 Hi, Alicia. Hi. I'm going to announce that we are officially recording now. Okay. And I have a meeting that I have to start at 630. And Paul Donna Ray will sit in for me. And so our meeting is over. Okay. At the HRC. Right. And then I have a council meeting at 630. I'm going to jump to. Okay. We will do our best to keep things moving along. Great. So we're ready to start. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Working group members. Good evening. Those of you who are participating and viewing. From outside of this meeting. Welcome to the community safety working groups. Weekly meeting. And. It appears we have a quorum. So I would like to. Take a roll call. Right now, if you would just acknowledge by. Saying your name and present. I'd appreciate it. Let's see. Ms Walker. Here. Okay. My full screen here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ms Owen. Here. Ms Ferreira. Here. Thank you. And I'm here as well. Good evening, everyone again. Thank you. Oh, yeah. I'm here too. Hi. Hi Russ. And now I, and Tashina, I believe I don't know if I called your name. I didn't see her on screen there. Tashina Bowen. Yeah. Yes, you're here. Thank you everyone for being here and getting the meeting started. We are. At five 31. To start our meeting. And. Going to take a quick review of the agenda. For tonight. And then we'll move to the approval of the. Last meeting's minutes. This evening. We're continuing and on our. Our work to. Try to get as close to our community and in most, the closest connection we can to our community. For the purpose of. Creating. What we feel will be an important piece of work. That will contribute to the ongoing. We're going to be opening up for public comment. We welcome those of you who are. In the audience today to. Feel free to make a comment. To us as a group. As I said before, we will listen respectfully to you. This will be not a time that we would be engaging in conversations. But we will. Hear everything you have to say. I also want to remind the community too, that we try to limit that to about 15 minutes for the sake of the work that the community. The working group has to do. So we'd appreciate anything you can do to contribute to that. After public comment. I usually open it up to the working group itself to see if there's anything else we can do. I usually open it up to the working group itself to see if there are any announcements from. The members. Personal work they've been doing. Between meetings. Any updates from their experiences that they feel might contribute to the work of the, of the group. And then we'll get into our, our action discussion items. Which is to. First up. Bring together an update through a discussion. About the community outreach planning and next action steps we're, we're doing. This will be most likely a bulk. Of what our conversation will be about tonight. Since we've done a lot of work. In between meetings. To begin to work on. Questions and outreach strategies. You will hear about that. We'll discuss that in, in full this evening. We'll also take a look at the. The legal women voters. Research that they've done and the study that they've shared with us. There's some important features to that. That may inform the, you know, our work as a committee. And. And then in our. In our agenda is an update on the police bill. This is. Not necessarily a formal piece of what we're doing, but it is an. An overlay of what's happening in the state with respect to. Policing in general and police policies and procedures. And I would less like to open that up to our group. To discuss any thoughts they may have about that. And consider, you know, how we might want to work. In line with some of the things that are coming out of the state. State bill. And lastly. We, we're going to discuss the support and resources needed by our group to continue our work. We are in the process of sharing this information. Broadly, whether it's readings. Webinars. Articles of any kind books, et cetera. And we feel like this is going to be important piece of our work going forward. So again, this will be a time for us to articulate what we're doing with respect to, respect to resources. Sorry about that phone ringing. So let me go back and welcome. Everyone once again and ask for a motion to approve the minutes. Of the December 9th. Community safety working group. Paul, do you want to take revisions of the minutes after the motions made or before? I think after the motion. If that's okay. Sure. In fact, we could watch. We could actually, if it sounds like you have some. I do. So why don't, why don't we do that then? Let's, let's do that. And then it'll make an easier path toward approval. Well, first of all, I wanted to say, I realized that Jennifer has been taking minutes and screen sharing all at the same time. And Jennifer, I don't know how you do both of those and participate in the meeting. But that's quite a challenge. Two, let's see. Two things I noticed. One was in number two. In number one. Letter B where I updated the group about the, the workshop. I think the last two words there should be mental illness rather than mental abuse. Okay. And then on the. Section three B. And then on the second question, three, I think what Mrs. Pat actually asked was whether I would take what everybody had submitted and try to merge them into a. A set of questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Russ. And any other edits corrections. To last week's minutes. For those of you who don't know for the latter part of the meeting, I was not in attendance. But the meeting did continue. I believe I left a little after six 30. So. Any other comments? Well, I wanted to ask Jennifer in the future, if we see things, would you rather we sent them to you right away? Or wait until the meeting. No, we can do it this way. I mean. That way everybody's aware because if, if you send, if I send them out and then you make a change, I have to send them back out to the group again. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, unless it's something just really outrageous, but. We don't need to add a step. I was asking whatever is for you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Before we go forward, I want to, I want to welcome Ms. Pat. Good to see you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. If there are no further. Comments on the minutes of last week. I will now welcome a motion to accept the minutes. So it's been moved. All those in favor of accepting the minutes as amended. I'll take a roll call. Ms. Farera. Aye. Ms. Walker. Aye. Ms. Owen. Aye. Ms. Anoni Baku. Aye. Ms. Bowman. Aye. Okay. The motion is passed. The minutes have been approved. Thank you very much. I don't get to vote. Paul. I did not say your name. No, I also support approved. Support. I purposely leave. Russ. I have a question. I forgot. I forgot your bus. I apologize. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Sorry. I have a question. Yes, Ms. Pat. So Ms. Bowman wasn't here last week. That's correct. I don't know how does it get to, I don't know. How does it work? You can abstain. Yeah. She can vote too. You can always vote. Yeah. Okay. We have a full compliment of everyone responding right now. Okay. So I'd like the motion to approve the minutes has been passed. Thank you very much. I'd like to move right to a public comment. If there are any of you who are joining us and participating this evening would like to comment. Please acknowledge yourself and. Moist and we'll, we'll recognize you. So I don't see anyone's hands up at the moment. No one. Okay. Thank you. Not seeing anyone who wants to make a comment. You know, we will move forward again. Thank you for attending. We're going to move over to our, our, our, as a whole since last week. We were all in involved in different things and thinking about this work together. And just like to open it up to see if there are any thoughts or. Or comments you want to make about this work and your, your personal life that you're bringing to the table. And, you know, if you're willing to share that with our, with our group and our public. I'm going to move on to the next. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, this was one of my part of it partly in following on one of my assignments from the group was supposed to find out about Newton. I went to the. Public hearing and meeting that the Newton police reform task force had. The other night. Paul Bachman was there too. And while you may have some comments on this as well. It was a really interesting event. They had 72 people there. They did not use the zoom webinar format. They used the zoom meeting format. And they had the chat open. And it was a very interesting dialogue in the chat with. I mean, some people spoke to the group, but a lot of people just put things in the chat. And there were some back and forth. And then the consultants recognized, you know, brought to the fore some things that were in the chat. But they're doing four town halls two in December and two in January. They have a February 1st deadline for their report. And the four are focused on where are we now? What, where do we want to go? How will we get there? And how will we ensure success? Which I thought was an interesting way to think about the work. And, you know, they're paying a consultant, whatever it is, a hundred and some thousand dollars. And the consultants ran the meeting and reported out a little bit of what they'd found of what they called SWAT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. About the Newton police force. One of the things that they reported was that the violent crime rate for 10,000 citizens is six per 10,000 citizens. And at the statewide rate is 36 per 10,000 citizens. There's 10,000 residents. And I realize I'd like to propose we add to our list of questions for the police department. You know, what's, what's the rate in Amherst. They had a very interesting discussion about the police contract. And whether or not they're, they're actually negotiating a contract and hiring a new police chief, all at the same time they have their reform committee going. But there was a lot of talk about whether the contract was likely to inhibit the implementation of reforms that the group came up with and how their work could have input into the contract. And some of their committee has done some work studying their police contract. And it occurred to me, that might be one of things some of us might want to do. It was also a discussion about, I mean, they have a very active defund the police group. And about whether that terminology was problematic and how well, how much you had to involve the police department. And I think that was a very good discussion. And I think that, I think that there's a lot of people who are looking to get their answers in order to have any expectation that the recommendations would actually be adopted. I think their situation is a little different than ours. But. It was just quite fascinating to see another community. Really in dialogue about some of the same issues. And to see. You know, with. With good meeting leadership. And with good community dialogue. Their consultant did say at one point, quote, our entire society is built on structures that are fundamentally racist and there are no exceptions. And they were very careful not to be very critical of the police department, but also to identify the police department as not being an exception to the fact that the racism of the society shows up. And then the police chief spoke at the very end. And commented that, you know, in big cities, crime fighting is about 20% of what the police do. In Newton, it's about 10% of what the police do. And as he described it. He said that the police department is primarily a service organization. And that that's most of what they do. So I'm just, just reporting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, did you want to comment about the meeting? You're muted right now. Actually, I was in and out. So I didn't hear as much as you did. Russ. So I don't have anything else to add to what you noted, but it is, you know, I find, I do find it instructional to hear what other communities are. The conversations the other communities are having as well. In terms of the. You know, having it be an active committee, you know, I don't, our town has not done that. And that's a different conversation. Primarily because we have been zoom bomb several times with. Committees have, and that's a, it's a very. You should have a very careful conversation about that because. We don't support something outside the webinar format because we have had. We've had a lot of formal and pornographic images and comments have been. Been spewed in these public meetings. So we have really tried to lock down the, on the webinar format. But again, that's it. When you get to the more public thing where it's not a formal committee meeting. I just don't want to put anybody in a situation where they're going to be vulnerable to that. So, but. But zoom is the way we do it is so constrained. So, but I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. But with it, what other options are available for that? Yeah. When we get to the hearing in particular. I think it'd be great if we could use the meeting format zoom has done a great deal to improve. It's capability for defending against. Zoom bombing. And I've, I've been studying that. And I think there's a lot. I think we can pretty much guarantee that some bombing can be contained. If we. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. It just has to be managed. I agree. But again, I do think it's always interesting to see how other communities going through a similar process. It's never totally directly comparable. And Newton isn't comparable to Amherst at all. But some of the dialogue is similar. Right. Question. Yes. I would like to know, or one of the questions that I think that. The question is, you know, when we're looking at, um, Amherst police department and their community outreach, or I don't know how it's, however, it's put down, but, um, I'd like to have more detail as to what they're doing outside of crime fighting. Basically. That's, that's a question that comes to mind is like, because one of the things that I see is, um, you know, you know, you know them out there directing traffic because they'll, you know, the power lines and whatnot or, you know, being taken care of. And as a community member, yeah, that's really good, but I don't really see that as community like engagement. So I would like to know, I would like to have a better idea. Can you be careful with that hot pan, please? I mean, that hot bowl. I would like to have more of an idea of what, what they're doing that they consider, um, community outreach. If I may, uh, in response both to, um, Mr. Vernon Jones and Ms. Bowman, uh, first, Mr. Mr. Vernon Jones's comment, I think is, is an important discussion topic for us going forward in terms of how to protect ourselves from the, the, the kinds of threats, if you will, that Mr. Bachman is pointing out that may come into the arena of our discussions, how best to do that, especially since we're trying to broaden and, uh, and deepen our conversation opportunities with the community. So, um, you know, whether it zoom or whether it's some other format, I think as this begins to, uh, get our work begins to get some traction in the community, I assume we're going to attract a larger, um, group of people. We're certainly going to have, uh, a broader array of opinions. So for us as a group, thinking about how to best manage that and how to do it, because we have talked about already the possibility of, uh, you know, holding events that are open to the public. So while we haven't really defined that thoroughly, um, I think that's just an important feature of our work. We have to consider if, in fact, we are committed to reaching out to the community as a whole. In response to Ms. Bowman's, uh, comment, um, uh, Mr. Vernon Jones and myself, um, are in, involved in creating the questions and the follow-up for this. And, you know, if it doesn't already, if it doesn't already reside in that set of questions that we're doing, uh, I think it may as I'm listening to the question, but we'll be assured that, um, we add that to our repertoire and make sure we, we include it. And I appreciate the, the offering. Other comments. And folks. We ought to has her hand up. Paul. Yeah. I'm just changing my screen here. Yeah. Thank you, Russ. So I just wanted to add kind of off of what Russ was saying and talk a little bit about, um, what Salem was doing because I know we did all, um, assign ourselves a different town to look into what they're doing for police reform. So I did do a little bit of research to see what Salem mass was doing for police reform. And, um, the mayor has openly took a stand against systemic racism to combat police reform. They have created a 26 member race equity task force. Um, their goal is to thoroughly review city policies, services and community systems. They are interested in, um, intersecting systems such as education, healthcare, employment. But the first thing that they're looking to reform is, um, the law enforcement