 calling this meeting to order as the co-chair. Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the working group. Given that we have a quorum present, I'm calling the May 5th, 2021 meeting of the community safety working group to order at 5.48 PM. I will call upon each member of the working group by name. At that time, you should unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate that they can hear me and we can hear them. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Ms. Walker. Present. Mr. Vernon Jones. Present. Ms. Ferrara. Present. Ms. Pat. Ms. Pat. Yeah. Mr. Cage. Present. Ms. Bowman. Present. Moving forward, Ms. Walker and I will take turns facilitating every other meeting and step up as needed, but first we'll go over the agenda. I want to take a couple of minutes to review our agenda for today's meeting. We will first hear any public comment that members of the public want to provide the working group. We will not respond to your comments, but we'll listen to your comments carefully. We'll then hear comments from community safety working group members and review the minutes and vote to approve them. Next, we'll hear from the Amherst Police Department and finish the conversation we started at our April 21st meeting. After hearing from the Amherst Police Department, we'll move into our discussion on what an effective resident oversight committee would look like in Amherst. Lastly, we will try to leave time to discuss the deadlines that we need to meet coming up and also where the budget is at for fiscal year 22 and what we need to do as a group to move forward. Our first order of business is the public comment section of the agenda. If any member of the public would like to make a statement, please raise your hand. I will recognize you and ask Ms. Moisten to turn on your microphone. I ask that comments be limited to no more than three minutes. The working group will not be responding, but listening carefully. Can you see Mr. Vince O'Connor? Oh, yes. Good evening, Mr. O'Connor. Good evening. Is this an appropriate time to make a comment? Yes? Yes. OK, so I have a copy of the budget book. I've read the sections that pertain to the work of the efforts of the working group. I mean, I've listened in to a number of meetings. I certainly am of the opinion that the budget represents a bad faith response to your efforts by the town manager and insulting bad faith response. And that those who participated in his efforts to do this may think they have won the war. They've only won the first battle. And that I just refer people to the W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America because I believe that we are in the Third American Revolution, the second being, of course, the Civil War and its aftermath. And that this revolution will complete the work of the Civil War in a way that probably none of us can outline at this time. But I really commend the working group for having put forth the effort and so forth and laid the foundation for the citizens of the town to essentially take back their government from a group of people who think they are invulnerable, both to criticism and to public action. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. I don't see anybody else with their hand raised at this time, so I think we can move forward. So the next agenda item is member reports. Out of respect for Chief Livingstone and his colleagues, I ask that all comments around the fiscal year 22 budget wait until later in this meeting. But I still want to allow this time for members to update us on any work they are doing or events that are coming up. So Ms. Bowman has her hand up. Oh, Ms. Bowman. Never mind. For me, oh, sorry. Ms. Farrah. So again, I think it was something that I had mentioned last time, but there was like more of an article around the 26, I mean, yeah, 26 year old man, Mario Gonzalez, that was killed on April 19th by the police in California, city of Alameda. Again, similar to, you know, what happened with George Floyd with kind of putting his face down, hands cuffed behind his back and then him passing away. And again, they were called in because of a mental health concern. So, you know, highlighting the importance of our work and making sure that, you know, we don't have to do that. I mean, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. These lives that continue to be lost. So. Just, you know, exhausting. Thank you for sharing that. Did anybody else have anything they wanted to report? So I guess we can move to the next agenda item, the minutes. So the next item on the agenda is the minutes from March 3rd, 2021. I want to, I want to make a motion to approve those minutes. Is there a second? I'll send that in. Do that. So Ms. Walker. No, no, you don't have those. Oh, we don't. You don't. Oh, I'm sorry. Just kidding. Okay. So I guess we'll move on. We need a hand. Last week. What about the minutes you sent last week? I'm sorry. I, I don't, I was stressing over minutes trying to get them uploaded to the packet, but you guys had the minutes from last week. Yeah. Okay. Great. I reviewed that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. My apologies. So should we do a motion to approve those? I'm sorry. Okay. So I would like, I want to, I want to move to approve the minutes from three, three 21 has presented. Is there a second? I did it before. Okay. I think we need to do a roll call for Ms. We can just raise our hands. Okay. So all in favor of moving to approve the minutes from three, three 21, raise your hand. Mr. Cage is your hand raised. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So I, with that out of the way, we can move to finishing our conversation with the Amherst police department. I would like to welcome back the chief of police chief Langston and his colleagues to finish our conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We had a list of questions that we put together. The April 21st meeting. And I want to pick up where we left off in finishing those questions, but I also want to urge members to ask follow up questions and questions as they arise. And. Ms. Brara. So, um, if. We recognize one of the questions being ours. I would like to ask a question. Absolutely. Thank you. Um, so chief Livingstone, and if you'd like to welcome yourself and your colleagues and introduce yourself again. And after that, I will start the questions where we left off. Okay. Sure. Thanks, Brianna. And, um, thank you everybody for having us back. Uh, again. And. Captain Gabe Ting is here again from the operations and, and Captain Ron Young is here from the administrative end. And they each have their own little specialties. So, um, I don't know if I can answer any additional follow up questions to the ones you presented to us. Um, I tried to, we tried to answer those the best of our ability and, you know, Without being overly, you know, the weeds with all those responses, I tried to keep them as short as possible. You know, the only one we didn't go into a great deal of, um, Detail with was the last question about, uh, recommendations to the Crest program. I think I mentioned in my response that we probably could have our own little separate meeting on that agenda alone about, you know, what direction the committee would like to go with that. And then the insight that we have is in our side of the responses that we've been dealing with for years. And then again, the additional conversations we've had, we've had with the police agencies about how they respond to mental health. Um, calls and that sort of thing. But, um, you know, I'll stop there and see if there are questions about our responses to the questions you presented, Brian, unless there's something specific you want me to address. So I did see that you've got a chance to write down the answers to the questions we had, but I wanted to verbally ask you guys them because I didn't get the responses until this afternoon and the group hasn't been able to have a chance to look at them. Okay. So the question where we left off was to do, does the APD track traffic stops by race? Do they use one standardized self reporting form created by the police stops committee in 2004? If yes, is the document accessible to the public? And if no, can you explain why? Sure. So for that specific form, I'm not familiar with it, nor am I familiar with the police stops committee that was. Organized or what was ever presented in 2004. In my explanation, I did reach, I explained that I reached out to the previous police chief. I was not police chief in 2004 and asked him if he had any recollection of that specific police stops committee. And he did mention that he remembers the select board voting on something, but never actually enacting it. So specific to a form from the select board, we do not use that particular form. We do track all vehicle stops, both verbal and written police stops. We have pretty strict protocol about that. And we are by law, mandated to report all of our written citations and written warning to the mass registry. So all of those get submitted and then in addition, any motor vehicle stops that are verbal warnings or that sort of thing, we have our officers have pretty strict guidelines about how they have to go into our computer aided dispatch system and give information about the type of stop that they made. So we, we do doc that collect that on every stop that we do. Our in-house system is pretty specific about what, what we track. And it goes into a lot more detailed in the state, state system as far as the citations. Like we do trace things, truck things such as race, the location of the stop, the reason for the stop, the type of stop, the duration of the stop, whether there was a search or not, what the weather was at the time. And if there are additional passengers, what was the traffic at that time, you know, date time and everything else is associated with that. And all of that information is documented. And we, we do an annual analysis of those stops. And I know that we presented that to the group and a previous batch of information that we, we gave you guys. So you should have that information. I also mentioned in the written responses that we are in the process of updating our website with, with our Brianna from the IT department and our IT people. So, you know, that's all public information and it's shared with anybody who wants it. So what we're going to be doing is taking the next step, next step and just having that on there all the time so that anybody who wants to can just click on a website and see that information for themselves. So that's pretty much it. Yes, Pat. So, um, Chief, I actually, I was the one who asked this question because in 2004, it was a friend of mine, Jackie Hazard, who convinced the town meeting at that time to create a form to track in terms of racially police stops. You were a political, you were an staff member of APD then. So I don't understand why you're saying that you don't recall, you don't remember. This was a, in the public thing that the board member, the select board charged APD and that was actually recruitment. There was appointment of residents to join that group. My friend Jackie Hazard actually urged some of our friends, including myself and some NWA, ACP members to attend and observe. What I recalled was BIPOC folks were very intimidated at that, at that meeting. And it wasn't very constructive, but I knew I, I know very well that a form was created at that meeting. And now we're hearing that it was never used. So what was the point of having select board charge a town department to do something and they just ignored it. Thank you, Miss Pat. So again, I wasn't part of the police department administration. I was a police officer back then. So I wasn't privy to what happened either at the select board meeting or the town meeting at that time. I can tell you that I've never seen the form. And if it's something that's simply just a form that they presented that needs to be filled out. We could probably incorporate that form into our reporting system. I'm guessing it's probably not as in depth as the forms we use currently. But again, without having seen it, I really don't know what the form even looks like. So if it's something that the group would want us to try and incorporate into our reporting system, I think that would probably be pretty easy to do. I mean, I don't have the form, but I do recall that it was developed. What I could do is my recollection. What I could probably do is go back into these select board minutes of 2004 and I could work with. Meet people in the town hall and see what was actually presented and then move forward from there. Do you have time for him for that to get back to us? I don't know how long it would take, but I can't imagine it would take more than a day to research it. Thank you. Sir, I'll follow up on that tomorrow. Thank you. You're welcome. That's right. Well, thank you. You all for continuing to answer our questions. And Miss Owen, just a quick thing. If you're able to kind of put the questions up on, on share screen, that would be helpful too, so that we could follow along. But in terms of my question, Chief Livingstone is in regards to what you stated about the, the information that you all keep, the data that you all keep. So I have a question in regards to, you said that you keep information on verbal warnings. And I believe we, you know, did look at that. I think it's been a little while since I got to look at that information again, but I want more specificity in terms of that, right? So are you talking about when a police person gives a verbal warning? Or are you talking about stops? And then nothing happens in terms of like, there's no verbal warning and there's no, what is it? Violation, you know, like, you know, a charge given to them and things like that. Because I want to know what happens. Do you document when there is a stop period, whether there is a verbal warning or not? And when you document that, do you have race? Do you have all the other specifications that you stated? So that's first question, right? Second question is, what about age? Do you keep age of, of those that you're stopping? Because, you know, obviously we always hear about younger people, you know, now what, 16 and over getting stopped quite a bit because of their age and getting a profile because of that. So interested in that. And then third question is about, you said passengers, you also document passengers. So what do you document their race? Do you document their gender? Do you document their age too? Because obviously I'm thinking about situations where a young person is stopped and then their friends who are in the car are also kind of, you know, questioned and so on and so forth. So yeah, very interested in the breakdown in terms of that information. Sure. And I'll start and Captain Ting might have to jump in because he's the one that actually presents the annual report. But so all stops are documented. Even if it's a verbal warning and by a verbal warning, let's say an officer pulls somebody over for a stop sign violation. Even either give a written citation with a fine or a written warning with no fine and just say, hey, be careful of that stop sign in the future. They still have to document that. In addition, we have in car video system. So anytime the blue lights are activated, those record automatically. So we have documentation of the stops as well. But you know, the officers have to initiate a CAD so that when they, you know, come back during a break, they enter into the computer. Yes, I made a motor vehicle stop on North Pleasant street and issued a verbal verbal warning to so and so. And then they put in all the information including the date of birth. So, Gabe, do you want to add anything on that? Yeah, just to try and answer your question, Ms. Ferrara is that, you know, relative to, you know, all the data that's compiled, you know, the state kind of regulates that to, for our agency to track our stops for that purpose. You know, we monitor it and we also do do a manual evaluation to try and take a look at what our motor vehicle stops are and see what our officers are doing. We compare that from a five year period. So we take a look at the comparisons and try and figure out, you know, what is going on with our agency. Sometimes those numbers fluctuate for several reasons. For example, this past year because of COVID, you know, those numbers are drastically going to change because the population here in town has changed at least for the year. Certainly we take into consideration the number of students and visitors that come into town. A lot of times that makes it very difficult to track in terms of if we were to delineate, you know, who are we stopping? Are we stopping just visitors, people that are just passing through town or coming here for a specific event? Or are they all Amherst residents? So that isn't something that we actually track. That makes it very difficult to enter a question in terms of the passengers. We do not keep any stats on the race or the sex of the passengers only on the operator. And the reason being for that is because the operator is the only one that's being focused on. Usually when there's a motor vehicle violation, we are only focusing on that operator. We do collect that data, however, in terms of the passengers, but we do not collect the data on their race or age. Again, only on the driver. Furthermore, you know, the data that we do compile is the best that we can. And the reason, the reason why I say that is because it makes it kind of difficult. We can't ask the specific motorist exactly what is their race. We have to make our best judgment in terms of what we observe, you know, asking somebody specifically what their race is inherently kind of offensive. So we try to shy away from that. And we make our best estimated guess as to who we're sopping. And that data again is monitored to try and ensure that our police department and our officers are doing what they're supposed to be doing. I hope that answers that question. Ms. Farera. So just a quick follow-up, just so I'm clear. So in terms of actually getting that data, and I understand obviously, you know, not asking, you know, people outright because you don't want to, you know, appear discriminatory, discriminatory, you know, in terms of that, right? And so, so I just want to be clear, though, that you're saying that then that means you're just doing your best guess when you do kind of stop someone in terms of what their race is, is that? Yes. That's correct. Okay. We're not going to ask the operator specifically what is their race? What about, what about if you arrest someone? Do you give them anything at that point, like a form or something where obviously if they want to volunteer their race, they can or you don't? Well, there's a booking procedure if they're placed under arrest. So there are specific questions that we will ask during that booking procedure. You know, certainly it's tied in with their identity. Usually when we do arrest somebody, we're able to take a look at what their driver's licenses and their background, which will already list their race. So we won't have to ask that question. We utilize the information that's already provided. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Does anybody else have any follow-ups for this question? Ms. Walker. I'm sorry. So I am, this is very similar to what Ms. Ferrera just asked, but I'm just wondering if you guys are taught any strategies or techniques that you use in order to indicate what someone's race would be, or if that is something that's entirely left up to the discretion of each officer on their own individually, or if there are like certain indicators that you would use to say, or if there are certain categories, like do you only use four separate racial categories when you're determining someone's race, or is there a more broad, do you have more choices? So that's like, sorry, you can go ahead. No, I understand. I understand your question. Unfortunately, the choices that we use are only what the registry of motor vehicles provides for us, for motor vehicle stops. You know, it becomes a little more extensive with their, when there's a physical arrest because there's, during the booking procedure, it's a, the booking procedure is a little more invasive for a lack of a better term in terms of gathering information. So if it's just merely for a motor vehicle stop, there is a set standard that the, that the RMB does provide for us to try and estimate what somebody's race is. In terms of trying to make that determination, we do have trainings through anti-bias training to try and help our officers make a determination to the best of our ability as to what somebody's race is. Thank you. And if you don't mind, I just have one other follow-up question. I was just wondering in terms of the documentation of stops, is documentation always done right away on the scene, or are there times or occasions where documentation is gone back and refilled in after the stop or incident has occurred? So that depends, it's both. If it's a, if we're going to issue a written citation or a written warning, so a documented form, which is, if you've ever received a citation, it would be filled out right away. So it would be documented immediately. Now, if it's a verbal warning, so obviously we wouldn't produce any type of paperwork. So that information of that operator's license would be called into our dispatch center. Our dispatcher will put that information into the CAD. CAD stands for computer-aided dispatch. It's basically a documentation device, our records management system. And so it is documented through the computer, just not in a written form. So I guess to answer your question, yes, it's in every instance it is documented immediately. It's just that the officer will have to go back into the station for that verbal warning to go into, there's a racial tab that we call it to be able to fill in more of the details of that stop. Thank you. You're welcome. Another follow-up question that I had from this question. Chief Livingstone, you talked a little bit about Brianna from IT working on updating the website. How frequently do you guys plan on publishing the demographics of the stops and violations? So, you know, I guess that would be up to maybe even the community and what they want. We do it annually. You know, we could do it every six months. We could do it once a month. If that were the case, you know, I guess it would be kind of what works for our IT department and how easy they can make it to work for us as far as backfilling that information. But, you know, I guess it would come down to what the community would want. Okay. And just to confirm then, so Amherst doesn't have a policy that allows you to publish more than just once a year. Oh, no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it would be whatever the community feels they would want if they wanted an annual report, which is what we do now. But, you know, it's a public document. So let's say somebody wanted to come in and see. Documentation of a car stop they had just had yesterday. We would be able to produce that documentation for that person. Okay. Thank you. Did anybody else have any follow-up questions for this question? So we can move on to question five. Question five is when the APD receives a complaint that a homeless person is sleeping or hanging out on either public or private property. How is that situation handled? Is this approach different in the winter versus warmer months? Different in daytime versus night. So if you want, I'll just read from that. If people haven't had the chance to access my response, but. So our officers are generally pretty familiar with most of our homeless population in town. If there is somebody new and that's happened here and there with our Craig's door shelter, you know, we've, the way it was set up this year, we had more beds available to people. So we did see it a change in the number of people that would access the Craig's door homeless shelter. So we did see some new people. When we encounter new people, we try and gather as much information as possible if we have to deal with them. I know what resources they may need. It might just be a place to sleep. They may need medical attention. They may need food. So, you know, and we can direct them to those resources as needed. You know, if it's very specific to somebody hanging out on public or private property. You know, again, we try each, each calls maybe a little bit different, but also a little bit the same because we try and find out what it is that individuals need. So, you know, why are you camping out in somebody's backyard or why we used to get a lot of complaints about people camping up in the uppers pond rec area and that sort of thing. And so we try and find through our crisis intervention team members what it is these people may need. And we, you know, we'll do follow up with those individuals. You know, we have a number of people that we work pretty closely with. And of course, the Craig's Doors staff is one of them. But we also work with Amherst Community Connections and Amherst Housing Authority. And in the Elliott homeless on this services in North Hampton. You know, if it involves. Somebody in the wintertime in the summertime, it doesn't change a whole lot because we're still looking to find the resources that the people need. Now, if it's some, you know, it's, if it's a 20 degree night in the wintertime, we're obviously not going to just leave the person out in the cold, you know, but there, we have other resources in the wintertime that we wouldn't necessarily have in the summertime. No, we can find them hotel rooms in the town of Amherst will supply people with, with the financial ability to get a hotel room for the night and dire straight situations, that sort of thing. You know, also if it's a private property complainant, you know, sometimes they want a little bit more done, like arrests that we were willing to do. So we kind of shy away from having to make a rest in situations like that, you know, even if we're dealing with a homeless person and this they may be shoplifting or something like that. They may be shoplifting for necessities, right? So sometimes the shopkeeper would want an arrest and we shy away from that. So, you know, a lot of different decisions go into the specific calls. I can tell you that the arrest of a homeless person is really our last resort. You know, we, we don't have a perfect system in the town of Amherst or in Hampshire County for that. In that case, but we do the best we can with the resources we have to deal with each individual person on a as need basis. So I kind of rambled on a little bit there, but I hope I explained myself. Miss Rara and then Mr. Vernon Jones. So I guess my question would be, and thank you, you know, for answering and providing that information. So my question would be so what under what and obviously just kind of, you know, give kind of like more general information about it because I understand obviously you can go into any specific, but when would you arrest someone who is homeless in regards to situations under what circumstances I guess, because like you said, right, the property owner may be put in pressure for them to be arrested or there may be another situation. But I guess, because from, from your responses, it appears that yeah, you know, HUD doesn't want to go into a specific situation that you have to deal with. So I guess I would say that APD is doing what needs to be done to kind of get the assistant. However, obviously, and totally we've heard other things, right? There's arrests. There's those types of things. So can you kind of explain a little bit about that? Yeah. Thanks, Mr. So first of all, they'd have to be committing a crime, right? In order to us to affect and arrest. Trying to think of a recent time where we had to affect. Yeah, jump in. Not too long ago, there was a gentleman that he's a homeless individual and he's known to us. And he's been homeless for quite some time. However, his MO is to break into homes and break into different businesses. Not too long ago, he had broken into a home that's right off of Spring Street. And apparently he had been living there in their basement on and off. The homeowners were awakened. And one of the homeowners had their daughter and their young infant child that was staying over for the night. And when they discovered him inside of the home, he kind of got cornered into one of the bedrooms. He took the child as hostage and he ended up running outside. And there was a wrestle between the grandmother and this homeless individual over the child. And thankfully, they were able to wrestle that child away from that homeless individual and he got away. And a subsequent investigation ensued, we were able to locate that homeless individual. And at that point, because of the severity of the crime, we made that determination that an arrest had to be made that was serious enough for us to be able to, not only look into his wellbeing in terms of what his needs were, but we now had to look at the needs for the homeowners and the child's safety. So we felt that an arrest had to be affected. That's one example. So just a quick follow-up. So in terms of that, you know, and obviously, yeah, I understand that, you know, being arrested and obviously going through that process, right? But yet and still, right? Even if the person has to, you know, it's gonna be charged and it's gonna have to deal with some certain situations, will this person also be offered though, right? Services to deal with the issues as to why this person is homeless. Maybe this person has the mental health issues. Maybe this person has some other issues, right? That's going on. Will there be a holistic approach besides all it only being kind of disciplinary for lack of a better word? Oh, absolutely. You know, the thing is, is, you know, we try and look at what the underlying causes, you know, a lot of times with homeless individuals, you know, there's really other reasons as to why they're homeless, you know, if they have a mental health issue or if they have some type of substance abuse issue, usually those type of things kind of lead them to the situation or circumstances that they're in. So we certainly visit their background and take a look at that and utilize the courts to give us some leverage to make sure that they get the services that they get. A lot of times they're very resistant in getting help. We certainly don't wanna force anyone to do anything that they don't wanna do. However, in many instances, again, they're very resistant and we are trying to help them. We do try and figure out what that underlying causes. So, you know, when we do make that arrest, the purpose isn't for punishment. The purpose is really to find a resolution for it. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Vernon Jones. Scott, how do you provide transportation for homeless folks if they need to get to a shelter or get to a service? And do you just put them in the back of a police car? And if they have belongings, do you take their stuff with them? Yeah, all of the above, Ross. I've transported people in my car to, and we typically in the past have used the Route 9 border for hotels in the wintertime if there's nothing available in our homeless shelter or, you know, sometimes we'll work with North Hampton and they do the same with us. So if all the shelters are full, we can go as far as South of Springfield to utilize their homeless shelters if we need to. And, you know, like most times in the middle of the night there's not transportation available. So yeah, we'll just utilize our own transportation and get the person to where they need to be. So yeah. Thanks. I have one quick question, Chief. How exactly do you guys follow up with the homeless people that you're interacting with? And probably Captain Young's, I don't wanna jump in because this is his expertise with our crisis intervention team because that is one of their responsibilities is as Captain Ting mentioned, you know, sometimes an arrest has to be made or sometimes, you know, we need to move on to a different call but that doesn't typically mean we end with that individual there. So Ron, maybe you can explain what the responsibilities are for follow-up for our crisis intervention team members. Certainly, Chief. So we schedule follow-up on a bi-weekly basis, I'm sorry. So members from our CIT team will team up with somebody from the behavioral health network or from whatever resource would meet that specific case. So let's say for instance, let's say it's a substance abuse disorder. We'd connect with somebody from Dart or from Hampshire Health or something along those lines or Recovery Coach and we will seek that person out and offer services. And we're repetitive with it because sometimes people don't want services in the beginning but, you know, if we develop a relationship with them, sometimes we can get them turned on. I also just wanted to add another follow-up question, too, Ms. Ferrara had brought up. Another fail-safe, another parachute that's out there is people who have been arrested and charged with criminal acts. When they get to court, forensic services at the court level handles a lot of people who deal with behavioral and mental health disorders. So if it slips through the cracks of let's say CSO or BHN or we don't pick up on it, but they are brought to court to deal with whatever criminal conduct that drew us to enforce the arrest, the forensic services is in place and they're tied back in and closes the circle with the image. Thank you. And I guess kind of as a follow-up from that, I think you touched on it a little bit, but how often do people show up for these bi-weekly check-ups? How effective is that? It's very effective. So, and we reach out to them. Actually, in many cases, they reach out to us but we actually schedule it. What we do is we'll go back and look and see if there's been activity with a person in town and we'll reach out to them. Sometimes it's just a phone call, just a check-in. Hey, how are you? You get what you need or you're wired in. We do that a lot, particularly people with substance abuse disorders. You know, if you've been with your recovery college, how's things going? Sometimes it's an in-person meeting. With COVID, obviously it's been almost exclusively either digital or by telephone for the last little bit. But yeah, so that's a bi-weekly. Monthly at the very least when our activity level is low, but bi-weekly more often than not. Thank you. Does anybody have any other follow-up questions for this question? Okay. The APD has instituted an anti-bias policy and many recommended progressive policing practices. Given this, how do you explain the fact that the BIPOC community members still report being mistreated, treating in a discriminatory manner or threatened by APD officers? So, yeah, thank you for that question, Brianna. Again, I put in my response how disappointed it is to hear that from our citizens and not disappointed, obviously, on their end, disappointed on our end, that they do feel that way, that they feel they can't reach out to us or they're feeling threatened or not treated with respect from the Amherst police officers. You know, we obviously need to do a better job with conveying to our BIPOC community about why we're here, you know, and what our mission is and what our goals are so that they don't feel discriminated against or threatened. You know, we've done a really good job with that aspect of our job when we're dealing with college students and, you know, we do a lot of work with the fraternities and sororities and the college community and the sports teams. So we need to figure out a way to translate that into our group of BIPOC community members who are, you know, feeling like they're not being taken care of in a respectful manner as well. So, you know, one of the things Ron and Gabe and I talked about from after our first meeting was, you know, it kind of shook us a little bit that, you know, we were kind of told that the BIPOC community members weren't willing to, for instance, file a police complaint that they needed to or didn't feel we would take it serious. I mean, those are types of discussions we had and we continue to have those discussions about how to make it better, you know, so information from you guys is extremely helpful about how we can take that next step because we are interested in making people feel confident in their police department, all the members of the community confident in their police department that they were there for them. And so, you know, we're here to learn as well. So, you know, I don't have all the answers, but we certainly are willing to try and find the answers and work with the groups that we need to. Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Pat. So I had a black man share with me recently that he was in the center of town and walked by a situation where a car with a man and a woman and two or three children, clearly dark-skinned folks, had been pulled over by the police, and there were three police cars there, all with their lights flashing. And the way he reported it to me is it just seemed so intimidating and so stigmatizing and that anybody walking by would think, oh, that person's really done something terrible. And I wondered, is this part of police protocols that you would send three cars? How do you think about that? You know, there are certain calls that require multiple vehicle response. I'm not familiar, Russ, with the very specific incident you're talking about, but those are the types of things that as a police chief I would wanna know about if somebody's feeling like they weren't treated fairly by the police department or had questions about why there were multiple police responses to a car stop, right? So, you know, how do we make that community member feel it's safe to come to the police chief or make a phone call or reach out to the town manager's office to make a complaint or at least even ask a question about why we do the types of things that we do. So, well... In this case, it wasn't the person who had been pulled over that I talked to, it was somebody else in town who felt, you know, that his people were being stigmatized and threatened and so he felt less safe around the police because the police were treating somebody that way. Yeah, I mean, I understand the visual of that and not only that, but the, I mean, I've been pulled over by other police agencies and my heart still thumps. It's not a comfortable feeling at all. So I understand that part of it, you know, I couldn't imagine being put in the position of a person of color who gets pulled over when they have other concerns too. So all I can tell you is we need to find a mechanism where people who have questions or concerns feel comfortable going to either the police department or the town manager's office, HR department, whoever it may be to inquire, ask questions and get answers. Thank you. Ms. Pat, Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Ferrara. Chief Scott, I feel that the police union is an issue and because when BIPOC folks make complaints, nothing comes out of it, officers are not fired. We don't know if there are discipline that is transparency issue. Would you consider or supporting getting rid of police union? Yes or no? So sure. Yeah, that would be accountability. So I think that's a good point. That would be accountability of police officers. Yeah, so when we do receive complaints, Ms. Pat, you know, they're investigated completely and thoroughly and we always respond to the complainant individually and I always offer to meet with those individuals in person to go over their complaints and any concerns they have about the process. Sometimes people take it up on me and sometimes it's a process of explaining, okay, what the law is, why do the officers do what they want? But sometimes it's a issue of a police officer being rude and we do take punitive action against police officers. So when we do receive complaints, we don't receive a lot of them, but when we do, we make sure that we communicate that to the complainant. And again, I offer to meet with those individuals personally and to go over all complaints and any issues they have with us. That wasn't my experience. So I'm just saying that I know some BIPOC folks who have made complaint. So APD and they never heard back what the outcome is. We are also aware of some police officers who got promoted even with some disciplinary issues that they have. And so we're talking about how can we build relationship between the police and BIPOC community? We need to see action. Action is what we need to see. Not that for us to trust the police. Thank you. Yeah, I understand officers are entitled to due process. I can tell you for the complaints we do receive, we investigate them thoroughly. And again, any complaint we receive from an individual, I reach out personally to those persons. Thank you. You're welcome. Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Ferreira. So the question I have is kind of too far. Or it's kind of, yeah. So I don't know if you heard, but we had an open forum a while back where people come and talk about their experiences with the Amherst Police Department. And one of those people to come forward was actually my eldest child. And I kind of had to beg him to come forward and talk about his story. And he was detained on New Year's Eve after a party where someone I guess pulled a knife or something like this. And it took a lot of people, a lot of students to keep them, to make the officer officers, I don't know if it was one or more to release him because another student of his had seen, another coast, a student who had been, they'd been gone to high school together, had seen this officer pulling him over, or not pulling him over, just that he was walking and stopped him and then putting him in the car and had this other student not been there, not blasted social media with, hey, they're detaining this person, get down here now. I think they would have brought my son to the station. I believe they would have brought my son to the station. And then comes to find out later that, because what they said is he looks like someone who did something at some party and he was like, look, I was at the party, but that wasn't me. I left to go see my girlfriend before, I've been gone for a while. And then he was like telling people he was telling the officers, he's like, look, you can verify this with a friend of mine who happened to be in that crowd at that point because so many people had been reached out to and they didn't even believe that the friend was standing right there and the friend's like, look, I got idea, I can show you, this is who I am. And they went to his house and it was just a fiasco. And I had to do everything I could do not to like as a parent who's lived in this, in Amherst since I was 11, whose son has been in the newspaper for football and lacrosse and so many other things. And then to come and find out that the kid that actually did this looked nothing like my child and wasn't even wearing the same clothes as my child. So when you say that like, you're not aware of this, you're not aware of this because my son was afraid to step forward. Nobody, we've spoken about this before. There's a history with police officers. There's a history that goes very far and very deep. And one of my issues with officers is that they mostly don't know that history when it pertains to black folks and other BIPOC people. And why would we trust you? Like, regardless of what you say you're gonna do if we were to report these other officers, like, why would we, we have no reason to trust you. And I think that like as a person who is in charge of these other officers, I feel like it's very important for you to really understand that this goes far and deep. It's like, I know I'm safe here in Amherst. I know my kids for the most part are safe here in Amherst. I cringe every time they leave the area because I don't know what's gonna happen in other towns. I at least know that I'm, people know me well enough in this community that if something really had gone down worse than what had happened, I have a whole community. You know, of people that know me and know my family well enough, did they know that they would back me and it would be problems, you know? But I just keep driving through this town even knowing that like I've been pulled over by officers and, you know, I've gotten pulled over but I got pulled over a while ago. I don't get pulled over often but I got pulled over a while ago by one particular officer who took one look at me and was like, Tishina, what are you doing? And I was like, sorry, miss that self sign. You know what I'm saying? But I know the only reason why is because we had and we knew each other from high school. You know what I'm saying? Like that's the only reason why, you know? And that's what people are coming from out of town. People coming from other places. And so I just want you to do the research and I want you to do the research and do it in a way that is deep and thorough because if you're here and trying to, if you're gonna continue being the chief here you have to set precedence for the rest of your officers and part of doing that is making sure that they understand the history themselves but it starts with you. Everything starts with you. The other thing I just wanted to answer to is, you know hearing the story about, you know the people who are pulled over and there's three cop cars and so on and so forth because, you know, obviously like as a person of color I see that and the first thing I do when I see a person pulled over is look and see what color they are. Like that's, I should be minding my business on some level. You know, but I can't because if I see a person of color that's gonna automatically make me wanna stop and just stand bare witness to what's happening. Constitutes a situation where multiple officers would need to be at a stop. I mean, there are a number of them, you know and again, I'm not, I don't wanna speculate about the Mr. Russ Vernon Jones told but there are policies and procedures that we have about what would constitute a multiple vehicle stop. It could be, you know somebody who is wanted for a felony warrant arrest or something of that nature. But, you know, the list isn't lengthy but there are circumstances where multiple officers would be initiating, you know, a car stop. Sometimes it's because it might be a female operator and then so we have to bring a female police officer to the scene. So, you know, you would have two officers at that scene. So, you know, there is a reason that there would be multiple officers. So again, I didn't wanna speculate on what the case was with the incident that Mr. Vernon Jones explained but those are just a couple of reasons why you might have more than one officer at a vehicle stop. All right. I mean, that's exactly answer my question but like, I guess I kind of get where you're getting at. One last thing that I just thought of before I quiet myself is that I forgot what it was. Okay, well, I guess I'm done for now. I'll raise my hand if I have another question. Thank you very much. Thanks, Tanisha. Ms. Ferrara. Thanks. So, a couple of things, you know when we're talking about this and Chief, I know that you, you know talk about, you know, wanting to know more and hear more and, you know, disappointed to hear about how BIPOC people are feeling in terms of the police and that's been a longstanding history. It's not anything new but I wanna kind of address some of that in terms of, you know, what I've heard, right? From the BIPOC community that come and talk to me and also what I've experienced, right? Which is, you know, in terms of complaints and I hear that all the time. One, a lot of BIPOC folks will not file complaints with the police because they feel there's not gonna be any accountability. It's a waste of time. It's not gonna be taken seriously, right? And also there could be retaliation against them, right? Cause if they file a complaint, now they are on the radar. Now they're gonna be the ones to get harassed by the police, right? That is very real. That is happening. So my thing is, is that, and it's been going on, you know, in terms of that way, that they feel that, you know, us as BIPOC folks and the BIPOC people that can talk to me feel nothing is gonna be done. It's been happening for a long time. So my thing is, you know, you know, did you all hear about this? I mean, what are you doing to really combat that sentiment, you know, that very real sentiment that nothing is gonna be done and we're gonna be retaliated against and we're gonna be harassed, right? Um, the other part of it, and it's also in the national news, but I know that in the report that seven generation our consulting group put in, in terms of the folks that they interviewed, right, that were confidential, because they were afraid of not being confidential, right? And being retaliated against and harassed is the fact that also, like if they call the police and say that something is happening, instead of the police helping them, and this is right here in Amherst, but I know it happens nationally too, and a lot of people get killed. A lot of people have gotten killed nationally, you know, black people have gotten killed nationally because they call the police, right, to come help their family, their friend that is having a mental health issue or some issue, and that person gets harmed or killed, one, and then, or they're the ones that become the suspect all of a sudden, right? As opposed to the police coming and actually going to do investigate it, to go investigate, they're actually start investigating the person and not call the men. You know, well, oh, you know, are you thinking of your kid? Do you have any dangerous things in your house? And blah, blah, blah. So again, there we go. Folks do not feel they can trust the APD, right? The other part, and like I said, I saw a firsthand was a noise complaint where, and I think I had said it the last time where I was at a party, you know, all folks, you know, mostly all BIPOC folks and majority of black folks, but it was BIPOC people from all different racial backgrounds and white people, everyone, right? The majority BIPOC and a noise complaint and the police and the way that they treated us, we went to the door. It was right away, like, you know, yelling and you better shut this down. And you know, and I'm like, wait a minute. Who are you? You know, like a bunch of us were like, we talking to you. Do you think like with five year olds, are you gonna talk to like this? You know what I'm saying? I mean, we're grown folk here, you know? You don't need to address us in that way, right? And there was no, there was no, so a big part of it is the approach, right? The approach is very wrong. When BIPOC people are involved. I remember I had been at, because you know, with the work that I do at UMass, we did a lot of trainings around diversity. And I remember being this one training where it was at, you know, it was for other police officers to get trained too. And this police officer, who was a black police officer, he was the person that got the most, was able to give people the most tickets, you know, every month. He was able to get the most people, give people the tickets, right? But guess what? When people, when those that got the tickets were asked about them, they were like, oh my God, I didn't mind getting the ticket. He was the best guy ever, this and that. Because why? Because how he approached them, right? He explained what was happening. He went down and said, okay, this is exactly why I stopped you. They were able to ask questions. He made everyone feel very comfortable. And then at the end he said, but I still have to give you a ticket. And they're like, okay, no problem. Why? Because they did not feel intimidated, they did not feel scared, they did not feel, you know? And I mean, but a lot of times that does not happen. It's right away with, you know, just that intimidation and the scare tactic approach as opposed to the, let's have a conversation approach, right? And then lastly, you know, I know you've said that there's been anti-bias training, but it doesn't seem as if it's impacting a change, that there's a change after there's the anti-bias training. It seems as if, okay, you know, police, APD are going through these trainings, but still behaving in the same way when it comes to interacting with BIPOC. So that's where I'll be. Thank you, Ms. Deb. One of the things that I had mentioned it in as part of my response in bucket two was, and it all goes back to trust and transparency with our community members, specifically our BIPOC community members is one of the final phases of our contract with our most recent diversity and implicit bias training is to have those, these types of listening sessions with the community. So our facilitators, and we're hoping it happens this summer once COVID, you know, once we're all cleared from COVID is to have a larger group with more officers doing exactly what we're doing tonight is hearing these stories, hearing these concerns, and how best to address them as an agency so that you're right. It isn't just, you know, okay, the cops did this diversity training and they checked off a box, right? And that's not what we were looking for, you know, when we reached out to an independent trainer. So those are the types of things that we've requested in this training so that we hopefully we'll get additional community members to come to these listening sessions and tell us what they think. Tell us how they want things policed. And, you know, because we get a lot of requests for things like traffic enforcement in neighborhoods. The majority of the neighborhoods where we do the traffic enforcement is at the request of the citizens. So we need to do a better job of listening to those concerns and then making and taking action on those concerns, right? So we're looking forward to those listening sessions this summer and I'm hoping good things come of them. And I mean that sincerely. Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Walker. So as far as these trainings go, I'm curious to know who you're getting your trainings through. Also, I'm never gonna stop talking about history. The last time I know I mentioned what did I say, cellular, that cells have memory, cellular memory. And that part of the fear of the police for people of color is the levels of abuse at the hands of white people, particularly white officers, particularly, you know, white KKK members. Like, I wanna hear that your students are doing work on history. I wanna hear that the Amherst PD, like I wanna in such a way that like the Amherst PD is like, look, one of the things we're doing out there, excuse me one second. I'm sorry, pause really quick. Sorry, that was a moment of parenting. Sorry. But, but like, I would love to see Amherst Police Department put out a statement that they are actively working on understanding the history and relationship between the BIPOC community and white police officers in particular and the systemic structure of policing of communities. I would love for that to be part of your charge as a police department. I don't think any other police department across the nation has actually taken that and made that part of their charge because, you know, I know that there are other places that are doing different things, but like, I think that part of the issue with a lot of police departments is that they really just don't understand the history. Like police horses were created to return slaves to slave owners. Like, again, why would we wanna trust you? And I say that because you're talking about having forums with people and hoping that people will come forward. And yeah, you'll get people of color like me who will come forward, but you know what? My interactions with the police have been very minimal. And that has to do with a lot of different things. One, it has to do with, you know, my mom being just my mom and anybody who knew my mom means that I wasn't doing anything because I was not gonna do anything because my mom. But, you know, there are some people that have, you know, come into running through the police who are trying to change their lives or whatever. I don't know what the situation is, but, you know, who have histories. Like, I know families who have histories of just like, this is how they're raised. And they're not necessarily wanting to be part of it, but have not seen any other options. And so I know officers. Like, I literally was in a situation where I dropped somebody off for 20 minutes, not even. It was barely 20 minutes. And on my way back to pick them up, five cop cars went by me. And then when I got to my destination, I realized they were surrounding that person. And I was like, what the heck? This person has been with me for the last two days. Like, I don't even understand. So there's this assumption of guilt with certain people because of who they are and who their families are. But like, you talk about some of the homeless people and how, you know, you understand that like, yeah, this person might have stolen because they need food, but you know what? There are lots of reasons why people do things. And we all know that certain things are not accessible to certain people. And, you know, you can just go back and look at things like they had a meeting last week. Was it last week? I think it was last week. Where they were talking about the history of redlining in the Amherst community, like, and it's still happening. Like, you know, when people who are trying to do better by themselves, can't do better by themselves by normal legal ways because certain people continue to make sure that they can't make it any further than where they're at. You're gonna run into problems like that. So you have to understand that this is a history lesson. This is deeper than, you know, just getting, you know, a racial compassion or, you know, come, you know, understanding that like, you know, trying to be understanding. You have to really get down and dirty and really understand, like really learn what's going on. You have to go back to the origins of policing, of communities and find out and understand what was going on. And until that kind of work is done, like, you're not gonna get the, you're gonna be, if people are gonna be very hesitant to give you the full story, you know, like, you know, I've made a certain name for myself in this community, you know, Ms. Fiera, she's made a name for herself in this community. Ms. Anabaku, she's made a certain name for herself in this community, but there are very strong, wonderful people in this community that don't, that don't because of who their sister is or who their brother is or whatever relative is already get looked down upon and they literally have to lead this community to not get the harassment from Amber's police