in the process of identifying through our assigned attorney, through Bill Surrell and some other volunteers we're beginning the work of revising our council rules. And of course, that's a legislative process as well and that'll take some time, but it's much needed because it reflects the old construct of the 12 person council. The military equipment acquisition working group. So that will, they will kick off their first meeting. I know it's a topic today where we will take a shot at the creation of a model policy related to the acquisition of military equipment. So we already have several volunteers from the council as well as from chiefs, sheriffs and various associations in the state. And that's the neat part here. All 24 council members and the other proxies have been tasked and have readily accepted any and all challenges related to working on multiple subcommittees. And it doesn't get any better than that because they know the impact and they know what we're trying to accomplish. So to have them interwoven with our staff with the larger law enforcement community, it's again, it is a seamless way to get this work done and they truly understand what we're trying to accomplish. We have the model body worn camera policy working group. We have solicited interest for facial recognition technology working group. We've been tasked again act 56, that's 124 with coming up with a recommended policy. Many of these, by the way, we know have a public outreach component. So for some of these without a timeline they may be more late summer so we can actually have an in-person kind of a hearing. So the council can kind of take some testimonies to the thoughts of the public. Wherever there's that public input piece we take that seriously. And I think while Zoom's a wonderful thing I don't know that it can quite deliver the same impact as in person but we'll probably try both. We have the entrance testing requirements working group. So this is a big one. This is a real ask to make sure that everything we're doing both written test and psychological profile is contemporary that it can be delivered 24-7 asynchronous to an agency candidate. They can complete that. The results can go to the agency. They can go to us. This is where candidly, Madam chair and committee, we need your help. We ask again, I know that Bill Surrell did a great job the other day testifying that we've had some success on the house side and house appropriations did in fact come over with the recommendation for two positions that's gonna go to Senate has gone to Senate appropriations. And we certainly appreciate that recognition and that's related to professional regulation and I could talk for hours on how we're doing with that. It's that committee, that subcommittee by the way currently meets one, an hour and a half a week to hear professional regulation cases. It's almost, and by the way, prior to those meetings they receive documentation that can be hundreds of pages. So it's nearly a, it's a rather onerous process but really good results. So I know I'm bouncing all over the place here, but... Because that is a standard, that is a regular committee, right? That's not a working group. Correct. Yes. Yeah. So there are areas like this entrance testing requirement. Madam chair, may I ask your question? Yes, I'm sorry, Senator Clarkson. Yeah, hi, Bill, sorry. The entrance testing requirements is not a working group, it's a standing group or... No, professional regulation is a... Oh, professional, sorry. So you skipped on. So I wanted to ask you a question about the entrance testing requirements. Surely there must be some great models out there for states that have already revamped their entrance testing. We don't need to reinvent the wheel on this one, do we? I don't think so. I think we wanna make sure that we do it in a fashion that represents Vermont. And I think that we in Vermont do some things better than other areas. The easy answer is we need, in all likelihood, a small amount of one-time money to actually go ahead and identify a vendor in a process to solicit the work that needs to be done in this area. Once it's done, that should live with a vendor for them to be able to deliver a secure test, whether it's a hundred question, multiple choice. But I think, Senator, you're on point. We are in the process of surveying other states and municipalities to determine if there is a mechanism with some assurances that it's meeting the criteria that's critically important to all of us, right? So the bias piece is massive. We wanna ensure that everybody has the same opportunity when they sit down and take that test, whether it's in person currently under the current construct or if they're doing it in front of a computer, they should have the same ability to make it through in the same criteria. Oh, absolutely. But again, other states have been, so I would assume there was help out there. So it's the professional regulation committee that's the standing committee. Yes, that's one of them. That's my fault for bouncing all over the place. I get excited when I talk about this stuff, so. Right, okay, great. I just, okay, great. So the entrance testing, we are anticipating and I know this is not one of the fiscal committees, but I know we appreciate your longtime support in terms of what we're trying to do. The leanest of lean budgets. What's the financial ask on that? $25,000 to $50,000, just one time. And then we'll have an operation set up that I think will greatly benefit every organization in the state of Vermont. And we'll have something that we can stand behind and be proud of that you can be proud of, that's an ask in S-124. Okay. And the testimony, and I think I can't remember