 We'll be waiting. I just texted Milo to see if she'll be able to join us tonight. I'll give her a couple minutes. It is 6.06 PM, August 23rd, 2022. And I call the police commission meeting to order. First item on the agenda is adopting the agenda as is. I don't have any amendments to make, so I'll entertain a motion to adopt the agenda as is. Seconded by, sorry, moved by Stephanie. Seconded by Susie with her hand. All in favor of adopting the agenda as is. Please raise your hand or say aye. That passes unanimously. Moving on to the next agenda item is 1.02, which is the chief's report. And with that, I give the floor to Chief Mirad. I think you're ready to move into a tricky little appointment at UMass cameras. But as a result, we don't have a means of getting this kind of information out of Valcor. Regarding hiring, how is it? I could, sorry, but I'm sorry, I apologize. This is unusual to be all these questions. Sure, we're changing protocol here. Can you at least give us a sense of the deployment of CSLs during the day and CSOs and just your general idea of when the calls for service are then? I don't understand what you mean by when they are. They come throughout. Right, and so the question I think was stated, which is when are you seeing the most calls for service and when are the CSLs and CSOs primarily deployed? So I don't have answers for that. We don't have an analyst right now and I don't have a way of getting that from Valcor in that way. Okay, let's move on. Regarding hiring, how is BPD coordinating with the city HR office to promote diversity and hiring? Describe the proposed recruitment coordinator position. We work with HR to leverage HR's networks. I've described them at length in previous chiefs reports, including slides that name a lot of those entities, all of which are places where HR sends postings. So in addition to posting online, they send additional information or notifications rather to those entities. We use that. We've just, I believe, the recruitment, the proposed recruitment coordinator position, the job description has been finalized and I believe that is in HR's hands to have that posted if it has not already been posted. The next question was there's now funding for 12 CSOs with six slots filled. Describe how this group is or will be managed? Is there a staff or sworn officer who manages this group? So we've had the six CSOs for quite some time now. They are managed by a sergeant who has responsibility for them as a group, but on an individual day-by-day basis, they are a part of the deployment in USB. And so they fall under the direction of whomever is the officer in charge for that shift. Normally an officer in charge is a lieutenant on occasion officers in charge are sergeants. The CSOs who are deployed in any given shift answer to that sergeant or that OIC. So for example, right now we have two CSOs who are on the shift and both of those would answer to, we have Sergeant Henry and Sergeant Young on. Sergeant Henry will be a lieutenant at the beginning of the next tour. So he has seniority there and there's also Lieutenant Young. We are in discussions with HR to potentially create a civilian position akin to the one that is currently occupied by Lacey Smith for the CSLs for the CSOs. But that requires creating the job description, grading it, getting city council, board of finance approval, et cetera. So we're a ways off for that. But overall their staffing is managed by a designated Sergeant Vinnie Ross. And finally, the CNA report proposed 12-hour shifts. Can you describe how this was incorporated into the new BPOA contract? The BPOA contract includes 12-hour shifts and as an emergency schedule, it is a schedule that requires a relatively hefty penalty be paid. So in addition to the current contract, which I think is really strong and fair with regard to compensation, $73,000 for starting officers, $100,000 for top pay officers once the contract matures in three years. There'd be an additional penalty on an hourly rate if we were to go to 12-hour shifts. That is something therefore that we would have to put a lot of thought into doing before doing it. It would be inordinately expensive for the city. And that's the questions. Chair Gommash, did you wanna see if any of the commissioners wanted to have any follow-up questions since we're within the time limit? Floor is open for questions for the Chief. Hello, Chief. We're talking about the CSOs and the CSOs. Do we currently have any on the evening shifts? Yeah, so as I said, we're on our evening shift right now and there are two CSOs assigned to it. Okay, and what about during the after-hour shifts during the night? So this shift goes, the CSOs are on until 2 a.m. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Grant. So Valcor is the only way to pull the information regarding CSOs and CSOs. Like would Officer Ross have an idea of how often the CSOs, for example, are being deployed? He would use Valcor to make that determination. So he would use Valcor to make the determination. So he could pull the information out of Valcor. No, he would probably, in order to get the specificity that was requested, he would go to our analyst, but we don't currently have an analyst. Is this, I guess I would request that the chairs, maybe we put this as a item to discuss with the mayor to see what we can do to get the department some assistance with tracking this important information. Thank you. Thanks, Commissioner Grant. That's great and we will take note of that. I have a question if I may. Okay, so can you tell us about the RFP for mental, the Kahootz type model, what the status of that is and timeline for implementing it? It was promulgated. We got respondents, a respondent was selected and that respondents estimate for cost was far higher than the city had estimated its own outlay. We are in the process of attempting to identify somebody who can shepherd the process through, work with the state to determine if there is funding available at the state level, perhaps assuage some of the, or minimize some of the funding expectations that are coming from the respondent and see if we can get it closer to the goal line. The sense of the timeline. No, I'm afraid I don't have a sense of that. We're working on it and I'm hopeful that we will be able to do it sooner rather than later. Great, thanks. Hi, Chief. I'm wondering if you had anything that isn't in your written report that you were planning to present tonight in your report? No, it was just a matter of going through that report and talking about the data that's in there, the volume data, the staffing data that we've got, some of the big events that happened this past month. We had a lot of very important events, I think. There was an opportunity for, let's see, I think some of the more important ones were, we announced that rebuilding plan with regard to the contract and the budget on August 8th, and then later that same day we had a terrific award ceremony, awarding officers for conduct in 2021, an exemplary conduct. And so that was a great opportunity. The mayor and many others were able to come to that award ceremony and hear about some of the work that the officers do. We had the South End Vandalism Spree sort of built on some of the things that Commissioner Comerford had talked about in our previous meeting at the very beginning of August, just only worse, as far as the level of vandalism that occurred there, different and a different actor, but significant. We had a shooting at the Shelburne Road shopping plaza where Market 32 is on August 11th. We had a double shooting on Main Street on August 13th in the very early morning hours of August 13th. We had an officer involved shooting. The Vermont State Police came in to assist with bar closing also on August 13th. It was a very, very busy weekend on top of a very busy week, a very stressful week for a lot of men and women inside the department. On August 19th, we did a swearing in and promotion ceremony that included bringing aboard three new police officers who are now at the Vermont Police Academy and will be there for about 17 weeks. And then promoting, as I mentioned, Sergeant Henry who will be promoted to Lieutenant, Sergeant Delgado who will also be promoted to Lieutenant recognizing Sergeant Young, who was promoted to Sergeant. So we had that ceremony, that was really wonderful and an opportunity, again, to recognize officers who were moving forward and officers who were coming aboard and to recognize that their families are gonna be along for this ride as well. So having their families there was nice. Then that same night, we had our shooting at the skate park. We had another gunfire incident last night. In the small hours, we had a very significant assault on a police officer on August 20th, an officer who got some significant eye injuries and will be out for a bit. But we hope that we'll get him back sooner than later. Those were the events that were in that presentation that I would have spoken about, Commissioner. Thank you. Commissioner Comerford. Chief, I'm wondering, given the now for us large screen of gunfire incidents, what the theory of the case is at this point and where the department is in terms of resolving these ongoing issues? Sure, so there is a graphic in the chief's report that shows the volume that we've experienced this far for the past several years. Since 2012, when Balco was implemented, I think it's shocking. It's a shocking graphic. Shows both the increase in overall, the increase in incidents in which people are struck, the increase in homicides now and the increase in incidents where we know people are shooting at one another. There are a lot of incidents there that we don't have information about. In the graphic, they are shown as white boxes. But most of those are also incidents in which people are shooting at each other. We just don't have proof enough of it to make a probable cause determination, excuse me, a reasonable suspicion determination that they were shooting at each other. A case in point would be last night's incident. We do believe that they were shooting at each other, but we don't have enough proof of that yet to know for short. And so I'm not gonna call that a light blue box. I'm gonna call it a white box until we are able to get additional information from either better information from new witnesses or video canvases or perhaps from people involved or suspects. What do we do? I've had a number of meetings about that recently, meetings with members of our federal partners, including the ATF, DEA, the FBI, HSI, meetings with the Vermont State Police at length and on multiple topics, meetings with the commissioner of public safety, and even with the mayor and the governor on these topics and these issues. There are a number of things in the works, and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to make some announcements next week about some of the more specific things we'll be doing. So I have a follow up question and that is, earlier, I think you're sorry, but I'm not able to check the time, but I think we are up for time on this item. Okay. Moving on to the next agenda item, 2.0 on, which is the public forum at this point in time. I'll start with online public comments first. Anyone is in the attendees list, please raise your hand and you'll be promoted to a panelist to speak. And I ask that you keep your comments to three minutes following. People that are here with us in person, you'll be invited to come speak and you'll have three minutes as well. Thank you. Appears there's nobody online without any comments. So for anybody that's out here in the public, please, just one at a time, please have a seat here. Speaking to the microphone, so you'll be able to be recorded properly. Yeah, you have the four, three minutes per person, please. In that case, please promote them a while. We'll hear from them now. We can hear you. Thank you. Hi, folks. Thank you so much. You know, I just wanted to call in today and express my appreciation for this police commission. Jabu, Susan, Stephanie, Garrison, Milo, you folks are doing an amazing job here. And I get to tune in every once in a while and when I do, I'm just in awe of how you show up for this unpaid labor. And I know some of you in your personal lives that have done maybe not police work, but you've done, you've been doing work on the ground and the community that I think, you know, in the long run does have an impact on preventing violence and stuff in our community. So I just really wanted to tune in and thank you all for your service. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. That's all I have for tonight. Thank you, much appreciated. Mr. Tamrell, is there anybody else in the attendees like to speak? Okay, thank you. That, then I invite anybody in the gallery to please come up and speak if you'd like. And lastly, before you start, just please state your name for the record. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Jacob Schumann. I'm a resident of Ward One. So I just wanted to speak briefly about the events that took place early in the morning of August 14th. Excuse me. So I was downtown with some folks from BTV Cop Watch. I was, I am an EMT and I had my license on me, my Vermont EMT practitioner's license. So with that event, which I understand is under investigation for use of force against Mr. Benusola. I identified myself as an EMT when they were restraining him on the ground. I was attempting to be a medical observer to ensure that everything was okay. As an impartial third party, I think that's an important role to play. I'm not sure why this keeps cutting out. So that was fine. You know, that was working out just fine. But when I interjected on behalf of Mr. Benusola's dignity and asked that officers pull his pants up because they had pulled them down and his butt was exposed to the world, you know, I was asked to leave the area. So, you know, given that there was no other medical oversight while somebody was being restrained, which we know poses risks to physical safety and health well-being, you know, I would ask that the department and the commission consider when professionals identify themselves during the course of a situation and present, you know, their credentials that they not be asked to leave because they are perceived as being critical of the force or what the force is doing. I think that it was an opportunity that was missed to provide for this individual's dignity and raise his pants. My name is Fareed Munarsha. I'm a resident of Ward 5. I was also present at that incident in which the officers touched and detained, tried to detain the individual without stating the reason. There was no attempt at the escalation. If anything, they're shoving and pushing this individual, escalated the situation. And also, it was clear that the individuals were, he was triggered. He was being humiliated sexually with his, you know, he was naked from the waist down in front of dozens of people. Later, that individual in the week, I believe they released him the next morning, but later that week, that individual was also arrested again in an assault incident in which witnesses described him as being dissociative and manic. It's clear to me that whatever the escalation training that the officers received were not employed. And this is only just the latest incident that I witnessed this year. And I just happened to have a camera with me and I was able to record the whole thing. In under two minutes, the officers went from first noticing this individual to tackling him down and arresting him. And but this is not the first time I've witnessed this. In fact, I've witnessed this many times over my years here living in Burlington. Earlier this year, I saw the same type of treatment at Sears Lane where I was serving daily meals during the eviction process. People who were mostly just wanna be left alone were picked on and then these are people who are already vulnerable, they're already struggling with mental health issues, interaction with the police, that kind of escalated interaction with the police. It has not helped with their struggle. And what happens is then they would went on to commit more serious violations. And it's a sick way of dealing with the problems that we're facing. And I hope the commission can do something about that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the public that would like to speak at this time? I thank you all for being here and sharing your thoughts. Moving on to the agenda, the next is item 3.01, which is the election of chairs. And with that, I open the floor for nominations. Susie, I see a commissioner Comfort, I see your hand raised, the floor is yours. I would like to nominate yourself, Commissioner Gommage, commissioner Ziguino as co-chairs and commissioner Hart as the vice chair. Is there a second? I'll second that. All right then, all in favor of moving, sorry, all in favor of moving commissioner Comfort's slate being myself, Stephanie Ziguino as co-chairs and Serena's vice chair. Please raise your hand to say aye. Aye. I believe that is 70 a's and zero nays. All right then. Thank you for that. Sorry, commissioner Comfort. I would like to thank the three of you for both your leadership and your service. It's deeply appreciated. Moving on to agenda item 3.02. And I guess things like to technically bundle with 3.03 and 3.04 as approval of minutes for our last three meetings, May 24th, 2022, June 28th, 2022 and August 3rd, 2022. I remember at our last meeting, a holdup on the 24th and 28th was some amendments to the minutes and I wonder if people were able to review those minutes and to see that those amendments were made. I'm sorry, commissioner Ziguino, you're muted. I just wanted to say I did look at them and they looked fine. Mr. Garrison. Are we gonna accept very August meetings or regular meetings for June 28th, August 3rd? I wasn't here. That is correct. In that case, yes, I will. All right, for our new commissioner Keefe, I would recommend that you abstain from the votes for the minutes for the May 24th and June 28th. I move to adopt the minutes from our meeting on May 24th and May 25th. Do I have a second? Seconded by commissioner Garrison, all in favor of adopting those minutes as is, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Do we have any abstentions? So we have six in favor and one abstention and I so move to adopt the minutes from our meeting on August 3rd, 2022. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by chair Hart. All in favor of approving the minutes from August 3rd, 2022, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Any nays? Abstain. One abstention. So that is six, four and zero nays, one abstention. Moving on to the agenda, we are at 3.05, which is the annual report. And with that, I'll give the floor to co-chairs who we know. Thanks, thanks very much. So this, I'm going to make a motion that the commission adopt the annual report and submit it to the city council and mayor. And I just say a few words about that annual report. It, I think I encourage all of the public to read it. It documents the work of the commission and the expanding the changing role of the commission in terms of our work on complaints, on policy, and some other changes in terms of the roles that we perform. And I just want to thank everybody on the commission for their work on putting this report together. Commissioner Comerford, your hand is raised. It's now lowered. If I might, Chair Gommasha, maybe it's useful just to say a few more things. Sorry about the background noise. We received 55 complaints last year and the report documents the types of complaints, the chief's disposition of those complaints and the commission's response to those complaints. It also documents the work that we have done in revising policies. And I think very importantly, for the first time, we have also set annual goals for next year and that document identifies those annual goals. In addition to that, the report identifies reports that the commission has written or comments that it has made, for example, on the draft ordinance to alter the role of the police commission in terms of civilian oversight. So those are some of the highlights of the report for the public. Commissioner Suguino, are you looking for a second? Yeah, I second. Yes. I second the approval or the adoption of the report. Any questions or comments with regards to this motion? All those in favor in approving the annual report as is, please raise your hand or say aye. This is unanimously. Thank you for the commissioners that worked on this. Moving on to agenda item 3.06, mental health and complaint policy updates. And with that, I'll give the floor to the, to those commissioners that are working on those policies. I can provide a report on the mental health, which is that we got a little sidetracked on that, but it is just had a lot of things as a commission that we've been working on. So I think commissioner Cumberford and I are ready to put the red line or the track, we're ready to put some revisions together to present to folks and go from there, hopefully with by the September meeting. Commissioner Gommas, should I jump in about the complaint policy? Yes, please. Great. The, we've done a few things since our last meeting. We, one of the recommendations of the CNA was to collect demographic data on complainants. And we are proceeding with that and are changing the complaint form. We're also moving forward with some additional work we have sent out a survey to complainants about the complaint process, how it has worked for them, what changes might be made to make it more effective and meet the needs of the community. We are also working on some changes to the complaint policy itself. And in particular the process, it's become very clear from inquiries from a variety of community members that the community is not aware of how to submit a complaint or the process for reviewing complaints or the commission's role in complaints. And so commissioner Keith and Hart and I are working on that. And in particular, developing a process and a flowchart, if you will, that can be shared with the community with regard to how the complaint process works. There's a lot of work actually to do to change the complaint process. There are many aspects of it to make it more effective and for us to be able to more carefully document the process. And we're working on that. So this is a multi-month process, but those who are complainants who have made a complaint in the last year or two years, if you have not received a survey to fill out, please feel free to email me in my commission email address and I'll make sure that you get a copy of the complaint survey. Thanks. Thank you for those updates. Any other questions or comments with regard to this agenda item before we move on from commissioners? I'm not seeing or hearing any. Moving on to agenda item 3.07, which is a quick update from the commission's independent counsel with regards to the commission's conflict counsel, oh, sorry, with regards to the BPO contract and how it affects changes to the complaint policy. Mohammed, sorry, is Anthony Irapano in the? He's not there yet. Not there yet? Okay then. In that case, we might jump ahead to the next agenda item and then when he joins us via Zoom, we'll come back to this agenda item. Right, so moving on to agenda item 3.08, the use of force report and I hope everyone had time to review the use of force report and if there are any any incidents that the commissioners would like to review in the next session, please, please let one of the DCs know which video is flagged for review. Do we have any of the deputy chiefs there in person that we can ask questions of? I believe they're all attending via Zoom. Oh, great. I have a question for DC LaVarge. DC LaVarge doesn't do the use of force report. Sorry, he was guessed there in your absence last week. DC LaVarge, can you, I'm referencing the second use of force report and that had to do with a high risk stop. I understand that in reading the incident report that guns were drawn and my understanding is that this is a policy that guns are drawn. Can you direct us to which policy contains that guidance? It's the training they receive at the Vermont police academy for high risk motor vehicle stops. So any documentation that's got it. Is there any commission, any documentation that the commission can review? You'd have to contact the Vermont police academy for their training regime for patrol procedures. That's when it's taught. Okay, thank you. Yep. Commissioner Hart. DC LaVarge, is it possible for us to get the use of force reports up through our meeting? So for example, we saw data earlier that went through the 22nd. So what we're hoping to do is to get, I know you like to track things by month, but for our purposes, can we get the use of force reports that you're able to write up prior to our meeting so that if there are August dates and you have time, I don't know what kind of cutoff you need, but what we'd like is try to get, we'd like to get the use of force reports at the earliest opportunity so that it's closer in time to the event. And I don't know how that works on your end in terms of when you prepare them. So the way benchmark works, it only runs reports yearly, quarterly, or monthly. I can dig through the use of force reports in, but I will not have time, and nor do I have the time to go into individual incidents and then try to figure out what happened. And so I can give you, I can give you the race, the number of officers and the incident number if you want, why they were arrested. So this is automatically generated through the benchmark. Okay, sorry. That's the new system that we use for use of force. Okay. Okay. Can we at least get those list of incidents? In other words, what's most useful for us in the work that we're doing is to track use of force from meeting to meeting. And so, understandably, you can't give us the details of those that have occurred in August, for example, but if you could give us whatever information is available to you so that we have a sense of what use of force incidents have occurred since our last meeting. Like I said, I can give you the incident number, the age and race of the person, the number of officers and that's it. That's fine. That would be good. Okay. Thank you, Casey. Any questions, comments or requests for videos while we have the chiefs here? I am assuming other commissioners do, but I'll just jump in. And I'd like to see the videos for incidents 10, 11 and 14. And I think once we see the videos, we might be able to ask some more specific questions about them. And I'm sorry, just to clarify, that was videos 10, 11 and 14. Yeah, for incident numbers, 10, 11 and 14. Thank you. Okay, we'll send those to you tomorrow. Thanks, D.C. LeBrick. I think we've talked to you about this before. Is AXON limited to three days, or can we extend that? So there is no bumping that to a week, for example, because I know we oftentimes have to come back. It's not a week, it's not an option in there. Okay, so we just, if folks aren't able to watch in that window, we just have to come back and unfortunately bother you to upload them again or give access again. Yep. Thanks. Are you have your credentials yet for that? Commissioner Gray, your floor is yours. Thanks, just to clarify on the availability of the AXON videos, if a week isn't available, is there an option for longer than three days or is there just not the maximum? The next one after that is 30 days. That's... Oh, well, we wouldn't need 30 days, but we need more than three days. Could it be 30 days? I'm not gonna assign 30 days. Okay. Any further questions while we have the deputy chiefs here? Yes, D.C. LeBron, can you explain your reasoning? That's way too long for those videos to be out there. All right, I think that might be an issue we take up with the mayor, thank you. Sure. Closes the agenda item, and we now have our conflict council here. The attorney, sorry. Irrepido, my apologies. So we are back to agenda item 3.07, and once he's situated, the floor will be his. Thank you very much. Awesome, thank you for being here with us. We appreciate it. That's quite all right. Sorry if I misunderstood. I thought I was expected for seven. No, we're just being really efficient. We're actually a little ahead of time. Sorry. Excellent. Oh, never a bad thing. Well, thank you, commissioners. I believe this is to talk about changes to the contract, the union's contract with the police department, and you should have received from me a memorandum that deals with the changes and highlights the changes relative to the commission's historic interest in aspects around transparency and the commission's complaint procedure. So what would be most useful since I've presented that in advance? I know that commissioner Saguino had asked a couple of questions, but I can turn to those first or if the memo needs any explanation in the public session, I'm happy to provide that as well. I think if you would, sorry. If you would identify those questions that we asked you to respond to, and I see that commissioner Comerford has her hand up as well. I think it's helpful since the general public did not receive the same memorandum that we do some very short kind of a thumbnail highlights for the public as well. Great, and I'm happy to do that. And I think the key questions had to do with the ability of the commission to make summaries of complaints received and resolutions achieved public as part of your annual report with certain identifying information redacted from them. So I will touch on those questions as well as step through the memo very briefly. And I believe this memo should be available to the public as well, having been posted. I'll just jump in and say that for the public, it is on board docs under agenda item 3.07 and it's the little paper thumbnail next to that agenda item. Very good. So in the memo, I've not focused just for clarity on all the changes between the previous contract and the current contract, which I believe is ratified by the city council, but is may be final at this point. I'm not really aware and involved in that process. I focused just on those sections of the contract that touch on the commission in some way or are relevant to changes that the commission has been contemplating with respect to its complaint procedure. And so really that picks right up in section 15.2, some minor changes into how the levels of infractions, how those are categorized factors, levels of discipline they're referred to and there are changes in terms of when discipline may be imposed and what types of discipline may be imposed, particularly clarifying that mid level and higher level infractions are where more serious discipline actions may be appropriate. Then turning to section 15.3, this is something that was very much recommended by the commission in terms of records retention and records of disciplinary investigations and resolutions, previously there was a time limit on the amount of time that the department would retain certain files related to disciplinary records and under the new contract records relating to certain more serious disciplinary outcomes may be retained permanently by the department. That's a may not a shall, so there is some discretion on the part of the department's management as to what records will be kept permanently, but the possibility is there whereas that was not true previously. Another big change is the timeline for using an officer or employees past disciplinary record in meeting out new progressive discipline. Basically I won't go through the specifics of it but the notion is that where there are time limits now retained in the contract and there are longer time limits than have historically been present, when a new disciplinary issue arises involving a department employee who was the subject of a prior disciplinary issue, then there is a look back period to see what else is in this employee's file with regard to past infractions and so that is what's been clarified or changed in the new contract and that is what the time periods pertain to. Notably for the commission, certain records that would be, are now reviewable by the commission and when the commission is fulfilling its appellate role in the grievance process. Next most significant change for the commission is in section 15.4 and that regards the employee interview process and confidentiality of investigatory files. First change is the timing of disclosure of witnesses to the employee under investigation. One of the steps that can be taken in an internal investigation is to interview the employee who is the subject of a complaint and previously prior to that interview being taken, the employee would know the name of the witnesses and others who would be spoken to in the investigation before sitting for the interview. That information is still disclosed to the employee under investigation but it's not disclosed until after the first interview occurs. More significantly, there have been changes and this is consistent with commission previous recommendations. There have been changes to the confidentiality of the investigatory file. Previously, the contract between the union and the department applied blanket confidentiality to any information gained in the course of an investigation into a department employee. That limited access to the investigatory file to the chief, the city attorney, the human resources director and the department investigator and it limited the investigator or any of those parties from voluntarily disclosing that information. The confidentiality that has been retained in the new contract applies only to information gained directly from the employee's statements during any interview that could lead to disciplinary action. And this goes right to the heart of the question that was put to me with regard to changes in the commissions or contemplated changes in the commission's complaint procedure because previously under the earlier contract the entire investigatory file was supposed to be held in confidence. Now, prior to discipline being meted out if any, that confidentiality is still supposed to apply but after the case has been resolved other aspects of the file are not required to be maintained as confidential. So there's a possibility that for example in an annual report for the commission or in any process the commission may undertake to share the resolution of any complaint with the public or with the complainant that other things that came to light in the course of the investigation which previously could not be made public now can be made public. The only limitation is information gained directly from the interview between the department or any outside investigator and the department employee who is the subject of the investigation. Even then there is a small change with regard to the commission's access to that material and that pertains to the commission can get access to information gained directly from an employee's interview in the event that the commission is called upon to fulfill its appellate role when there is a grievance that's taken up from the chief's decision and that's pretty much a summary of the changes as they relate to the commission's investigation of complaints as well as the commission's ability to make complaints information about the complaints and the resolution of those complaints public. Steffan or commissioner Saguino did also ask a specific question regarding an example that the commission has come across of the annual report from the city of Boulder which also has a police oversight commission and in its annual report it goes through a fairly detailed summary of all of the complaints that the commission in Boulder, Colorado dealt with during the course of the year and in similar fashion without naming individuals whether they be complainants or officers under investigation. It does give a rather lengthy summary of the complaint, the steps that were taken in the investigation and the resolution of the complaint and the question was asked whether that would be a practice under the new contract that this commission could adopt and in fact my view is that it could be adopted although I did in looking through the various complaints that were reported in the city of Boulder's annual report I did note that there were a couple of instances where statements made by department employees who were the subject of the investigation were excerpted and placed into the summary of the complaint resolution statement in the city of Boulder's report. That is an example of something that could still not be done. So a department employee or an officer's statement made during the course of an investigatory interview could not be included in a summary of the report. That's distinguished from an officer's statement that's made in public in front of other members of the public or an officer's statement that may have precipitated a complaint or a statement that an officer may have made in the press or an employee. The distinction is just those statements that are made by a department employee who is the subject of an investigation during the course of the interview, the internal interview with that employee that's part of the investigatory process. So that's my review of the changes and how that implicates the commission's ability moving forward to share with members of the community more information about the nature of the complaints received, the process undertaken to investigate those complaints and the resolution of those complaints, whether that be in an annual report that compiles them all or in special instances where the commission feels it's appropriate to make that kind of information public. Again, the contract is still expresses the agreement among the stakeholders that prior to any discipline action being resolved internally the information should remain confidential. It's an interestingly worded contract provision. Lawyers might disagree on whether that's mandatory or just a statement of shared values that can be deviated from in an appropriate case but as far as what happens after the disciplinary action has been resolved, it's clear that a much broader universe of information is now susceptible of being shared with the public and that contract is not an obstacle to that. Thank you very much for that. I open the floor to the commissioners for any questions while we have Anthony here. Not seeing or hearing any. Mr. Aropino, thank you very much for that. I appreciate that and breaking that down for us. Very happy to provide the information. Glad to keep you moving ahead of schedule. Thank you. Back to the agenda. We are on agenda item 3.09, commissioner comments. Part of the meeting where if you have any questions, comments or any thoughts you wanna give out to the general public, the floor is yours. Commissioner Grant, your hand is raised. The floor is yours. Thank you. I just wanted to reference some of the acting chief Merritt's comments earlier about what is being done with regards to addressing the number of gun incidents that we are like many other places having here in Burlington. My concern is especially with regards to specific groups in our community. Having them previously, I don't even have a proper word for it. I guess when I listen to the list of partners, what continues to discourage me is I don't hear any community engagement. So if we're gonna point the finger at a particular groups in our community, what specifically is going on to do outreach to that community? There's not mention of community partners and that worries me. The other thing I wanted to quickly mention is I've been reading a lot nationally of communities of all sizes, bigger cities, cities the same size, smaller communities who are engaging in gun buyback programs. And I think that is something that Burlington needs to consider. Thank you. Thank you for that. Commissioner Hart. Yeah, Chief, I'm wondering if you can speak to one thing that the gun violence has been brought up. Another issue that I'm seeing a lot of discussion about in the public, it has to do with bike theft and auto theft. And for some folks, their bicycle is their commute. That's how they get to work. That is their transportation. And I'm wondering if we can discuss what their expectations should be with the department, what they're supposed to do. Is it just talk us through what's going on if you can. Thanks. Sure, thank you. So we do have, we've certainly seen an uptick in vehicle thefts. And among the many things we're hopeful that we can do is encourage people to make themselves harder targets for both vehicle theft and bicycle theft. The chief of staff in the mayor's office has worked on a piece that we are going to be mailing out that talks a lot about crime prevention methods with regard to bicycles, with regard to vehicles. And I hope that that will create some bit of change. It includes also an ability to register bicycles so that when we recover them, we can know that they belong to someone. It is not rare for us to encounter a person on a bicycle who does not appear to be the legitimate owner of that bicycle. But if we have no means of proving that, we have to let that individual ride off on that bicycle. Sometimes a mere query, if we've lawfully engaged with that individual, is enough for the person to say, oh, it's not my bicycle, I found it. And then proceed to get off when we say, well, maybe we should try to find who that goes to. But if we don't have that kind of lawful reason to engage and if we don't ask those questions, the person may very well leave. And if we have no way of determining whether or not the bicycle has been reported stolen, we also have no way of preventing that person from leaving with the bicycle. So a registration system is going to facilitate return of bicycles at times. It's not going to help with arrest. The mere possession of a stolen bicycle in Burlington is not enough to arrest. It is at worst, it is possession of stolen property. And even there we have to demonstrate some degree of proof that the person knew that it was stolen property. Much less are we going to be able to actually hold the person accountable for having stolen it, absent specific and articulable proof of video of that individual taking it, for example, or catching that person in the act. Nevertheless, what we really wanna do is be able to return these things because as you pointed out, commissioner, they are very important to people. For some people, they are the main conveyance that folks have. With regard to another question that was raised around gun violence, et cetera, I worked on gun violence, excuse me, on gun buybacks in New York. Every practitioner and academic acknowledges that gun buybacks are smoke and mirrors. They are not useful at all with regard to actually driving down crime. The guns that are collected in gun buybacks are almost always guns that have never been involved in crime because the simple fact that the people who commit crimes with guns don't sell them, they keep them. There may be rare occasions where a parent is able to find a gun and bring it in, but that sometimes happens already. I have been to, for example, community groups who've called me where they're facilitating for a parent who has recovered a firearm or an imitation firearm sometimes and wants us to take that into custody. We do do that and we're happy to do that and have those kinds of relationships. But with regard to the other issues, when it comes down to it, the gun violence is being perpetrated by a very small number of people and incarceration and, well, rather, investigation and prosecution and ultimately incarceration is how we are going to be able to prevent recurrence of these crimes. And we do obviously want to have engagement with the entirety of the community of the city because this is something that's affecting everybody in the city at this point and involving the community in that. Again, I'm hopeful that we may be able to make some announcements about ideas around that in the coming week or weeks. Thank you for that. Thank you, Chief. Just a couple of follow-up questions. On the car theft, is that generally speaking because the keys are being left in the car or I'm just trying to think in terms of getting information out to folks? So that's about leaving your car unlocked and keys on the car generally speaking. Yes, that is a significant driver. I don't have numbers for that, Commissioner, but that is a significant component of vehicle theft. Okay, and with bicycles, I know a lot of people are locking their bikes up and losing them, so will what you distribute be talking about what locks someone should be getting or is that really not something that one can even hope for? I don't believe that that is a component of that flyer, the recommendation about specific kinds of locks or types. We obviously can't recommend brands. I don't think that's appropriate for a government entity, but I do think that we want people to have robust locks. I mean, I certainly would recommend to people that they do some solid research on the locks that they get. We see instances of people clipping and or cutting locks and so people should be doing a little bit of investigation into what they're purchasing and how they're using it. But the biggest issue is actually locking them and locking them well. You know, what we haven't seen much of here is report, well, no reports and it may be that people are not making those reports, but we haven't seen reports of things like wheel theft or seat theft. That was endemic when I was in college and in graduate school that people would take any part of the bike that wasn't somehow connected. This is really about taking the whole bike. And so therefore, you know, locking up need not be a really elaborate procedure where you try to wind a chain through every single part of the bicycle against whatever thing you're locking it to. I mean, it's the frame, lock the frame, put it there and make sure that it is a lock that's robust and strong. But what we really do need is we need serial numbers for these bikes. We need people to register these bikes in ways that allow us to identify them when we come into contact with them. There were hundreds and possibly, you know, more than hundreds of bikes and or bike pieces at Sears Lane. We have run into encampments in the intervail that have had, you know, just a myriad of bicycles and bicycle parts. And when we go through them, we very rarely find any that we can actually return, including some that are visually expensive models. But having a stronger set of information about that is something that this flyer encourages and hopefully it will help make a difference. Thank you, Chief. Commissioner Grant. Thank you. So as someone who for some time now had been just upset about the fact that there wasn't significant community engagement with regards to crimes of opportunity, how quickly they were increasing. And I just felt we were really behind the ball in increasing community awareness. I'm very happy to hear about this flyer and the fact that it'll be going out to all households. I'm curious as to if we can get a preview of the flyer, have members of the commission look at it to see if there's maybe something we could suggest that could be added to be more effective or just say, hey, yeah, this looks great. If we could have a preview of that, that would be greatly appreciated. With regards to registering bicycles would this be handled through City Hall? The flyer is being handled through City Hall. So I'm sure that they'd be happy to share that with you, Commissioner. Okay, so with regards to the bike registration, the actual someone actually registering their bike, has that been- I believe it's a website on the city, an entry form that is on the city website. Is it currently on the city website or is this something new that's gonna be created? Because I vaguely remember years and years ago, people could register their bikes, but I have no idea like a lot of people what is currently available to the community. We used to have a process by which people could come and register their bike with our desk officer. That was an officer who was assigned to be a face for the department for the public and the public would come into the building and could bring a bike with them and register it there. And then that's not something we've had for some time, neither the process nor the desk officer. Sure, but what is going to be specifically this new process that we want the community to follow? Is it going to be, is a city going to handle it like like someone going to City Hall or is there going to be a new website or a website link within the city's website? Just trying to have an understanding. And I think a lot of community members would have that question as well. I think it'll be explained in that flyer and there will probably be a link to how it's done there. Okay, very good. And then I would like the city to talk about the possibility of a gun buyback. I do hear what you're saying, but if it can encourage maybe more, I hear a lot of talk and I see younger individuals involved in a lot of these incidents. So I'm wondering if that would encourage more parents to get more involved. It may be of a benefit to us. So I don't want us to be too quick to dismiss that. I would at another time like you to really specify is a small number of people and also with regards to community partners and the age of a lot of these individuals, did they go through the Burlington school system? What is the Burlington school system doing to address these issues with students? What are area services that provide services to elementary, middle school and some high school students? What are they doing to talk to students about this? It pains me to think that we have to wait till we get to a point where someone has to be incarcerated, right? Why is that the only and final solution? What are we doing to intervene to prevent people from taking a particular path? Not that this is something that the police department would be actively involved in, but should be involved in communications with the community partners that are engaging with this age group and younger. So I really would like to hear that that's part of the conversation. And that just has been missing. And we're saying other things that are hurtful. Thank you very much. The implication that there hasn't been intervention is I think unfair. The fact is that the majority, the strong, strong plurality, if not a strong majority of these individuals have had multiple interventions. They've had multiple arrests, multiple instances in which they have been engaged with through the Boys and Girls Club, through the schools, through the SROs. And there have been many, many opportunities for off-ramping this behavior. We have individuals who have graduated from lower level of crime and disorder, most of which was ultimately either deferred or sent to the family court into levels of crime and disorder that are now what we see, which are gun violence of a type that is unprecedented in this community. So what I would like to see is what specifically, if other things aren't working, what conversations are happening to look at new ways? I work in a job where I have to explain things to people all the time. And sometimes I have to explain the exact same thing, but in an entirely different way to relate to the particular person that I am working with. So I would like, and since we're not really talking about these conversations, publicly, I feel like I'm someone who's, you know, my ears to the ground, so to speak. I'm not hearing what's happening there. We need to have more public conversations about that. We need to engage the public more about getting ideas. Because once again, when we get to the point of where incarceration becomes the final option, that's just heartbreaking to me. And it's heartbreaking to a lot of other people. And I think it's fair to say that that's not where we want to be. So, you know, please feel free to refer to me, people that you've worked with or people that are working with these kids. I'd be happy to do my own research to find out what exactly is going on. I mean, I know there's an issue with a number of students who are not getting through high school. So what is, you know, they're getting their GED, but it would be more beneficial if the high school can hold them. So what is the high school doing? What is the superintendent doing? Is he involved in looking at this and looking at other ways to try to keep some of these students? And you know, what is the engagement that is happening? Right? That's to me is what's not visible. And that to me is what's not really being talked about in the community. And what we need to know is happening because given everything that's going on nationally and in Vermont, things are gonna get worse before they get better. So we have to be looking at different solutions. Thank you. Thank you for that Commissioner Grant. I believe Commissioner Hart has another question. Thank you. Chief, can you speak to when you called in the Vermont State Police the other evening? What was the threshold and do you envision, if you can just talk through, I know that was after a shooting, but what your expectation is going forward on that? Sure. So my expectation is that we will not see a repeat of it in that scope. And it is not something that we should depend upon on a regular basis. The rationale for it was this. We had had a shooting on Thursday night. We had another shooting on Friday night, very, very early Saturday morning. That shooting occurred at bar closing. It occurred, there was a CSO on the corner of church and main. The shooting happened in front of the burn gallery on Main Street. The chain of events that we believe happened right now was that there was an altercation of some sort in the vicinity of a restaurant or bar in somewhere around Alibaba's there. Two individuals walked past an individual involved in the, I think I said CSL, but I meant CSO. I'm sorry, there was a CSO on the street corner of church and main. Two individuals walked past the individual who was involved in an altercation. They made a comment about that altercation. The individual broke away from the altercation, followed them down Main Street to the burn gallery, accosted them, attacked them physically. They then physically defended themselves and to a certain extent overwhelmed that individual at which point that individual produced a firearm and chased one and shot him. And then went back to the other, held that person at gunpoint for about 30 seconds before firing three times at that person striking him once. Had there been police officers on that corner, had we had the resources to have that, that incident would have been interrupted at one of those stages, the initial altercation that caused the two people passing by to make some comment, the fight that happened in front of the burn gallery, the first gunfire, certainly by the second gunfire. Instead, we had a CSO unarmed, unsworn who did amazing work, encouraging people to get away from that scene and come this way, come this way, get away as gunfire rang out. What we ended up with was a request to the Vermont State Police for additional resources in order to handle that Saturday night. And we ended up with 10 Vermont State troopers. The combination of those troopers and the resources that we had in the form of officers available to us was less than we normally would have on a Friday or Saturday night as recently as four years ago. It was great to have those 10 troopers. I am grateful to them. I'm grateful to the Colonel, Colonel Matt Birmingham for sending those troopers to us. Those troopers were pulled out on short notice on overtime. Many of them had other plans that weekend, but they were suddenly being sent to Burlington from as far away as Brattleboro. It is not reasonable or probable to expect that kind of outlay on the behalf of the city of Burlington's from the state and from the Vermont State Police. But it was well received that night and we are grateful for it. Thank you, Chief. Commissioner Grant. I guess I had a question about that. So what exactly was the expectation? I know that I received some comments where people were concerned that... I can't remember if it was seven days or which publication it was, but VSB had stated that they were not there to help out with any other types of incidents. So what was the directive given to them regarding their presence? And why were they... I guess I would have liked to have seen them spread out a little bit more in the downtown area. And that's reflective of some of the feedback that I received as opposed to having them all just grouped together. Thank you. Did you see them all grouped together, Commissioner? Because they weren't. Well, that's what I'm asking. Like when you say there was a total of 10 troopers, does that mean there were 10 cars? Yes, but you weren't asking. You were saying that you saw them all grouped together and that you would have liked to see them deployed. My apologies. So I'm asking, so there were groups of them together on Main Street. I'm trying to ascertain were there more than those set of cars on Main Street? So if there were 10 troopers, there were actually 10 cars, that would represent that there would be cars in other areas and exactly what areas those cars were in. Well, the request was for presence and the vicinity of church in Maine for bar closing. They were not going to come to this city in order to do routine patrol. Vermont State Police will not augment routine patrol. This was a specialized footpost for a specific event and time. There were vehicles at a variety of locations in that downtown core. Some were on St. Paul, I'm sorry, I apologize, I did not hear that. I'm sorry, I'm just clarifying that there were 10 vehicles. That's the main thing I wanted to clarify. Each of them came, they don't carpool. Okay. So they had 10 vehicles and some of them were parked on St. Paul. Some of them were parked on Winooski. Some of them were parked on college. Some of them were parked on Main Street and the officers were similarly distributed. There was a core group at the intersection of church in Maine. That is where the majority of our activity occurs but there were also troopers in other locations and troopers were roving around on foot. We included a post over in the vicinity of the Simons because we've had multiple gunfire incidents at Simons on South Winooski and Bank. We had troopers there also because we've had multiple gunfire incidents in the parking garage in that vicinity. We had a foot patrol that was moving through. I myself did multiple foot patrols with the captain of the Vermont State Police who was leading this detail. There was no clumping of one large group of people in one location. So that's why I was asking when they were teamed up for yourself. Sorry to interrupt you chief. I appreciate that detail and apologize if I misspoke. I was trying to get a clarity with actually how many vehicles there were and where they were posted because it didn't look based on community feedback that they were only in that certain area. So that's what I wanted clarification of. So I do appreciate you giving us those details. Thank you. I don't have any other questions at this time. I'm not seeing any further questions or comments from commissioners right now. So we'll close the agenda item 3.09 moving on to agenda item 3.10. Setting the agenda for next meeting in addition to the normal things use force reports and all that jazz. I think a continuation of policy updates. Commissioner Comerford, all your muted. I'd like to propose a continued conversation on this issue of gunfire and for next time as well. I don't want to prolong it tonight but I have also more questions. And as always with other commissioners as the month goes on, if there's anything comes up that we want to put on the agenda please reach out to either myself, commissioner Hart or commissioners who we know commissioner Green of the floor is yours. Thanks. Commissioner Comerford has agreed to take over organizing the educational component of commission meetings. And I'm anticipating that there will be an item on the agenda for next month as well. Is that correct commissioner Comerford? That is correct. And I would like to see us do something around de-escalation. We still haven't done that was on the agenda earlier. So if the chief could organize it instead of a day which we had talked about before at least a small introduction that can be followed up by something else that will be appropriate. One other item, oops, sorry. One other item would be for the commissioners that were able to attend the mental health summit that they would give a report to the commission at the next meeting. Yeah, that's not problem. I can give a mini report right now from today. They would just, there were several presentations from a variety of groups from around the area. And then I believe tomorrow is gonna be more of a Q and A between attendees and the groups that are presenting. But we'll be happy to give a more detailed report for next meeting. Commissioner Grant, floor is yours. Quick question, is this summit being recorded by any chance? It is. Thank you. It's currently a living app, but it is and I will find out where it's being housed. That'll be great, because I can't attend to, because of my work scheduled, but I would be very interested in what was discussed. Thank you. All right then, closing up that agenda item. Moving on to agenda item 4.01 and anticipating their concession. And there will be one and I am citing one. Excuse me, Commissioner Gommas. Somebody's got something playing in the background that's very loud. Yeah, can everyone now please mute her? And I can't unmute, I can't mute. Is Mohamed, can you mute me? I think you have to mute on your side, sorry. All right then, citing one VSA 313A4. I move to enter executive session to discuss officer disciplinary records. I am right now is 334. Technically, I don't believe we have the Sharon Bush or conference room till 815. So I think, well, there was gonna be a period of time where the commissioner deliberate over, over the executive slate. So I believe we're gonna convene now. And then at 815, we'll invite the chiefs via Zoom for us. So I guess the chiefs, we will see y'all at 815. I believe you should have the executive session Zoom link for that. And we'll see y'all then for the other commissioners, hang tight and I'll be in contact. And for everyone that joined in for the public, thank you very much. Our next scheduled monthly meeting is the fourth Tuesday of September, which is September 27th. 6 p.m. That'll be a hybrid form again, meeting here and on Zoom. Please stay, keep your eyes peeled, the board docs when we announce our next meeting. Thank you so much. Have a good night, everybody.