department. And even then, like, that's horrific to hear that Ms. Fiera had to deal with that at a party that she was at when I see students up here running a ruckus, a ruckus on a regular basis every weekend running a ruckus. And I'm very seldomly, I drew a joke for Uber. I very seldomly saw officers out there putting their foot down. Like they seem to have done in this situation with BIPOC people. Like, you gotta go into the history so you really understand what's going on here. You know, so that's all I'm gonna say. Thank you. Ms. Walker. And then Mr. Vernon Jones. Thank you. So I also just have a comment, not so much a question and piggybacking off of what Tashina said. I appreciate Chief Livingstone's like willingness to hear the BIPOC community and desire to connect with them. But I also just wanna say that I'm 27 years old and I've lived in Amherst my entire life. And I have seen the Amherst police harass, disrespect, racially profile members of the BIPOC community on more occasions than I can count. And so it's very hard for me to believe that a police officer who's been on the force for longer than I've been alive has no idea what's going on. It's very strange to me. It proves that there is a huge disconnect. And that is a problem when officers are serving an entire community because then that shows that they're not actually serving the entire community. And I do appreciate the fact that you want to hear them and listen to them and I think that's great. But I also think just piggybacking on what Tashina said, history, we need to stop re-traumatizing the residents and the citizens here. There have been plenty of public forums that you can look up. I know last year in September, there was a public forum that the town council held specifically for members of the public that wanted the Amherst police department to be defunded. There's two hours of public testimony, stories of harassment from the Amherst PD and I would urge you guys to listen to things that already exist rather than re-traumatizing the citizens that are here because there are people who have already told their stories. And I think that's a good place to start because like Tashina said, I don't think it's wise to go into this with no background. And I think it's honestly disrespectful to go into it with no background. And I think it deserves the time in research before even starting to touch the BIPOC community because you guys are going to cause more harm if you do that because it can be as simple as the way you ask a question to the community can cause harm. And so I think you need to be aware of the history of policing and not just nationally but you can look up the history just here in Amherst itself. You can listen to public forums. We have public forums, the town council has public forums and I think that is a good place to start. And I would really urge you guys to start there rather than just bringing the community in again because I think you guys need to just be more aware before doing so. And so I do wanna say again that like I appreciate the sentiment and I think it's extremely important and I think it should be a number one priority of the police department but I think you guys need to approach it very carefully because you do not want to continue to harm this community. One quick thing, I'm sorry, the other thing is that I think that be really important is to know how many of the officers actually are community members of this town. And that's really important because it shows an investment. I know there's an officer who retired relatively recently who was, I know him from being around town because he lives in town and I know him from being in town. And yes, there are some people that don't like him but I know that he really had the backs of a lot of the youth in this area and a lot of the BIPOC people, he really, rather than quick jump into an arrest would be like, look, what are you doing? No, you shouldn't be doing this right now. And I think that we need people who are part of this community to like, if we're gonna like, allow for policing, like it needs to be people who live in this community and who are invested in this community because their kids go to school here because you know what I'm saying? Like that really makes a difference. Mr. Vernon-Johnson, Ms. Ferrara. Oh, I wanna really express my appreciation to other members of the working group for sharing these concerns and to say to the police officers here that in my experience, these complaints are not atypical. This is not a, I mean, this is a special and wonderful group here but the kinds of things they have to say are not different from what I've heard from other BIPOC people throughout town for a good many years. I'd like to switch base for a minute with questions though. And Chief, am I right that you currently have 44 sworn officers? Yeah, 44, yes. We just had a recent officer leave, yes, at last. Well, I think you told us 44 back in December. No, it's 44 now for sure. 44 now, okay. And so there were, I know you were funded or budgeted for 48. So there were two positions held by the town council and then you had two other vacancies. That's correct. And were those retirements or? Yes. Okay. And I think I've heard you talk in the past about how long it can take a new hire if they haven't been through the academy to get ready to do the job. What, how long is that from the time you post a position till they're really operating independently? Yeah, so if it's an individual who has not been to the academy yet, the academy itself runs 22 to 26 weeks. So that's just for the initial training and then there's an additional 14 weeks. But then of course, the prior to that is the recruitment process and then the hiring process. So it varies between eight months to 12 months before somebody is actually working as a police officer for all of the training, yes. So does that mean that if a robust Cres program could be put in place, like 16 hours a day, seven days a week, if we could do that within six months that that would actually be a quicker way to handle some of the 911 calls than others that the police are handling now? Yeah, I mean, a lot of discussion will need to go into that Russ to decide what exactly the type of calls that Cres people could reach. Sure. And I know those are the discussions that the town manager is gonna be putting a group together to have discussions about. So I know the initial discussion was about people responding to mental health calls. And I know I addressed some of it in the last question that Brianna had sent to me, but we don't have a lot of calls specific just mental health calls and they don't typically come in as a mental health call. There's usually a reason people are calling. So we would need to, that's partly gonna be part of the discussion about how do we delegate which calls the Cres people would respond to and which ones the police officers would still need to respond to. And if possible, what other calls they would respond to because currently again, maybe 250 to 300 calls a year for mental health it's not really a lot when you think about it because I know I did a lot of discussions with the officers out in Eugene, Oregon and their program, the Cahoots program they only respond to about 20% of the calls they get and the rest are still delegated to police. So I guess we would need to figure out what it is would best fit for the Amherst community. Well, yeah, we've talked about on our group about much more than just mental health calls. So we think it could be higher than 20% but even 20% would be a pretty big change. Sure, sure. So I know that most of your budget is salaries but if there were funds available or could be freed up this year are there any items in next year's budget that could be purchased before the end of June? Well, specific to what's coming out of this budget? Well, I mean, one of the things that occurred to me I heard there was some significant piece of money for a software upgrade for next year. If the money from those held positions could be freed up this year could that be spent before the end of June so that there's more money available for Cress? That's not a decision that I make that's something the town manager would have to decide. I get a budget and then I get it allocated out so I don't have a lot of leeway of what I get to do with my own budget but so that might be a question towards the town manager. Okay, thank you. You bet. Ms. Freira, did you have your hand up? Yes, I do. Yeah, I guess just going back to what we were talking about in terms of BIPOC community. Just lastly, really quickly, Chief it was around what you were saying about the least listening sessions and I just have a thought about it which kind of goes off of what Ms. Bowman and Ms. Walker talked about, right? You don't want to re-traumatize and then also in terms of who would actually show up to these listening sessions, right? And some of us might show up but a lot of folks are gonna be very intimidated are gonna feel that they might get retaliated against and not gonna feel comfortable showing up actually. So you really need to think about multiple ways of getting information. As Ms. Walker said, maybe looking at what's already out there because there's already been multiple opportunities for people to share, but also like surveys but not a survey, but now other ways for people to be able to share that information anonymously and confidentially because let me tell you, you might only get a couple of people then you might say, hey, that means we're doing great work. Actually, no, you're not doing good work because people know what they're afraid to show up to those listening sessions. You see what I'm saying? So you wanna be very careful about these listening sessions being indicator towards whether the APD is doing good or not doing good because you might not get a lot of people showing up to those, okay? And that's why I'm saying use multiple avenues to get the information from the people, all the members, so you can get an actual picture of what's going on and not just a thin slice. Thank you, Ms. Devin. I guess that's kind of exactly what I was hoping for was feedback from you folks as well. Yeah, I don't expect that it's gonna be something that the police department is just gonna say, hey, listening session next Monday night and be there. I agree, that's not gonna work. We need to find a mechanism where people are gonna wanna come and explain what their stories are and what they want from us, from our agency. I was having an email exchange with Dr. Chabaz about the Citizens Police Academy and he brought it up to me about reinventing that because we used to do them a long time ago back in the early 2000s where citizens would come and learn about how the police department does what it does and it was a part of the history process that Ms. Bowman mentioned in there as well. But he's like, it would be a great opportunity to start that going again. So those are the discussions that he and I had, which I thought was valuable as well. So yeah, there's a lot of moving parts but thank you for those comments, Ms. Devin. I appreciate that. Ms. Pat. So I'm looking at time but I do wanna sneak in a question. I run a business in town for 11 years and my experience was that after school, when our bifurc youth, when they come out of school, I'm working down, they're not seeking no trouble, nothing. And the next thing will be some of my neighbors will call police because the bifurc youth were just hanging around behind our next to the Emily Dickinson cemetery that area behind my restaurant. And boom, you will see like one or two police officers show up and the youth will be like, they'll be like very, very scared. What I typically do is observe and when the police leave, I go and calm the youth down. I bring them into my restaurant and offer them like maybe, you know, drink water, whatever they need some snack or something. The point I'm trying to make is that I observe for 11 years at least a minimum of two or three times a week where police officers are harassing our youth just for hanging around. I hear this youth who are money into the downtown businesses, they purchase pizza, they buy snacks at convenience stores and yeah, they get called and harassed. At the same time, I've seen white youth in front of my restaurant sometimes or even around that vicinity. I never saw white police, I never saw any police officer talking to them or harassing them. I just want to put, you know, that out. So with the dispatcher, they trained to screen out perceived crime or threat or whatever just a business person will call and said, I see three or four black youth hanging around, and let them, you know, come talk to them, harassing them. What are the training that dispatchers have in spinning out unnecessary complaint is my point. So yeah, dispatch does get training in that. It's relatively new training because of everything that's going on in our country now. But it's very much what you explained. It's asking more questions. Right, what are they doing? If they're just hanging out, we're not sending a police officer. You know, are they creating a disturbance? So what it really comes down to is just having our dispatchers when they receive calls like that, asking a lot more questions before there's a decision made to dispatch a police officer. It's getting more information and explaining to the caller sometimes, look, that doesn't, we're not gonna have a police officer respond to that. So, you know, those things are happening maybe not as quickly as we hope, but the police, the civilian dispatchers, all of our dispatchers are civilian, but they do receive training in that. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm looking at the time and we do have two questions left. So I'm just gonna read them fairly quickly. So the APDs submitted a, oh, Ms. Ferrara. Actually, this one's my question. Do you mind if I do this one? So yeah, so you submit a list of community outreach events that APD members attend. However, please explain how these events translate to the APD actually knowing members from the BIPOC communities that you serve. And I ask that question just to kind of, give a little bit more meat with that is because I've been a community member, for about 24 years. And I really don't know any of the police around and then my kids, I think one of my kids maybe had one trip from the school that it went to the police and got to know more about the police. So I saw all of those events that you all submitted in the data. And so my story is not, again, I've heard from a lot of BIPOC people that they don't know the police, right? Besides when they're getting like stopped, arrested, questioned, so on and so forth, right? But to actually know them and know their names and know about them and hang out with them. Multiple occasions, I'm not talking one-offs like my son that went in for a trip, you know? Not one-offs, I'm talking about building a relationship where yes, you're not in uniform and with a gun on your belt buckle, right? So that's what I wanna know. I want more specifics in terms of the data that you all gave because it was quite a long lengthy list but does that really translate into an actual like relationship, a good relationship with the police? That's what I wanna know. Yeah, and Ron and Gabe and I talked about that specifically because we all, I think we feel like we know a lot of people individually from the BIPOC community because for instance, Gabe coaches LaCrosse and I've coached and rep soccer before and we have a lot of our police officers who coach sports either at the high school or junior high school level. So we know a lot of people individually. What we don't do a good job at is turning that into group sessions or group meetings or knowing a BIPOC community group, whether it's the NAACP group or what have you. And so going back to having meetings and community sessions and other recommendations you mentioned Deb about surveys and that sort of thing are things that we'll do. And so, how do we transform our individual friendships with the BIPOC community that we have and make that into a larger group is something that we need to work on. So I totally hear what you're saying. Ms. Pat. Yeah, so I know we're running out of time but I wanna just comment very quickly about relationship. I have a business in hardly and trust me, hardly is not perfect. But within months when I opened my business, the community police officer took the time came to my business, introduced himself and what he does. Like what Ms. Ferrara said, it's about her approach of things. And he even asked if we ever wanted him to come in and talk to my staff. So our clients, what they do, that having police should not be a scary thing especially for our clients. I mentioned this because when I run my restaurant for 11 years, the first couple months, most of my business was catering. And sometimes I have to stay later after I close the official man that I closed in the evening one night out of nowhere, there was a bang, boom, boom, boom, boom on my door. And I was scared. When I looked, it was the police officer. And I think the way he delivered the message really bothered me. It was like, oh, he's a patrol officer and was wondering why somebody was in my restaurant. Mind you, this is an African restaurant. I'm a middle-aged woman. Of course I have accent and you accent trying to verify my identity. Are people getting what I'm saying? Compared to my experience with hardly, they came during the day. I never knew that was even for patrol. My first experience with the patrol officer few months when I opened my restaurant was this type of interaction. You know, I was that way. I said I was breaking into somebody else's business. That's how I felt. The patrol officer probably didn't, but that was, so approaches everything is the point I'm trying to make. And I will shut up. Thank you. Another quick comment that I wanna make Chief Livingstone is I think I'm really grateful to hear that you do want to do more to reach out to BIPOC communities. And I heard you speak earlier about how you're doing your best to connect with college students and sororities and fraternities and sports teams. But UMass has a lot of other things and Amherst College too. For example, the Center of Multicultural Student Success was a second home for me. It was a place where there was activities where I found mentors to help me in my journey in higher education. And I really wanna advise you to look for groups like that to help build those relationships. And I think it's important to not just look at sports teams and fraternities and to really branch out with more intention to reach out to BIPOC communities. Thank you, Brianna. That's a good point. And we work with the Every Woman Center as well with our domestic violence advocates that we have here in our building as well. And so that was another avenue that I did not mention that we reach out to in the UMass community and student government as well. But that's a good point and a good resource that we can be advocating with as well. So thank you for that. Yeah, of course. And then our last question is, what recommendations do you have to make the Crest program successful? So, yeah, I think I had stated we might need to have time made down the road about what direction we would want this program to go and because I can tell you that all the police officers are talking about it and how to make it sure that it's successful and sustainable and what types of job descriptions there's going to be. And for me, when I first thought about this, I was looking at the North Hampton group and they're kind of doing the same thing on their own. I know that as agencies, we talk a lot together and many of the times we deal with the same individuals. And so for me, I thought it might make more sense to look at it from a coexisting or mutual agency type of a response for Crest program that works in both North Hampton and Amherst and we have the ability to respond to either but it doesn't sound like our group wants to go in that direction. You know, also with the research I've done with the CAHOOTS program and the STARS program, most of those are co-response and coexisting relationships with the fire departments, EMS and the police and they've been very successful. I'm not sure about the direction that this group would like to go in either but those are the types of programs that have been very successful so far. So I think we could get a wealth of information from some of them if we do some research and reach out to them to just ask questions what's been successful from your standpoint or your point of view and what hasn't been successful so that we don't fall into those traps and or mistakes but again, and I don't know if Ron or Gabe want to chime in at all, but I think it's important that we have a good relationship with whichever program we decide to have because there are going to be many, many times where we will probably be responding to the calls together. It's just gonna happen at the very nature of these types of calls because I mentioned earlier rarely does a call come in for assistance where it says, hey, I take this mental health call. It usually comes in with sometimes it's a disturbance or sometimes it's somebody experience a mental health crisis and there are weapons involved in that sort of thing. So that's why I was thinking it might be important that we have some sort of co-response and certainly a relationship with the CRETS program whichever direction we decide to go in. Ms. Pat? Ms. Australia and CRETS, but I want to ask the Chief about resident oversight board. Is this something that you will support and how would that look like? How would you like that to happen? Yeah, I totally support having that conversation and seeing what direction that would lead us. And again, there are programs that are already out there for police oversight. And I support having those conversations and those discussions and seeing where that leads us to and what the community wants from it. So yeah, I'm in support in favor of that. Thank you. When you said discussion, are you thinking more of the town of employees, officials or would CSWG be part of that discussion? I'm just curious. I mean, I don't think I'm the one who makes those decisions. It probably would come down to the town manager but I would certainly like to be part of those discussions. What it is the community would like, yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you Chief Livingstone for your feedback on that question and also for coming to our meeting tonight to finish this very important dialogue. We appreciate it. Thank you guys and thank you for this again and have a good rest of your evening. You too. Thank you. Thanks. So the next item on our agenda is the resident oversight committee but before we get into the conversation on that I wanna consider moving it to a different date because we did put the resident oversight committee in part A of our report given that it had budget implications but I just wanna confirm with Mr. Backelman that he did not propose funds for the stipends that we had to put in our recommendations. So I did not put specific funds in for stipends for any of this work yet until we have a real proposal put together that I can fund and I can sustainably fund. So given that I want to move to discuss the details of the resident oversight committee at a different time. Oh, Ms. Backelman. Can I suggest we take five minutes break and then come back and can we negotiate time because I know we meet for two hours are people willing to stay till eight o'clock today? Ms. Walker. So I just wanted to thank you, Ms. Pat. So I do agree that we probably will need some more time for the following discussion. I'm also in support of moving the conversation about the civilian oversight board to a future meeting also because I believe that's for the second half of our charge. We had only brought it up now just in terms of budget and so I think the specifics of that can wait but also just a reminder that we started the minute the meeting 15 minutes later so we wouldn't be ending right now. We still have an additional 15 minutes of this meeting. Oh, what happened to my thing? Did I get, oh my goodness. What happened? We can hear you. Oh, you can hear, what happened to me? Okay. No, what I meant is I know that we'll be ending 7.45 but I was thinking more like eight o'clock. Can people hear me? What happened to me? Mr. Vrindavan. I think we need at least that long. Okay. Do we want to move to Ms. Walker? Sorry, I just, if it's okay with everybody else, I don't need a five minute break. I would be okay to just continue into the second portion of the meeting. If other people would like a five minute break, I'm willing to honor that but I just wanted to put that out there also. So does everybody want to take a five minute break or where do we stand? I just feel that we just had an intense meeting with APD. Like for me, I just need five minutes to clear my head. I think that's, it's fine with me. I think that we can regroup in about five minutes. Yeah, we need to do that. Thank you guys. Thank you. For other members who are off camera, if you could just turn your camera on. So I know that we're all present and ready to continue the conversation. Ms. Walker, just waiting for you to turn your camera on so we can finish our conversation. So I guess we can pick up where we left off on the resident oversight committee. Given that there isn't money in the budget for this, I'm wondering if the group is willing to postpone this conversation. So we can give the group an opportunity to talk about deadlines here from the subcommittee working on the final report and also have a conversation about the budget. Are we all on board with that? Yes. Awesome. Okay. So the next item on our agenda is deadlines. Just a reminder to everyone that our final report is due in 10 days and our presentation to the town council is in 12. I want to have an opportunity to hear from the subcommittee working on the final report. And I also want to remind you guys to make comments and revisions to the final report draft. Mr. Vernon Jones, Ms. Rara, did you want to report anything to the group? I know that you guys were both members of the subcommittee working on the final draft as well as me. Mr. Vernon Jones, do you want to kind of start it out? Because Mr. Vernon Jones just to say he was the one that kind of was the main author in terms of getting us started with it and Ms. Owen and then obviously provided feedback. But I was thinking Mr. Vernon Jones could start us off. Well, we've got about, I think it's about a 12 page document with a lot of appendices. And what we did was try to take some of the key points from our discussions and summary of the outlines and findings from the seven gen report and condense it into a straightforward readable report that would summarize everything and then put in appendices a bunch of significant more detail including the seven gen report. So the three of us spent some time going over all of it. I think we're in pretty good agreement with what's there but we really need, there are some things there where we have not made decisions about as a group and we'd really like everybody to take a look at it. It's a Google doc. You can put your comments right on the document. If everybody, we probably ought to set a deadline by which everyone's going to do that because we want to then polish the report and Breonna's agreed to put some graphics and organization to it. So that we would really have a final draft. Well, we'd have a final draft to vote on next week but we think the committee that's gonna be thinking about the presentation to the town council will wanna have this report as soon as possible to work with. Yeah, and for me, I mean, I think Mr. Breonna Jones is right on point with that. I think the important thing would be to for us if the co-chairs would be willing to kind of guide us in terms of figuring out a deadline, right? To get the draft feedback so that then we can finalize that report because then the presentation committee can use it. So I think that's gonna be important. Would Monday be a reasonable deadline for everybody to take a look at the document and put comments? Because for me on the graphic end, I can do that in a day or two but everybody obviously needs to take a look at it and make sure they're in agreement with all of the content before I put it, add graphics to it. Can we say Monday noon? Monday noon. Does that work for everyone? Yeah, that's better. And would that be enough time in terms of getting that back for then the presentation committee? Because the presentation committee, when are you all gonna be doing the presentation? I mean, getting a draft of the presentation. So the subcommittee for the presentation is meeting on Tuesday, May 11th from 12 to one. So I think that will be good. Okay, perfect. Ms. Walker, I saw your hand. Yes, I was just wondering, has this document already been sent out to us? Yes, so I shared it with everybody on Google Docs and I apologize that it's on Docs and Google Doc and not Word. If word works better for everybody, I can just get word, but please let me know if you have trouble accessing it. Ms. Moisten. I did send it out and then there were several follow-up emails to it because some folks couldn't see it because it was at the bottom of the email itself and you wouldn't necessarily think to click there. So then I kind of copied and pasted the link and so it went out a few times actually. Thank you, Ms. Pat. So actually I did read the document. I want to really thank the subcommittee for putting this together for us. I know it takes a lot of time to do this type of work. I really appreciate it. A couple of comments I need to make is I know Mr. Wiley left. I was wondering when we put out the names of the CSWG like adding his name on it. I know he was mentioned and recognized for the work he does that he did with the group. Obviously we can't just put it in there, but if one of you could reach out to him to see if he will like his name, you know, listed because he put in so much work doing this like all of you guys did. So thank you. I really appreciate that. There is one document and I was wondering Ms. Maistin, I don't want to put you on the spot. You had some graphic, you have some graph for the online survey, do you? No, but I had said in the emails that I can create them if you guys wanted to. And so you emailed back and so didn't Russ, Vernon, and Jones that said yes, but I just didn't have the time to do it for this meeting. I'm not talking about for this meeting, but this is something that... That's fine. Yeah, but you can... The survey monkey will take the questions that are like of the multiple choice questions and they can put that into a graphic. The people know what I'm talking about. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So I would like that result included in this report if that's okay with the subcommittee. That's the reason why I raised that. And the last thing is that, I feel that we're very fortunate to have seven gen in our community to do the work that they did. I've glanced through, I read very quickly, but not much because I didn't have enough time to read it, but I'm very appreciative for the work they did. So I just want to put that out. And I know we're going to have a segment to talk about Monday Town Council meeting. So I will let her break more in general. Thank you. Mr. Backelman. Yeah, so I think the council has meetings on May 17th and May 24th, and they've met with the council president this morning or this afternoon and she's open to whatever works for you. Both agendas can accommodate the working group. The only thing that the council usually requests is that they get the material on like the Wednesday or Thursday before because they actually do their homework. They read everything they get. So it's up to you on what day would work better for whoever's going to be making the presentation for the whole working group. So if you just let me know when that is, then I'll let the council president know that. Okay. Yeah, I would say 24th, but what would the chair to the chairs want to kind of get a sense from our group? Ms. Walker, and then I'll have to go. So I would absolutely love to hear from other members in the group, but also Brianna and I have some specific questions prepared for the town manager. And I think it would be helpful to have the answer to those questions before we made that decision. I agree. Ms. Walker and I did prepare some questions that we really need clarification on. And in regards to the town council meeting, we want to make sure our presentation is effective and quality just like the work that seven gen provided us and the work everybody has been doing in this group. But we also want to make sure it's effective and that we're meeting deadlines. Ms. Freira. Well, are your questions going to be irrelevant to the agenda item around the budget, the town council budget? Because if it is, I know I wasn't able to attend that meeting. So if you all are going to ask questions, could you give a brief little summary of what that was specific to us? Because obviously I've been hearing a lot of things and I'm assuming, yeah, I've just made some assumptions, but I want to hear a little bit more detail so that then I have the information before your questions are asked, because that would be helpful. Ms. Moisten and then Ms. Walker. I was just going to say to Ms. Freira that I earmarked the pages that reference the community safety working group or any diversity, equity inclusion work that was included in the budget. And I sent it to you, but none of that matters if you're looking for it before the discussion. So. Yeah, and which email was that though? I know I send a lot. I'm sorry. It was one of the later ones. It's the whole link to the entire budget. Oh, gotcha. Okay, I'll look at that afterwards. But yeah, could I get a summary though now of verbal summary now? Yeah. Yeah, Ms. Walker, do you want to do that or would you like me to or? I can do my best, but to be completely honest, it's very difficult to do so considering the fact that the town council meetings started at 630 and at 1030 we were still on the council meeting. So it was a very lengthy meeting. Not all of it was of course focused on our work, but it was just a lot to consume and to be able to just give you like a brief overview would be extremely difficult. But like just speaking on behalf of myself personally, it was an extremely disappointing and an extremely disrespectful meeting. And so I felt like our work was not discussed in depth and there was no clarity provided to the town council as to the work that we have done. It was very, it was discussed in a way that was very just touch and go and not all of our recommendations were even discussed or brought up at all. There were many occasions where the town manager instructed the town council to just refer to the attachments and he didn't even verbally say some of our recommendations out loud, which to me was very disappointing because we spent a lot of time on this. And so I think some of the follow up questions we have are to provide clarification one on the process. We need a little bit of more clarification as to the process of how the budget works because it became evident to me at the meeting that we may have been given as a group very misleading information that has been setting us up for failure this entire time. And so I think we deserve clarification on how the budget process actually works because I don't think we were given the correct information. And then on the calculations and reasoning that Mr. Backelman has as to what he came the conclusion he came to as a result of all of the work we've done. And so I think we just need a little bit of clarification on those two things because a lot of things that happened during the meeting did not align with what we were told in our meetings. So I think clarification at this point is just what we need because I'm very confused. I agree. I want to echo with what Ms. Walker said. I was very disappointed at the meeting with the amount of money allocated to Cress and also that during that meeting there wasn't space for the other recommendations that we put forth. I think that as the community safety working group we all bring not only a passion for social justice but our lived experience that has led us to talk about different things besides Cress and there wasn't space for that at that town meeting. But Ms. Walker and I did come up with specific questions. So if the group is okay I'd like to ask Mr. Backelman those questions at this time. So our first question we're interested for you to explain the checks and balances with the town budget. Are you the only one who can reallocate funds? Can the town council do that? Can the town council reject the budget in full in pieces? And can you explain this entire process to us? Okay. The budget is the town manager responsible for submitting a budget to the town council. The council has the ability. It starts with the council's establishing goals for the town manager. We do a financial indicators report in this fall that talks about the money that we have available. And we sort of share that out with the entire community. The town council establishes budget guidelines that I have to operate under within. And then I put together a budget based on information that I've gathered through our working with department heads and established under the goals that the council has set. And so I've aligned the budget this year especially and according to the six major goals that they've established that they wanted to accomplish this year. So and then that budget, which is what was presented and very scared, you know, I had 30 or 40 minutes to present the $85 million budget. Then that gets broken up into multiple meetings with the finance committee. Their first one is Friday at one o'clock and then they meet every, like there's a schedule that's already published and they'll meet throughout May. And then the finance committee makes a recommendation to the full town council who takes it up in June. There's a public hearing on the budget on May 17th. That's open to the public, anybody can comment on it on the budget that's been proposed and communicate that to the town council. For the work that you've done, which I have incredible amount of respect for is I just wanted you to know that I am fully behind and want to make this pro, the community responder program active and my senior management team is totally engaged. And I think the police chief mentioned it, you know, we have the fire chief, we have our finance director, we have our HR folks all getting ready to engage in building the program under the guidance that you have given in the program that you have identified is significantly different than most of the models out there is as the chief mentioned, most of the models out there are these co-responders programs, but the direction you've given us is no, we don't want that. We want a standalone program that's independent of the police department. And that's what, that's the goal that you have established for us. And our mission is now to design, put all the elements together to build that program. And that's what we are doing now. And there's a lot of pieces to it, you know, what are the protocols? What are the procedures? What are the job descriptions? What resources do they need? Where will they be located? The fire chief has some really creative ideas that he has come up with that I'm really eager to engage with. And I hope you are too. So our mission, and there's grant funding out there for much of this stuff. I think this is going to be a really important moment for us because we are really, truly as this community can reimagine what police is. I've learned a lot being part of your meetings. And I think that that is where we're really looking at transforming how policing is done. I thought what Terry Mullen presented a couple of weeks ago, I think about the community, how the community policing model, and that maybe that's not the right model for our town. But tonight I was hearing something different. Tonight I was hearing people saying, no, we want police officers to be more engaged in the community. I think we want to dig into that a little bit more. But I just want to make sure that you understand that, I am moving this program forward based on the goal that you have established. The money that's been set aside is just the startup money to get it started. I know this money, this program is going to cost a lot more than that, depending on the shape of it it takes. But this is a sort of a commitment to say, we're getting this, we're moving forward on this. So. So I really appreciate your dedication to this, but also I'm just a little bit concerned that we're listening to creative ideas from the fire chief and the APD. Why were we assembled? I thought our charge was partially to create something that would be good for Amherst. We are not Denver, Colorado. We are not Eugene, Oregon. We are Amherst, Massachusetts. All of us are residents. And that program is going to look different in Amherst. Yes, yes, absolutely agree. And I think you've shaped that program. So now it's more like, okay, on the boots on the ground, how does it actually come into life? And you've shaped what you want it to look like and that's the direction we're moving in. Ms. Patton and Ms. Walker. Hey, so my recollection, what I understood are the Crest program that we proposed, even though it would be an independent department, we also said that that would be collaboration. When needed. And so the idea that without one collaboration, I don't know where that is coming from, that we want Crest program to be independent, not to be managed by APD. We want BIPOC leadership with Crest is the point. I just want to put that out. Yeah, yeah. And just to add that and just to add that, of course it would have to have conversation and of course it would have to be collaboration and partnership with the police. Again, like what Ms. Patt said, it's just that we want them to be independent for them to be able to make independent decisions. Now what we don't want is for them to be siloed and put to the side and then all of a sudden they're ineffective because then the police and the fire department is doing something else and they're getting sidelined. So this has to be understood. It's very nuanced, but it needs to be understood because if not, it's gonna get off on a very bad track. And then two, my other point is in terms of what you said that today you were hearing something else. In terms of what you were hearing is that we're still going through the process, there's gonna be a portion that the police are gonna be handling, especially around violent crimes and things like that. And so that's the portion we're talking about in terms of police still being involved in the community. So I don't think those things are mutually exclusive, right? It doesn't mean that because we were talking about this, that means now we don't want Christ. No, no, no. That's because obviously all of it has to be vetted, all of it has to be talked about and all of it has to be something that's taken seriously is intentional and really worked on. So just wanna say that. So one more question to the town manager. The $130,000 that you are located, are you looking at the planning state for six months? Are you looking for the whole fiscal year? Because I'm not understanding where you think the full CRES program will take off and why didn't you put some money if you think it's going to get off this fiscal year 22? Why didn't you put some money? Sufficient amount of money in the budget? It's a great question. So I don't want the funding to be a barrier. We want to implement the program. I don't know how long it will take for planning, but I don't think it will take some time because there's a lot of moving pieces. This is a new thing. We can't just, like you said, we don't want to carbon copy something else. This is an independent new department that we're creating for the town. It has to go through a process the council has to approve a new department. I can't just create a department, but so I think that that's an important step for us. And our next first thing is to put together a timeline for you and for us to say how long will this take? What are the milestones? How can the community safety working group be involved in our conversations? When does it get onto the council agenda? They have a certain number of days, 30 days to do certain things and 60 days to do other things. I have to come up with a true funding program for what's being recommended. There'll be a transition year. FY 22 will be the transition year. But the thing that we've talked a whole lot about is that this has to be sustainable. We don't want to set it up and have it disappear for lack of funding. So we have to build this into our budget and we will use grants when we can get it, but we need to have a multi-year plan of implementation so that we know that there'll be sustainable funding. Again, I think there's excitement with the police and the fire and all of our senior staff to say we really want to create this program. And I think I'm really engaged in creating this new program independent of the police, but really collaboration with everyone. And again, I'd like that all of our senior officials are thinking creatively about how to make this a success. Mr. Vernon Jones, and then Ms. Walker. Well, Mr. Backelman, it's great to hear you say all these good things. First of all, I dispute your claim that the other programs are all co-responders because I remember reading that one of them had only a one or 2% rate at which they needed to call the police it. But we can research that. But you express a lot of enthusiasm, but most of us have learned over time, you put your money behind the things you care about and you haven't put any money behind this program. And I consider the budget you presented an insult to this working group, an insult to the BIPOC communities at Amherst, and also frankly, an insult to the white people in town who really thought maybe this was the time we really were gonna do something about systemic racism. The APD was budgeted for 48 sworn positions for 21, but it only has 44 right now, right? What you've done is proposed an increase in police officers. We have 44 now and you've proposed that the budget be increased to 46. If it's, you know, the money is there, you didn't, this didn't require a lot of political courage or imagination. We're four positions down from what's budgeted. You put those four positions into the Cress program and it wouldn't be everything that we've proposed, but it would be a real significant genuine pilot instead of a miniscule token. And if the concern is that the police can't handle things with only 44 officers, first of all, they're already doing it. But secondly, as you heard from my questioning of the chief tonight, it's the fastest way to get the police some help if they're having trouble handling everything is to get Cress up and running and taking their share of the calls. So I think you've made a big mistake in the way you've presented the budget. I think it's problematic that you didn't put any funding in for the resident oversight board, but I don't think it's too late to correct this mistake. I think you could still put in a more realistic budget for Cress without leaving the APD unable to do their work. And I really ask that you do that. And we will certainly be lobbying town council to do that. Ms. Walker. So I just also agree and thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones for that statement. And I just wanted to just also piggyback on what Brianna said that like this program, we have said many times that we are designing specifically for Amherst. And I think it's very important that we keep in mind that when we started this group, we had made the decision that this process needs to be guided by the BIPOC community. Like we need to create this system with the community. And that's why we focus so much on community outreach because we needed to hear directly from our community what they needed. And we did that. And so it's very hard for me to say that you're now looking for the answers that we have already gotten from our community, from the fire chiefs and from like for them to design specifics of the program that we have already discussed in detail amongst ourselves and amongst the community. And we have already reported to you what they're looking for. It's also slightly problematic to me that we have done subcommittee work to be very detailed and specific in what the program should look like and where the funding could come from and all of these things. And then we received an email from you in response saying this is too detailed and too specific. What we want from you is a broad general goal. But then you also then went to the town council and told them we don't know the specifics. But you told us that's not what you wanted from us. When we had, we've already done the work though. And so if it's, if you don't want funding to be a barrier, I do also recall we've had multiple meetings discussing the possibilities of applying for grants. This conversation has already come up amongst our group and was dismissed by yourself. And a town council member did ask at the meeting on Monday if grants can be used to fund this work. And she was told yes. I do not remember receiving that answer when I asked the same exact question a few weeks ago in one of our meetings. I was also told that that was not our job to look for grants. I also just wanted to say that you, that funding is a barrier. To be completely honest right now that's our only barrier because we've done a lot. And if job descriptions is another issue I'm sure we'd be willing to get a subcommittee. I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure because we've already put in so much work that we could put a subcommittee together and come up with job descriptions for you for free. So 130K is that that's, I just am finding it's really hard for me to figure out what exactly that is going to be used for and what exactly that is going to do. And I think that is, that is what I'm looking for. Like when you put the 130 aside in the budget what in your head was the process like how that was going to be utilized exactly to push us closer towards the Crest program. So my mission is to implement the recommendation is to accept and implement the recommendations that you've recommended. And that's what our job is now it's not to substitute any judgment for your judgment it's to put the pieces together to put this into place. The $130,000 is for the program it's not for any kind of work that we have to do for the implementation of the program it's for the program to be operational. It's a beginning cost for doing that. I know it will be more than that. I'm sorry if there's confusion about grants. My intention on grants is we can't build a program based on grants, but there's grants out there that we can help, but it's not how we're going to build this program for a long period of time. We need to have taxpayer money dedicated to the program. And maybe we can use some marijuana money maybe we can use some grants to help sort of shape things but that's not how we're going to build this. This has to be built into the fabric of our budget and to get something sustainable into the fabric of our budget is a really important task for that's how I internalize my job on this. And it's really when I talk about the work that this group is going to do it really isn't to reinvent although I want to be open to ideas that people have. And I think there are some creative ideas that people have that I just learned recently that might work in some really creative ways about how to make sure that we get paramedics or hermetics available to people things like that when we need them. So I just, I think our job again is to work on the implementation plan and to get a timeline that we can share with the council's going to ask me for a timeline. I can guarantee that and make that as transparent as possible so you can see the work that we're going to do. Ms. Freira, Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Pat and then I'd also like to make a comment. So, like I said, unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to look at other things because things came and I know everyone's busy. So when I was getting a lot of those things obviously I have work and everything else to look into but based on all the information that people have shared, yeah, I mean, this is pretty problematic and disrespectful and insulting because Mr. Bowman, you've been part of all these discussions and you've heard what we've said throughout this entire time that we've been hearing from our BIPOC community about the urgency of the work that we were doing and how we took this very seriously, spent countless hours, going through everything, researching, attending webinars, doing everything that we could to really be, to really honor our community, to really honor all of the residents of Amherst because again, by helping the BIPOC community, you're actually helping all the residents of our Amherst community. It's not just BIPOC community, it's everyone. So the fact that our program, and we were very serious and intentional about what the program that we were creating and the fact that it wasn't given its due, the budget doesn't reflect what we requested, it's really a slap in the face because our community and the BIPOC community specifically is asking for this type of services now, not later. And it's something that has to be viable that needs to be able to happen. And I know obviously it's gonna take a little bit of time to build, but with 130K, I don't see how that's going to be a viable program. And then to add to it all, what Mr. Vernon Jones stated that now the APD got an increase. I'm just like, and that was again, what our BIPOC community had talked about in terms of what they've been telling us is that no, that's basically adding more to the intimidation, more to being afraid, more to, so again, another slap in the face. So, and then my other point is around, and then what happened to the other recommendations? So those weren't even discussed. So Cress wasn't dealt with seriously, the APD actually got an increase. And then, and then our other recommendations weren't even discussed. I mean, I'm flabbergasted right now. And disappointed. Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Pat. Excuse me, so I got one of the meetings. Baby, I'm on a meeting, you gotta go. Sorry, go talk to one of your brothers, please. So at one of the meetings, I feel like I remember you saying that, I remember hearing a number, 75K, I mean 750K, I remember hearing that at one meeting in regards to our group. And then we worked it out and we were like, nope, it's significantly more than that. And so, you gave us like a sixth of the amount that you personally had said that you thought this would cost, I too like am just sitting here like, I feel like I just got like completely, I feel like you left us out hanging. I feel like you left us out to hang. Like it's, we have done a lot of work and we have shared a lot of information and you have sat in our meetings saying that you, that you were hearing what we were saying and saying that you were understanding what we were saying. And regardless of what your intention might have been, you didn't explain why you gave that amount to us. You didn't explain why, like, you didn't say, oh, this amount is gonna increase. This is what I'm giving them right now to get started, but this amount is gonna increase and this is how it's gonna increase. Like, I mean, you didn't, I'm just, I'm so at a loss for words because you didn't even give us the bare minimum that you told us that you thought the program was gonna cost at a bare minimum. Like we were the ones who told you that that was not an acceptable number, that it was gonna cost much more because we gave you, we literally sat here and talked about details of why it was gonna cost the amount we were asking for. And then for you to go forward to the council and be like, you know, I'm giving them this much, you know, this, I don't really, you know, I don't really have much detail to give you. Like I just, I'm frustrated because as you can see with me tonight, I'm, you know, multitasking to be here. You know, I had, I made a full dinner. I did, there's a lot of things that I did to be here because this is extremely important to me to be part of this community. And I really do, like there's a part of me that really, I'm on, okay. There's a part of me that really questions your investment in this community because, you know, honestly, like my first, the first thing that comes to my mind is like, are you a resident of Amherst? Like that's one thing that comes to my mind, like resident of Amherst? Like because do you, do you, I feel like somebody who's a resident of Amherst might have a little more dedication to this community and having this community not continue to start programs like this and then watch them fail and sit by and be like, well, I gave them something, you know, just what it is. Because, you know, we're like the 15th organization working for the town that has come, you're like the 15th, we're like the 15th organization over the last like 30 years to come be encouraged by the non-BIPOC people of this community to try to come up with something to include the BIPOC community. And then, you know, like right now, the way I look at it, I'm like, yep, this is gonna be just like the last group that was here and they'll just like the group before that and just like the group before that. Like you wanna hear what we gotta say, but you don't wanna implement anything because it's gonna make you uncomfortable. It's gonna make people of the town uncomfortable. It's gonna make the elite of the town uncomfortable. And that is the problem. That's a problem. You know, BIPOC people have been pushed out of this community continuously, continuously. Just go look at the statistics of redlining in this community. Y'all don't want us. Y'all don't want us. And it's very clear when every time we try to come up and work with non-BIPOC people, y'all don't wanna fund it. Y'all don't wanna help us. And we're in here, we're here. We're paying taxes. We're participating in a community. We're, you know, buying things out of our community stores and it's constant. It's very constant and it's very consistent of being looked at as not important in this community. That the students are more important, that, you know, the elite of the community is more important and that the BIPOC community is just a burden on Amherst. And you guys in this town have shown us this time and time and time again, whether it be through the school committee, whether it be through the housing authority, whether it be through the whatever, it doesn't even matter. It's like every committee in this town just looks at the BIPOC community as being a problem. And we're sitting here and we're saying, look, it doesn't have to be a problem. You know, if we get some, our voices heard, it may not be a problem for you, but it is a problem. And it really is coming down to, it's a problem because we're in the BIPOC community. It's not a problem because of anything else because there's a lot of us who aren't elite in this community who aren't, you know, living in multi-million dollar houses, they're contributing a lot to this community. And personally, I am just, sorry, my niece is in the shower thing. Part, accidentally, I am, can you, thanks. I am, I'm frustrated, I'm frustrated because I really do. I'm invested in this community. How can I not be? I've lived here for over 30 years. I've raised kids here. And it's like, I'm consistently, consistently watching the non-BIPOC people of this community do everything in their power to make the BIPOC people in this community feel less that. And it just goes back to the same old slave narrative. And I just, I don't even know how else to say it. Like you just want to keep us as, you know, we're just keeping our heads above water. Like I know a lot of people who have had to move out of this community for exactly a lot of these reasons. And it is unfair and it's uncomfortable because you know what? I've contributed to this community. I've been contributing to this community since I was a teenager. You know, my mom ran an African dance group and it was free to the community. And there's a lot of people in this community who benefit and took part of this, of African dance in this community that she just opens her doors to. It wasn't about getting paid. And it is like, that was something that I literally couldn't continue not just because of my own health issues, but because there was no way, I was, there was no way that I was gonna get supported the way that I needed to be supported from this community. And it really, you know, it really, it's like really pushing our hands to be like, you know what, we don't care about you. And so if you don't like it, you can leave. And that is what the non-BIPOC people of this community tell us a lot. And I'm not gonna sit here and just allow that to happen any longer. Step up. That's what you need to do at this point. Step up. You need to be real with what you're doing. You need to look at what we are trying to do and look at it as being something that is important because it's not gonna just benefit up. It is gonna benefit the community as a whole. It is gonna benefit, you know, everybody who walks through the doors. And you guys are missing. Amherst has an opportunity to be at the forefront of something that's never been done in this country. We have the, we have that ability because we have the intelligence and we have the money and we have the strength and we have that to be on the forefront of making real change and setting real examples in this community. And no. And I'm not gonna sit here and let the ball drop. I'm at a point in my life where it's like, look, this is gonna be about accountability. And I'm holding you accountable. Yes, absolutely. I'm holding you accountable because you could have gone into that meeting and been like, look, I'm giving them 700K because you know what? I know what kind of work they are trying to do. And you did not do that. You went in and threw us crumb. I have no confidence right now in you. Miss Pat, and then I'd also like to make a comment. Okay. So I've lived in this town for almost 40 years 38 precisely, and people know my record about speaking my mind about advocacy. And when this group was announced that it's forming and I talked to my regular network and people discouraged me to join this group because that it will come out of it is about checking the box. But I always like to give people the benefit of doubt. And because of my relationship with the town manager I'm addressing this to you. When you were hired, I know you reach out to some community leaders in town and I know I met with you. You did talk to me, we met at the Beggar Breakery. I researched you. I knew some of the work you did in the past. And I felt that perhaps you have some social justice inclination and that's part of the reason why I said, let me join CESTA this group. Am I surprised about the disrespect of one allocation that has to do with BIPOC? No, you might be empathetic but you don't live our lives. And I watched the entire budget, the entire town council meeting on Monday from 6.30 until the end of it. As usual, I saw why supremacy lay out at the meeting. And I did take notes as I was listening. And I just want to go through them very quickly. I jetted down some notes. So when you mentioned 130K for Crest Program, it would have been helpful given the amount of time that we've put in this project, for you to explain what your 130K meant for. A lot of people who tuned in and watched the meetings and even after the meeting, a lot of people have reached out to me and we were like people, BIPOC community and even white allies are very outraged just like I am. We felt that you disrespected us. And we felt that all our time, I know what have sacrificed and even all of you to be doing this work. And we got nothing to show for it. And I hear you say that the town will hire an economic development director. For what? And this is to benefit the white landowners, land lord in this town. It's going to benefit them more. Why do we need that? You also mentioned about allocated 100,000K for somebody to manage capital projects that the town has, meaning the new library, the DPWU, the fire station. Are you serious? Are you kidding me? You have highly paid white administrators in town. Why do you need to spend 100,000K temporarily to manage a project? You have your finance department, you have your DPWU superintendent. I can go on and on. Who could work as a team to do that? I'm just saying where we can move some money. And the most devastating news was the diversity, equity and inclusion. Position you said you're going to be creating. And you call it coordinator. And we were very clear that we want this department to be independent, to have the departmental head. Just like you have APD and other departments. And so calling the coordinator is like insulting again to our BIPOC community. It's not okay. Like we can not manage a department. And then you are located ADK to address racism. What racism are you going to be addressing? Training has not worked. There have been plenty of trainings in the school system where they tell, it has not changed. How is training going to help? And I also want to mention that you also, like you said, there was something about that would be increased in property taxes. Just to remind you that our BIPOC folks who own property in this town, that would be paying the same amount. And we're not, we don't have anything to show for it. So I just want to put that out that all this project that you just proposed is not free. It's not going to, you know, we'll have to pay for it somewhere on the other. And then the program that the BIPOC folks, the input we got from BIPOC community was just disregarded. There was no mention of the multicultural center. There was no mention of youth empowerment program. It was like, really I wasted so many months here and there was no mention. We don't know what your intentions are. Are you actually going to do something about it or not? But I didn't see anything in your budget that specifically mentioned that. And yet we want to include BIPOC people. And we've just told, the CSWU already stated what we want and we got disregarded. I want to talk about the finance director just to give our young CSWG members. He's a good person, don't get me wrong. This is the same individual that was finance director with the Amesco system that helps to produce budget for the Amesco district and will hide successfully cost, legal, special education expenses and they will put it into special education in general so that people will feel, oh my goodness, special education is costing so much money but they're not breaking it down. I had the privilege as co-chair, co-president for special education parents. We have to request for a public record to piece all that out. Is the same director, he quit his job and then turn around and got hired to help create budget that will impact BIPOC community. You go figure. I just want to raise that awareness to all of you that there is a history here. We have white folks making decision for BIPOC community, it's never going to work until we're in the same table making that decisions together. I want us to follow the money, okay? The most highest paid people in this town are white folks. I would like to know, for example, who are getting the contracts? Who are we using? For example, for the town vehicles, do we have BIPOC mechanics that we contract out or is it only white-owned repair shops that we use? That's just an example. Follow the money. Now the town is talking about capital projects. Who are going to be the bidding winners? Are we going to give preference of priority to current and former BIPOC contractors too? I'm curious to see the process, how that is going to play out. And so until BIPOC folks also get the piece of the money, it's all about money, it's all about influence and until we vote out some of the councillors and it's not the only groups in this town. The planning board also, what are the process? What outreach are being done to include BIPOC folks? And I can go on and on, but we need to follow the money and it's not benefiting BIPOC community. We have all white, mostly white administration who make decisions for us. This is not working for us. We're not feeling included. Something has to change and I'm encouraging the young folks and I'm addressing this to you, you know? Come out, go vote. If we don't like how things are going, we need to make change. That's all. I want to say. I also wanted to make a comment to the group because I do share a mutual frustration with the presentation at the Last Town Council meeting. I just want to reiterate how exhausting, triggering and tiring all of this work has been. So for us to spend countless hours and our meeting's always spilling over time on subcommittees, our own personal time and webinars and research for then the Amherst Police Department to be actually funded more money and receive an additional amount of money for updated software just feels like a slap in the face. Because I took on a leadership commitment, I'm going to finish this charge, but I'm very disappointed. And I'm also very disappointed that none of our other recommendations had space at that meeting. And I'm wondering how many times are we going to be sued by the, how many times is Amherst Public Schools going to be sued by the NAACP? How many stories of young people being profiled downtown? How many stories of young people experiencing police brutality and falling through the cracks of these systems? Are we going to let happen before we make a commitment to invest in BIPOC youth and support family and embrace culture in Amherst? I was really hurt and offended that that recommendation didn't have a spot in there. And as a former Foster alumni, my foster family was Caveridian. So I see the issues in the police department on both ends. I was at, I've been at in places where I've seen people been over police. And I also went to UMass Amherst and had white friends and watched them set off fireworks and jump off roofs and nothing happened. So this experience has been very triggering for me. And I want to say by the grace of God, I didn't slip through the cracks, but imagine all of the young people that did. By the grace of God, one person along my journey cared about me enough to mentor me and guide me, but not everybody has that one person. So for us to overlook the youth center and the multicultural center is insulting. And I'm very disappointed. And I was very confused about the process and just attending the town council meeting and hearing the word grants come up kind of triggered me a little bit because a couple of weeks ago, that was something I brought to everyone's attention. Like, look, the Denver Star program used grants to get this off the ground and make sure it was fully funded. And I was disappointed to hear the word grants at that town council meeting. And I was also very, very, very disappointed with the word coordinator next to diversity, equity and inclusion, because I just know how serious is somebody going to take an entry level position that is paying all of $30,000 in a coordinator role to really push people in Amherst and all the departments in a coordinator position. It doesn't feel fair. It doesn't feel right. And we've all put so much time into this. And I'm just wondering how many groups is Amherst going to assemble? How many reports are going to come out? How many groups of consultants are going to come together and do this work before Amherst makes a change? And I did hear two council people just ask like, hey, is this actually going to happen? Or I also heard another council member mention what power would a coordinator actually have? How is that going to be successful to promote any diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives? And I just want to echo everybody's frustration. And yeah, I'm just very, very, very disappointed. And for me, there's just a disconnect. And I am more invested in local government now because I realized that there's an overarching theme of white supremacy. There's no other way to explain assembling a group of local people who are not only passionate about social justice, but share lived experiences with the police department and with social services and with different community members, assembling them together, having them do hours of work for a very low stipend and then fully funding the Amherst police department and giving them an additional fund for software. Like I'm just very let down. Ms. Pat. So I want to comment on a couple more issues that I forgot to add. Was at the meeting on Monday, I heard one council member, Alyssa Brewer, questioning the amount of money that was being spent on seven generations. But she felt to also mention that the town supported 60,000 grant for BID. That's the administration that is run by the landlords, the landowners in Amherst. And the town manager, you are a board member of that group, which really, what does mean? Because that is the conflict right there. If people want to know who holds the power here at the town, the land owners, the landlords, they have everybody in their pocket, including our local politicians. And so whatever they say at that meeting, that same night, there was a land owners representative, an attorney, Anthony Sharp, who was opposing road in South Amherst, you know, for the slow body family. And they were given so much air time, of course they owned a lot of property in town, but you can't deal with a bit Vince, Mr. Vince was speaking during the public comment and he was caught off because he was talking about justice issues, about immigration issue. I saw white supremacy really played out on Monday as usual, okay? I also want to talk about, you know, care act funding. Okay, for businesses that were given some money to retain employees. Why on earth are we cutting staffing in the school system? Why are we not going to implement the youth center, the multicultural center? Why are we not going to create a department for the diversity, equity inclusion program that will directly benefit BIPOC community? Yes, if you have people in leadership position, it matters a lot, power and influence matter a lot. Mr. Bocma, you're talking about, you know, you need to flesh out and discuss fully the press, who are going to help you do this when you don't have, you know, too many BIPOC leadership on your team. I know of the fire department and that's it. I don't think that's enough. So I'm not having any confidence that white folks will make the decision for us. I'm concerned about that. Also, I also want to point out that when you did your, I read the budget actually, you had mentioned that the reserve was not touched and you were praising yourself for doing a good job and I'm not saying you didn't do a good job for not touching reserve. And as a person of color, to me, you have part of money sitting and you don't want to implement program that we recommended. You know, that is so, you know, beyond frustration. It's very infuriating to say the least. And also, there was no mention of, you know, what you're going to be doing with marijuana money, yeah. So there is just so much. I don't think this meeting is even enough. Like I have so much thought going into my head. I want to, I would like to see publicly who is getting contract from our town because it's not benefiting our people. My daughter, for example, is an accomplished real estate investor, developer, contractor. I'm just giving you an example. Okay. So I want to know who is making money in this town and it's not benefiting BIPOC people. I'll just shut up my mouth. I'm just like charged up. Follow the money, everybody. That's where our power is going to be. Expose how money is being sent. For example, when I was, I was very involved with special education, they had some staff in special education who don't have licenses getting promoted. I had to request a public record to expose them. That's how the current special education director, Dr. Brady was hired. They wanted to do internally. Okay. There is a lot of corruption that is going on in this town. BIPOC community, open your eyes, please. Follow the money. That is a lot going on. Thank you. Before Ms. Bowman goes just so you know, I do actually have another meeting at 8.45. I mean, it might start at nine, but I may have to just jump off because obviously we're extending. Very important reason why, but just so you know. Ms. Bowman, and thank you, Ms. Freira, for letting us know ahead of time. Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Walker. So I actually was just gonna say that I, unfortunately I'm gonna need to remove myself because I have to start putting my younger one to bed. And so I'm gonna have to catch up a little later, but really at this point, all I just have to say is you gotta do better. You gotta do better. You gotta hold your white counterparts. You gotta hold them accountable. And they're not gonna like it and they're gonna be angry at you and you need to feel uncomfortable. We spend day-to-day feeling uncomfortable. Tiptoeing around the white community of Amherst to make sure that we don't get arrested by the police or we don't get called on by the police and it's a day-to-day thing for us. And there's so many examples across the country that's going on. And like Ms. Pat said, like, the marijuana money, who better to jump that money into than the BIPOC community? Are you kidding me? Like historically, statistically, BIPOC community has had more arrests, more convictions, more everything when it comes to marijuana. Now that marijuana is legal, I know one dispensary owned by someone in the BIPOC community that is in Boston. There's one more that I know that's opening up. Our communities aren't seeing a return on this, but our communities were first in making sure we were getting convictions in regards to this. You gotta do better. You gotta do better. You gotta figure out how to do better. And it is not for the BIPOC community to teach you how to do that. We have voiced our opinions, our feelings, we have voiced our experiences. It is not for us to teach you how to do that. It is not for us to call you or hold your hand while you hold your community accountable. But our expectation is that you are going to hold your community accountable or you are not here in support of us. You are not here representing us. You are not here being with us on this topic as much as you may say that you are. And you know what? I don't look for allies in my life. I look for co-conspirators. I look for people who are about it, who are doing it, who are doing the work, who are taking the hits, who will step in and not make it a situation where I have to speak. And with that being said, I wanna directly say thank you to Mr. Vernon Jones because you had my whole family here like what? Really? Because we were like, who is that speaking? Who is that speaking? Because that is the kind of thing that needs to happen. That is the kind of work that needs to be happening. You need to call out your people on their stuff. You need to make them feel uncomfortable. You need to help them understand that they're living the lives that they're living because they are making sure someone else is not living anywhere near an equal life to that. Because that's what's happening. Systemic racism, that is exactly what's happening. When a road is more important than a person's life, like if you sit and look at, re-look at the budget and you look at other things that you are, that are more important than people of BIPOC people in your community's lives, their livelihood, and that they're, you're putting more money into that sort of stuff than putting money into making sure that the BIPOC community is included. You're not here for us. And that's really problematic for me because I'm raising sons in this world. I'm raising boys in this community. And, you know, and I'm out there fighting for the females in this community, you know, doing my work as a doula. It's like that's where I'm fighting for my females because, you know, women are dying on that hand and a lot of men are dying by the hands of police. So I'm fighting on both sides. And it's exhausting. It's tiring. It, you know, we have high blood pressure in our communities. We have all these things literally proven because of systemic racism. And you've sat here with us the whole time. You've sat here with us, you know. And what you showed us is that it doesn't matter. That's what you showed us. So I apologize cause I have to get off the meeting right now. I'm, I, like I said, I have to, it's nine o'clock. I really got, like, I gotta put my kids to bed. But I appreciate being part of this group. I appreciate being able to have my voice heard. And I will, you know, I'll see you guys next week. Ms. Walker, did you have your hand up? Yes, I don't want to, you know, push the meeting out too far. But I did just also want to speak very briefly on what something Ms. Pat brought up. That was also very problematic for me at the meeting and that was the town council's discussion of the funds that we allocated for the consultant group. And I just think that the amount of work that has been done, the amount of time, the amount of research that has been put into all of this work by not only the CSWG members, but also by our consultant group is really being overlooked here. And it's very disrespectful. They had three weeks to do research that other communities have spent years on. Like I can't remember the exact program, but Brianna did send us an example of another similar program somewhere in the Midwest and their consulting group was given over 100K to research and come up with this program. We didn't give them any money and we didn't give them any time. And it's very disrespectful that their work and the funds are being questioned. This wasn't even enough money to get it done in the first place. This wasn't even enough money to come up with the recommendations. And we still gave you amazing recommendations. And the entire process was flawed. We weren't notified of deadlines. I recall meetings where we said, hey, Mr. Balkeman, when do you need this? And you said, today, in the meeting. Like that has happened to us on multiple occasions. I don't think any of us were informed that you were gonna present the budget at the town council meeting on Monday. Did anybody here know that? Mr. Balkeman didn't tell us these things. Like this has been very disappointing, very frustrating. And I think for what we were given, we did an excellent job. Our consultant group did an excellent job. And I just wanna put that out there publicly because we were, I felt like we were shamed at the meeting. Like our work, they were confused as to why we spent so much money. They were confused as to why our report was only 18 pages and it made me feel shameful. And we did a good job. We weren't given anything. We weren't given money and we weren't given time. And we did a good job. And so I want to thank the members of this group. I so much value you guys and your opinions and your voices and your time and our consultant group. I want to thank you guys like publicly, you guys put so much time and effort into this and really turned out something amazing out of the nothing that they gave us and you guys are getting no recognition. And so if it means anything, I am completely in awe for all of you guys and for the community to coming together to do this regardless of whether or not our work is being recognized or valued or implemented. I thank you all for doing this and for being here and it was a tremendous effort for what we were given. Ms. Brara. Well, and I think, Mr. Bachman has heard from all of us and obviously our feelings and how obviously perturbed and upset we are in regards to it, but I wanted to put the question to Mr. Bachman. So what are you gonna do about it? Oh, yeah, I am. Oh, he froze. Well, Mr. Bachman, can you hear us? Ms. Moytun, do you want to tell him to kind of maybe shut off his video? Maybe that would be helpful. Oh, it looks like she's frozen too. She's frozen also. Oh, no. See, right at the point when I said, what are you gonna do about it? Oh, she's frozen. Let's send him a chat. Chat thing, where's the, oh, no, there's no chat. Is it back? Oh, it's back. Oh, it's working. Okay, good. Okay. He must have... You were frozen. Well, what happened? The last connectivity appear or something. Oh, okay. You both froze. You both froze. Okay. There's Mr. Bachman. Mr. Bachman, can you hear us? Okay. Can you hear us? You're muted. Oh. You're muted. I'm sorry, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, I don't know if you heard my question, which is basically based on everything we said. What are you gonna do about it? Yeah. So Ms. Bowman started at the beginning of the meeting a few hours ago saying there's no reason for us to trust you. And she said, saying that to APD, but she and I, I think that was to a broader community as well. Listening to you, I feel like I've reinforced that obviously, and that is not what I wanted to do and not what I intended. My mission on this was to take the goals that you had set for the Cress program and to make that a real thing that happens. The budget is one metric of it, but building the program is what will matter. And I've said it and I know that words aren't enough, obviously to say we're gonna do this, but I have listened to what you said. I apologize deeply about the re-traumatizing that you went through. If anything on this entire journey with you so far it's been how I can't even imagine what you go through many of you daily walking out the door that I don't feel. And so, and I'm crushed that I've caused this pain for you. So I apologize for that. Ms. Farah, you said, you said, what are you gonna do about it? And Ms. Bowman, so you got to do better. I need to rest with this and think about it. The one thing I know that will happen is that we will be implementing this program the way you've envisioned it and building the program. So it's that it will last for a long time because I think it is the right, it's a time to reimagine and re-envision what the police department does and how we see community safety, not just police. It's more than police. And how we get there as a community, but I want to do it so that's thoughtful and resilient. The larger items that you identified that I did not mention about the major investments in the centers and things like that, that is something that needs to go through our, I recognize the value of that. That's something that needs to go through our capital planning process that begins in a few months. But those are major investments. So, I don't have, I shouldn't even be speaking at this point. So I just apologize that you feel, I've let you down so badly. And I, the only thing I can say is I will be thinking about this pretty deeply. And hopefully present something to us at the next meeting. I won't be at the next meeting and I won't be in town next meeting. So. Then there's something then when you have something. I'll work on it. Yeah. Ms. Walker. I'm ideally, there would be a completely new budget written, but just because I'm honestly getting the idea that that's not going to happen at all and that this is still just words and no actions are going to follow, I would like an action plan for exactly what the 130K is going to be used for since you said that this is not gonna, I'm a little bit confused because I heard that it's not gonna be for the designing of the program, but for the program itself, but that's not enough money for the program, but we have to design the program. So like what exactly line by line is the 130 gonna go for? What is the action plan to get this off the ground with 130K only in the next fiscal year? I would like like in writing an action plan, as well as an action plan for the centers, because as you said that those things will have to go through a different process, which is beginning later. So can we have an action plan as to how those will be exactly addressed and at what times and at what time funding will be presented for those programs. And an action plan for how it will get to that, that the budget that we wanted to get to for each of those items that we had recommended. Ms. Pat. I also would like to know what exactly you were thinking in terms of the 30K for the diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator position, what exactly would that person be doing because I don't get it. I don't know what the 30K will do. It wouldn't have any power. Obviously with the coordinator position. So I don't know what you're thinking it, but it's not, you know, without that position without power is useless. Just like what Ms. Ferreira referred to in a couple meetings ago, she used to have that position at UMass and without power, you know, attached to it and support it's one of, you know, check the box. So I need to know detail, you know, what you're thinking and the money that you're attached to it. I also want to know, is there any plan for you to bring back the rental assistance program from the action, whatever they call them in Greenfield? We have a nonprofit organization in this town that is run by the bus group. They can handle that and the town can pay them fee like they're doing right now. Whatever the town is paying, the white managed organization in Greenfield that is doing it, it can go to seven generation or any other BIPOC business in this town to manage the rental program because right now it's not working. It's not people are being come back and wait until the moratorium about rental freeze. You're going to see a lot of people being homeless in this town. You're talking about we have homeless right now wait until the federal, you know, whatever they need to like contain it right now is going to be worse. So the sooner we do something and bring that rental program into our community and pay an organization that is run by BIPOC leadership to manage it. You will see a huge difference. The money will be spent. Thank you. Ms. Pereira. No, just I'm going to head on out. So, you know, keep me posted if you all talk about anything else. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Also, I do realize the time is getting late. One last thing that I want to ask of you, Mr. Backelman, is that you really consider just keeping the Amherst police department at the bare minimum of its 44 officers that are there now. If you are not going to defund them, please stop contributing to an institution that has been so harmful to everyone in town. You've been in the listening forums. You've heard everybody's piece today. Just please consider that before continuing to give them funding. And... So I have a question. Are we going to do... The people who are going to be presenting next week on the 17th or 24th, what are we deciding to do? Ms. Walker. I'm sorry. So one of the questions that I had that I wanted to be answered, we didn't actually make it past the first question that we had for the town manager. But one of the questions that for me was important for it to be answered before making that decision was whether or not... So the reason we asked the checks and balances question was because at one town meeting, the town councilor said they can't add funds to any particular category they can only cut. But then I heard a public comment that was urging them to reject the budget. And so I wanted to know what their exact powers were. Like if they rejected the budget, what does that mean? Does the town manager have to go reconstruct a new budget and propose it again? And so what I wanted to know was if our presentation to the town council on the 17th is going to have any effect on the budget itself or if it's like just separate from that. Because by the 17th, would the town council have already made some decisions as to whether or not they're going to approve the budget or like, is it going to change anything or is it just simply us demonstrating to them what we've done? So the town council must approve the budget by June 30th. That's what it does under the charter. They have to approve a budget. They may delete or decrease any programs or amounts except expenditures required by law. So I don't think they would reject the entire budget. They could take line items, i.e. public safety, whatever they choose and say they want to reduce those funds. With that, Mr. Vernon Jones. So are you saying that the town council does not have the power to increase funding in any line item on the budget you presented? Correct. Are you able to make changes in what you've presented? Yes. Ms. Walker. So our presentation would be more effective if we made it to the town manager because I fully believe that he doesn't really understand what we're doing here. And although he sits in every single meeting, I think we need to lay out really comprehensively to the town manager himself. Also the town council, just because they are his bosses, but they don't really have any stake here in what we're looking to do. They can't give us any more money. They can't do anything. They can only give us less and we're already upset with what we have. So I don't really know what to do with that. I'd be fine pushing it back to the 24th since it's really not gonna make a tremendous difference. But I am just so very conflicted about all of this. Ms. Pat. I'm leaning towards on the 24th. I don't know how other people feel. I can do the 24th. Ms. Walker, does that work for you? Yes. I also agree with Ms. Walker, though Mr. Backelman, that we should make a presentation for you. I do feel like the town council doesn't understand the urgency of our work just given the comments they've made about our consultants and just the way they've talked about the CSWG. But I do think that we should make a presentation for you if you're okay with that. Yeah. Whatever you wanna do, I think the public forum of a town council is an important place for you to be. Cause I think it's a high visibility place for you to identify the concerns that you have with my performance or concerns with the council. Okay. So are we okay with the 24th for the meeting, Ms. Walker? Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to say that I think that we should definitely present to Mr. Backelman and then and also present to the town council. Mr. Backelman should be first because then when the town council, meeting happens or whatever, like, and this is just from understanding this rate is that then even he will be able to speak on why this is important. And as we know, as people of color, we know that sometimes when something needs to get done and it involves white people, we need another white person to be able to say, hey, this is why this is important. Cause sometimes even as much as we would like as black voices or BIPOC voices, we don't get heard until a non-BIPOC person says it and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, boom, there's the light that goes off. So I think that we will need Mr. Backelman to fully understand what is happening and why it's happening and be able to speak on it confidently and with a level of, just with a level of certainty, not be kind of like wishy-washy about it. You know what I'm saying? We need him to really be able to like, if somebody asks him, he's like, nope, this is why this needs to happen and not be like kind of sitting on the fence because I kind of feel like that's part of what's been happening. If there's been some friends sitting, so. Pat. So, I mean, I hear what you're saying, I don't know how I think about that. I mean, Mr. Backelman has been with us all each meetings. I'm just concerned about our time. I think like he stated, the town council meeting is high visibility opportunity because a lot of people tune in. I think we need to consolidate our efforts. I will read that, you know, there are some groups that we haven't spoken with which we still have other agenda items pending. I'm just worried about time. Our time at meetings. So to devote one meeting to do presentation to the town manager, I'm not sure if it's a good use of our time. You heard a lot tonight. So I don't know what else you're going to hear. That would be different. That's just my opinion, but I will respect, you know, the group. Whatever the group decide. Ms. Walker and then Mr. Verna Jones. I would propose that as a group, we would agree to move our presentation from town council to the 24th and that we can have further discussion as to whether or not we would want to present to Mr. Backelman at another time. Mr. Vernon Jones. Well, first I agree with what Alicia just said. And Mr. Backelman, did I hear you say you're not available for our meeting next week? Okay. So we have, we have next week to think together about all of our next steps, including our presentation and hopefully finalize our report because that is due right after our next meeting. Okay. With all of that, I hope that, I know that the town council meeting was really discouraging. I thought this discussion was moving us in the right direction. And I hope that everybody uses their frustration to fuel us to finish this charge and to continue to just keep pushing because this is our community as well. And with all of that, I want a motion to adjourn. Do I have a second? Second. Before we adjourn, I just want to say thank you to everybody, you know, for your work and your time. And to the town manager for listening to us tonight, but we would like to see action. Please take care of yourselves. Self-care is very critical in this work that we're doing because it has not been easy. Please. On that note, I second that adjournment. So we're done, right? We're done. Yeah. Thank you guys. Have a great night. Thank you to our chairs. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. And to Mr. Bogum. Well run meeting. Yes. Thank you. Thank you everyone.