 second. We'll call the meeting in order. Roll call. Jerry Jones, Larry Samet, Jane Clioness, and Andy is excused. I have the pledge of allegiance. All right. The proceeding before the Board of Police and Fire Commission related to complaint filed by Chad Shelton. The hearing of the Board of Police and Fire Commission has been convened to hit a complaint filed by Chad Shelton to complainant against Police Chief Chris Tomokowski, Police Captain James Visa, Police Sergeant Timothy Patton, Police Officer Pioti Gordev, Police Officer Richard Hange, Police Officer Michael McCarty, Police Officer Dana Fisher-Mugen, Police Officer Brian Prey, and Police Officer Christopher Sundali, the respondents. It should be noted that the complainant names four officers in his complaint. Chad Ramos, Michael Randolph, James Freebie, and John Samuels. The Board has no authority over those officers as none of them are city of Subway and police officers. Two, Freebie and Samuels have retired prior to the filing of the complaint. One, Ramos having resigned many years ago to take a position in other communities, and one, Randolph having separated from the Department in 2021. As these hearings are disciplinary hearings and none of those four officers work for the city of Subway and the Board has no jurisdiction to hear the complaint against them. The Board previously dealt with the complaint, original complaint, filed by complainant, which made general claims of run-doing, including some references to some law of policies against a list of officers, a list not mutually exclusive with a list of respondents here. However, in the original complaint, Shelton, number one, failed to identify the specific person against whom charges are brought as required by 5E of the Citizens Complaint Procedure provided in the Board's policies and procedures. Failed to identify specific rules of policies in which the accused is charged with violating as required by 5E of the procedures, and three, failed to meet procedural standards. As such, the original complaint was defective. The Board, which met on June 17, 2021, to hear the original complaint, chose not to dismiss Shelton's original complaint, but to require him to amend and resubmit a complaint such that meets the requirements of the procedure. This matter is now before the Board for hearing. The purpose of the hearing is to determine whether or not the charges allegedly are sustained against any particular respondent. The proceeding is conducted pursuant to the provisions of Section 6213-5, Wisconsin Statutes, and the policies of the Board adopted pursuant to the authority granted to the Board by Section 62.135G, Wisconsin Statutes. The procedures outlined herein provided the Board with the information regarding the conduct of the hearing. Mr. Shelton, do you acknowledge receipt of service of the notice of this hearing via regular mail? For the record, he answered yes, he wasn't at the mic, but he did answer yes. Thank you. As an explanation, we need to have Mr. Shelton admit service of the complaint. You don't have to read that part. That was just so that it would be understood, but he's admitted it. Okay. So it's the second piece that needs to happen. And so, and I can explain that piece for you. So as noted by the chair, the last time you met in June on a complaint, you decided that the complaint was not sufficient to move ahead, but you gave Mr. Shelton the opportunity to file a new complaint, and he has done that. So before you can move forward, you do have to determine whether that new complaint meets the requirements of the procedures. And there's a couple of things that you need to consider. First, Section 5C does require a complaint to identify the person or the persons against whom charges have been brought. You did receive a copy of that complaint, and that new complaint does identify specific officers. It does make specific charges against those officers. So in my opinion, he's met that piece of the initial determination. The second part deals with Section 5E. 5E requires the complainant to state the specific code of conduct, rules and regulations, city work rules, or state and federal laws with which the accused is charged of violating. The charges are stated in Mr. Shelton's new complaint. With some level of descriptiveness, he does sort of list the name of an officer and then sort of a description of what he thinks the officer did wrong. None of those descriptions cite to specific rules or sections. There is on the last page of the complaint, though, as you see, a section that's entitled Specification of Violation. That specification does list some state statues in a section of the U.S. Constitution. I had hoped to attach copies, and it just got to be one o'clock and wasn't able to do that. But I'll have access to that as needed. But he did not specifically relate those specification of violations to the charges that are listed in the complaint with regard to the officers. Now, in thinking about whether you believe that this complaint is even valid to go forward, I think you have to determine whether he meets the requirements in 5E to state the specific code of conduct, rules and regulations, city work rules, or state and federal laws with which the accused is charged with violating. And there's really two reasons why you have those requirements. One is just to narrow the issues so that the Police and Fire Commission can deal with specific charges related to specific actions that were alleged to have been taken by an officer rather than just sort of generalized complaints of undefined alleged bad behavior. And that was your primary concern the last time. The last complaint was really just sort of very generalized. All these people are bad, they don't like me, but it didn't really provide any kind of specificity. He has provided some level, some additional level of specificity now. But you also do have to consider that the other reason for those requirements is to provide notice to those accused of the charges of exactly