 I will move to adopted agenda as is for the second. Seconded by Shireen, raise your hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That passed unanimously. With that we move on to public forum. I've seen anybody email you. And if there's anybody in the attendees that would like to speak, please raise your hand and it will promote you to the panelists. I'm not seeing or hearing any. And without a close that out, move on to get item 4.01. You see memo in response to draft city ordinance on oversight and accountability. Sorry. Can we approve that? Get that. Was the minutes approved? Oh, I completely missed that. My apologies. My apologies. I'm 2.01 approval from the minutes from. 322. 2022. Hope everyone got the chance to look over the minutes. I, so I moved to adopt a minutes from 322 as is. Checked by Shireen. All in favor raise your hand to say aye. Hi. Milo, are you a favor? Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That passes unanimously. And all right. Jumping back to item 4.01. And with that, I will give the floor to Stephanie. The fine author of this document. Just want to say fine author with excellent comments from the commission and. Input from Anthony. That provided our comments and. The detailed comments. We just removed one version from board docs because it had comments that it shouldn't have. And I'm emailing the correct version of the. Ordinance with comments right now to Shannon to upload in just a couple of minutes, but just need to pause here to do that. So I think the question for us at this point is to. Do we have any. Edits that they'd like to suggest either of the two documents. And if not, I would move that we would approve these to be sent to the city attorney and the president of the city council. So I'm assuming that from not hearing from anybody. That you have no additional changes or wording that you'd like to make sure. I'm just wondering if we should take five minutes so we can see the changes. We're moving the comments. Okay. All right. So if you've seen it already, you've seen it. The only thing that's changed is we're moving the track changes and comments. And I'm almost there. Sorry. All good on my part. Same here. Thank you for compiling and organizing all of our thoughts into. Thank you for your time. This is a lot too. Much appreciated. I'm so sorry you muted. Oh, sorry. I appreciated the opportunity to advise the commission on it. So I'm not hearing any additional comments. So I would move that we as a commission accept these documents formally to submit to the city attorney and to the. The city council. Is there a second? Second. All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Or raise your hand. Aye. Milo. Aye. Okay. Any opposed. No abstentions. Okay. That passes unanimously. Thanks everybody. And thank you, Anthony, for taking the time to be here even briefly. Do you like to excuse me at this point? Yes. We're going to go on with other business unless you'd like to stay, but this, this concludes this. Component of the agenda. I will stay as a member of the. General public. Thanks. Awesome. All right. I'm moving on to agenda item 4.02 CNA committee update. And. It was my, it was my hope that, uh, well, sorry. So there's nothing to say. Updated. Last time. I gave an update. We had one final meeting after that. That was just. Um, the very last few recommendations on it. Um, the final matrix that has everyone's input. The committee. It's currently posted on the most recent. Public safety committee. Board docs. Um, And I spoke with. Council president Paul earlier on today. And the process of a right important thing a little bit longer than. Then anticipated, but it is her hopes that the report will be done at some point next week. The second I get up to this copy of the report, I will pass it all along to all of the y'all. Um, I don't have anything else to add. I don't know if you will want to jump in and say anything else. Um, but I'm also happy to take questions. Uh, Stephanie. Nope. You covered it. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you, Mila. So the, what is happening essentially is that the committee has gone through the CNA recommendations and determined which of those to adopt. Which to not adopt. Who has the responsibility for it. Can you. Exactly. Yeah. So I like to report there was about a hundred plus recommendations and. We looked at all, we looked at every single one. Um, some recommendations are we were identified as. Easy. Easy. Um, Changes as in inserting certain language into an already existing policy. Um, Some recommendations. Uh, require like charger change. Um, and or, uh, Contractual changes. And so we, uh, Noted those things to put those in like the buckets. If there was like a BBOA, uh, Negotiating, Put it, uh, Recreation that bucket and. And so on and so forth. Um, some things have varied to quick turn around. Hopefully in the next month or two, some are, Some are already being done. Uh, like some of the, uh, The policy revisions that we're currently doing. Um, Uh, some are things that are going to take probably four or five months or maybe even like next year. And so the report. Chris lists out. Uh, the. The map of how to get every single one of these recommendations done. And yeah, timeline. Who's only the responsibility for it or who should own responsibility for it. And so forth. Can I get. Yes. How this works. So it'll be a report. Does it need the approval of the city council? Or is this just a, this is just to, uh, inform. The city council and the community about. The actions that will be taken or is there. Approval. I believe it's, um, remember correctly. This report is being delivered to city council to kind of show. How, like, How it's going to get done. Um, But that's your question. I'm not like that. Yeah. Look at the matrix. Um, but for example, There is a tab on the matrix. That itemizes. Um, the items that are related to the contract. Group together. So that they could be addressed during the, um. Contract. Uh, negotiation. So it goes through that particular process that controls that. And then there are some, recommendations like it would note the, um, The directives that the police commission is currently working on. So it'll say is something being currently working on. If something's not being currently working on. Sorry, Mila. I think we lost you there. Uh, yeah, I don't want to speak from Milo, but, um, yeah, if you see on the matrix, uh, there are certain tabs. It's like PBA tabs charter tab. And like, I don't know how the report is going to look like, but I believe it's going to be going through kind of just speaking on every recommendation where it falls in your back. We can hear you. I'm sorry. I started my new gig. So my hours are different. So I'm on. Bluetooth. Uh, saying that there are tabs, County for items that have to go through the contract negotiations. So though, I think that's a very interesting tab to look at the other items. Are prioritized. We weren't able to make everything like a number one priority because we weren't able to make everything like a number one priority. Because simply can't do everything all at once. So some items have, uh, future priorities in terms of the time that we'll take to get to them. And then there are things that are listed as being under our purview, such as the directive that we're in the middle of updating. And any other. Directives we may need to, to look at. So the matrix is definitely, um, I think councilor high tower did a really great job. Um, In her summary of the discussion. Uh, for next steps. So I do definitely recommend the mates reviewing the matrix at, uh, your convenience. Uh, I think I saw your hand up before when I was saying something. Um, Don't want to leave. Don't want to forget about you. You filled in with your response. So I didn't need to answer the question. Uh, Any other commissioners with regards to. Senior report. I guess I will say thank you to you and to Milo for the time that you put into that. Thank you. No problem. All right. Uh, closes that agenda item. Um, And moves on to agenda item 4. 