 Thanks Chair Copeland Hanses and members of the committee. Thanks for this invitation. So I'm going to talk just about two things. One is the an assessment of the process for collecting raised data on traffic stops and then to talk about the impact of that on racial disparities. So with regard to what's working well with data collection, all law enforcement agencies are now reporting their data and that's a good thing that wasn't happening early on. And I think a big change has been that the data are now centrally processed and posted on the Vermont Training Council website. I'll just note to you that they are only hosting the data for 2018 to 2020. The crime research group continues to host the remaining data and it really should all be in one place and I'm hopeful that that could happen. I think another important change is that the percentage of stops in which officers did not record the race of the driver has fallen from around 7% to under 1%. So that too is good. I will make the point that however agencies are not following the legislation as well with regards to other categories of data that are required. So for example, there's a lot of missing data on very important categories for us to identify racial disparities. The reason for the stop, whether contraband was found and so forth and I won't go through the details because it's in the testimony that I submitted to you. So that continues to be a problem of data quality. In terms of what I think is needs some adjustment if you will with regard to this process is first of all, I think it's important to clarify existing legislation and expand the categories of data report. Not just give you one small problem that has arisen and I'll propose a solution to it. For example, in the legislation it says that officers are required to record the outcome of a stop. But many times there are multiple outcomes of the stop. There are you know two warnings, a ticket and an arrest and unfortunately police chiefs have refused to not been willing to give us that data because they say the legislation doesn't require it. So there are these fine tuning aspects that need to be addressed. In addition to that we really there are some expanded categories of data that we do need and part of this is I'm going to make some suggestions based on the research and the work that's done in North Carolina which I think is exemplary and also based on a consultant report in Burlington that recommended more data be collected. So I'm going to give you a few examples of these. One is the start and end time of the stop which tells you how long people are detained, the reason for each ticket, warning and arrest. This is going to, this would enable us to better identify racial bias than the existing data set does. We'd like data on the type and quantity of contraband found, the state in which the vehicle is registered, the year it's registered and really some trivial things such as the date and time of stop which again because it's not in the legislation many agencies have refused to give that data to us and it's important for a variety of reasons. So I think those categories should be expanded and I think in general a solution to some of these fixes is that instead of periodically revising the legislation it would be beneficial and more efficient for the legislature to delegate someone or a group to make sure that data is collected uniformly and accurately, that there's consistency but also that could make changes time to time in the data requirements what data should be collected. I read the H546 that is being considered in the House in the Judicial Committee and that seems to me to be a step in the right direction. One of the other problems that I see that is very serious is that the data are not reported in a timely manner. We just processed 2020 data and here we are in 2022 and you know the idea is for these data to also be a management tool to monitor what's going on in terms of racial disparities at the municipal level for community members to be aware of this in a much more timely manner and so I think that that needs to be addressed. I will say again that North Carolina and Burlington have interactive data portals and the data are updated once a month so that's an example of what we could do to really make the data more meaningful. I've mentioned here also that there are continued problems of data quality and I'll just let you read that but I think if you have an oversight body that is reviewing the quality of the data and sending it back to improve it that would address that. I wanted to talk to you then about the impact of the online enforcement of the requirement to collect traffic stop data and first what I'm going to do is just talk to you about trends in the data and if you look at the testimony I submitted yesterday I provided you some tables in case some of you are more visual learners but I'll just briefly say a few things. My colleagues Pat Rotilio and Nancy Brooks and I published a series of studies last year at the statewide analysis of trends and we did this for the largest agencies Vermont State Police Burlington, Beddington, Rutland, Brattleboro, Williston, Colchester and I think I've forgotten something and what we found is that from 2015 to 2019 the number of traffic stops has increased for all racial groups but it has increased substantially more for groups of color so for example for white drivers stops increased less than about 50% but for Hispanic drivers the stops increased by 120% and for black drivers over 70%. The share of stops that are pretextual or investigatory has increased over time just a reminder that pretextual stops are legal but they are typically based on suspicion of criminal activity and use a minor traffic violation as a means to stop the vehicle and get a look inside the vehicle. The problem with pretextual stops is they tend to be racially biased because of the suspicion component of this and sort of implicit bias so pretextual stops have increased and they've increased more for drivers of color. Rest rates have widened since 2014 and the widening gap is largely due to a decline in the white arrest rate rather than an increase for example in the black arrest rate. Search rates declined for all racial groups since 2019 after which cannabis was legalized but the black search rate continues to be about three times greater than the white search rate and I have a little bit more detail there and I'll skip this just to say not to tax you too much with numbers but to say that you know over the at the state level we trends don't seem to yield evidence that racial disparities have diminished for most of the indicators that we have even with legalization but statewide measures obscure a wide variation at the agency level. There are numerous agencies that don't have racial disparities in arrests or searches and so on and so forth and I want to just give you some positive news about the largest agencies in South Burlington black white arrest disparities and search rate disparities decreased since 2015 in Burlington South Burlington Rutland and Vermont state police racial disparities and contraband hit rates have decreased and we see that with in 2020 we just came out with a COVID analysis of traffic stops that I sent to you also and traffic stops declined 40 percent it didn't do much to reduce racial disparities and stops but it did reduce disparities in arrests racial disparities and arrests in searches. I will note that Vermont nevertheless continues to stop many more vehicles than the national average nationally before COVID around 81 vehicles were stopped per 1000 residents annually and in Vermont that number was over 300 some agencies in Vermont had numbers up to 700 COVID has reduced that but we still have a very wide disparity. So in general just to remind you that there is tremendous variation across agencies and I think the fact that some of the largest agencies have reduced disparities and that there are a number of smaller agencies that have very little disparities tell us that there is room for progress that progress can be made. So let me just say very briefly about what has been the response of police chiefs and community members to raise data collection. I would say that the response of police chiefs has been very uneven several agencies have demonstrated really strong interest in the data and in understanding the causes of the data and we we get calls sometimes from these agencies to talk about what the results are and to in some cases we've done additional data analysis for those agencies and I want to emphasize that Vermont state police continues to be a leader in attempting to implement protocols and procedures to arrest address racial disparities and some others like South Burlington