what they're accused of doing. And it may be that you want both Mr. Shelton and the Attorney for the Respondents to explain their position on this issue. You should consider both of those reasons in determining whether the complaint meets the requirements of the procedures. So my suggestion would be is to give first Mr. Shelton an opportunity to explain why he might think that the complaint does meet that second requirement under 5E and then allow Attorney Valkner on behalf of the Respondents to respond however he chooses. So if you do that, I would just have Mr. Shelton come up to the mic and make his case just on that issue first, on that procedural issue. And we'll ensure all the respondents are here and we'll get to that in a moment. Okay. I think you should deal with this first. And then we'll get to the hearing procedure. So Mr. Shelton, can you get to the mic? Can the mic be moved? I don't know whether the mic case is probably got... Mr. Shelton, do you understand what's being asked of you at this point? I'd like to begin by objecting to the very clear conflict of interest with Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams, when a municipal citation is issued by the police department, is it not you who prosecutes those municipal citations? I do not and have not since 2015. And yet you did. So therefore you have worked very closely with the police department. And again, all of the things you're bringing up today are reminiscent of exactly the last time that we were here in which Mr. Adams tried to convince you guys to just throw my case out. I have his words right here. Rather than using the complaint form provided by the PFC, Shelton, for the most part, simply attached his own narrative and noted the words see attach in each section of the complaint. Oh, I'm sorry. Chad Shelton filed what purported to be a complaint. You know, the language that he uses makes it very clear that he has a bias and a interest in not seeing this hearing move forward. And I have done everything in my power to get a timely return on my request for justice in this matter. And as you guys know, we have now not seen each other in over half a year when I was given 30 days to be able to amend my report. And yet the city of Sheboygan Police Department has taken an indefinite amount of time. And then I was notified with less than a week to go. Well, I was in the emergency room receiving an emergency blood transfusion that I had to be released early from. I should still be in the hospital right now receiving medical care. And yet I had to get released in order to come here. And yet Mr. Adams only interest is in trying to have this case not move forward. It seems very clear that he's trying to protect someone. And it certainly isn't me a citizen of Sheboygan. I would point out he hasn't answered your questions. But the one issue that he has indicated is he believes that there's a conflict of interest in my representing the Police and Fire Commission. You know, I have prosecuted matters more than you know, seven years ago, and I did so for many years. Of course, in doing that, that was a representation of the city of Sheboygan, not of individual officers. Some of the officers here, probably three of the six officers I see sitting here probably did have cases where I represented the city of Sheboygan and they were the officers who issued the citations. It is my opinion that my advice, first of all, my representing you as a police and fire commission is entirely consistent with representing the police department in prosecuting matters because I did not did not represent individually any of the officers in in any matter. And this is sort of similar to the complaint that was made by Mr. Gillette alleging that a member of the city attorney's office would somehow be prevented from representing the Police and Fire Commission. And as you know, the court actually ruled in that case. That that is not a conflict and that I am able to represent you. So it's certainly your choice to go out and get different representation, you know, and ask for that. But we're here today for for the hearing. I'm not asking you to get different representation. I'm asking you to take all of his words with the grain of salt that it is very clear that he has an interest and it's not mine. All right, so then the other question is I'm sorry, can the Commission ask me the questions? Well, I'm I'm their attorney, so I'll ask you the questions. There will be opportunity for them to ask you questions here as well. But as far as the legal issues, I'll I'll ask the questions. They'll get to they'll deal with you on the factual things because they are the determiners of the facts in the matter. But what we're asking for you to answer is there is a question about whether your complaint meets the requirements of Section 5e. I think it's very clear that it does. Okay, and why don't you explain to the Commission why you believe it does? Because I filled it out to the best of my ability, given the instructions that we went over the last time that we were here. I have been dealing with stage four metastatic colon cancer for three years, and I did everything I could to list all of the specific officers, all of the specific incidents. I heard you very clearly state that some of these officers no longer work for the police department, and therefore there is no jurisdiction. We can obviously, you know, bypass those complaints since there wouldn't be any purpose in hearing them. But I believe that all of the rest of them are very clearly laid out. And the attachment at the back spells out exactly what the statutes and constitutional amendments were violated. So then the next Mr. Belcher should probably respond. I'm assuming Mr. Adams is referring to the first question is with respect to Section 5 and whether there's the necessary or requisite level of specificity that's made with regard to the allegations. I would submit to you that I do not believe that to be true. I do not believe that listing specific statutes 