 I'll make one minor minor modification to the agenda. Um, we have, uh, I believe our new commissioner Jack Keith and the attendees and. I swan maybe like, like a 60 seconds for him to say hello. Um, after we do the motion. Um, after, sorry, after we do agenda item 2.01. So I know apologies. Um, again, I'm 5.01 commission response to annual report. I motion that as a second. Second. All in favor of many of the agenda to have a short introduction from Jack Keith raise your hand to say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. That'll be a five point zero two. And with that, uh, move on to commission actions agenda item 2.01 2.02 2.03. That's the approval of the minutes from special commission meeting on for 2022. The regular commission meeting on 426 2022 and the regular question meeting on 524 2022. I'm sorry. I don't want to make a motion, but I'd like to comment on the minutes. All right. Comment away. So the second set of minutes, I don't see on board docs. I see that it says approve the minutes from regular commission meeting on 426, but there are no minutes to look at everything should be attached. I did go in and add as you requested the last meeting to put the memo that was approved at that meeting are included in the regular meeting that was on. On 426. I did have trouble getting the minutes to pull up on my work computer and my lap and my work laptop, I was able to get them to pull up on my regular computer. So if y'all can't see it now, I think that I best contact board docs because I did have trouble actually yesterday trying to pull them up as well. Okay. And as I'm on the board docs, yeah, it's, I'm only seeing available minutes for 524. So the other ones I was getting like a screen of just a complete black screen Stephanie is not what is happening to you as well or there's just nothing to click on. There's nothing to click on. Okay, see I have something to click on, but it doesn't open. At the end of the world. Go forward. I was just going to mention the same thing I have something to click on for the main meetings but not for the other two. Okay. In that case, then, are we comfortable voting on the minutes for 524 22. Have people are people able to review that. I would like to make a comment on those as well. Absolutely. If you look at those minutes. They, I think it's really would be helpful if the commentary was in complete sentences. These look like notes. And I think it would be hard with passage of time to go back and actually reconstruct what the discussion was. This is in particular with regard to general Larson's data report. So I think, yeah, I think it needs to be complete sentences and a narrative so that we understand what actually happened at the meeting. All right. In that case. I say we postpone then. Yeah. So we'll be on the next meeting. So I'm going to post on these bodies on the windows to all now next regular scheduled meeting, which will be. Sorry. That'll be July 26. So I put that on hold. And then that moves on to public form. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mila. I just also with regards to the minutes for May. would, I guess I would like clarification, better clarification, and fuller thoughts as to what I discussed about some of the language that I found and continue to find offensive towards the Black community. So I don't know if that can be updated in the minutes or if it would be better for me to write a statement. You know, I can go back and re-listen to the meeting and then just, you know, put down the thoughts that I expressed. I just want that clearly documented. I just want to concur with Milo. I think that's a very important thing to do. And thank you for bringing it up, Milo. Yes. So just before we move on from these agenda items, if you are intending to table them to the next meeting, that would need a vote just before moving forward. Okay. Thank you for that. All right then. I moved to table from these minutes until we fall through with some of the things that were said by Milo and Stephanie for the next meeting. Do I have a second? Seconded by Stephanie. All in favor raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Can you hear me? Kind of. Quite all right. You're coming through a little choppy there, so I'm going to do a quick voice vote. Stephanie, in favor? I'm in favor. Kevin, I thought you were going to hand but you are muted. FYI, Susie? Yes. In favor? Milo? Yes. In favor? And Shereen? I'm going to mark that down as I'm abstaining from the vote and I believe that passes one, two, three, four, five yeses, one abstention and one not present. All right. Moving on to agenda item 3.01, which is the public forum. If there's anybody in the attendees that would like to speak, please raise your hand and be promoted to the panel. And while people are doing that, Shereen, did anybody email you with any public comment? Just Mr. Keith had asked to speak during public forum but you did just give him some space before the meeting, so that was the only one. All right. Well, I guess, well, no, Jackie, if you want to promote him now, that's fine. Hey, Jack, what's that video on board? The floor is yours. If you may just need to unmute yourself. Thank you. Sorry for that. Just to clarify, I really didn't mean to request time to speak. I just said if it was appropriate to say hello just to have the functionality to do so. So with that, I'll just say hello. You may have all seen my application, so I don't know if I really need to summarize that. But just very briefly, living in Burlington for the last 10 years, with my family, we moved from overseas, raised our child here. We live in Ward 1. I have a legal background. I graduated from Mount Law School. I currently work for a company in Burlington called, used to be called ARD. It's now known as Tetra Tech, but we implement projects for USAID overseas. So I do have some experience working on some policy issues doing comparative research, some data analytics. And I think I just really wanted to say that I've been really impressed with the work this commission has done. They've made tremendous progress, and I just think it's an honor to be in a position to support you in any way that I can. So that's really all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate hearing that, and I appreciate you looking forward to working with you. Welcome, Jack. Yeah, welcome, Jack. Welcome. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. All right. And I'm sorry, Shannon, was there anything else for bubble forum? That's it. Awesome. And all right then, moving on to agenda item 4.01, the Chiefs Report. And with that, I give the floor to Chief Mirrod. Thank you, Mr. Co-Chair. If you would allow me to, I'm going to share my screen. Is it possible to have everybody just meet their mics very quick? I'm just getting some feedback. I'm not sure who it is. Thank you. Thank you. So hopefully this will be brief. It's really just about the data. I want to thank Shannon for assistance that she does on this. She does such great work on this, and I think on making certain that this meeting runs well and that the various parts of it are done. So thanks, Shannon, for all that work. I begin with the priority response plan, the revision to it, simply as a way of grounding folks who may be seeing these for the first time. This is not new to you, but it may be to members of the public. We have revised the priority response plan. We have not changed any categorization of incident with regard to priority one, two, or three. But we have turned several types of incidents into CSO response and other incidents into online response. We also checked year date data, as we do each month. Our stacked percentage has risen, as I anticipated that it would. It was 14% at the previous presentation. It's 16% at this presentation. The differential between 2021 and 2022 has grown to 11% increase over last year, still lower than 2020 or 2019, but catching up to 2020. Will it cross it? Probably not by the end of the year. Again, if we remove traffic and foot patrol, both of them proactive officer engagements, that decrease diminishes a lot. You'll note, however, that this year has also changed. We're up this year in those, and by a decent percentage, foot patrol has picked up, and the use of the CSOs for foot patrol has been very successful. You'll see them out a lot, especially in the evenings and well in the day times and in the evenings. Total incident volume shows 2022 breaking away from 2021. Again, will it cross 2020? Not certain, wouldn't bank on it, but it may. Priority one, of course, are more important for us with regard to deployment. There are simply incidents that are of a greater concern for members of the public. There's certainly greater concern for us as we deploy. These are the things that cause us to respond. Irrespective of what the incident may or may not turn out to be upon arrival, we have to go when called for these kinds of incidents. As you can see, it is higher than it's been in the period that I keep track of. I keep track of a rolling five years, five years plus the year that we're in. Last year, we would have had 2016 on there. I believe it's higher than 2016 as well, although I don't know that. I'm saying that from memory, not straight from the data, but it is certainly higher than the past five years. A number of various incident categories. Again, these are incident categories. They are different from offenses or from Niber's data, but they are what we respond to and what we hear from the public. To a certain extent as well, if the public describes an aggravated assault, and that is the call type, if we get there and it turns out to be something else, it may get recategorized as that something else, but if we get there and parties are gone and we do have a crime but perhaps maybe not an offense to record, maybe we don't have an arrest to make, what matters is the public still believed it to be an aggravated assault as they described it to the dispatch, and that contributes to the sense that the public has of where we are with regard to these categories of incident. For the most part, 2022 is higher in a lot of categories, lower in some. In general, the progress that was being made 2018 through early part of 2020 is disappearing fast. This is our current staffing. We have 63 and 53 actually available, and the breakdown is there. There are 10 who are on various forms of leave or long term injury, who are at the police academy. There are a total of 15 supervisors, but I count 14 here because one of those supervisors is among the injured, so I didn't want to double count him. There are nine detectives. There are six airport officers that's down from seven because we currently are running lean on our midnight, and we have three officers in special assignments, recruiting, narcotics, and domestic violence. Three specialty roles, each of which is integral. We cannot grow without the recruitment officer. We need a domestic violence, and the volume of narcotics complaints necessitates that we have a road officer assigned to narcotics separate from the narcotics detectives. But that leaves us with 21 officers on patrol. We are going to get our, we have one officer who's on field training. He will be returned, will be a solo officer sometime early in July, and then we lose another officer just two days later who has chosen to go to Milton. That said, we had a really, really important night last night with the unanimous decision by the city council under the leadership of President Karen Paul to adopt Mayor Weinberger's budget. The mayor worked incredibly hard on that budget over a long period of time as did CAO Catherine Shad. We put together a fair budget, a budget that is predicated on a rebuilding plan. The mayor has presented that in other venues, and I would encourage the public to look for that both on board docs and it will soon be on the BPD website. That rebuilding plan is a ambitious plan, but it is an achievable plan over the next three years for us to get back to the numbers that were ultimately adopted by the city council in a partial reversal of its decision from June 2020 to move towards a number that this commission supported of 87. And I do believe that we can do that from these numbers with that budget and just as or perhaps more importantly with the contract that we are currently negotiating. I do believe that that contract is I think I'm optimistic that we're going to see that contract agreed upon very soon. I'm hopeful that it will be a strong, fair contract. I'm hopeful that it will be something that will allow us to grow. There is an avenue whereby it is substantially or sufficiently that it is a sufficiently lucrative contract, attractive contract that we could start immediately attracting lateral applicants in a way that allows us to begin to move from this. My initial my projections prior to that contract discussion and prior to the budget were that we would lose more officers in the course of this calendar year than we bring aboard. I believe we are on track to have four officers in the next academy that starts in August. That could change. We could lose any number of those. They could get down there and either they could there could be injury. They could not particularly care for it. They could fail out. But I do believe we will have four officers in that academy. However, I believe we will lose more officers than that between now and the end of the calendar year. If we are able to bring aboard some lateral officers owing to a strong contract, then the balance changes and we may be able to actually end the year at this number or perhaps even a little bit higher than 63. If we can do that, that would be great because my calculations have actually been predicated on us being lower at the end of this calendar year on the 1st of