3, which is a update on policy review. Process. I didn't hear you. I was just asking if you want me to speak to this and then. Go ahead. You can fill in the gaps. I certainly will leave. So, um, Susie and I are leading an effort to review and revise. Uh, Directive 13.02 interacting with persons with disabilities. And Directive 13.03 interacting with persons with diminished capacities. The department through the chief. Uh, has been. Meeting with us when we're able to coordinate and we have gotten input from disability rights Vermont. And also from CNA. Uh, they have all provided us with feedback in the department as well. And so we are at the point where we're going to take the two directives. And, uh, Incorporate the suggestions from disability rights. Uh, CNA and the department. And, um, At that point, we would bring it to the commission. And also that once the commission is able to weigh in, it would go to, we would want public input as well, uh, as well as any other stakeholders. Uh, we had tried to get more stakeholders, but this is, um, what we were able to come up with in terms of getting input from. Certain entities. So. And Susie, would you like to add anything? What I would add is just to say that most of the social service agencies. Are strapped. To the max. Um, This, they've been having their budgets cut for the last number of years. And on top of that, they've had COVID. And I know that also from the university work in the social work department with our field, um, Practicum, we have all our students doing field work. And it's getting tougher and tougher because it's really hard in the social service agencies right now. Thank you for that update. I do any, uh, any questions have any questions for them with regards to this? Um, Susie, when you say that it's tough, does that mean it's been tough to get input from various, various social service groups? Is that what you mean? It's, it's tough to do that, but I just want to also say that organizations are strapped to the max right now. And it's, and they've lost, you know, Everybody's trying to recruit staff and it's really difficult to do that right now. Um, people not necessarily responding. So. And the, the workers themselves are exhausted. Um, they've been working throughout the pandemic and, um, it just been, it just, I, I would say our social service system is a kind of rough shape for them. Um, It's just, I would say our social service system isn't kind of rough shape right now. As a whole. Thank you. All right. Uh, I believe Kevin was working on something, but Kevin is not here. So. All right. Sorry, Stephanie. So Kevin and I were working on revising the complaint policy. Um, some components of it are pretty straightforward. Um, I think it's, uh, Partly based on CNA advice, for example, collecting demographic information. Of complainants. We'd like to organize a process where we get input from complainants, uh, from former complainants to inform us about how the process was. And if there are ways that we can improve it. And, uh, There are some things that have been recommended with regard to making the complaint process more accessible. Um, And I think it helps to be able to find some of the, um, Rebellops, uh, in places for people to pick up complaints and be able to mail them in, in addition to doing it online. So we are getting prepared to do that. The, uh, the ordinance, uh, Contradict some things that we had intended on doing. So I think we have to sort out the sequencing of the ordinance and Revi whether it makes sense to revise our complaint policy That's, that's an update. We, we have a lot of work to do on it, but that's just to give you an idea of where we're going. All right. Thank you, Stephanie. Um, any commission have any questions? Uh, something with regards to this, I am not seeing or hearing any. Um, uh, thank you three in attendance, uh, for, for your continued work on this. And, um, very much look forward to seeing, uh, the end results, um, other, any further questions or comments on this agenda item? I'm not seeing or hearing any, uh, with that, uh, move on to agenda item 5.01, which is the chief's report. And with that, uh, I could forward to the chiefs. Hello. And, and thank you for having me, uh, Mr. Chair, Madam Chair. Um, if you would allow me to all share my screen. Um, this is our chief's report for April 26th. Uh, we are, uh, well into the year at this point, and we are starting to see how it feels like it's going to be shaping up for us. Uh, I begin as I always do with our incidents and the priority response ranking, uh, merely because, uh, there's always the chance that someone new is looking at this document for the first time. Once we posted online and on board docs and on both on board docs and on our transparency portal at the city website. And I always want them to be grounded in, uh, the, the, the crux, uh, excuse me, the core of what we do, which are serving the public mostly through these kinds of incidents and calls for service. Um, here's our incident volume here to date. As you see, we continue to be down. We are higher this year than we were last year. Um, if you'll excuse me, just one moment, my door is open and there was some noise. I apologize for that. I apologize. Um, the, uh, as you'll see, we are a little bit higher than last year, but overall we are down. Uh, we have stacked about 13% of our incidents, according to the priority response model. Um, when, when incidents are stacked, that means that we do not have sufficient resources to, uh, respond to priority threes and some priority twos at that time. Uh, we are wondering if this trend is where it's going to go for the year. Um, and again, a component of the decrease comes from the diminishment of proactive officer activities, which has continued as staffing has dropped. Our total staffing, uh, excuse me, our total incidents, another way of looking at it. Uh, again, you see that we're pretty much right online with last year, just a little bit above hovering it. We haven't seen a radical divergence from last year. Priority ones, however, uh, are different from last year. In fact, they're higher than they were last year. Uh, that's the second highest over the past six years. Um, actually it's, it's right there with the first highest. Uh, and, uh, the trend is looking the same as it looked last year. It's quite possible we will end this year with the highest that we've had for the past six years. Um, it does not appear to be abating. Uses