if it's been in this committee or not, but prior to my arrival here, it's been widely known, very thin budget in terms of right now the ask is 2.7, just in general funds, 10.5 full-time equivalent state and 1.5 interdepartmental transfer, just grant funded. We last year ran out of money to buy a toner for the copier. And candidly it's unacceptable when we're asked to do all of these things that we take serious. We really want to achieve everything that you're asking us to achieve. But when there's not money to buy toner, I'm not sure how we can say to a committee, we do have $50,000 to really take a look at this and implement it in a way that it should be implemented. And Madam Chair, if I may. Yes. Yes. This sort of underscores what I think you, I heard you say is that the, oh, this is the council, not the academy, right? Well, that's the, that's always the. I wanna say that the plus of being in an agency and underneath an agency is you'd have all that additional both financial support and just infrastructure support. But this is not that. This is the council, which is gonna stay independent. It's really both. That's the difficulty with the discussion, right? We have a 24 person council that lives over here. We, the staff of the Vermont Police Academy essentially work for and support that 24 person council. The budgetary impact that I'm talking about is in fact the Vermont Police Academy, but it's interchangeable. So it could, so some of the financial challenges could be managed a little more easily with a big sibling agency making, advocating and ensuring better budgets for the academy. Yeah. It's hard to have a voice of just 12 people when you have no seat at the table in the form of a commissioner or secretary. Yes. And Sherling would be, oh, whoever's in that position, the secretary of the agency would be presumably a much louder, A has a seat at the table and B would be a very strong advocate. Just an advocate and honestly, we might not have to go back to the legislature and it might be easy to find $25,000 or $50,000 in an 80 to $120 million budget than it is in a 2.7 million budget where 93% of it is beyond your control with salaries, benefits fee for space and things like that. Right. And so I think what our committee, and I'm sure our chair is gonna ask you this to just clarify all your asks this year because I've so far heard this afternoon, $50,000 and two positions. Right. We will as we go through, I mean, at the very end, we'll need to know what all of those are, but right now we're not really addressing the asks in particular, but where these working groups and committees are in terms of what they're doing. And then as you go through, like with the entrance testing requirements, you'd need a small infusion of cash. So we've got that. So we'll be keeping track of all of those asks. Thank you, Madam Chair. The other three remaining working groups, and again, there are nine of them, tactical, I'm sorry, training curriculum review working group. So we always need to be mindful that we're looking at all curriculum to make sure it's relevant, it's contemporary, it's best practices. So that's an ongoing thing, but specifically in S-124, it asks us, it requests that we take a look from a number of different lenses. There is the tactical medical training working group. So that's a very small working group that's looking at the delivery of critical first aid in the field. So in tactical situations where somebody, so like it's applicable in a situation like Boulder, Colorado, the shooting there, right? That where you have something massive like that, or any critical injury where we can either equip and respond to either officers or citizens and help them in critical need. Then there's the field training evaluation program. So the last component, once somebody graduates from here and gets a certification to become a law enforcement officer is their requirement to pass a field training program that's completed in the field. Again, that's always a program where we want to ensure we're doing best practices and we're taking a real comprehensive look at that. The last working group is a leadership and supervisory training working group. What we learned, especially in the COVID environment where some things were put on hold. I think, again, I've had the opportunity through consulting to travel throughout the US and Canada. I'm pleased to proudly testify that I think we do it as well as anyone in the country for basic training. So the level two, the level three, where I think we can improve and we should improve are delivering training for officers that are a little more mature for our leaders in the organization related to supervision, culture, things like that that I think we can offer courses whether it's internally or we bring those resources in. I think we really should, we owe it to the agencies to create a really comprehensive mature training matrix that can identify those trainings that we most critically need for the profession to get better. And then that takes us to the existing standing, existing or newly created subcommittees, fair and impartial policing. So that's been a subcommittee for a while. There are several asks. We are in the odd number year. So we have to deliver a training this year. We prefer to do that in person. We're gonna do that related to getting better at perceptions at roadside and doing a better job at traffic stop data collection as well as some other bias related trainings. So they're working on that right now. The biggest, by far the biggest committee, 23 people subcommittee is the Training Advisory Subcommittee. Many of those working groups I named are subsets of those that include some of those