January 2023, being probably around 60 or even 59, and then beginning to rebuild. If that happens sooner rather than later, that would be terrific. In the meantime, however, we are continuing to work hard on non-sworn resources and the budget last night gave us the tools to do that. We have our community service officers. They are unarmed. They are unsworn. We currently have seven. The new budget authorizes a total of 12 and therefore we'll be working to hire five more. I believe that we have some in the hopper and I think that we will be able to bring aboard additional officers, CSOs in that role. It's turned out to be a very strong role, a valuable role, definitely is able to project municipal presence on the marketplace and in other parts of town. It has helped with the hill section, particularly with regard to folks who are younger and a little bit louder in that section of town, traditionally college students, and being able to also do touches with folks in avenues and places like the parks and the beaches. We have beach and parkers this year. We did not last year. Those are generally younger folks. Oftentimes they are people who are in between college years. It's a summer job. It is a part-time job. You'll see them in bright yellow polo shirts on the marketplace, on the waterfront, on the bike path, on the beaches. Having five of those again this year is terrific. It is a good feeder for us. We often have turned some of those beach and parkers into police officers down the road. I'd be very happy if we were able to do that with our bunch that we've got this year. They're really talented, personable, caring young people. I think that they would make good police officers and would represent the profession well, although most of them are going back to college for another couple of years. The CSLs are the other piece of our non-sworn resource building efforts. We have three currently with the great support of the police commission. We were able to articulate a need for more. The public safety continuity plan that I initially presented to this body in December of 2020 and then to the city council in December and again in January and again in February of 2021 called for the numbers that we now have with this budget. I'm really gratified by that. I'm really gratified to be able to actually build out to the piece and the picture that we anticipated and drew then. We started working on that plan as soon as the resolution went through in June of 2020. Basically on July 1st with the beginning of that fiscal year 2020, we immediately began thinking about what would be contained by that public safety continuity plan. I was prepared to present it a good deal earlier. We waited to present it for other movements to happen with regard to the joint committee and the potential development of assessments, both by what ultimately became the Talitha report and the CNA report. But the continuity plan is the real foundation on which this rebuild is happening. And I think that having the resources now to develop it as fully as it was envisioned is very important. We'll be able to bring aboard six CSLs instead of the three that we currently have hiring additional three. And I believe there too we have good candidates and I'm confident that we'll be able to get that definitely in the fiscal year, potentially in the calendar year. This is a slide I've shown before but again for those who click on this once we mount it on our Burlington Police Department City of Burlington website, I can't guarantee that people are going to go sequentially through each chief's report. So there's certain things I think are important enough for us to show each time. That includes that priority response model includes this and a description of what these tiers of service do and how they function. This too is something you've all seen before but is worth repeating. The city center area, we are now using this when we have four officers available. There are many shifts where we do not. There are many shifts where the four officers who are staffed on the shift are not all present instead leaving us only three and we function on a north-south deployment cover north cover south. But when we have four we are putting officers on the CCA. We are putting officers on north and rover north and rover south and we're putting every day irrespective of whether we're actually able to have a CCA we are putting the CSOs on the CCA when they are available. When they are otherwise engaged of course whether that's because of a non-injury crash that occurs in the new north end or a animal incident that occurs in the south end then they can't be on the marketplace or within the confines of the CCA. But that is their base even on days when the officers are functioning in a cover north cover south function. And that's the presentation I have. It's relatively shorter than normal and I'm hopeful that that is it bodes well for the for the meeting. And I'll stop sharing now. Awesome Chief, thank you. Appreciate that. Any questions or comments for the Chief with regards to the report? And I can't quite see all hands. So if you raise your hand please just take a floor. Okay Chief I'm interested to know how we're doing with applications for CSOs and CSOs in terms of race. Have we had people of color apply? Have we hired people of color? Are we moving in that direction? Yes we have people of color in both roles. Can I ask how many? We have one person of color among our seven CSOs and we have one person of color among our two people of color among our four the CSL team. The supervisor is a woman of color. Thank you. We lost your hand raised. Thank you. I was wondering if we could get back to having the report posted to board docs at least the Friday before the meeting. It's just very helpful to be able to look at it in advance. And I think for public viewing as well it would be helpful to make sure that it's posted for for public to review or to come back to it. And it's something that's come up before so it would be appreciated if that could happen. I have just a couple of other things. I with regards to the contract I believe that I'm so sorry I'm having a very very hard time here right now. I'm going to terrific connections all over on stable for one year. Try like the last five seconds over again. Can you hear me now? Perfect. Much better. Thank you. Okay. Although I don't know whose dog that is. That's mine. Sorry. Okay. I was just saying that with regards to just a few thoughts I have on my mind. The CNA contract had a number of items. The CNA consultants report had a number of items that needed to be presented during contract negotiations. So of course we're not going to know what happens with those items until the whole process is complete. I believe that officers deserve a fair contract. But I believe the citizens of Burlington also deserve a fair contract. And I hope that these items that were brought