really stands out to me as a leader in trying to use these data in a way to help them improve with regards to racial disparities. I've mentioned some others here Wyndham County Sheriff's Office Winooski PD and the Shelburne Select Board have invited us to present our data. There are the one of the challenges is that however that there are most agencies have not contacted us and we don't see much interest in the data and in some cases agencies are continuing to deny that there are racial disparities and to so they really don't seem to be on board with the rate the race data collection as a mechanism for self-reflection if you will but I will say that one of the things that has been important is that we did our analyses in a way that we hoped was accessible to community members because at the municipal level it is primarily the community that holds police departments accountable and we have had numerous calls from community groups across the state to talk about the data to you know to to discuss the issues and so forth and I've listed them here and I think one of the most interesting cases was for gents in which two community members actually did a documentary to try to understand the the race data but also to move forward with a civilian oversight board and more momentum with regard to addressing racial disparities. I'll leave it at that and I'm happy to answer any questions for you. Thank you so much Representative Hooper. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Stephanie. This is one of those questions that may be misinterpreted and get me in trouble but do you track in any way a change in the data that you've just laid out as the force itself becomes more diversified and reflecting more of the community in terms of racial or other structures? That's such a great question. Again if it's not required by legislation so for example it would be great to have the composition of the racial and gender composition of the police department and quite frankly the race and gender of the officers although anonymously right? I do think we actually do need officer level data once again anonymized but to give us a sense of that. So Representative Hooper we don't track that because we don't have that data. I will say that the number of officers of color is so small also it might be difficult to to to detect that other states do this but it would be I think it would be an important step to be able to have officer level data on their race and gender and also actually also that they're tenure as police officers because we do see variants amongst younger police officers versus older police officers those who've been on the force longer and there are a variety of reasons why that would matter. I would agree that in analysis there are a lot of holes that should be filled. Thank you. Representative Gannon. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Dr. Subwino for testifying this morning. Unfortunately I was looking at your COVID data and one of the towns I represent and actually live in Wilmington appears to be at the bottom of your list with respect to increases in traffic stops during the pandemic. That's embarrassing for me. As a select board member I will put this on our agenda as soon as possible so I can better understand it but I just want to make sure I understand the data. Does it take into account staffing of a police department because I know we have struggled with staffing and have finally started to you know bring more officers on so I was just wondering if that's something that's taken into account here. No I read that about Wilmington that they were staffed up and that might be one of the reasons that there were more traffic stops so one way to get at that in Wilmington is look at the number of traffic stops per officer and that might be a better way for you all to get a better sense of that so you could easily do that if you have that data. Thank you. Representative Colston. Thank you Madam Chair and Dr. Subwino good to see you again and thank you for your testimony. It's rather disheartening to learn that some of our agencies aren't taking this seriously but my question is is it possible for a law enforcement agency to contract out the data collection to share say maybe and if so is that done at the same level of collection as other agencies or not? I don't I don't think any agency contracts out their data there are two systems that are used Spillman and Valkor and agencies have one or the other and my understanding now is that that is all then extracted by the Vermont Training Council to post so I think a problem is that probably the smaller agencies aren't able to analyze their own data and that's why waiting a year to get the results is is not a good idea. That's why I think a dashboard you know an interactive portal that agencies could check their numbers every month or every four months would be a better idea. Thank you. Representative Vihopsky. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Dr. Subwino it's nice to see you. One of the things that you had mentioned I too am sort of disheartened to hear that there's uneven uptake and interest in this area and one of the things you had mentioned is having an oversight body review and send back lower quality data do you imagine that that would be something done at the state level or better done at a more local level I know we don't have those oversight bodies but I'm just trying to get a sense of where you in in your view that would make the most sense. Well I see that Captain Kessler is here and I think she might be able to speak to how Vermont State Police does it but I mean there's essentially a process in which supervisors review incident reports and I think with appropriate supervision you can send it back to the officer and say fill in these missing categories I also think that something that can be done and should be done at the state level is training on how to use the data what the categories mean so that officers have a consistent understanding of what the categories are that they're checking off Vermont State Police did this early on right after our 2017 study they did made an enormous effort training effort at all of their barracks to train officers on on data collection I don't think this has been done in many of the smaller agencies and I get that I really get the challenges of the smaller agencies so I think this is something that could be more effectively done at the state level but in terms of monitoring tickets or I'm sorry incident reports that seems to me that that should be something of daily practice and I you know some agencies have just done a phenomenal job at this and again I point to Vermont State Police which has I think zero percent missing data now and other agencies just continue to have swaths of missing data so I think it's a local level but I also think that it's not it's not hard I mean we we do it with a we have we programmed it now but you know in a nanosecond we can identify the missing data for an agency and it shouldn't be difficult for any agency to do that or for the Vermont training council to do it and send the data back to the agency thank you representative Hooper thank you for the second bite at the apple madam chair Stephanie following up on representative Grant Danon's question how is the data normalized if we're not looking at variances in departments when we're reporting and is it then valid comparing the apple to the apple in the overall yeah that's a really good question so so for those very unfamiliar with normalized so you don't want to compare the number of traffic stops in Burlington with a number of traffic stops let's say in I don't know uh Heinzberg because it's such a small it's a much smaller town with a smaller police force and so forth most of our numbers we do we do address that so for example most of the time what we're doing is looking at percentages and that's the way to normalize the data so if we say the number of stops of black drivers I should say of searches of black drivers then we will normalize it by the number of stops of black drivers so we do correct for that in all of our data thank you representative Leclerc thank you madam chair good morning Stephanie how are you it's nice to see you again you too I got a couple of questions one being in in in your research do you folks actually do any field work have you gone out with officers and actually spent the time with them to understand the processes that they have to go through yeah I've I've done uh ride-alongs with numerous agencies I've probably done about 10 ride-alongs uh thus far I actually I continue to do them I learn a lot from them uh but yeah I do yeah I do consistently do ride-alongs so you've done 10 over how many years uh over maybe the last three or