members. That really is responsible for all the deliverables under the guidance of Cindy Taylor-Patch, the director of training. So it really is all encompassing. A very large ask on a continual basis to look at curriculum, the way that we're delivering training, being responsive to things like de-escalation, the use of force, and again, implementing best practices kind of across the board. The Professional Regulation Subcommittee, we've talked a little bit about that and I could talk about that for hours. There's a waiver subcommittee. So we reinstituted the ability for somebody to come in from out of state that is an out of state police officer that can essentially give us their portfolio of their experience. We assess that portfolio and identify which specific Vermont trainings they're required to do so that they do not have to complete the entire 800 hours, level three basic training. So that, we're getting more requests on that. The state police has recently decided that they're going to look at out of state waivers as well. So that should increase the scope and the responsibility of that committee, which is why we made it a standing subcommittee again. We have a domestic violence subcommittee. Again, they're looking at deliverables for training. There are certain training requirements semi or bi annually. There's a canine subcommittee, a use of force subcommittee, and a highway safety subcommittee. And Madam Chair, if it's okay, I think if you give us a week, I believe we can have the outline of all of these and provide you written documentation. Again, description of the subcommittee, who's assigned to each subcommittee from the council, maybe a reminder of who's on the council and kind of the charter and the timeline and what's happening in all of those. Cause I think that really, it's complex. There's a lot of things that are happening. And again, we take, we love it. We take it all seriously. It's just a lot of work. Yeah, thank you. And I think that last year there, when we were looking at 124, there was some pressure for us to come up with all these answers. And it, knowing the complexity of it, it didn't make any sense to us to try to come up with the answers for these, but to instead ask the appropriate groups. In your case, it's, for example, it's headed by the council, but it involves the ACLU and the Human Rights Commission and different groups on different issues here. So it made sense for us to ask for, and we realized that it was putting a lot of work on the council, but in the end, I think that the answers that are presented to us will be much better thought out and meaningful than had we tried last year to come up with those. Senator Clarkson, did you have, I thought? Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill, these are all great subcommittees. The one glaring missing one is mental health. I mean, really, I mean, canines, I mean, I know you have canine units, but canines, mental health is a much bigger issue for the police world than canines. We've talked about having a standalone committee, I can assure you that that is a critical part of the training advisory committee. So that could be the same for many, many of the discussions that we have within that subcommittee, but we actually have had an open discussion about creating a separate standalone long-term subcommittee related to mental health. So I think that's impactful, Senator, for us hearing it from you, because even though I think we're giving it the due recognition that it critically deserves, it might be better served to actually be more prominent on our website standalone subcommittee where we're identifying that we're taking that particular issue very seriously. I actually have some mixed feelings about that just because I think that issues of mental health and bias should be interwoven with every single one of these committees. That if you're talking about professional regulation, that it should be part of that. If you're talking about the use of body cams, that it should be part of that or any other. So I think it's a conversation you need to have more about whether to have a special, a special committee that's devoted to mental health. Well, they have one devoted to impartial policing. I mean, they have one devoted to- But that was the legislature that did that. And I have to tell you, I have mixed feelings about the way we did it and the way we applied it. But I have a real problem with model policies in general. I think that a model policy that's defined, and that's why I'm hoping that when you are talking about things like the use of body cams and facial recognition and stuff that, what you're looking at is what should be in a policy? The things that people need to put into a policy. And I know that on the FIP policies, there were some real issues and we reviewed them all. And there's things like in the model policy that says you have to be, you have to treat all community members in the same way. That should be part of the overall policy of the police department. That shouldn't be just in a fair and impartial policing policy or just in a mental health policy. It should be the overall, but if when we were looking at the policies, if they didn't have it in their fair and impartial policing policy as such, but had it in their general policies, then it wasn't accepted as a legitimate policy. So I think that we need to be, we need to tell people what they need to address in a policy, but to actually tell them that this is their policy is both, in my mind, doesn't make any sense. And it also, all the department has to do is to say, we're just gonna accept the policy that was given to us. They don't have to discuss it. They don't have to grapple with it. They don't have to say, what does this really mean? They just have to accept the model policy. And that doesn't do anything in terms of their education, but I'll stop about that because I just feel so strongly that when we do model policies, we're doing a real disservice to people instead of telling them, these are the 27 things you have to address in your policy. But anyway, so that's my little speech for the day. Yes, Senator Colomar. There's a lot more than that, that I need off, out of committee help on. I mean, I get some of what you're getting at, but we can chat about it at another point, but I, the difference between a policy and a model policy and giving them a charge, it's, anyway, it's. Well, I'll go, just you was one example that has nothing to do with law enforcement here. At one point, we were looking at a model policy for school lunch programs. And the agency of education at the time it was the department, but came up with this model policy about what the school lunch program should look like. And so it didn't require anything on the part of this individual school. They didn't have to sit down and say, what is our community like? What kinds of foods are available to us? What can we buy locally? What is the best kind of food for us to prepare for our students? Do we have ethnic choices here that we need to be a sensitive to? I mean, it didn't, all they had to do is just accept the policy. They didn't have to have any conversations at all. You want them to own it by making it. I want them, I want people when they have a policy, I want them to sit down and say, these are the 27 things we have to address. How are we going to address this in our policy? That's all, I just, I want them to own it instead of just accepting something that we tell them to, which is exactly what happened with fair and impartial policing. So Senator Collomer. I hear you saying that you want them to own it and incorporate it in whatever fashion it works for them. Yeah. Senator Collomer. Thank you Madam Chair. Bill, I didn't hear anything, but maybe I was dozing here, but I was. School resource officers, how do they figure into this in terms of, how do they get trained now and where are they going to fit in? Yeah, Senator, it's a, so that's not necessarily under the purview of the council or the academy. Once you complete basic training and you're in good standing in your organization, your respective organization, if they have a school resource officer program can then solicit interest and select they would obtain the training. We could host a training, but essentially that is the responsibility of that host agency to do that. Where we have in the past here, under our umbrella, hosted subject matter experts related to school resource officers. The content largely is controlled by outside expertise. So at the discretion of the level of training is at the discretion of that individual agency. So it falls to each local agency basically to train their own people or find them? Yeah, there's very few now that still are in the school resource officer business. It's definitely diminishing. Thank you. Madam chair, if I may just touch base on the policy question quickly. Yep, please. So in a large part, we do very little policy work. That's the responsibility of the respective organizations. They have comprehensive policy and procedures. Where I think we find ourselves getting involved is when the organizations perhaps don't do as they're supposed to. And there's a legislative mandate that says, hey, you know what, perhaps you're not getting it right in fair and impartial policing. So we're gonna ask the law enforcement advisory board and the criminal justice council and appropriately so to come up with some model policy language. That's where we do a dive into creating policy, but generally that's the responsibility of the organization. Our charter is much, much more broad in terms of delivery of training. So as it relates to mental health, for example, we're gonna concentrate far more on an interwoven approach to deliver throughout our curriculum. Every chance we can inject de-escalation, for example, better communication skills, better outreach, we're going to do that. So it's all interwoven. So we're not heavily policy driven in these working groups and subcommittees unless and until we get those marching orders from the Senate, and then we're gonna take it seriously and we're gonna do it. But generally it falls to the organization. Yeah. And that's how we did the fair and impartial policy and swept into that the immigration policy, which I still think was a mistake because, but to have them be in the same policy. But anyway, any more questions or anything, comments? No, do you have a total of a bill? How many people are now engaged in all this work? I mean, you have all these subcommittees. It's not just the 24 council members. I assume you have members from all over the place on these. How many people are engaged in all this work? Dozens, likely over a hundred. But don't quote me on that for a week. You can quote me in a week when I send you a document that has all of that. Oh, I can tell you right now, I have a list of the reports that we requested. There are 10 of them, 10 reports. And each of them, like the law enforcement hiring qualifications was the responsibility of the council, but they were to work with Human Rights Commission, ACLU, the relevant social and racial equity groups, mental health agencies, people with mental health who had themselves had mental health issues. So there's tons of people involved in these reports, I believe. I would say well over a hundred. All right, so I realize that we don't have any specifics, but if you, we'll give you another week or so. How about we give you a week and a half? Thank you, Madam Chair. And primarily because I've been trying to do an X-week schedule, it's already filling up. But so, and then at that point, what I would also ask when you do them, if there's legislative changes that need to happen in order to make any of the changes that your reports are suggesting, but you bring those to us also so that we can get those. I don't know what they might be, but I mean just something as simple as how to go from level two to level three without having to repeat the whole thing. If there's an answer for that, it might need a legislative change somewhere. Or I don't think we need to change the kinds of training that you do, except what would be interesting is if you would bring us also a list of the kinds of training that we have mandated over the last five or six years that without regard to reducing any training, because we've mandated a number of hours in different areas. And I'd be curious what those were. We can certainly put that together. Is there anything else, Committee, that we should be looking for? That's a lot. Yeah, I think they're working pretty hard. I think they're working pretty hard. I think so too. And it's, I know that this is work that doesn't get a lot of press or a lot of it doesn't seem very glitzy. And it doesn't ever move fast enough for most people. But I think that it is happening. And I think that we should acknowledge that. So anybody else? As much as you didn't like the fair and impartial policing work, it actually has enabled a huge amount of our moving with data into our whole racial equity discussion. I mean, it really was so essential for the work that followed. So. No, I didn't say, I didn't like the work done. I didn't like the way that the legislature came up with a policy and said, this is the policy that you're going to have. I thought that didn't make any sense to me, but that's my bias about policies. And it's not an implicit bias. It's very explicit. I was gonna say, all of your biases are pretty explicit. Not all of them. I keep discovering ones that I didn't know about. Your committee mates are pretty clear on them. Oh, on my explicit ones, but I keep discovering every day. Really, I do. I'm trying to get Brian to smile. All right, Katie, is there anything else? Thank you, Bill, for meeting with us and we look forward to the reports. I think this is really important work and so the other, well, maybe, I don't know if you have answers to this. There was an article in our paper, not too long ago that said, Vermont is the most policed state in the country. And I've heard the opposite. And it said that the number of traffic stops have increased, I don't know what the percentage was. And I wonder if there's any reason if we know why those, maybe that's more a question for Mike Schirling about why, what the kinds of stops are, if they're mostly drug related, if they're speeding related, but why we have- Is that how it's measured, just on traffic stops? That's ridiculous. Well, that is the measure that these, they were, this article was using, as they said that we have more stops than we've ever had before. And I do know that we have a lot of stops down here. And it said, it quoted Bennington as being really high. And I think Wyndham is being really high. And one of the problems is we have 91 right here and Bennington has route nine and seven. And I mean, the other day there was a guy driving about 110 miles an hour in an unregistered car with bad license plates or something. And he had, I don't know how many bags of heroin in the car. So I don't know if we have more stops because we have more drug trafficking or what. But we'll ask Mike Schirling that, I guess, probably better than you. Certainly not in my purview for sure. I will gladly defer to the commissioner on that one. So if we have a full class, if we have a full class starting soon, how many is that, 40? No, so in a COVID environment, we were restricted because of a whole bunch of COVID concerns to 28. We do believe that we can move from that number because at this point we feel confident that while we cannot enforce vaccinations on anyone because they're emergency use authorization, we believe that most recruits will enter our academy fully vaccinated to include staff and support personnel. We believe we can fully accommodate everybody on the list and wait list. And that varies often greatly. But sadly, including wait list right now is 35 or 36 people. And they have to pass the physical fitness test, the entrance that happens. And if they're successful in doing that, they will enter here usually a max of 38 comfortably because of scenarios on May 3rd. The state police three week pre-basics starts three weeks before that. And then it's 16 weeks and then they have what's called a post-basic for another four weeks. So we do that twice a year. It's 23 weeks twice a year. So just the level three, that's what our small staff is working with almost full-time 46 weeks out of the year. Then you have to do the level twos and deliver all of the other training deliverables as well. So that's one of the reasons why you need to look at less residential training perhaps and more in the field or regional non overnight training. And that might accommodate some people who aren't on the waiting list because as was brought up to us with by the mayor of Winooski when she talked to us that she had, and she just had one person she said, but who is a single mom with a kid and could not possibly go for 16 weeks of overnight training but would have made a great police officer. Yeah, and that's certainly one of the areas that we're taking seriously and we'll take a comprehensive look at that through the work of the subcommittees and working groups. Good, good. But the easy answer on that is unfortunately I think it's more of a difficulty in recruiting in this current environment for agencies sending candidates to us for entrance because honestly, if the wait list was more we would likely be able to accommodate many more. So for those that are gonna fail the physical fitness requirements we're probably going to be under 30 and we would like to be at 38. Well, I'll make my other speech for the day. Think about it. Why would anybody wanna become a law enforcement officer in this environment? I mean, we've done our best to demonize them, I think. I think it's full of opportunities and I think that people who care about their communities and public safety and public health might actually be inspired by what's going on and wanting to really engage with it now. I think there's a whole new reason for maybe wanting to join. I agree with you, it's tough. Certainly the pay needs to be brought up. I mean, the pay is a big issue and the only really well-paid team are the bigger towns and the Vermont State Police. So I think pay is a big issue but I think actually there we need and that's a question for Bill later is how are we recruiting? What kind of exciting, I mean, I know you don't have the money to get a great recruiter marketing and all that stuff but I think actually in this environment with the right angle there are huge communities to recruit from right now. I mean, I think our BIPOC community would be a great community to be engaging with to recruit as officers. I mean, it's a rich opportunity for people who want to engage and be involved in leadership in their community. Yeah, I do agree with you that we need to expand our recruiting and I was very excited to see that Omar Buell became one of the ones that was at our Democratic caucus two years ago and talked to us about wanting, he's a Somalian refugee, I believe. And that's good and we need to do that. I have had two law enforcement people who are really good people and they have just told their kids over my dead body we become a cop because of the current environment. So we need to find a balance there. It's, I think it's, anyway. Anybody else need to make a speech of the day? Sorry about that. I'm all set. This and town meeting are two topics that I can't ever help but expounding on. I happen to agree with you, Madam Chair. I'm sensitive to Senator Clarkson's point, but I think if you ask the average law enforcement person now and money's an issue, I won't deny that, but so is respect. And I don't know that they're getting the kind of respect they might have had 20 or 25 years ago. I think we have allowed things to happen that are bad. And to me, I bet if you made a list of the top 10 occupations I don't think law enforcement even make the top 10. I think it's too bad. And that's why we need to continue to change the culture here. I think Vermont does have a better culture among law enforcement than, and that's, it's not perfect. It's not perfect. And we need to change where it isn't perfect. We need to change it, but we need to continue that cultural change within law enforcement so that we do have, yeah, Senator Rahm. Well, I just wanted to say, I mean, one thing a lot of states have started to track is how expensive misconduct is. I feel like we can easily get stuck in right or wrong, but a lot of states are starting to show that their local municipalities might spend 6% of their budget on these cases and the problems. I mean, this has been very expensive for Vermont, Rutland, White River Junction. Those have been huge burdens on taxpayers. So, you know, it's not just do we like police or not, but this is a profession that will continue to be heavily regulated because it's life or death, civil liberty or not for people. And it gets extremely expensive to have misconduct on your books and a culture that's not accountable. But how do you feel about recruiting in the BIPOC community now? I mean, don't you think that's an opportunity that we could, and I would argue- Some of those cases were cases where black officers felt forced out because of the culture. I know, but we're working actively to try and change the culture. But if they see those major headlines, I'm just, you asked me a question and I'm giving you my answer, which is if they see a culture that doesn't evolve with their presence, then no, they're not going to stay. And I think Omar Boulay is a great example of a pioneer and someone who really, we know that it's hard with certain tests for new American folks to participate. I want good police officers, but that means the culture has to accept these changes. Otherwise it's expensive when someone leaves to use a department for creating an unsafe environment for them. Oh, absolutely, but we're committed to change. I mean, I think, I don't think that's, but anyway. Yeah. Well, we are. And I think most of our law enforcement leaders are. And so we just need to make sure that we give the support that's needed to continue that cultural change and to make sure that those people who are not changing with the change in culture are somehow disciplined or as we used to say in the 60s, I'm going to send you back for re-grooving. So we need to make sure that the people get the message that it is changing and that we continue to support that. However, we need to make sure that the people get the message that it is changing and that we continue to support that, however we need to do that. That's why I suggested that if there are any legislative changes that need to be made here, that we need to be aware of those.