forward are being taken into consideration seriously and that we're not being, we being the community being put in a position of disadvantage to do what we can to offer additional financial support. I'm not naive. I understand the labor market. But to really understand that in addition to some of these other things like housing support, et cetera, that the city gets something in return with regards to oversight and things that will overall improve the relationships within the community. This is something that has been discussed many times before. And I will just say it again, the different communities throughout the city are not always treated the same, which is why we have different relationships with the department and some of these relationships need to be repaired. So and overall better communication because you talk to somebody in one part of the city, they really don't understand why the other part of the city would not trust the department. And there is still significant factor. The officers continue to feel that. I haven't heard that there is a change based on what they expressed in their report that they gave us about their survey from last summer. And although I'm happy to hear less of the political blame, there is still some of it and reminding people again that the counselors get their seats from the people that vote for them. And you just continue to blame the counselors without adjusting the root causes of distrust in the community continues to put the department at a disadvantage because more than ever, the department needs the community's help. So I just I feel that some of these things keep getting in the loss, especially around the discussions about race. I feel that certain things have been brought up time and time again, and they're just dismissed. And I feel we don't always that if the intention isn't there, I can understand that the intention isn't there. But if the result happens, and someone's trying to communicate that, that the experiences of people have to be respected. And there has to be honest look as to why people would feel a certain way. And there has to be also understanding cheap that your words are very powerful as a chief of police acting chief of police for the city of Burlington. So when people hear some of your language, and they repeat it, but they add racist overtones to it, that hurts people in the community and that puts people in danger. So I just really would like and I continue to plead. I mean, I guess at this point, I'm just kind of begging you to take this into consideration. I just feel you've you've been dismissive and it comes out of frustration. You're frustrated, right? You're working really hard. Everybody's working all this over time. You're frustrated. But in your frustration, you are inadvertently creating more problems for yourself. And you are insults you're I get again, it's not intentional, but I need you to understand that, you know, I personally as a member of black community feel insulted. Now, I know not all black people feel the same way. I get that. But some do. And then some are just completely checked out like literally, well, what do you expect? You know, I mean, this is the way they are, you know, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear people give up, not cooperate with the department when we need people to be cooperating with the department to assist with certain types of incidents. I don't want to hear that officers don't want to hear that. So this is what I just would like people to think about because this has been weighing on me very, very heavily. I have never I've been upset a lot over the last three years since I did the committee on policing special special committee on policing policy and then later joining the commission. This is the most upset I have ever been. I just, I don't even know how to express how upset I am. I just feel that language that's used about the black community, you wouldn't talk about white on white violence, you wouldn't talk about why don't write crime, you wouldn't you wouldn't say those things. So when you do that about the black community, and you're not more specific about who you're concerned about, and you don't have a plan of engagement, it takes us to a really dark place. Thank you. Thank you for that, Milo. Stephanie, it's your hand raised. Yeah, Chief Mirad, I wanted to go back to the slide that you showed in which you identified the types of incidents that CSOs would respond to. Can we get that back up? So Chief Mirad, can you clarify once again there are now seven CSOs, is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And so can you tell us what's the impact? I can't, the screen's not loud and large enough, I mean, for me to read this now. Can you tell us what percentage of calls are now being handled by CSOs and what's the impact on the burden on officers, sworn officers? Sure. So the total universe of these calls is in the total universe of all those calls for service in 2021 was 4,700. So, you know, out of the total number of calls over the course of the year, it's less than a quarter. It is, back in 2017, the total universe of those calls was about 8,000, but back in 2017, I believe the total volume of calls was somewhere around 32 or 33,000. These kinds of calls for service are not, that's also the total universe of every single instance of those types of calls for service. There are going to be instances where CSOs don't respond, either because there's no CSO available or there's no CSO on shift. We do not staff the midnight with CSOs nor do I intend to. But there are instances in which an officer is going to pick that up instead. What we don't do right now is give these to an officer in, as a default. So the officer does not, the dispatch is not to give these to officers unless there's either something has changed in the incident that requires an officer response and CSO can't handle it or it's metastasized beyond the ability of CSOs to address or again, there's no CSO on. Although, because of our current midnight staffing, most of the time, these are all priority three calls and we are never not, we are never responding to priority three calls on the midnight. We just don't have the resources. So we're almost always in that priority one posture. Nevertheless, for example, there are, you know, crashes are big ones, non-investigated and non-investigated and property damage only crashes in 2021 were 185 incidents of non-investigated and 619 incidents of property damage only. Now it's possible that a CSO gets to a scene and sees that an airbag has been deployed, which is usually shorthand for the idea that A, there may be an injury that comes up after the fact or B, the damage is going to be such that it's going to exceed the monetary value that allows for a CSO to do that investigation. What's the monetary value? Off the top of my head, I don't know it. I believe it's $4,000. I believe it's a total of $4,000 and maybe $2,000. I wish... And so legally CSOs would not be able to respond to those calls? It requires a long form and the long form has to be conducted. It has to be filled up by a sworn officer. And that's by the DMV in the state. So you get to the scene of a crash that's between a... I don't know if somebody in town is driving a Bugatti then it doesn't matter what they did to that car. It's going to be more than four grand. So that is a possibility. Some portion of that universe of incidents is not going to be CSOs. In 2021, there were 67 fireworks calls. So those are going to be given to CSOs. There are a certain motor vehicle complaints. It depends on whether we're talking about a traffic stop or a motor vehicle complaint or motor vehicle complaint that's based on driving behavior. That may be moved to an officer or not responded to stacked. But if it's a motor vehicle complaint about parking or about other kinds of issues, then a CSO can handle. And then the biggest really is noise. Noise complaints of those 4,700 complaints in 2021 of all these CSO eligible calls, the plurality of them were noise complaints 876. So that's the largest single category of incident. And then the next is found or lost property, much of which actually happens here at the PD where either somebody turns it in or it's the return of a property item that has been found to a person. And those are CSO tasks as well. So those are the kinds of things that CSOs are doing. So just to clarify, so roughly 25% of calls are now handled by CSOs? No, I think it's less than 25%. I don't think 4,700 is 25% of what our call volume was last year. 20%? 20%. Okay. And I don't see on the list here, it's small. And so maybe me, but are welfare checks on this list? No, welfare checks are a police officer. And why would that be? Because most welfare checks are predicated on the fact that the person is in some kind of crisis or maybe the victim of a crime or may have indicated thoughts of either suicide or may be deceased. So for example, when I was on a ride along, we were asked to do a welfare check for a person whose mother had not heard from them and who had, they believe was bipolar. That would not be an incident that you could send a CSO to. CSOs are not trained for that at all. And the officer in question noted to me, he also was not trained for those kinds of calls. What training do officers get for welfare checks? Officers get a lot of training around the idea of emotional distress and around mental health. They get components at the police academy and they get additional components in the, during our, both during field training and as a component of our patrol procedures and other kinds of training. We send, we have been sending more and more officers to team two training. And it's not nearly the possibility of emotional distress at the scene. It's also the possibility of a dead body, of a crime scene. And those are things that officers are trained for regularly, if in part because of vast experience. Can you talk about the training that CSOs do get? CSOs get training on these issues around ordinance violations, around animal issues, around noise complaints, around how to write municipal tickets. They are taught how to do the short form for crashes. They are taught how to do the return of property and the proper tagging of property that's brought into the precinct and into headquarters. They're taught to do Vin via verifications and fingerprint roles. They are taught to do issues around, as I said, a lot of animal issues. Do you plan on using CSOs for traffic stops? No. And can you explain that why? Because traffic stops are inherently dangerous. We don't do very many of them anymore at all. And CSOs don't have, they don't have the law enforcement power to detain someone. A traffic stop is a detention. These CSOs have no law enforcement powers, none. So they can't do things that require the ability to temporarily abrogate a person's Fourth Amendment rights. Great. All right. Thank you for that. I do think that I just do want to underscore the 20% is a large share of calls. And so it's very gratifying that we have those resources to supplement the department. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. And sorry, Chief, I just want to jump in right after that. Does that include like not being able to like issue tickets and summons and things like that? CSOs aren't allowed to do that as well? No. CSOs can issue municipal tickets. They can issue tickets that are only based on city ordinance. They cannot issue tickets or citations or make arrests that are based on the Vermont statutes. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Any further questions? And furthermore, if a person refuses to identify him or herself to a CSO, the CSO has no recourse. A police officer can detain that person and demand identification. A police officer can also escalate that matter into an issue of resistance or find a VSA charge that meets the standards that have been set before them. CSOs don't have that capacity. I've heard. Thank you for the clarification. Any further questions or comments with regards to the key support to make? Susie, I'm sorry you needed. As you know, in the south end, we've had someone, particularly down the Welles Street area, flossing tires. We had two incidents in the fall and we had one about two weeks ago. And two of my neighbors have been hit now three times with two tires. Do they have any recourse to get any kind of funding for that? Do you mean to be reimbursed in some way? That would be a question for victim services that sits in the police department, but it's run by CEDO. And those individuals, in normal practice, if a case like that comes through, those individuals will be contacted by the victim's advocate to see if they need things. Well, that hasn't happened. Now it's the third time and it's six tires, six or eight tires for some people, which is a lot of money. So okay, thank you. I think it might be interesting and worthwhile to request a presentation from victim services. That's an excellent idea. Yeah, happy to have a conversation about that. Moving on to agenda item 5.01, questions, response to the annual report. And with this, I will give the floor to coach our staff at CEDO. Okay. Thank you. So this statement that is on board docs is something the commission developed in response to the annual report. And so our task here is to vote on this as a motion to share both post to our website and to share with the media and interested parties. I don't know that there's much more to add that we identified what we thought were some of the sailing aspects of the report. And we have some recommendations for going forward. One of those includes focusing, continued focus on the racial disparities that we observe, especially in use of force. There has been some improvement with regard to racial disparities in traffic stops, and that's gratifying. But the disparities in use of force are really excessive. And the question is, why is this happening? We are recommending that the city and the Burlington Police Department engage the services of the Center for Policing Equity. It's an organization that is staffed largely by former police chiefs that is able to look into the data and to, I would say, support the police department and understanding better the sources of those disparities, but also addresses a concern in the community. And the debate is whether those disparities are justified or unjustified. And we are now at a stalemate in that, in the sense that there is disagreement and no path forward would appear to be to rectify that, hence the recommendation of the commission that the city and the police department engage the services of the Center for Policing Equity to provide precisely those services to help move us forward on this important debate. And I therefore move that we adopt this motion. I believe Susie says she secures it. I raise a hand here when you do that. I also want to add on, thank you for, for drafting this document and putting everyone's thoughts into coherent sentences and pages. And yeah, I support it as well too. I guess all in favor of passing this motion and raising a hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. That passes unanimously with Serene raising her hand and in support. All right then. I guess either Stephanie and I will forward this to the respective parties that we outlined. Thank you for that. Moving forward on to agenda item 5.02, which is policy updates. I'll start with mine on DD33 Juval Ops. I have reached out to Spectrum Youth Center and Kingsview Center and in hopes of setting the time to have them review DD33 and identify points that they think are outdated or not. And once I kind of organize that out, once I get that time together and be with them, I'll let y'all know what comes out of that meeting. And I wish I had more to update on that one, but fortunately that is where I'm at on DD33. And if anyone has any other updates on policies that they're working right now, I will now it's time to speak. Stephanie. Commissioner Garrison and I and Commissioner Grant met to lay out a path, if you will, for revising the complaint policy. And we met with Chief Mirad last week, I believe it was, to discuss this. And I'll just mention three things that we're working on. We're starting with the easiest things first. One of them is that most complaint forms across the country include demographic information. And so we're going to revise the form to request demographic information for people who are willing to supply it. And we also need to provide an explanation to people as to why we're asking for that so that they won't be intimidated by the request for that information. That that the second piece that we're working on is that the categories for complaints. So what kind of complaint are you filing? We've found those categories aren't accurate adequate for us. And we're going to do some research and identify some revise the categories. And third, we spoke to Chief Mirad about this. And I'm glad Shireen is on the call. We are going to conduct a survey of complaints from the past year. And the Chief informed us that we have actually the contact info for people who submitted through the online portal. So we will be developing a very short survey to get feedback to understand better how we could improve the complaint process to meet folks needs. So that's where we are the harder items are further down the line. I appreciate that very much. And thank you for continuing to work on that. You three and everybody else. All right. Any questions or comments with the policy updates that the commissioners have right now? I am not seeing or hearing any. With that move on to agenda item 6.01, which is the use of force incident report. This has been on board for a couple of days. And I hope people had time to review it. I did. And are there any incidents that are sticking out to people that they would like to have the BWC reviewed? I've got a question. I'm just trying to find the incident. I just need a moment. Okay. It's number four on the list. So it was initially two females fighting. One female had been stabbed, but not by the female she had been fighting with. So was the female where use of force tactics needed to be used with? Was that the female who did the stabbing? The write-up I find is not clear on that. There were two females fighting in a large crowd. The officer didn't distinguish between who was victim or perpetrator. They were both fighting. Grab the female closest to him and did pull her away from the fight. I do understand that. My question is the female who is described as being on the receiving end, was she the one who stabbed? Like it says that the second female had been stabbed, but not by the female she had been fighting with. So I'm just not clear who did the stabbing. We're not clear on that either. It was a member of the crowd. Somebody in the crowd while she was fighting the other female stabbed her. There were a number of people fighting. It was a bit of a melee and were counted and somebody else stabbed her. We do not have a suspect in that. We have a semi-cooperative victim. The person who was the subject of the use of force, I believe was not the stabby, but was the person with whom the stabby was fighting. Presumably possibly a friend of the person with whom the stabby was fighting is the person who stabbed the stabby. Okay. So curious, what was the race of the other woman? I believe both of them were black. I know that the woman stabbed was black. So both of those two people were black. Okay. Okay, but we don't know who. Okay. Thank you. So sorry, just to clarify, would you like to review that BWC for incident number four? No, not for that incident. I'm going to be re-requesting some others that I did not have a chance to review in the time that we have allotted. I just have to try and time it because the only time I can really view this stuff is on the weekend. So if I get it and then the three days expires during the week, I just don't have a chance to view. So I'll be re-recasting a couple of other things, but I don't need to see that one. Thank you. All right. Are there any incidents on the support support that Commissioner would like to review? Not seeing or hearing any. If it's upon review of the incident report, yeah, change of your mind. Please reach out to D.C. Lebrac. All right, moving on. Moving on to agenda item 7.01, accommodations that have been received for May 2020. And this will give the floor back to Shannon. Thank you. I don't actually have only one that was for an officer that helped with a public assist. And that's the only one from May. Thank you. I have one to give for one of the CSOs. I forget his name. Older gentlemen, Sally Balding. I believe this was the last week at the Jazz Fest. I had a drunk person come up to my door person who is currently transitioning and this person started to rape them and just be a very unpleasant person. My door person told them to that they weren't allowed in. I told them to leave. The person wouldn't leave. I went outside to try to get this person to move on. They wouldn't. That's about five minutes of talking with them. The CSO question had pulled up across the street, stepped out of this car in about 30 seconds, looking at us across the street, knew something was up, came over and was able to get the individuals away from our business and got them to walk himself home. So I really appreciated that person coming in there and the escalating that situation for us. Any further ones? I'm not seeing or hearing any. Moving on to agenda item 8.01, commissioner updates and comments. I will jump onto this and tie this in with agenda item 9, which is next to agenda items. I will reach out to victim services and ask them if they would like to join us for a presentation on some of the services they provide to the community at our next scheduled meeting, which is on the 26th. I don't think we need a vote necessarily, but is that something that Mila brought that up before? Is that something else that people would be something that we would like to hear? We talked about here? I think it's a great idea. I am wondering if we don't have a full agenda in July, whether we want to hold a July meeting. It may be that we hold July but not August and actually it reminds me that we have to discuss our annual report. Which would typically be discussed at the July meeting. I'm in favor of having a July meeting. I think we will have a full agenda. I'd be very surprised if we did. But that is something that you think would be a good idea to have. Yeah, definitely. And you don't need to comment, but Shaker or not of the head, that's something that's okay with you all, Susie and Kevin. Thank you then. Are there any additional questions, updates, comments from the public? I am not seeing or hearing any. I'm moving on to agenda item 9.01, next agenda items. Discussion on the annual reports. That was one from Stephanie. Reaching out the victim service bureaus and policy update. Those are the three I have right now. And it's nothing jumping out of people right now. Please email either myself or Stephanie or Serene. And we'll be happy to add additional things to the agenda. And with that, sorry, Susie, you are muted. I'm sorry. As you know, I've had a little bit of a rough time with COVID. So I've missed a little bit. I'm interested in finding out just where we are with the issues Stephanie brought up in terms of contact and that larger police agency. Where are we with that right now? Center for policing equity. Yes. Well, we recommended to the mayor, and we're now recommending, again, that the police department engage their services. And so at this point, the next step would be for the police department to contact the center for policing equity. So Chief Murat, is that something you're on board with? I would have to discuss that with the mayor. So you don't have an opinion on that? Or I'm sorry, I missed some time because I was sick. I just trying to get caught up here. The specific things that have been raised, particularly, for example, the idea that racial disparities and use of force suggest that Burlington police officers see black people as inherently threatening or dangerous. I don't believe that to be the case, nor do the cases that we've shown every single month, every single use of force demonstrate that. Similarly, the idea that we now stop fewer black drivers, maybe evidence that black drivers are more likely to be stopped based on pretext than whites. I don't understand that conclusion. And similarly, there is an issue with the frequency of arrest from stops. Arrest requires probable cause and actually seems to contradict the statement above that. These are the rationales for a relatively expensive engagement with a, you know, and I know Dr. Kesey quite well. I worked with Phillip Goff on implicit bias training. And I have a high regard for that organization, but as I said, I would have to speak to the mayor about it. Just to clarify, the services are free. They actually are not costly. That portion is free. I think the broader issue is that we do have this disagreement about the data. And so bringing in a professional is objective that has an arms length relationship and policing experience can help all of us, hopefully to get some agreement because absent that we're simply going to view this issue differently. And I think we all want to move forward on it. I guess I bring this up, you know, because I'm wondering, since it is a time of rebuilding for the community and particularly rebuilding the force, it would make sense, you know, to start with the fundamentals, you know, that particularly are relevant in our community right now, which have to do with, you know, how we as a whole community, including everyone go forward. And we know there's some disparate feelings about how the police interact with different communities. So it seems like, especially since it doesn't cost us anything, it would be a good move as we go forward. And as you rebuild, you know, the police department. So that's why I'm asking the question. I would like to add that this would be looked upon as being a positive step. I think what is a huge issue is that, you know, I grew up watching Muhammad Ali and other boxers. So I always look upon the department at times, allowing itself to be put up against the ropes and and literally punching itself in the face. Because there's a lot of unforced errors. And there's a lot of unforced errors related to now I'm getting to baseball, but there's this stubbornness to recognize and acknowledge feelings in the community, feelings that officers, they feel strongly and have expressed in the strongest possible terms that that is why they are leading this community. So we have to be real about doing something that is going to address these issues and these differences. Like there has to be some effort to understand why people feel the way they do. And that's going to require a frank look about how certain interactions are carried out. We have discussed in executive sessions certain incidents that have occurred that we feel could have been handled better, not necessarily asking for punishment, asking for confirmation that officers are getting the coaching that they need, the re-review of training of directives of policies. And sometimes we can't get that. This stubbornness hurts the department. And that needs to be recognized. Thank you. When there has been requests for directive reviews, I have done directive reviews, I have done retraining, both with the department as a whole. I've explained that in executive session and in public session. Okay, I don't see Cebu in the West. I'm just going to speak. By doing this, it's not an admission of guilt. It's a recognition of perception. And that can help the whole entire community move forward and support you in terms of rebuilding the force. It's not a condemnation. It's an opportunity. What we're trying to do, I think, is to continue to support you in building a bridge to some communities where there's discomfort and sadness and anger about some of the ways things fall out for their community members. And I think that the only way we can move forward is by building that bridge. And this is an excellent opportunity to do so. It's a no-cost effort toward bringing in many new members to the department, having everybody kind of start off at the fundamental level with the help of this commission, this other organization. So you don't lose anything, you only gain. How does this entity bring anybody into the police department? Well, I'm hoping that you get information that might be helpful to you as you train them into the department. So everybody's clear. Go ahead. And then also just the willingness to participate, to be open to the possibility that it can improve relationships within the community. From a community engagement standpoint, that's important. And that can be used to also create a more positive experience that, you know, everything about the department comes off to some people as fear-mongering. And to other people, you know, it looks different. What we want is to, if someone's going to think about a lateral transfer in the Google Burlington, Vermont, you know, any officer looking to transfer or to move knows what the situation is nationally, or at least they should. And wherever they're moving from, they don't want to move into an area that they might find to be more stressful because all over this country, everybody is shorthanded. All over this country, people are taking retirements in higher numbers than they ever have, and people are leaving the profession completely or they're just moving to a place they think were being better, easier, or what have you. Someone's making a lateral transfer. They're going to be looking into Burlington, Vermont. And there's a lot of positive things about Burlington, Vermont. But when it comes down to doing the actual job and engaging with the community, that's going to be important. So this stubbornness about not wanting to do that engagement, because I think, I'm very thankful for that comment, because it's not some admission of guilt. I feel like there's always this feeling that people are trying to trap you or got you, or the level of defensiveness is unnecessary and hurts the department. It is not going to cost anything, and it could help, and it could bring some fresh eyes on a situation. Why not? If there's a possibility of improvement, I, I don't understand this, this continued defensiveness and stubbornness. I just do not think it serves the department well, and I don't think it serves our officers well. Thank you. I just want to underscore something that she just said, which is it's not a gotcha game in any way, shape, or form. It's an invitation to more support going forward, particularly when you're working to bring, rebuild the department. And it's an opportunity to rebuild that department on a solid foundation. That's perceived by all the communities within the Burlington area as an effort toward continuously moving forward in a respectful way to everyone. It's not a gotcha game. None of us have any interest in that whatsoever. Well put. No, thank you everyone for your comments. Right. There was an anticipated executive session. My only concern that I might need actually, wait, now we're good, we can't, we have four. Sorry, I couldn't count that. All right. By all one VSA 3.13A4, I would motion to move into executive session to discuss display, possible display with regards to BPD staff. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Susie. All in favor, raise your hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. So I met with Commissioner Hart and she may want to weigh in. I see her hand. Okay. I don't know if there was an internet issue, but maybe try speaking again, possibly you can hear you. Yeah, can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. Yes, you can. Okay. Sorry about this folks. I'm not in my home. Yes. So I'm sorry, I missed. I lost the connection for 30 seconds and then came back on to you chair saying or the chief saying we had met. So is the question whether we should go into executive session? Correct. Yes. So I don't, I certainly don't think we need a separate executive session this month. The only documents we have or the only issues we have are those which you've got in the emails today. So we didn't get any independent complaints, you know, that I usually forward to you. So we could certainly meet. I think it will be a matter of 10 minutes for a meeting or if, you know, it's up to the group whether you want to hold it till the next executive session or have a quick one and get those behind us. Darina, are you saying you need more information? No, I think actually the chief provided everything that we need in order to look at the, I believe there are two emails that I sent today. One was with the voicemail and the other was with summaries of the investigations. So the other thing I would say is, you know, perhaps it's just whether folks have questions about them. Okay. Personally, upon reviewing those things, I don't have any pertinent questions, least not ones that require immediacy on them. With that being said, I'm here at the world's group. If people would like to meet for that, I'm happy to do that. So I guess with that case, it's up to y'all that are here present. I'm okay with going ahead with the meeting. So we can stay on top of things. I'm fine too. Mila? Oops, sorry. Yes, that would be fine. Thank you. All right. Yeah. So yeah, I guess, I need to reintroduce the motion, Haley. I think it's been second, you know, it's been made seconded and voted on. So I think unless you're going to reconsider it, I think you're fine to move forward as voted on by the commission. Okay. Is there a separate link for that? I'm working on it now. Okay. I didn't know if we had it one or not. That's why, yeah, sorry. Awesome. That works out there because I can use a quick bathroom break before we jump into that set, jump into that. So yeah, that passed unanimously. So everyone that is tuned in on the public, thank you for joining us. Our next scheduled meeting is July the 26th at 6 p.m. As always, we'll be setting out the agenda for that meeting Friday before. Thank you to everyone for tuning in, joining with us, and we'll see y'all next month. And for purposes for a greater session, let's recess for, let's recess till 7.20. Let's recon me at 7.30 so we all take a bath and break and grab a glass of water. All right. Thank you all very much. Have a good night. Bye.