four years three years maybe four years okay not much during COVID but uh I have done a couple during COVID but uh prior to that was doing them pretty regularly yeah sure another question I have is you were making a comparison to our stops to I think per 1000 of population have you ever gone back and took a look at the different laws and statute that law enforcement like say in Vermont works under versus other states for instance I'm thinking well we're we're having kind of an ongoing dialogue right now about say front license plates in Vermont they're required in other states they may not be or license excuse me or seat belts are you know have you gone through to take a look at the the different reasons why law enforcement would stop somebody Vermont versus where they would in another state um no we haven't done that there's not really a national database that would allow us to do that easily um uh so let me see if I can understand kind of the the purpose of your question is to maybe get at the issue of whether the higher number of stops per capita uh in Vermont is related to us having maybe more stringent traffic laws is that your point yeah so we I look in the way to put it I don't know about that but uh uh so we haven't done that you know um but it's a really good question but the way I guess I would get at that is to say that in Vermont all all uh agencies operate under the same traffic laws but we see for example that I um if I recollect correctly Vermont State Police last year stopped uh 400 43 drivers per capita whereas uh some towns like Bennington and Brattleboro were stopping over 400 uh uh the stops were for over 400 per 1000 residents so within the same state we see very you know significant variation okay and I guess it's one other quick question and it it and maybe it's more of a statement it just it concerns me that the data that I'm hearing that we're having to collect and then the data that I hear you say you wish that we collected um I'm just not sure is is that feasible in that you know we we want to limit the interaction with law enforcement and the people that are stopping and it seems like that the officers are going to have to walk away with somewhat of a short novel of the information that that we're looking to acquire here and is it just is it realistic to be able to expect officers to do that yeah that's a really good question too and you know I really you know share your concern I think collecting too much data is you know too onerous but this is what I'm thinking about this that that much of the additional data that I suggested the collected is already automatically collected it's just not shared with the public because it's not required by law so the start and end time of the stop is automatically generated the state in which the vehicle is registered all of that is automatically generated so it's more of a question of simply requiring that that data be publicly shared very good thank you yeah representative colston thank you madam chair dr seguino um what are some best practices for agencies um to be held accountable for collecting data and and using the data whether it's in state or out of state yeah um well I think that one of the best practices that I see is uh at the Vermont state police I'm not doing this because I see captain kessler in front of me but because I continue to see Vermont state police as a model uh one of the things that uh Vermont and I should you know I mean captain kessler couldn't say this for himself but what they do is that when they look at their data and if they see that there are significant uh disparities for one officer compared to another uh they call the officer in to talk about it to see what's going on uh they if there are complaints filed um I was a case was shared with me in which a there was a complaint filed by a black family and the the trooper was called in to look at the video and to compare that to the video of his performance with white drivers for example so um so I think the data in and of itself generates a conversation and uh the the deeper scrutiny at the at the agency level is what is needed to get to the bottom of this they're more they're they have more much more data than we do on the outside to identify that so those are two practices that I think um the practice of comparing the data of an officer with other officers is called internal benchmarking so same town same city same circumstances if one officer's traffic stop disparities are significantly greater than another's it's a reason to check into that sometimes like the city of Philadelphia as I've mentioned in my report have banned pretextual stops because they are not related to public safety but they are more related to suspicion of criminal activity and are more open to bias so that is another possibility clearly you know training on implicit bias is uh I think important and um I would encourage you to talk to um chief Sean Burke from South Burlington who uh when we talked about this he he shared with me that he thinks one of the most important things that can be done is for officers to better understand racial history in the united states and what is leading to these disparities so not just implicit bias training and I think that's something that it's hard for a small agency to mount themselves but that's something that the state could do whether it's the Vermont training council or some uh state level entity could support agents smaller agencies in doing that kind of thing thank you representative of faith thank you madam chair and thank you Stephanie for being here with us today um so when you were comparing um Vermont state police having the 43 per capita and then places like bennington and braddle borough did you do you have the data of what the state police that covers bennington and braddle borough did compared to what say they what they would do up in orange county uh no but I can easily get that data that's a great question and we we can get that data for you if you would I'm not trying to just put them on the spot but for me so I live in orange county and I know the amount of times I've seen a state trooper pull somebody over or the time I've even seen somebody on my road um it's very minimal I do appreciate the work that they do but the presence is smaller versus uh you know this the state police on the interstate or in a major area so I'd just be interested to see while it is 43 per capita how much that has gone up um in areas around and then um my second question was um for the plate for the departments that don't uh participate as well as we would like do we have a way that maybe their uh local government could reach out to them to say you know why are you not participating um is information that we need versus the pressure coming from you consistently but um from us to say hey like we would like this information this information could be helpful um and see what we could do to help them I know funding and staffing is very overwhelming or you know underwhelming for a lot of places um the Vermont State Police last thing we heard last year they were down at least 40 troopers and I'm sure that's only gone up um so I know our local municipalities are also really hurting and so if there's something that we can do on our end to support them I'd also like to hear that because if we're gonna you know say they're not doing a good job I would like to assist them um in helping yeah that's a great idea uh I really appreciate that so we have um we have we produce a table that shows missing data for each category for each agency and um I mean that's something we can share and post and then I think uh you know I think the public and whether it is the select board or the city council or the Vermont uh league of cities and towns for example I do think there's an entity that could you know use these data to call the agency and see what's going on and see if they can make some improvements I think that if people don't use the data and that you know some agencies agencies continue to not feel that this is an important exercise so they're you know I think registering interest in what the results are will shine a light on this and perhaps draw attention to it and I don't I agree with your point that there are a lot of competing demands but I will say the following that the there was a lot of missing data initially in the first few years of data collection and it's declined dramatically for smaller agencies and larger agencies but uh but not for all of them. All right any other questions from committee members for Dr. Savino? All right hoping that you will stick around we'll continue on this topic for uh for quite a bit longer I would imagine um so thank you for being with us this morning. Thanks for having me thanks. Next I'd like to go to Dr. Etan Nasreden-Longo Dr. Nasreden-Longo is the chair of the Racial Disparities Advisory Panel and I believe also the co-chair or co-director of fair and impartial policing I think it would be helpful for this committee to understand you know a little bit of the history of the organizations that you are involved in just for the for the benefit of new members to the committee who weren't here when these were created. Well I would be glad to Madam Chair may I also ask though that um that Captain Kessler present her testimony before I do but I'm willing to I mean I'll do that right now and tell you the history if you'd like. Let's get a little orientation and then I understand Captain Kessler has a time constraint and so um let's let's let's get oriented from you by you know on what these entities are and then we'll jump to Captain Kessler and come back to you thank you. Okay fair and impartial policing has been an initiative in um the state police for good lord way over a decade way way over a decade Stephanie would be helpful in telling me how much time it's been because she was involved in it then and certainly was Curtis Reed this was under Commissioner Baker at that time that um there was a there was a push towards what was being called at that moment ironically bias free policing as though such a thing is even possible in a human um that has as it started out with these with um measuring traffic stop data um there was a committee that was put together the FIP committee fair and impartial policing committee that meets quarterly um and that committee is advisory to the colonel and to the commissioner of public safety regarding progress being made towards the amelioration of disparities within traffic stops um as um Dr. Segwina points out things have improved as time went on I mean initially when the data was rolled out we were all rubbing our heads going oh my god I mean there was so much missing and I mean I think Dr. Segwina probably has the stats on how much was missing I can't remember it was a lot um but that has improved as she has pointed out enormously um there was at that time all a bit later the idea of a director of fair and impartial policing and community affairs was put together the first person in that role is now retired major um Ingrid Jonas she did that for a very long time at that point she was a captain when first appointed um after her appointment uh promotion to major Captain Gary Scott took over and he and I worked together on this initiative uh I was a volunteer I simply believe in this as a kind of service um as Alice Walker once said her activism is the rent she pays for living on planet earth and I sort of feel the same way um what then ended up we then had captain Julie Scribner who retired in November and now we and when she came on the idea was to in fact break the position into two and have a civilian co-director along with a sworn member as a co-director and we work together it's turning out to be fabulous because there are so many things that we each have expertise in I'm certainly way more conversant with the various communities um than perhaps the sworn member may be that flows certainly and it you know there's differences but um the co-directorship has allowed in its sharing of duties for a broader range of duties to be covered um the job continues to evolve in some ways we are still writing our job descriptions um and in some ways that's part of our job is to continue writing our job descriptions um and of course to continue to work with um our people in training them doing anti-bias training doing implicit bias work um when I do that I also just to sort of reference Dr. Ceguino's point um I also reference a lot of American history um around bias um I've been doing that for a long time I continue to revise that Captain Kessler and I do these trainings together um we do them around the state various municipalities by word of mouth know that we do this regularly and ask us to to participate in this so we have a lot of also connections with the police academy um because we a lot of our work is conducted there so that would be what I'd say about the Farron and Partial Initiative within BSP the RDAP which is formerly known and I get this wrong every time because its title is ridiculous it the advisory panel on racial disparities in the juvenile and criminal justice systems we call it the RDAP racial disparities advisory panel that came together in 2017 as a result of Act 54 we are charged to write a report at least by statute every two years regarding the amelioration of racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems and to make recommendations for that um what has happened in practice is we have actually submitted a report in 2019 we submitted a report in 2020 and we submitted a report in 2021 so we're a little bit ahead of schedule the report that we were produced in and last year that was uh submitted on November 15th contained all the information that has gone into the creation of H546 which is currently in front of you all um that was the work of the RDAP we put together a working group and worked on it from the beginning of August until the middle of November we have been concentrating very heavily on these issues of data and data collection and in fact that is the point of H546 um it really is focused on data and creating a division of racial justice statistics which could be at another moment it'd be expanded to include more than just race and include other vectors of human identity is that enough madam chair that's perfect thank you so much you're more than welcome um so we will come back to you in a moment for for some more comments and questions but um I wanted to take this time to welcome Captain Kessler and thank you for stepping into this very important role and I would love to hear some reflections from you on issues around data collection challenges with data collection and any uh any directions you see pushing this in the future in your agency good morning thank you so much I'm very happy to be here uh first of all I'm going to uh thank your forgiveness here that I am getting over a cold or COVID or whatever not sure I tested negative but uh now being told that things tend to test negative now so that's that's how it's going but um my voice will come and go a little bit little scratchier than normal stuff anyways um thank you so much for having me here and I just want to introduce myself I am a 25 year veteran with the Vermont State Police um worked in every uh division that we have support services right now I've done training division uh detectives and spent the bulk of my career on the road as a trooper so um I know all about traffic stops I shouldn't say all there's always stuff to learn but I'm quite familiar with traffic stops and their nuances and problems that we encounter so if you have any questions please ask um but today I'm here to talk to you about traffic stops uh traffic stops are a function of being a police officer and an agent of public safety aggressive driving and law violations threaten the safety of our citizens and their driving public this year due to COVID we saw a dramatic drop in traffic stops for Vermont State Police as a result we've seen a spike in highway fatalities as you can imagine uh 61 in 2020 72 in 2021 this is all up from 2019 which was 47 that's how we were moving in the right direction 1947 or excuse me when we had 47 in 2019 but obviously not so I can go over now our traffic stops data uh the 2020 summary is that we had 24,000 stops roughly 92 percent were white 2.9 percent were black 2.5 percent were Asian 1.9 percent were Hispanic and 0.12 were Native Americans this is all based on officer perception so this can be greatly flawed we're not asking people on these stops to declare um how they identify so that would lead to its own set of complications but again this data is we have to take it with a grain of salt because it is officer perception two cover searches we have 88 in total for the year that's 88 out of 24,000 stops 75 of those were for white operators six of those were on black operators um the black operators that was 0.024 percent of our traffic stops two searches were on Asian operators five were on Hispanic and none were on Native Americans so as we look at this data again it's very very low numbers um six black operators also had a hundred percent hit rate for contraband so that is that's something we're really proud of um because years ago it wasn't like that so I think we can say that something is working um but again the numbers of these stops and searches is so small that we actually don't know if the numbers are moving in a positive direction we'd like to think that they are so hopefully that means we're doing something