of force is in the middle. Uh, this is, it's tapering off after a relatively busy January, February. Um, I'm hopeful to get this to flatten this out. Uh, is you can see from previous years, it's lumpy. Sometimes it rockets up, it goes down a single month can have a couple uses of force that result in it. Accelerating. Um, and these in this map, these years intertwine and tangle in ways that the other maps do not, but we are monitoring all of these. We are, we have, I have applicants for the digital media redaction specialist. Uh, and I'm hopeful to be able to move on that. I know that is essentially the message that was given in the last police commission meeting. We're working on trying to hire those. Um, this is information that was requested at the last police commission meeting. They're Coddx related data, including overdose, uh, overdose, com stat, found needles and drug stat and drug tips. Um, overdose, Valcor is what we track with regard to calls for service. And when they come in overdose, com stat is tracked by John Larson and he can explain better the pieces that go into that. Uh, I believe he's in attendance. Found needles are reports primarily through a C click fix and drug tips are the tips that come in through our drug hotline, which is the very first clickable item on the front page of the Burlington police department city website. Uh, Giano, I don't know if I can promote you or if Shannon can, just to quickly weigh in on the difference between overdose, Valcor versus overdose, com stat. Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. I've been clear, John. Great. Um, so, uh, overdose, Valcor, that, um, there's a, an incident type called overdose. Um, and so the overdose, Valcor line, that's what that refers to for overdose, com stat. Um, there are other call types that may have been the results of an overdose. For example, untimely death. So untimely, untimely death is its own call type and that untimely death may have been caused by an overdose, but it wouldn't be categorized as an overdose. So for overdose, com stat, it's just, um, it captures more call types that may be overdoses. Um, and then, uh, it just ensures that, um, you're only getting those untimely deaths where drugs were involved. So it, um, it does some, uh, it's an algorithm that looks for drug involvement in the incident. Um, so overdose, com stat is, is a more, um, uh, I guess liberal, um, way of finding overdoses and it captures some overdoses that may not be captured just by that, looking at the incident type. Thank you. Thank you, John. Oh, thank you very much. Um, on our, uh, next slide we see, uh, this is full year data. Again, this is primarily, you've seen this before it was presented in January. This is primarily for those people who may find this report, uh, on our webpage and it will give them a grounding in what the full years look like. What's important for this monthly presentation is this, which is the year to date data, uh, through 424. So you can see where this year stacks up in these variety of, uh, incident categories versus the previous years. Um, again, these are Valkor incidents. This is what the incident is called normally when it is first, uh, reported to police. Sometimes when police recategorize it after arriving on the scene in order, and then understand it a little better, but it may differ from a fence category or, uh, categories as reported to, uh, Nibers, for example. But what this is relevant towards is the fact that this is what determines why we deploy, how we deploy, when officers are going to what kinds of calls. Um, and this is the volume that officers understand with regard to the frequency of different kinds of incidents. And frankly, it's the, uh, variety and volume that the public understands as well, because if the public calls us about, let's say a domestic assault, uh, and we respond, but upon analyzing it or attempting to get, uh, information sufficient to press an offense against a person for an analyte, for a domestic assault arrest, for example, we don't get cooperation, which sadly sometimes happens in domestic incidents with victims. Uh, maybe there's not sufficient evidence there to, uh, get us to an arrest or an offense. It was still a domestic assault that occurred as far as the public was concerned and as far as the officers were concerned as they responded. So this is the main measure for us as we look at how we deploy and the officer numbers we need. Um, and speaking of officer numbers we need, this is where we are with regard to current headcount. Um, another way of looking at it, uh, we've seen this, this graph before, this actually prognosticates as of May 1st. Um, I'm relatively confident that we'll be okay for the next five days, but I'm never entirely sure. Uh, this is, this is a, uh, another picture of our numbers and where those numbers are currently working within the police department. Um, one of the commissioner, Comerford mentioned that the social service system is in rough shape at this time. Uh, I spent the last two hours this evening speaking with leadership in the police, in the police department and talking about where we are with regard to our ability to deliver services and our staffing. These numbers are, are worrisome. They are intensely problematic. They are numbers that we have never seen before. Uh, one of my coworkers was going through an old file, uh, and a sort of springtime purging of very old documents and found documents from Shannon can correct me, but I believe the 1970s with higher numbers than we currently have. Uh, this is, these are our really, really striking, uh, staffing figures and they render us, uh, on the cusp of an inability to perform the tasks that our community expects of us. Uh, we have 66 total. We subtract from that nine who are on various forms of leave for the military, for injury, one who's in the police academy, which is good news. One who's in field training, which is also good news. Um, but one who is on terminal leave, meaning that officer has put in his official papers. I have other officers who have put in official papers who are not counted in that nine because they're currently still with us, but will not be by the time I next make report to you. Uh, I subtract also from that by a 15 supervisors, um, who do not generally perform the tasks of, uh, responding to direct calls for service from the public or directly taking on various assignments, uh, or investigations. I subtract from that nine detectives who do take on specific investigations, but don't do root work on the road or routinely answer calls for service. I subtract for that the seven officers at the airport. Uh, that number may be changing as we seek to evaluate our midnight service at the airport, uh, a time when the gate restrictions don't apply the legal lawful, the latest restrictions that we have to dictate staffing. And then three current special assignments, most important of which is, is our domestic violence prevention officer, but also a recruitment officer and a narcotics officer. Uh, and that leaves us with 23 non-supervisory officers on patrol. That covers all three shifts, day shift, evening shift, midnight shift that covers seven days a week. That covers 24 hours a day. Uh, that number is not adequate for a city of 44,000 that routinely serves many thousands more as the only entertainment cultural hub of its region. We are building other capacities as we've talked about before. This body is advocated for additional community support liaisons. Uh, we currently have eight CSOs. This is a visual of our summer patrol staffing expected. Um, we see on the left of my screen, uh, the historical shifts and 52 non-supervisory officers available for patrol. Each of these diagrams, uh, shows us one split of our two-sided schedule. Uh, again, because our officers work for 10 hour shifts, four plus four is eight, not seven. So there is one day a week when each shift overlaps. We use that for the copious training that is expected of officers so that we can pull officers away from their normal duties and run them through the training that's required by the state of Vermont and the far more rigorous and plentiful training that we expect of our officers, including much of the training that the, uh, CNA report discussed. But as a result, we have, when you have four shifts of 10 and four shifts of 10, that equals eight, there's a, uh, a combination day, which is your, your, uh, double day as we call it. What we're looking at here is only one of those four shift sides. Um, a lieutenant, a sergeant, eight officers, a CSO. That was the historic, uh, staffing for days and for evenings. As we go into the summer this year, we will have four officers on a shift, uh, in the days, four in the evenings and we will have two CSOs, which is, uh, more than we previously have had. Um, but as you can see the overnight staffing, the overnight staffing, excuse me, becomes, uh, very low. This is, uh, something that I've also included in each one again, because whenever somebody sees it for the first time, I want them to see this slide. I want them to understand what this department does offer. I think that we, we remain a strong department with regard to our, uh, our remuneration and our benefits. Um, and there are still things that can make this department an attractive one. Uh, a strong contract where in the midst of contract negotiations is going to be a key to continuing our growth and accelerating that growth. We want to return to the numbers that the council realloc, reauthorized us for of 87. Um, and part of that is we're working to hire. Uh, we worked with WCAX creative services. We produced a 30 second recruitment ad. It's currently airing on local TV. It's also airing online and I'm going to try to share it with you, but it requires going to a different screen. So let's see if I can make this happen without mucking it up. And I hope that I've shared audio as well. Um, let me know if I have not become an officer with the Burlington police department is more than just a job. It's a calling to keep people safe, to serve, to be a vital part of our city. We need motivated people passionate about helping their neighbors. So we offer great pay, great benefits, and the great work life balance. So you can enjoy all the great things Burlington has to offer. Become a BPD officer and be a part of something. A team, a community, a mission that matters. Apply today. So, uh, that's, uh, that is the ad that we produced. We're going to be working on that. That came from existing recruitment money. We haven't done one of those in recent memory. Nobody here can really remember us having done one. Uh, we are, we did it out of our existing recruitment budget. I am hopeful to present to the mayor a recruitment plan. He promised one for the city council during his state of the city address. He and I agree, uh, entirely that we need a strong recruitment plan in order to bring this agency back to the numbers that make it effective, because it currently does not have those numbers. And we are hopeful to be able to describe the agency as what we believe it is, a cutting edge agency that is at the forefront of a number of changes in this profession that is striving to serve its neighbors in ways that are, uh, in keeping with the best practices. And in fact, the, uh, the foremost practices of the profession and thereby be able to get not only new people into the profession who perhaps might not have thought of it before as an avenue of career growth, but also bring people from other places into the profession, because that frankly will be the fastest way for us to grow, to bring in, uh, existing officers from other departments, not in Vermont, but outside of Vermont. And that will come with, with a certain amount of extra expectation on us to do due diligence. It is entirely, uh, there's a phenomenon in policing, uh, in which officers move from place to place because they are trying to get ahead of things. We don't want that. And we're certainly going to be particularly cautious about that during our background checks, et cetera. The state of Vermont has rules that are, that prevent that through Act 56. But we're hopeful that we will be able to put together an ad campaign, a recruitment campaign that includes, uh, ways of selling this department, of incentivizing this department, of keeping the people that we have here, which is a key and also key to a good new strong contract, but also of bringing new people in. It is the only way that we are going to reverse the trend. I'm hopeful that we are going to be able to put three to four recruits into the next Academy class, which is currently expected to begin in August, but may be delayed a little bit. In the, if I do that, I will nevertheless lose between six and 10 officers between now and the end of the calendar year. We will have a net loss of officers in 2022. The trick is for us to be able to stabilize and start to grow in 2023. That will require essentially hitting all cylinders, throwing perfect games, being able to, you know, pick your pick. Holes in one, whatever your metaphor is, we are going to have to do that consecutively for multiple years in order to get to that 87 number, much less numbers that, frankly, I still think are potentially necessary for us to really be able to fulfill a lot of the things with regard to community policing, with regard to engagement that both the CNA report described and that our public expects and that we have historically provided. And thank you very much, Madam Chair, Mr. Chair, for for letting me speak. Susie. Chief, do we have gang issues in the community and what are they? So there are we do not have gangs in the sense of cities like Chicago or Los Angeles, where there are strongly territorial and entrepreneurial gangs that are primarily marked by the protection of turf and the protection of business, normally the narcotics trade, but also sexual trafficking, weapons trafficking, et cetera. We have affinity groups of mostly young people. There are certain sort of territorial aspects to these. There are some that are centered mostly in the north part of the city, some that are centered mostly in the south part of the city. They sometimes mimic or put on the flags that are known to be associated with more national gangs or larger present gangs such as Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings. These are gangs that have very specific senses of hierarchy, rules, imagery that is associated with them. And in true gang cities, using the wrong flag in the wrong territory can be lethal. That is not what we see here. But do we see people who are in affinity groups and in the course of creating those affinity groups, sometimes put on some of these imagery and some of these ideas, these icons and the iconography of it? Yes, we do. We also see them mix it up. They will sometimes use two or three different kinds of gang iconography that, again, in larger municipalities could potentially be lethal. There is an aspect of it that is that is therefore not as as entrenched as in other communities. But we do have affinity groups who congregate in this way. And then we've seen that some of those groups are the locus of certain kinds of disorders, certain kinds of crime, including some of the gunfire that we've seen. Reason I ask is I was recently told by someone that there was a relationship between affinity groups and gunfire in the city. And I just want to double check that. Thank you, Milo. I have the same question. Is there a relationship and also what's the age range for these groups? Thank you. Is there a relationship for what, Commissioner? So a lot of what you're I think you're trying to the question you were asking was these groups actively recruit younger members, which can go down into the. Even the middle school range, quite honestly, for drug trafficking and also associated with that is human trafficking, where some of these youth are being groomed by other youth that are brought up here to basically groom them into the sex traffic along with the drug traffic. And some of these gangs like are familiar to people. The Bloods are certainly a gang that's been affiliated up in Vermont in upstate New York, but you don't see them because they don't want to draw attention to themselves. And actually, the less attention drawn to their enterprises, the better off they are. So they don't really try to like the gunfire instance and stuff like that. You don't see that very often from the actual gang members. You see that more from the people that they've recruited. But I go to monthly meetings with some with other departments and not just police departments, but services and stuff like that. And it's, you know, it's it's all over. It's in the schools. It's these members come up and they are some of our past folks that we've been working or seeing in these gunfire. And since, yes, there are loosely, sometimes loosely tied in or sometimes more tied into those types of affiliations. Thank you for that update. Mila, do you have anything further you wanted to say? All right. I think you got cut off there. Yes. No, no. Thank you, DC LeBrecht, for your response. I appreciate that. I just wanted to also in terms of recruitment, I've been really thinking a lot lately about discussions that I've had internally with some police officers and externally with the community. When we look at the reasons that officers have why they're saying that they are leaving, I have a concern that while we are looking at this public information officer and in engagement position that we could still be doing things to work on community engagement. So because we have, for example, one of the major things that gets said is that officers don't feel supported in the community. And so when we look at the root cause of that, that's trust issues. So we can have this explanation coming from officers who are leaving and they're saying why they're leaving, but we're not doing anything to work on the root cause of the trust issues. And it becomes an issue because if we want someone to do a lateral transfer from another place and they Google Burlington, which is something that I've heard from multiple officers, you know, what are they going to see? They're not going to see anything positive. So this video is certainly a positive step. How it's marketed will be a positive step. Like are we going to market it in specific areas that we would be interested in having lateral transfers from, for example? And what are we doing to try to improve the trust issues? I mean, I really just don't see anything happening with that. And that's a major concern of the community and of the officers. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I have ideas if anyone wants to listen. I think that there are some things that can be done within the current constraints of time and the shortage of officers at this time. And I guess I'm not sure of the right way to. To go about it, I don't want to say everyone's fatalistic, but there's ways to move forward is what I'm trying to say. And if we're not really fully addressing the root causes of why officers have chosen to leave in the city, we're not going to be able to get the numbers back that we're we're looking for. Thank you. Thank you, Milo. Any other questions for the chiefs with regards to chief support? Not seeing her here. She's here. I think for that. And you, sir, for filling in as well. Moving on to agenda item six point zero one, which is the use of force in the report for March. I hope you all have time to look and review this. Anyone has any of the incidents that's staying out that they want to review? Um, speak up or please email DC LeBreck and he will share with us to review. And I guess were there any questions? I don't have any questions over it. It's the report. We want to bring up right now. I'm not seeing or hearing any. All right. That moves on to agenda item seven point zero one, which is commendations that have been received for March twenty two. I'm sharing. Thank you. Let me just say I'm unmuted, right? OK, we did receive a commendation for from the sheriff's department, extending their thanks to the entire department for their for BPD's assistance in apprehending a fugitive that they were looking for. That kind of popped in and out of Burlington. There was a commendation received for Eric, who's spoken, one of the CSL's Goldman, that's spoken to the commission previously, stating that his work shows the significant value in the role the CSL's play in aiding law enforcement and the community that he's gone above and beyond. He's been able to point people in the right direction, helped bring people to appointments, delivered supplies and help connect them to services. And it states that the list could go much longer than that summary, but that Eric has demonstrated incredible work and help for the department. And I think that the commission knows that as well and sees the value in the CSL's. The next and final accommodation that I have here is a quick note about BPD's involvement in the shooting incident at on South Winooski. Of course, this was last this would have been March and March. They stated that this. Sorry, I just lost my email here. Hold on one second. Sorry. Stated that the when when they arrived on scene that and this is from the fire department was chaotic and that there were multiple patients that they needed to attend to and that the officers tactic and strategies were impressive, that they had extreme control of the the incident and that they felt that the officers helped treated the patients before the emergency services arrived that they applied a chest seal to one and a tourniquet to another and that without intervention, it would have negatively impacted the outcome of those individuals' lives and that he states that it was great collaboration and work together of the two departments. And those are from March. Thank you for that. I have a combination to give. Most, you know, in Barts in downtown rather than quite on Main Street and the last three weekends have been pretty hot downtown. And this past weekend was a pretty significant incident. And it was a pretty, pretty bad fight to happen. I'll say about three or four weeks ago and both times there were large crowds gathered when officers showed up and things have gotten much, much hotter and they kept it. They kept the temperature pretty cool. Despite the chaos that's gone around them and being a bartender and just knowing that chaos firsthand. Yeah, it was it wasn't pretty sticky and they did a very good job. So I just want to give my thanks for what I saw downtown this past weekend and basketball weekend. So yeah, thanks for that. And I don't see or hear any other commendations. So that will close that agenda item moving on to agenda item eight point zero one commissioner updates and comments. Stephanie. Yeah, I'll comment on something it actually will come up when we talk about the next agenda. But as many of you may recall, last year, the commission developed a request for annual reports from the city on use of forest traffic stops and arrests. And we had asked for that report in March. There was slippage last year, understandably, because this was the first time that Nancy Stetson was preparing three reports simultaneously. We had anticipated having the annual report this April and that was requested by Dr. Stetson last year to have the additional months to be able to complete the report. Unfortunately, it's not ready this month and we will be getting it next month's meeting. But I did want to just bring this up because it is important for us to get that report in April in part because any outgoing members of the commission if the report comes in in May, any outgoing members of the commission are going to have the opportunity to comment on it because we do need to respond as a commission to these reports. General Larson is on here and we spoke and he indicated that there are sometimes delay in getting data on accidents, racial shares of accidents. And so that's helpful, but given that most of the rest of the reports can be prepared without that information, then hopefully, as I said in the future, we will be able to get these reports in April. And I know Johnna was here. Johnna, if you'd like to comment, that would be great. I don't want to speak on your behalf, so. Yeah, thank you. The report will, I really hope, be done for the May meeting. That's been my goal. And yeah, I'm doing my best to make sure that it's as good as possible. And I'm looking forward to presenting it to all of you at your next meeting. And just to say, Johnna, it will be really important for us to get that report at least a week in advance of our meeting so that people have a chance to read it before you present it. So, thanks. And Milo's handles up first, then followed by Susie. Thank you. I just had one minor correction for Acting Chief Murad in terms of quote, unquote, cultural centers in our region. I feel the need to give a shout out to Winooski that actually has a lot of cultural events there and has places such as Monkey House, which brings in a really great amount of music and also the whole team that puts together Waking Windows, which is returning this year to Winooski. And I can't remember if it was a Boston Globe, but it had a recent article of the Top Things to Do in the spring and summer, and they actually had Waking Windows listed above Boston Calling, which was kind of crazy to me for a Boston newspaper to put Waking Windows above that major cities festival. So I just wanted to give a shout out to our friends next door. Thank you. Thank you. Susie. Chief, I'm really concerned with the numbers of police. So I'm sure everybody else is as well. My question is, has the incentive money helped so far? And if not, why not? And what do you see the future of that money being in? I'm sorry, you cut off the last part of your comment, Commissioner. So the last part of the comment is, how successful has the recruitment money been and how do you anticipate its future success will be? Sure, thank you so much for the question. So there's two questions there. One is the recruitment, one's the incentive. The recruitment incentive has, I think, been very successful. We have brought in, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I want to say that since we began exploring, hiring again last summer, we've seen about a hundred and four or five total applicants. We have hired a total of three. Two of those are still in our employee as police officers. One is in the academy, one is in the FTO program, a third we transitioned into a community service officer role. So we're able to keep that individual, which is important. But three versus a hundred is indicative of what we see with regard to incoming applicants, standards. It's also, not all of those people applied in one instant and were therefore able to be considered for the same classes, right? It's a rolling process. But I was reminded earlier this morning by some officers that once upon a time, and I believe it was the class of 2014, for what ended up being four total hires, there were 1200 applicants. And so we're in a different place right now. We're in a different place with regard to the overall profession across the country, different place with regard to the state of Vermont, different place with regard to Burlington Police Department, which was long a real crown jewel and a place where routinely officers went to the academy and looked at other recruits who had been rejected by this police department and hired by others. And for good and ill, that bred a certain sense of self-assurance in Burlington officers at the academy. The recruitment incentive is really productive. Having that $15,000 out there is absolutely bringing in people. It's not always bringing in people who are necessarily here for the mission and here for the service aspect of this job, but it is expanding our hiring pool and that is to the good. We have used, as I said, we haven't actually dispersed any of that money yet. The current person who's in field training was already hired by the police department when that incentive was authorized. Therefore, he was eligible for the retention incentive. The officer who is in the academy will not get his first disbursement of money until he completes field training. And then there will be another one a year from then and a year after that. So we haven't actually distributed any of it, but it's absolutely helping us get people in. I have a certain amount of it. I'm hopeful to be able to get a little more. We saved money on the retention incentive and that brings us to the other issue of retention incentive. The retention incentive, frankly, was diminished in a way that made it much less effective than it should have been. It was reduced in the council's hearing from what would have been the same as the recruitment incentive to a lesser incentive. And there are many officers who felt that that ultimately was indicative of a certain amount of insult that they felt. You're saying that I'm less worthy of the incoming