in Salem. Um, I wasn't able to find the structure of their meetings, um, their minutes and that type of thing, but I did email to inquire about it. And, um, part of what they're working toward with their police reform is potentially making a civilian review board to, um, cement long-term racial equity and law enforcement there. Thank you. Others. I mean, I see from the notes. Other folks who have, uh, let me see. So I have this forever. Yeah. I have something too. So yeah, along the same lines. Um, you know, I have to look at our captain, but just a quick thing in terms of the youth, which I do want to hear if there's, um, been any movement. I know you all can't tell us if anyone. Who, who are the people who have applied, but I just want to know if there's any movement in terms of like young people applying, um, for the committee. That's one of things. Just so you all know, my son has decided not to apply. Um, he just has too much going on, but he's still spreading the word, um, to other young people so that they can apply in the high school. Um, so I wanted to give an update on that. Um, but for me, I was to look at into North Hampton. And, uh, what they've been doing around police reform. So I've done a little bit too, I haven't done too much, but a little bit. And, um, you know, one of the first things that they did was, uh, when all of the, uh, protests were going on around, um, you know, June was that they already did decrease their budget by 10%. Um, within the police department. So that met a $669,907, uh, uh, budget decrease. Um, which their chief, um, for the police department, chief wasn't very happy about her name is chief Jodi Casper. Cause she said that that would mean that there would be some loss of police officers. Um, but they were concerned about the fact that, um, that their, the money could go into other, um, areas. And also the fact that police will have to respond to kind of issues that deal with mental health, addiction, homelessness. And they were saying that one of the things that could change would be that mental health services or drug councils could respond to those types of incidents that's supposed to having the police do that. Um, it was interesting though, too, that I thought that the chief, um, Casper from North Hampton, when they were, the budget cuts happened. Um, that the first thing that she said in terms of, uh, police officers being lost. And she brought up the fact that they were going to be these three candidates that will, uh, BIPOC that were going to be, um, graduating from the police academy and saying that that would be the reason that, um, you know, that this budget cut would not entail it allowed them to be hired. So it was interesting that that was the only time she kind of brought, brought this up in this article that I was reading. Um, and for me, I mean, I, um, it didn't seem very genuine. It seemed disingenuous to kind of bring it up at that point. Um, so, and the other thing too is in the same article, I said that Boston also did the same thing. They decreased their police department budget by, by, uh, 20%. So $12 million. And that they're going to be spreading it out to, um, other, uh, youth programs, community youth programs. Um, to, to also address homelessness and other, um, areas like housing, healthcare, you know, that are impact folks, uh, inequitably. Um, and the police commissioner though of Boston, he was on, on, on point with the mayor in terms of having this cut. He thought that this is something that needed to happen because he felt that it, that the police shouldn't, shouldn't be involved in all the kind of mental health cases and things like that. So he was in agreement with it. So in terms of North Hampton though, going back to North Hampton, uh, what they've done is, uh, they put together a commission too. So North Hampton policy review commission. Um, they held their first public meeting on December 1st. And there's actually a zoom link, but I didn't have a chance to kind of cause I guess you can even, they recorded it so you can even look at it now. What the public meeting was, but I didn't have a chance to do that. Um, and so what their task to do is that they're going to be examining the department's budget, the use of force policies, and then also alternatives to, uh, current policing practices. Um, they have a 15 member, uh, commission. They have to do a report by mid-March of 2021 of this next year. They did start their work though, back in September. Um, and they have these, uh, three subcommittees too, which is policing policies and services. That's one subcommittee, um, spending and contracts. So this is all dealing with the police and then alternatives to policing. Um, so as a whole, they've met around, um, 12 times, um, so far. So that was the information on one other thing in terms of, um, the police chief from North Hampton, you know, Jodi Casper, she did say because I guess once they did do the budget, she did do an update in another article and she basically said that once, um, they, they cut their budget by 10%. Um, I guess some police officers, once that happened, I guess about 11 police officers, uh, decided to apply to other places. And then five of them left, um, because they wanted to leave the department because they felt the department, you know, wasn't being supportive of, of them. Um, so just to kind of let you all know what, what transpired after the budget cut. Thank you. Thank you very much on this forever. And I'll be, I'll be trying to do, uh, I'll try to email them to get more information though. Um, I think you, uh, you misrepresented yourself in some way by saying that you didn't do much work on that at the start of your comments. I appreciate your, the extra time you put in, you know, for our community in doing this work. And, um, if, uh, if the group may allow me, I'd like to just say something about Newark. Um, and, um, I was charged with looking at Newark and, uh, so I began some of that work and I, there's still more to do. But, uh, certainly, you know, all of you know, from an historical perspective, you know, Newark, New Jersey. Was at the heart of unrest in the sixties. And, uh, a lot of what's going on politically and socially and economically for the community. In fact, I was recalling conversations I had with a good, uh, college colleague of mine, colleague and friend of mine. Who lives in East Orange nearby and, um, how volatile that situation was and, you know, sort of fast forwarding and this doesn't follow any particularly linear pattern, but, uh, ultimately the, um, uh, the justice department moved in and they're operating under a consent discreet decree, a consent decree. And, um, to basically, you know, it's a settlement, you know, for them to take action in particular ways that are very explicit and very discreet, uh, and very concrete. And they're in the process of doing that. The, um, Ross Baraka, the mayor, um, I saw was quoted as saying, you know, it's a new day in New Jersey, uh, you know, in Newark, New Jersey for this kind of work, because they're really doing a lot more now to get engaged in community. And while that's happening, uh, we have to know, like other places, you know, it's, it's not a perfect science going forward. There is still, uh, you know, like in many other communities, a lot of mistrust, um, in the community, uh, uh, of the police, uh, because of the historical context, certainly, but there's a lot also going on. And just to, you know, my initial work in there was to look at, um, the, um, what they have as a. Consent, excuse me, a consent decree in planning division, which came out of the work with the department of justice. And this particular, uh, division has a number of, of, of sub divisions to it, if you will. One of them that caught my attention was community engagement. And, uh, they generate, uh, reports. They have, uh, a thing called community and cops. And if you can just sort of visualize the word community, it's capital C O M M. And then unity is all in caps. And cops is all in caps. So unity and cops. And there are programs under these subheadings. And, uh, they have community service officers and they also have school resource officers. Now, someone mentioned earlier, I guess, you know, when I was in the city, I think, you know, I'm going to talk about the city for some time. But I'm not sure if that was another city. We're not the same in terms of cities and towns and in terms of architectural experiences, but, um, this is just to say, like, they're, they're examining different strategies and tactics for how to, you know, how to deal with the issue of policing. In the communities. And there's, there's a lot that's that still has to be done. So I plan to look into that more, more deeply. So you all snuck that in on me that was what I caught you anyway this is all all good work and I did want to say that you know Newark also has a civilian oversight agency and that title is important because I think this is where a lot of the the head banging the the buttressing comes from you know the police versus the community who has oversight who should have oversight and I think this is where you know police and the community interact in ways where they dispute and who has the authority or realm of oversight that's most important so I see that as a conversation more than a than a dispute but certainly in Amherst it you know we talked about how the community could get more involved in policing and how to interact more with police so there probably some ideas and models and strategies out there that we can take advantage of going forward but just wanted to mention that about Newark there's much more to be learned about them certainly and I will certainly follow up I think there were others who had you know other communities they were looking into if you are able and willing to report on those now I'd appreciate it okay so nobody's snuck anything on you actually I thought I was supposed to do the no work and also some avail that you did a great job and thank God you know you decided to look into no work what I like about Newark is the level of community engagement and the civilian oversight in that city even though it's not the same as Amherst community so I looked into Somerville where our town manager is from and I am pleasantly surprised when I looked into the website like I typically do when I go to any website I'm looking at from the lens of a black woman you know what is this city our town is all about and they have already diversity catalog basically for the least all the businesses owned by people of color by LGBT individuals immigrants veterans disabled business owners so I was kind of intrigued I also noticed on the website that they have a multicultural affairs department wow and basically that department supposed to be addressing issues of racism to make sure that their residents have equal treatment like in the rest of the residents there so I was kind of impressed with that they also have office of immigrant affairs and I'm like wow that's cool that's something we can learn Amherst can learn from the city of Somerville then I started the real assignment and in June of this year the city declared declared racism as a public safety and health emergency the mayor announced 10 point plan to address racism I want to they were 10 of them but one of the points that really caught my eye is the independent civilian oversight I kind of like that similar to I think why my my attention also you know caught within a new work to the mayor also is committed to the hashtag it can't wait campaign do people know what that is I don't want to do people know what that is it's basically a project by campaign zero to address use of force in policing so I believe the Somerville police agreed to addressing use of police force in the work they do and and I think significantly is that the city is has created a new racial and social justice initiative and one of the things that they plan to do is to hire a new director of racial and social justice they advertise the positional line and the only thing I don't like about the new initiative is that the new director will be reporting to the mayor I had hoped that it would be independent but that's you know that's why as I can go since they haven't hired the director I don't even know who to contact but I'm very impressed with the work that the mayor is doing in the city and it seems like the interim acting police chief has worked at Somerville before left and came back because the chief police retired is retired or something like that am I correct mr. Buckman yeah retired so I think a lot of good things is happening in Somerville I actually have some friends who are familiar with Somerville city and so I think that a few things we can learn from from them I'm hoping to continue doing additional research at least talk to the mayor I don't know when they're going to hire their social justice director I didn't see much about community engagement I tried to dig in and research but I didn't talk to anybody yet but I hope to do that in the future that's it I was just trying to unmute myself here by my screen froze on my end I'm okay now I'm back I was saying I want to thank you for your work and your research as well as others who've reported are there any others Ms. Walker thank you yeah so I was assigned to do Cambridge and mine is still a work in progress but what I have so far is in Cambridge they have a similar group to what we are doing here they have created a public safety committee and they hold public hearings similar to these they have assigned a topic for each meeting and they have done things like review police policies specifically the use of force policy they've done evaluations of their surveillance ordinance and they review annual reports that the police produced and so they have also committed to as a city to invest in public safety by co-designing and power sharing with the community and how they do that is they have groups who are who they described as representing residents who have been historically marginalized and unheard in government and safety planning and so they actually fund they partially fund these groups to do the work to work within the communities and report back to their group and those groups include the Cambridge families of color coalition the Cambridge educators of color coalition my brothers and my sisters keepers special education advisory council and black yard arts I haven't gotten into exactly how those groups are directly involved in the decision making but I did see that they were discussing things like anti-racist hiring policies and reallocating funds we can't hear you we can't hear you thank you all of you are continuing to do great work and appreciate your efforts I again for for all of us just reminding us of how this as we're taking this in you know we're taking notes from each meeting that we're constantly focused on you know what what what what our mission is as as a working group and I see this information as informing and giving a backdrop to our work here in Amherst even though we're outreaching to different communities we're looking at research from different places certainly some very large recent pieces of research about policing etc that we we're working to funnel us down to where it has meaning and impact for our own community and you know we're gonna move into talking about you know our our next step planning based on the other work that we had to do in terms of raising questions etc for next steps but I do want to take a moment to just say that I'm going all the way back to our first conversation we had as a working group that there still exists unfortunately a lot of mistrust distrust mistrust however you want to put it there's a lack of faith in policing in general especially among black and brown and poor communities and so knowing that I hope we also keep in mind that while we're collecting data which is important and informs our decisions that we're also collecting data that will help inform how we can better position ourselves to build relationships when this in this community none of this works none of this will work unless we're on the path toward building better relationships within the community with our police department and that's going to take a lot of work it's going to take a lot of different pathways to get there and it is not necessarily going to be smooth all the time but that's one of the things that I wanted to say in addition not before going to the next piece I I want to encourage us also to think about what's underneath some of the things that we're hearing and seeing you know when we hear about you know things such as I heard this statistic in in I read about the statistic in Newark where use of force against black people was 2.7 times higher than white people but what does that mean underneath that you know what are the questions we wanted that are driving the discussion underneath that is it's good to know the statistic and is horrific in its presence but what what does that mean in terms of our work here because even though it's Newark the essence of it is an Amherst in terms of how people feel so I just keep us going deeper into finding root causes about this and that will inform what we're doing and again I can't stress enough the relationships piece because it seems like that's where we're going to find our best success in Amherst I think we're poised to do that by asking all the hard questions and doing all the hard work that we're doing so I and I think there's a readiness in Amherst to do that at this particular time so I will stop talking there for a minute and you know your permission I'd like to move on to the piece of our agenda where we're talking about updating a community outreach planning and next actions all of us have submitted questions we have a framework for how to to do this I think we're poised to make some next steps and whether it's with the police department you know most directly whether it's community agencies as they exist in our community or individuals so I want to just open that up to this group to have a discussion about where our work is leading us now in terms of next steps I know Mr. Vernon Jones and myself are working on the police for example so we can comment on that there are others who are working on community so I just want to open that up to see you know give us we have a decision about where we stand with that and where we think our next steps need to go well I thought we had agreed at our last meeting that we wanted to start hearing from BIPOC folks first and that while we were doing that we would immediately send questions to the Amherst police department that they could be preparing written responses to so they could be working on that well we're getting to hear from BIPOC folks and what Mrs. Pat had asked that I do at our last meeting was take the suggestions that everybody made for you know what we would put out that we'd like to invite people to talk to us about so I'm in the in the packet and when you're ready I can screen share it if you want I put together a few questions based on what everybody had contributed and my hope is that we could revise those tonight so we could start sharing them with people and schedule some times for people to come talk to us I appreciate that and that's the direction I hope we go tonight you know with with our discussion so you know if I don't see any objection to that maybe we can go there first but Jennifer I had a Jennifer I'm sorry I um Russ is it easier for you to screen share so that you can make the changes live as we're going is that work fast I think so all right great let's see if I can thank you and while Mr. Vernon Jones is working on that again to the working group and to you know for those of you who are listening there's a constant feed into this process by everyone on the working group to come up with questions and we're trying to get a framework for how to approach this in the most effective way so that's just background information okay can you can you see this yeah it says questions yes I can see it yeah so the first one is about positive and negative experiences the second one about differential treatment for BIPOC folks and white folks the third one is one I think Deborah suggested about do you personally know the names of police officers which was maybe a measure of how successful community policing is the fourth one is about trust the fifth one is their recommendations and then the last two are you know any comments of with regard to the previous five questions with regard to the fire department or EMTs or the health department and number seven is there anything else you want to share so that's the sort of overview let me scroll back up we can look at them one at a time and see I mean people had put in a lot of great things but wanted me to keep the list short so I tried to try to do both thank you Russ for putting this together for us I still feel that the list is too long the way I'm thinking in my head I mean what is the reason for positive experiences what do we have from there I think the positive experiences in what what work what is actually working with as far as like community relation with with the Amherst police department the one thing I can say just off the bat is that I know that Taper had a really good one of the Amherst police department officers his basketball coach at one point and so they established like he was he he was the coach of this team so he established a relationship with the youth outside of being an officer so I think those positive things are important because then when we bring that back to Amherst police department they have an understanding of what is what is possible like let's say you know in part of it we we are saying we want to see them do more community service type things well here you know there's a lot of times where we're struggling to find coaches for for our school schooling events and whatever whatever so you know that's a place where they can you know be involved but not be policing our kids you know like you know rather than having you know an officer present at school type thing you know what I'm saying like I think the way I will okay so I think I don't know how the rest of the group feels instead of saying positive experiences why don't we say what is working what is you know what is working within the APD and what is not working in addition in addition to the negative experiences so so you have the night what you're saying is have the negative what are your what I'm saying is but then what what has worked for you in your interactions with Amherst PD no that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is what is what you know like in general what is working from your experience within APD and then then people can share their negative experiences it's just my my opinion mr. Vernon Jones I can't see the the whole scroll here but you know I know you and I were working on this but one of the you know I don't know and I don't know where this fits if it comes later I'll defer it to the later but in response to you miss Pat um one of the things I was curious about as we were developing these questions is to say you know what is the Amherst police department doing that they feel is effective yeah that's in our that's in our list of questions for the police department yeah and I will say this set of questions I was not thinking we would ask people to answer all of these okay my thought was we put these out as here here's the invitation okay talk to us about any of this okay yeah okay I'm fine with that then yeah because as a black woman you know I don't it's not something that I'll respond to yeah you might not people won't have a positive because if we're talking about police reform you know for me that is an urgency I want to address what is not working for me as a black mother as a black parent as a black right yeah but also for me as a woman yeah I think having kids in sports for since they were able to sign up for sports it's important for for me to see to share what's working because because I don't want what's working to stop and that's and that's what I think is like that's what concerns me is that if we don't find out what's working we don't know we like they could stop what's working and and things like you know things like that in my experience having these interactions with these coaches who happen to be officers as well you know for the most part it has been a situation that has worked so and so if I may if I may just say I'm sorry go ahead Ms. Farera I mean I just wanted to kind of also echo some of what the sheen is saying in terms of like yeah I think it'll be important to kind of hear you know what they're doing that you know it's helpful within the community because then we can kind of build upon some of those things if there are some right if the community shares that there's some things that they're doing that's positive that is helpful it'll be good for us to hear because then we can either you know continue with those or improve upon those especially if it's around any type of community policing type of work that they're doing and me right now I don't know that you know so I think that's supposed to just hearing just what's the negatives and everything because of course we want to hear the negatives but what's the positives that you know hopefully we can do more with and also I mean I like the fact that we have you know these different questions because you know again yeah people don't have to answer all of them but it gives enough so that they're able to maybe it'll spur them to think about oh wait a minute yeah you know maybe I do know someone personally you know a police officer and I want to share their story or I want to talk about you know this negative interaction or whatever you know it kind of is is enough of a smorgasbord that can can but not too much that it can spur them sharing some information I guess what I'm struggling with is just the positioning of the question I mean it seems like the first number I'm sorry say that again please I guess what I'm struggling with is the it's where the question is it's like number one I don't think that matters though yeah what experience is positive or negative but we can move on we can move on it's fine I think what Russ was saying though is that it doesn't matter what the position of the question is it's just like it's kind of like talking points like like when I looked at it I didn't like and I was thinking of like people that I wanted to speak to and get their stories I wasn't looking at it as like it asks this question asks this question I was looking at it as like things to think about and try to like you know use my own words to bring out this information from that person so I think you I think he was saying to use it as just a guide but I mean for me though uh Miss Pat I mean I don't mind us switching it around I see what you're saying too I I know I know my network what they're talking we have to be careful that we don't insult people because we're talking about police reform and then you know people are anxious to see changes and there are good things happening in police department absolutely but you know we're here to you know to make some recommendation for reform we just have to be careful that we don't insult people when we invite them to you know share their experiences I know what people are you know are telling me what people are talking to me about so do you have any recommendations do you have any suggestions Miss Pat in terms of like how we could reorder it no basically what I'm saying is is that that you know we can at some point I below say you know you know what is working in APD department or something like that but I don't think it should be you know the first question that we list yeah yeah we're moving around I'm okay yeah no positive experiences I know if people ask me that I'm not I'm just going to skip it because my focus is we want to reform the department would it be more inviting to some of the people we want to really have talked to us if we just made us what experience is negative or positive have you had perhaps yeah and I mean I think maybe switch it around and put some of the other ones that kind of deal more with the BIPOC like number two and everything maybe that could be number one and then we can kind of you know what do you believe it'll take to build the trust could be number two you know what what change would you like to see our recommend could be number three and then we could talk about experiences as number four or something like that you know I think one of the things that you know Mr. Vernon Jones is trying to