948 31 968 10 995 50, as well as inclusive rather vague statements about the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States against searches and seizures is not sufficient to meet that level of specificity. Now, perhaps Mr. Shelton has some other specifics that he may wish to address. I'm not sure what bases those would be, but I will note for the commissioners that there is a complete lack of any specific reference to any procedure protocol or other rules of engagement or operational matters. There's no such reference whatsoever. I do understand and appreciate that Mr. Shelton is a lay person and that Mr. Shelton is making allegations against police officers. I also understand the fact that there is likely not to be that level of requisite knowledge to make specific allegations. So with that, I would submit to you that there's just simply not the level of specificity required here. You have what I would characterize as relatively vague allegations against each officer, some of which aren't substantiated in any way by documents or otherwise. And I'll reserve my procedural arguments for later on should this threshold be be met. And I'll address that later on. So my response would be respectfully, I disagree with Mr. Shelton's position and I do not think there is legal sufficiency of this complaint. So the next thing for you to do is to basically make a determination as a police and fire commission on that issue. Yeah, I've sort of laid that out for you and you can make that decision. Speaking to the mic, though, because we are recording and we get together for a couple minutes to commission. Well, you've got to be an open session and the open meetings laws provide that you can go into closed session, but you're not going to be able to come back out without it being noted that you would do that. So I would suggest that your discussion should be an open session right here. Jerry, what's your recommendation? Is it hot? Okay. Thank you, Chair. I based on the information that's in front of me. I was not here for the meeting last June, so I'll defer to my senior counsel on that. But based on what I presented, been presented and reviewed and the history that I've read of this hearing and the previous hearings, I must agree that I do not see the specificity and the violation. I think you have to be extremely detailed, not just because they're police officers, but if it was a URI or anyone else that was on this side of the ledger here, you have to come up with a specific violation and say, this person did this and violated this rule at this time on this date. And I just don't see that level of specificity here. That's just my opinion. Larry, being the citizen of the layperson with not a great knowledge of the law, I don't see specific information that would allow me to address an issue with confidence. So I don't think it meets in my opinion either. Jane, make sure your mic is on first. He'll turn it on, but okay. There you go. Okay. We are referring to these pages as evidence or the specificity, specific references to each officer. There isn't anything listed in terms of a law, a statute or anything like that. Well, there is, if you look at his third page, he does have that section. Are they numbered? The pages? Well, they're not numbered, but it's his third page that says specification of violation. Okay. I'm going to get that. It would be the page right after the page that you have out. Okay. Three, four, five, okay. Got a signature on it. His signature is, oh, hit his signature. Here it is. Okay. Well, that's page one. This is page two. Okay. Okay. I have it then. Yeah. It's not referring to any statutes at all. I mean, it just says a false filing report. Is that enough? Well, so what I guess I would point you to is what he has done is he has that section called specification of violation, where it just says numerous violations of oaths of integrity and honor as well as violations of Wisconsin statutes 948-31-968-1099-550 in the Fourth Amendment. And the question before you is whether that is specific enough to be specific to each of the charges against each of the officers, that you can attach that to a particular officer. There's no question that this complaint is better than the complaint that you rejected the last time. The question before you is whether it is enough and whether it is enough for you to be able to narrow the issues and understand the issues and whether it's enough for the officers to know what is actually specifically being, they're being specifically charged with. Hello. I guess I'm failing to understand. I have each officer listed with all of the individual statements of what I'm accusing them of as well as then going and specifying exactly which statutes those would be in violation of. What am I supposed to have put here? It's really, and now it's come to you as sort of a decision to make. And there are basically the way I would put it is it's better than the last time. The last time it was just sort of all over the place. There was no way. Here he, you know, obviously he lists officers, he lists things that he alleges the officers have done and then later he lists a series of statutes. There aren't dates and times for those things as Mr. Jones has noted and as Attorney Veltner noted. And the question really for you, I think Commissioner Sam it put it well to say, you know, as a as a non lawyer, you know, as, as just simply a citizen, would you, you know, if you were confronted with charges against you, would, would this be enough to let you know to understand so that you would understand what you're being charged with? And that's really the question for you to decide if you decide that it's not enough, then it would really be unfair for the officers to defend themselves because they don't know what they're being, what they're defending against. If you believe that it is enough, then we would move on to the hearing and you would, you would begin to hear the evidence. Was I supposed to write my entire case out for