officers. Retaining me is less important than bringing in new officers. Is it effective? We certainly have one or two officers who I know are staying in order to get the incentive that is coming in September. They are prolonging what otherwise would have been a retirement probably now or in the next month or two in order to stay for the final disbursement of pay in September. Has it kept other people? That I'm not certain. Has it been a reward, a sense of reward for officers who went through a lot over the past two plus years? Yes. And so, what is its efficacy with regard to actually retaining people in roles? I don't know. And I'm not entirely certain there would be a way to determine that in a way that would be objective or scientifically validatable. I mean, I certainly could do surveys and ask what people did or didn't think about it. And I'm willing to do that and perhaps I should. But we know that it's kept at least one or two people who otherwise would have retired. Has it kept people who are leaving for other agencies? No, we lost three in February or January, February to other agencies. They received that first small disbursement. The bigger disbursement that's expected in September was not sufficient to delay their progress. I have two officers who are currently in process for another agency out of state. They'll get it all. Their departure is dependent on the agency to which they're going, being ready to receive them. And that's based on that agency's training schedules. So if those training schedules come before that, the second payment of the recruitment, excuse me, the retention incentive is dispersed, then they won't get it. And if that agency comes calling after that retention incentive is dispersed, they'll get the retention and then they'll probably leave. So what has it accomplished? It's a little mixed bag. I do believe that the original proposal would have been a stronger method of prolonging that payment out a year and being able to keep officers, change their minds a little bit. But what do we do next is the big question. And as I said, a strong contract is important. The officers certainly talk about that. We have some other recruitment ideas the mayor and I have discussed. They include incentives around a variety of attractions. Including for example, issues around, we would love it if more officers lived inside our city. Is there a way to do that? We would love it if we could get officers additional education incentives. Right now, the biggest challenge would be being able to spare an officer long enough to go off and either get a degree or even take classes on a regular basis and not be on patrol. I can barely afford not to have officers on patrol where I am. So with regard to staffing, where I am with regard to staffing. So, more training opportunities. That's a strong incentive. The idea of certain things that police officers like. Police officers like new tools. Police officers like take home cars if that's possible. Police officers love roles available to them. Having multiple roles available when we are staffed the way we are is almost impossible because we are the equivalent of a person who is freezing and all of their energy and blood and circulation is being drawn into the core as the outside parts fall away. Those outside parts aren't necessary to live but they're really important for doing what you need to do. And so for example, a role like a narcotics officer. Like a community affairs officer which we lost very early in the staffing crisis. Those are our fingers and our hands. Those are incredibly important for doing what we do and doing it well. But our core patrol and to a certain extent, detectives is in here. And the colder we get, the more everything is drawn into that core. But that makes aspects of recruitment a little bit more challenging. I want for us to be up to that challenge because it's the only way out of the crisis that we're in. That was a very thorough response. Now I wanna go to the other side and ask you about what the department has done about exit interviews and then a compilation and analysis of that information. Sure. So we conduct exit interviews with every officer. That's both a written exit interview and an interview with one of the chiefs myself, Deputy Chief LeBreck, Deputy Chief Sullivan when Deputy Chief Sullivan was with us. The claims and the responses are uniform. And I have once been taken to task by members of this body for explaining the uniformity of that. There was a decided voice among people departing about a sense of primarily political support from at the council level, not the mayoral level that has caused them to be concerned. There are also levels of oversight that give them concern and changes in the nature of their work environment and whether or not they are going to have different expectations and different levels of oversight than they have had in the past. Those are all mentioned as rationales for departure. So are truncated career opportunities and growth opportunities. And ultimately also the prospect of, for example, some of the new laws that have come in at the state level with regard to liability. Thank you. Thank you for that. Question and a response, Mila. Hi, so some of that, as I mentioned before, goes back to the engagement piece because when we talk another thing ad nauseam I've been very vocal about is the narrative blaming certain members of the city council, right? We have a representative democracy, people vote for those counselors. So what do we need to do? We need to look at the root cause. If people feel that there are certain counselors that are not supporting, which is something that I disagree with because it's reflective of what is felt in part of our community. And there hasn't been, I've been really concerned that if there was a better good faith effort to be responsive to some of the concerns that were expressed early on in the community that we might be in a better position. I believe we still would have lost people. We are in the middle of very unique times in our country. What is happening here, it's happening statewide and across the country, right? There was nothing that was passed in the city council that actually quote unquote fired people. People left of their own accord. So what do we do to improve the relationship between parts of the community? And that's going to mean just accepting some harsh realities, right? On both sides, I don't wanna, actually let me put that aside. It's a deep concern to me because I find some of the narratives to have been false to have put people's safety in danger because of concerns and views that they express that are representative from the communities that they represent. And I find that it's not serving the community and it's not serving our officers. And we really, we just have to be willing to deep dive this and quite frankly own up to some things. There are reasons why people are upset. That's just facts. So how do we understand these reasons and what can we do to help to improve the relationship? We've got two lawsuits that hang like a dark cloud over this department. They have gone on and on and on. And at some point, the city really needs to have the courage to get these resolved so we can move past them. But to try to have them dismissed, I personally don't believe is the way to go. But I think that they hang over our city as a dark cloud and they bring up a lot of things that are at the root cause of how people feel and that then cause officers not to feel appreciated. So there's things we can do. So I'll leave it there because I'm starting to be a little bit repetitive, but I just feel so strongly about this and people just are not showing the courage that they need at all levels to be really honest about some of the discussions that need to be had. Thank you. Thank you, Milo. Appreciate it. I have one quick thing. If I'm also going to be quick, hopefully quick. This is actually for Haley. This was discussed briefly in the session last week, Wednesday, but I think it's safe to bring up here. It wouldn't be possible to get an opinion from the city attorney's office on the RF Pellet role and kind of like that move forward. And I guess my second part of question is that I saw a press release from the governor today stating that Dan will be leaving city attorney's office. I'm curious how that'll affect some of the things that we're working on right now. Yes, as to the legal opinion, yes, it is possible to get an opinion from our office on that. I have taken a look at the memo and the accompanying line by line that was posted to board docs. So I'm aware of what you're referencing as part of, as it relates to the appellate role that's outlined in charter. And so, yes, I'm happy to take it back to our office and get together an opinion for the commission from the city attorney's office on that. And yes, sadly, the rumors are true. Dan is leaving us, which is great for him professionally and very sad for the attorney's office and for the city. So it's very bittersweet. I don't have a lot of information yet as far as what the exit process is going to look like because it's still so very new information even to us internally. But what I can say is, we are working on certainly a process by which we will try to transition work in such a way that there's this minimal disruption to the city and to the work that's being done currently as possible. And when I have more of an update on what exactly that transition plan is going to look like, I certainly will keep the co-chairs in the loop on that. So I'm sorry, I don't have more sort of substantive information on that tonight, co-chair Gamash, but the best I can say is it's brand new and we are working on how to sort of come up with a transition plan. Awesome. Thank you for the answer to part one and for part two. I mean, it came out hours ago, so I understand there's not more information on the exit plan, but thank you for that update. Any other commissioners have any updates or comments we would like to get in? I am not seeing or hearing any. So with that, who's onto next meeting agenda items? We have our data report from, we have a data report and what else is jumping out people right now? We've had two suggestions for people to bring in for the educational component. One is Etan Nesreddin Logan, Longo, sorry, who is a co-chair of the Ferry and Impartial Policing Committee at the Vermont State Police and the chair of the RDAP committee. Hard to remember the acronym here, but it's the Attorney General's Committee on criminal justice reform, addressing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. And the other recommendation was the ACLU. Happy to reach out to either of them if the commissioners have a preference, let me know. But I think we could put that on the agenda and maybe for more limited time than we have in the past because we do have other work to do, so maybe for 30 minutes. Yes, people, guys, get your preference to Stephanie was the next day or two. I'll reach out to Kevin, let him know the options and I'll reach out to you as well too. And that and seeing how I hatch some more free time now that I'm not on the ad hoc committee, I'm happy to take on the task of like a third. I know we're working at two posts right now, I'm happy to take on a third. I'll refer back with the matrix to see which other policies I think were on there, but yeah, I'll look at that and I'll get back to everyone else and let them know which one I choose. I think I'll put that on the agenda item. Yeah, one of the things we had talked about was the code of ethics, but then that's mentioned in the ordinance so that I don't know if we're gonna put that on hold, I don't know, or if we should just get a code of ethics done and in place and see if it needs to be revised. I don't think it would be terrible, something that should take us too long. The question is whether we wanna do it with this formulation of the commission or wait until there's a new commission in place in the summertime. I think now is a better time than waiting if we have people who can do it right now. Yeah, so Chair Gommas, if you may recall, Susie had, Susie, you circulated something, did you not a draft? Was it, I can't remember where it came from now. Nicole gave us a draft. Yeah. And we were gonna work from that. Yeah, we was me, I didn't do it yet. Yeah, but also, we've been doing the directive stuff so I don't think we have to manage our time. Right, right. So, Jibu, I can certainly weigh in with you or help you. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. And I guess anything else comes to mind, please filter it to my self-explanatory and we will tackle it. I'll have a laundry list for you by tomorrow. Thank you. Yes, that's it. Our next scheduled monthly meeting will be May 24th, for Tuesday, Friday 4th, Tuesday at 6 p.m. As of now, still remote, still further notice. If there's nothing else that's on anyone else's minds, I will apply it. Yeah, sorry. I'm just seeing if we need to have tomorrow night's executive session because I just confirmed with the chief, thank you chief that there, we had two complaints, if you all will recall, that have come in this month. There are no internal and the two that came in, if you'll recall, I don't think either rises to the level of a complaint that we would write. So, unless the chief has updates or the department has updates, we might not need it. Sorry, chief, for pleasures. Yeah, it's not that they're not actionable, they're not complaints. One is a screed about the fact that police officers are scumbags and the other is a mental health complaint. But that's not to say that any legitimate complaint is ultimately actionable on some level. These are simply not complaints, they just came in through the portal. Well, in that case, I'd be in favor of not having a meeting if we don't meet it. I concur. Well, it's looking like we don't need that session for tomorrow night. But before we get to there, I believe I motion to adjourn the meeting. Unless there is seconded by Stephanie. All in favor, raising your hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. All right then. It is 723 PM and the meeting is adjourned. We will not be having executive session tomorrow night. Due to not being needed, and we will see everybody at our next scheduled monthly meeting, May 24th at 6 PM via Zoom and look out for peace pressure on board docs the week before. Everybody have a great night and thank you for having, take care. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.