right right what the small numbers did do for us is allow the breakdown of searches and to do a very partial qualitative analysis rather than quantitative because as we can tell you all day numbers are numbers and you know there's always something behind the numbers um but we haven't been able to dig very deeply into them as to what they mean what we found for this like six black operators searched out of 24,000 cars stops was that all were found to have contraband but only three were arrested the three that were arrested were these three cases I can tell you that they were male operators two were on the interstate and had out of state plate one was on a secondary road feed was the reason for the stop in all three cases one was 80 and a 55 one was 104 and a 65 and one was 94 and a 50 as you can imagine we feel that these stops were justified in december of 2021 the SP went to a new statewide computer aided dispatch system this is valcor previously we had been on stillman so I believe that now almost everybody on in the state for police departments is on valcor or hope to be on soon I'm not sure if there may be one or two police departments that are not on valcor but what this is going to do for us is going to mean that all agencies are in the same reporting platform this is where we record the tickets this is where we record the incidents this is record all the names that we encounter and everything is merged in one place so this should make analysis much easier and that is the goal so um so look at the numbers initially appears again that due to covid and possibly other issues traffic stops for romance state police are going to be down another 55 percent from 2020 so initially looking at the numbers that I just barely got and haven't had time to look at really is that 2021 is going to have less stops it's I think around 10 000 stops or 11 000 stops down from 24 000 and that's just for romance state police I'm not talking about law enforcement statewide I don't know what their numbers are um we're just beginning to compile this data however with all of this data we would actually like to request that a qualitative analysis be hired to interpret that data to be sure we're moving in the right direction we would also like to ask that we have some time to work with this data and to see if our trainings and policies are truly having the desired effect we ask a lot of our troopers we've asked them to report out on this stuff with the race data collection and I know we've talked about like collecting more and more data and reporting out more and more data we certainly have a lot of data but I think we may muddy the waters if we start throwing in a lot of different things um we've definitely seen improvements over the last several years as far as our traffic stop data and resolving racial disparities or at least narrowing them I don't know that we're ever going to be able to resolve them but we can get them down to a number that is a lot more positive um excuse me we'd like to remind this committee that our work towards resolving traffic stop disparities is constantly in motion this is not a race with a finish line where we can say we have reached perfection and have no need to continue this work this fair and impartial policing initiative must continue as we're dealing with changing human behavior it's not just behavior of new troopers that are coming on that need training as they're hired each year but we're talking about that changing the behavior of the driving public some of whom choose to break the law and endanger others our work here is never done and we're asking for your input and help on how we can improve this our function of protecting all people in the state of Vermont thank you thank you so much questions from committee members representative Higley that seems to be leaning in go right ahead thank you and thank you for your testimony um i'm interested in the the different um descriptions by the officers when a stop is made and and i believe this business has been going on for a while where it's their interpretation of of what group is being stopped is there training around that and i guess uh the other question i've got is especially for native american groups how is that even considered yeah that's a very loaded question it's something that we're really not sure how to reconcile um we train them and how to fill out the form that we have which is on the back of the ticket as well i say back it used to be paper tickets i'm very old um but now it's all done by e-ticket and they have to fill out certain things you know the things that we come up so we can't train them on how to perceive someone um we do train them to say like if one of the things you always confuse me was um especially people who appeared possibly to be of middle eastern descent and i'm like there's just no box for that i don't i don't know how to fill that out um and the there's confusion on that um a lot of you say uh maybe it's uh asian or white or so it's really really difficult and without having a class in racism basically you can't define how to define someone um which isn't in fact i think racist you know so that that's really hard um and actually dr mustady davila who is doing fair and impartial policing training uh this year through the dpa um actually has a section in her training talking and she actually has pictures of 10 people that she puts up and she says identify the race of this person as you're putting it out on ticket i got nine out of ten wrong because we are we are a mixed country and probably so um i that's a really hard question no thank you thank you for that and i can understand that uh being very hard i guess just one other follow-up question is um is there a box that is checked for whether there is a it is a night time stop or a daytime stop i suppose that would be with the the time right okay correct yes and actually what i didn't mention because uh dr nazard and long ago gave such a lovely overview of our fair and impartial policing um duties one of the things that we do do is we review every traffic stop um so we have a what's called a data dashboard and that very simply collects all of the information from the ticket and warning and stops basically we go in we look at it quarterly or by monthly and we actually review we can go in so granularly and look at the trooper the town the barracks um the time of day we can separate all that out and produce reports and every quarter we meet with the station commanders and we go over this and we review to see if there's any outliers so if someone stopped um uh five black operators in the past two months that looks a little funny but again numbers can be really misleading um so say you know they normally patrol one area they could have stopped one person three times like say this person just has a heavy foot you know and they're like hey i told you last time you know you came through here i know you're on your way to your vacation but uh you gotta slow it down and uh there is a phenomena that we definitely see and i can voice this as a road trooper for many years that um anyone coming from like Massachusetts Connecticut the city tends to get a little heavy on the pedal when they have free reign like they don't have that bumper to bumper traffic keeping them in check and they just go so sometimes they need a little reminder like hey you might want to slow it down but um so yeah so we can see the time of day of stop and we can produce that yes well thank you and thank you for your work it sounds like you're you're doing a good job thank you so much i appreciate that representative leclerc um thank you madam chair uh morning barb how are you this morning i'm wonderful how are you good um i'm gonna ask you uh kind of the same question that i asked uh dr shabuino as far as um the laws that we have in vermont does it require you as in law enforcement to potentially have more interaction with motorists if we're talking just stop data for instance like you know we have a state inspection and obviously we have stickers on our windshield where some states i know don't have that um are there other laws and things that we have that would i guess force you to have more interaction with motorists in vermont than say another state might have i don't know that we have anything that is out of line with any other state um yes we do have the inspection there are a number of other states that have the inspection as well um our inspection is i think it's a little funny in that we put the sticker behind the rear view mirror which i don't know about you guys but i never walk around the front of my own personal vehicle like for whatever reason i just get in from the rear and and get it and actually i this is really embarrassing i took it to have the brakes done and my mechanic was like can i give you a ticket for having an inspired inspection and i said you've got to be kidding me and i ran around the front and looked at it and sure enough the sticker is the wrong color wrong month but yeah um so that is one that we have that some other states don't have i believe Florida doesn't have it um it's i think it's important to remember that all of our laws are on the books for a reason they're on the books for the reason of public safety you know we stopped someone for a headlight out or a tail light out there's a public safety element now i'm not saying they should get a ticket for that or whatever but some people may need to have their attention called to that i got stopped in naryland for having a tail light out and i was like oh my gosh what did i do you know was i speeding oh i think i was speeding you know and uh he's like hey you have a tail light out like i never would have known that now one tail laid out not a huge issue but what happens if you don't fix it and then the next the other one goes out then you have no tail light that's a serious problem like you could actually get in the crash because of that like someone could hit you um hopefully they're paying attention they would see the reflective of you know the back but you know people don't pay attention much anymore either so um i want to have all the safety equipment on my car working and if that takes uh an officer to stop me and remind me with a friendly reminder that's great and that's also where a number of our positive interactions come from uh if an officer stops somebody and just says hey i'm looking out for you i'm trying to let you know that something's not right with your vehicle or or hey didn't use your turn signal and you almost caused the wreck back there i think these things are important well i'm and i'm not trying to make the point that they aren't but what i am trying to understand is if there's something unique about vermont because it was pointed out that vermont has significantly higher stops per 1000 population than a lot of other states and is there a i guess a valid reason for that um just to real quick i got stopped here the other day because well i happen to have a used car dealership so i have a car with a dealer plate on the back and my dealership plate on the front the young officer that pulled me over pulled me over because i didn't have a regular plate on the front of my car was extremely apologetic after he realized what was going on but i know in some states um that's not required window tinting in some states you can have your vehicle fully window tinted it's not a problem in vermont it can be so i'm just trying to understand is there reasons why we would have an increase in interaction with law enforcement around traffic stops potentially compared to some other state but thank you thank you um yeah i mean we don't make the laws we just enforce them so i don't know that we can answer that but again we do for a public safety reason the window tinting is actually for officer safety i believe i believe that so that the officers can see into the car a little bit um at least shadows um because yeah not everybody out there is nice um i noticed um dr. subpoena's hand popped up during that exchange so i'm just going to ask if you wanted to comment on this particular yeah i think you know the trend nationally is for to reduce traffic policing um and to focus more on public safety than other reasons and a good way to understand whether that's you know a viable um strategy or not is to look at what's happening with accidents as traffic stops decrease um so we we don't have that data for 20 i don't have it at least for 2020 yet but uh if you look at burlington burlington has decreased traffic stops by about about 70 percent uh from roughly 2016 to 2020 and there's been virtually no change in the number of uh the accident rate if you will so i think that's a useful way to think about are we over policing in terms of traffic policing and can those resources be better used elsewhere and just to say that this is a national conversation not just in brawl thanks uh representative anthony uh thank you madam chair and thank you all presenters uh i want to go back to the observation um that uh nicely fits with the comet we just heard namely philadelphia which has abandoned or um uh at least uh i guess i don't want to say outlawed but pretextural stops and it seems to me that temptation uh for me anyway uh has to be balanced against whether those pretextural stops somehow are productive in the public safety sense not just in the criminal justice sense um and i'd appreciate any of you commenting uh since i suspect and this has already been commented on because they are so subjective and uh can be uh pardon the phrase retroactively gained uh they're troublesome um and difficult to if you will oversee but it seems to me a terrifically uh ripe tool for uh management and allocation of resources how much do you spend on road uh related stuff as opposed to taking time away from other uh uh criminal enforcement or public safety kinds of uh a potential application of resources so is is the pretextural stop that we heard that philadelphia has really said no more or at least for time time being and see what happens is that a is that a tempting avenue uh to both address the bias issue but also the amount of resources that are committed to stops which may or may not be productive and may or may not change public safety stats thank you could somebody tell me what a pretextural stop is what explain that to me sorry i can explain that for you so pretextural stops the term is used uh to describe a stop that is not based in public safety in nature um usually used as an excuse to stop a car um so that that would be like you know maybe saying that an officer is pulling someone over for a headlight out when in reality they just want to stop the car but and i can say that like pretext stops used to be a big thing when like drug interdiction was a thing um but that doesn't really happen here it doesn't happen um i mean look at our hit rate for black operators is 100 percent we're talking about six black operators were searched 0.024 of 24 000 stops we are not stopping people for just to get in their car like making up of i of they were picking up on some little violation saying oh my goodness like look at that you know now i can stop this car that is not what we are about um we stopped for public safety um as you can see the reduction in our stops has resulted in a significant increase in fatalities we want to protect people and we constantly um i was a station commander for four years i fielded so many calls requests for patrols please come to my road people are speeding up and down it people are driving recklessly she's someone almost hit me the other day please come in patrol that is what we do we hit hot areas that are for DUIs um maybe around a high drinking area or whatever um we stop people for you know uh weaving in in the lanes um weaving outside of the lanes um there's a number of reasons that we need to stop people for public safety we're not stopping people to get in their cars so if there was an issue like i think philadelphia had an issue and they needed to address it we don't have a problem here so we don't need to address that um can i just ask a follow-up question um and then i see dr saguino's hand is up do you mean we don't have a problem as in you're speaking for vermont state police or do you mean we don't have a problem in that you think there are not agencies in the state of vermont who have a who who necessarily are um abusing an excuse to stop a motorist i could speak only for vermont state police however uh also when i was reading the articles about philadelphia's pre-tech stops that was done because um they were having shootings of unarmed civilians after traffic stops and and fatal encounters with them or or violent encounters with them have we ever had that we haven't like that's that's the issue that they're trying to fix we don't need to do that we're stopping again for public safety again i can't speak for every agency but looking at our numbers statewide we don't have stops where someone has a violent encounter with the police because of a pretextual stop thank you uh dr saguino yeah uh i i wanted to make that point as well that although this may not be an issue with vermont state police it is with other agencies and uh it's one of the reasons that we've asked for i just requested that you expand the data on the reasons for the stop so that we can better identify pretextual stops right now we just have a rough measure but i want to say also texas the state of texas is uh pursuing legislation to ban pretextual stops the oragon supreme court banned pretextual stops uh massachusetts legislature is moving to ban pretextual stops as well and i think that you know in these issues that you have to uh weigh the fact that it is more likely to be drivers of color who are stopped on a pretext uh than our white drivers that you have to weigh the impact on the community of color of these things it promotes a distrust between the police and the community not just for drivers of color but for all drivers to be stopped for minor violations and so you have to weigh the impact of that i think we have a crisis in public safety and a great mistrust of police and so to the extent that the police are engaged in activities that are not really focused on public safety and traffic stops that that may be a good move and it certainly is a way to address racial disparities in traffic stops and i just want to give you an incident from burlington um a few years ago uh a young woman from the university of mont vermont uh contacted me she was a graduate student uh at uvm she's a black woman and uh she stopped at a street corner in burlington and on the opposite corner was a police officer it was at night but they could clearly see each other he then proceeded to follow her weaving in and out of the old north end and finally put his light on and stopped her when she pulled in front of her house and what he told her was the reason he had stopped her was that she um she had uh not turned on her turn signal uh a hundred feet before the stop sign and i just want you to know she was very clear it was pretextual she was traumatized by this she she's a young woman from georgia she didn't anticipate being treated that way in vermont she went home she didn't go to classes for two weeks because of the fear that this generated in her and the the the the perception of being targeted so i think we have to consider all of these all of these ramifications and to really think about focusing on what traffic policing is if there is an issue of you know other criminal activity detective work can get us to more closely hone who we are stopping uh and pursuing in a way that doesn't cause these disruptions to citizens read that ultimately undermines undermines trust in policing and i think you know we all want that we want to improve that relationship and so we should think about uh ending pretextual stops i think when a state like texas uh is uh on the verge of banning them uh i think it it says something and we might think about that here in vermont thanks thank you um representative colston thank you madam chair and uh thank you captain castler for your testimony on a personal note i i just want to share that i and my two beautiful black sons have had many many experiences with pretextual stops by police more than i ever want to remember so it is an issue and actually i wrote an op-ed many many years ago that it was an epidemic in burlington at that time uh and i i presented an op-ed on driving while black in vermont so it's here it's real um i just want to share a story about why this work is important several years ago the president of the national league of cities and towns came to vermont an african-american he flew into burlington airport ran out of car and proceeded to drive to montpelier where he was going to inspect the potential site to have a national meeting along the way he got a phone call so he pulled over and no sir then he pulled over and got on the call he saw these blue flashing lights pull up behind it oh crap he said something else um he was in fear once again of driving while black instead the state police officer pulled up and asked him is there anything he can do to help him he was shocked that's not what he expected he proceeded on his trip he made the decision to come to vermont with this national meeting and that's the impact of this clearly we have got to get this right as we look forward if there's no way our economy is going to be sustainable we don't attract and support people of color that's what's driving our population growth in vermont and our country so this is a very important issue thank you thank you rep colston um representative vihovsky um thank you everyone and thank you rep colston for for sharing that um i am sort of thinking larger than simply pretextual stops but i'm wondering if there are actually some stops that we could eliminate as stops and use an alternate form of of notification an example i have is if someone had a tail light out could we rather than stop them have a notice mailed to their home that said you have a tail light out get it fixed you know that my understanding is that all that that data would be available by running the registration so i'm wondering if that's a method of a utilizing our resources towards towards real public safety immediate public safety issues and also you know potentially taking lowering our traffic stops and and taking one place where bias could happen sort of out of the mix not but and and really i don't think it could would only be a tail light it could be you know any sort of defective equipment i'm wondering what thoughts are on on that i would be fine with that um representative lefave um thank you madam chair i'm not sure if um sorry he put his hand down um doctor he had his hand up i don't sure if you want to go first okay i have a couple questions and i apologize they're from a little bit back in our testimony um so um captain kessler do you have the data from when you said how many people were pulled over from the from bsp about how many were in state residents or people that were traveling through i don't expect that now but would that be something that would be available to us um i can only i have data that it says uh out of state place um so we would assume that they are out of state residents but yes um we do have that data and we can supply it to you and i i fully understand that could be a vermont or using a rental that could be somebody that bought a car and hadn't transferred plates yet um and and then also sorry i had them written down we're gonna skip over some that were answered um so when we were talking about burlington i think this was stephanie um and how there had been a decrease in stops from 2016 to 2020 but there'd been no change in incident rate um the dispatcher in the amount of decrease in officers that burlington has had um this was a policy decision by the police chief thank you um and so i have been one of the residents that has actually called captain kessler myself and asked her to please come patrol my area um she used to cover my district i believe she has moved um to a different district now um and that is something that is um a danger in the town of orange where i live we have a route 302 that runs right down and people seem to think that is um call it calligate sometimes so with that i do know that we have asked for them to even sit and like just put their blue lights on like just make it aware that there's an uh this officer present um in same thing the same philosophy is going into like a work zone you have to see the blue lights and your mind says slow down and so i just um i'm wondering if we get rid of some of the traffic stops or if we get some get rid of some of the violation stops as our representative he said of a tail light which in my my feeling is a tail light being out is a safety concern for the public because you could then not be able to see somebody if if they didn't have the proper lighting around their vehicle but that's another discussion so i my concerns just rise when we start saying you want to lower or get rid of things um i would like people just to obey the law um and it is very disheartening to hear that uh people are having incidents like this where they are being uh profiled and i i feel the more data we can collect the better but also getting rid of police i think we have seen overwhelming evidence around that people sometimes are taking back those words of uh not having them do certain things because the crime has gone up and accidents have gone up and they're asking for support to come back and when we talk about places like philadelphia i don't want to compare our crime rates there yes there probably are some things going on there that i would not want to have happen here in vermont um and i would stand right alongside people to not allow that to happen to our residents or people visiting vermont but i also do not want the lack of protection to cause us to then wish we had wish we had help thank you all right any other questions for captain kessler all right um dr nuss red and longo thank you for um for for letting us take captain kessler first and captain i hope that you feel better and that whatever it is that's plaguing you resolves itself without too much suffering thank you madam chair and thank you committee for listening dr nuss red and longo welcome hello thank you for having me again um there are a couple things that i want to mention in terms of i mean what's working you've heard a lot of what's working um i don't want to be gloomy guss but there are some things that we need to make all of i think the positive steps that both um dr segrino and barb kessler have mentioned even more um solid frankly um one of these things would have to be um um again and you all know this resources um we've already discussed when dr segrino was testifying about what goes on with the smaller departments um this was an issue i brought up in testimony two years ago that people were holding up vsp as a kind of gold standard for data collection and i remember going yes and we have a person who is hired and works for the agency of digital services who enjoys doing data i'm not going to comment on that not going to comment on that but she very much enjoys doing this she does this in her free time and if that's a gold standard i'm a little concerned because we have a lot of departments around the state that maybe two or three people and the gathering of the data at least at that point was really somewhat there's there's a lack of understanding i've noticed and i say this also is cherubly our dap um about what it requires to do this work it's a lot more than people understand um and i think that resources need to go out to departments that in fact do not have a lot of people um i've been hearing this anecdotally from different departments about the kind of troubles that they have and they know where i stand politically on this so there's sort of it you know there's an immediate like but they get it i get it and i still think that that's something that needs to be brought forth right now so that was that's one of the major points that i um would like to make to you um another one would concern resources at the academy which is where a lot of the training exists to shape curriculum and programs um that has been desperately needed for some time uh they've been asking for that for some time and that needs to happen and i can say that certainly from the standpoint of someone who does an enormous amount of training at the academy um there are many other in-service trainings that i can imagine they literally do not have the resources to support them i find that frustrating both personally and professionally and so that would be something else that i would uh frankly beg the committee to consider i also know that the academy needs a data analyst that can provide dashboards around the data that they get the raw data that they get now and dashboards meaning something that the public can easily look at these easily access first easily look at and easily understand because the raw data on its own doesn't necessarily tell someone who's not schooled in stats what they're looking at and so there needs to be more there need to be more resources dedicated to the interaction between law enforcement and the communities that law enforcement serves um of course that data um helps with making policy decisions or training decisions certainly around not nearly law enforcement but relationships with the mental health communities children the elderly so on people who are housing um who have problems with housing all of those things um and that's why those resources need to be there so that kind of training can exist and be given basically i would feel statewide to as many officers if not all of them as possible i think that needs to happen um i certainly know that the that um director simons of the academy feels that policy and data need to go hand in hand with building up scenario training um that that's another part of the training a sort of sub issue here that's actually fairly expensive that there need to be resources for that training works very well and it i personally certainly feel needs to be um facilitated um i think that the another issue that i would point out would be time that changes are made and changes take a while to take effect they don't always move as quickly as they might two anthropologists who were not my teachers in graduate school but whose work i know intimately well once wrote in one of their most famous books that culture is a reactionary formation and just think about that for a moment culture and this is always culture is always a reactionary formation okay it doesn't happen overnight given that what change i mean i am not white i would love change to happen at this very minute i am also a reasonable person and understand as i said culture being reactionary that's not going to happen so we need to have time to see that these measures that we put into place actually bear fruit if you have a if you have an experiment running for a year to ask for results at six months is kind of problematic for a lot of reasons that i don't think i really have to explain um i would say that's really pretty much my wish list as it were my only other one would be um the data the division of data racial what are we calling it now it's had so many names in its incarnations the division of racial justice statistics um i think that that bears a lot of a weight in what's been already put forth here that this would standardize data and that has to happen there has to be a standardization going on um it's very difficult you end up comparing apples and oranges at worst and not even having data in certain circumstances as one of our reports showed at in another circumstance so that has to stop as well and i think that that division um and its support is essential in all of this as well um the one i guess one last thing that i would put out is a plea again for qualitative a qualitative analysis one of the things that i certainly know from my professional work and many of you may know that i do ethnomusicology species of anthropology is we write ethnographies and ethnographies are not totally qualitative but there are a lot of qualitative um they're very qualitative and certainly when discussing smaller populations or indeed smaller populations in larger groups that kind of approach is important now this is not a zero sum game right i'm not saying we'll do away with quantitative analysis that is not what i'm saying and i want to go on the record is going that's not what i'm saying there's this american tendency to go it's a one or zero not doing that um i just think that we need to put some resources into that as well thank you um captain kesler yeah just to follow up on that uh for the pre-tech stops if vermont state police is doing well in that area which i really hope it is um from your perspective and the other agencies are not i don't know if it's a law issue or banning issue i think it's a training issue and i would like to have all the other department experience the same training that we are getting um we are doing all new officers in the basic academy um but there are some probably older officers or ones that are out on the road or maybe i'm not sure or ones that we just haven't gotten to yet so um maybe that's an option for you to think about as well but i just offer that as input thank you yeah i think one could reasonably expect that um you know that there probably needs to be sort of a loop of continuous improvement and that uh initial training might be part of it but that uh supervision and check-in might be part of it as well um and when i think about the law enforcement landscape across the state you know i mean vermont state police is in a in a unique position in that you know you have the capacity to um you know to do that internal reflection uh and to have a conversation with officers whose statistics might you know indicate that that there are an outlier um but so many of our law enforcement agencies are you know one or two person three person shops and you know the entity that um the entity that that oversees them is you know a largely volunteer select board in a small community where everybody knows everybody so um you know the the opportunities for breakdown of that uh of that need for training supervision you know conversation retraining all of that is uh is just pretty vast in many of our smaller agencies and it's a it's a big concern um questions from committee members all right we have been at this now for an hour and a half and what i would like to do is just take a 15 minute break give folks an opportunity to stretch and we're going to come back and speak with the folks from the criminal justice council um we uh i would like to orient the committee to the role of the criminal justice council in uh in in a number of these um aspects not only training but uh data collection and and whatnot and so um let's take a break until 1045 and