each statement? I gave a very clear officer Fisher falsifying a report. That's what I'm accusing officer Fisher of. My dates and times will be presented throughout the course of the hearing. As if you and it's perfectly fine for you, let Mr. Shelton speak. I would suggest that anytime he does, you allow attorney Valkner to respond on behalf of the respondents. Can you walk? I want to respond to what Mr. Shelton is alleging. Thank you. You know, in reviewing the complaint, yes, admittedly, there are individual officers that are named. We acknowledge that. I don't think that's a difficult threshold to overcome. The second thing is with respect to the nature of the allegations that are made in the complaint. What you've, what you are literally dealing with here is a premise which starts with the claims that everything you're going to see or review starts with falsification of a report. An impossible foundational aspect to start from. So I would leave the vagueness of that out there is that that simply just isn't enough. Absence, any kind of specificity as to date, time, place, procedure, policy, protocol, any of those things are completely absent. Lastly, I would add this is Mr. Shelton is a lay person. With that lay persons, just like persons that are either have legal training or are lawyers, the same requirements are provided both procedurally and otherwise. That is, is their advice that every step along the way by written notice, by statute, by their own research, no matter how they choose to approach it, that they are told exactly what the contents of the complaint have to be. It isn't a mystery. It isn't a guessing game. And it certainly isn't. I'm going to pull facts out of the air, allege them and then claim their specificity, which I will show later. And that's what we have here. So I would resubmit for the commissioners that this complaint needs to be dismissed. Thank you. And I would just, in making your decision, I would encourage you to look at Section 5 of your procedures, which is on page 2. And I'll read it for you. Requirements of charges, charges shall be in writing on a form provided by or approved by the board. B, be addressed to the City of Sheboygan Board of Police and Fire Commissioners. C, identify the person against whom the charges are brought. D, state sufficient facts to allow the accused to know and understand the factual allegations and to be able to prepare his or her defense. If any portions of the, any portion of the charge is made upon information or belief, the source of such information and belief shall be stated, including the names and addresses of witnesses having such knowledge. The charges shall specifically indicate the date and place of the alleged offense. E, state the specific code of conduct, rules and regulations, city work rules and or any state or federal law, which the accused is charged with violating. F, be sworn to under penalty of perjury. G, be filed with the president or secretary of the board in the event that the charges are filed with the secretary, the secretary shall thereupon file the charges with the president. That's what you're trying to determine whether that three page complaint that Mr. Shelton has submitted meets those requirements. And I would suggest that the, you know, he has met 5a, 5b, 5c, 5f and 5g. The question is D and e. And that's really for you to make that determination. Gene. Based on I read through the whole list of complaints that Mr. Shelton had issued to us, given to us in June. And that the specific, the requirements of charges under D, it does, he doesn't have it. He doesn't have, he has a year, but no date. He has no witnesses named. And I, you know, it's it's, you know, it's a version of what he saw, but it's not fulfilling the information that is needed to hear, have the hearing, you know, to say that the evidence is here to hear. That's why I would say it isn't enough to hear. I think it's insufficient. So what I would suggest is that you have someone make a motion on that issue as to whether it's sufficient to move ahead or not. Right. I would need a motion to either go ahead or to dismiss. Based on the insufficiency that I find with the charges, specifically in section five, not adhering to letter D. And for me, specifically state sufficient facts to allow the Q's to no one understand the factual allegations based on the omission of that, I would move that we dismiss. Motion in a second. In a second to dismiss. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify with saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. So who do I sue for denying me my timely right to justice? I would suggest you talk to your own council about those issues. Oh yeah, I'll definitely hire an attorney with the eight hundred and fifty dollars I get in disability. Mr. Shelton, I think I told you the last time, I think we did as a board, we did everything we possibly could. And I know your position, but there's nothing in here that allows for us to do anything other than you seeking. Other than just to allow the police department to harass me, my neighbors threw a punch at my face and the police department sat there and smiled above it. A guy stopped his counter in the middle of 14th Street, got out and they threatened me with a ticket. I think your proper response is not to respond at this point and move to the next item on the agenda. Well, I can't respond because it's not on the agenda. And you know, I again, I mean, we've been through this twice and you know, I can tell myself, I would have seen counsel or something some somehow with what money I'm fully disabled and all they're trying to do is drag this out until I die, so that I never get to see my justice. I think you would just need to move to a motion to adjourn. I think the proper is the next item, the motion to adjourn. Yeah, I think we've done that. I need a motion. We've got a motion and a second to dismiss any discussion. All in favor signify with saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried.