001and i'd like to call the tuesday march 23rd meeting of ann arbor's independent community police oversight commission to order ms jeunesse can you do the roll call for us yes no problem cheer lisa jackson present in ann arbor vice chair francis the door hargraves commissioner walton commissioner evans commissioner offman i'm sorry are we supposed to be doing the uh stating our location that was that email not until april first oh okay great okay thank you sorry so i will add that to your zoom link so you'll know what to say right okay commissioner caldwell commissioner birch president commissioner mary commissioner billups president commissioner carter here commissioner chip ship rather council member song and council member ram law week yeah okay i see names so i know they're here okay you have though before we approve
002the agenda is there a motion to add an item yeah can i make a motion i would like to uh briefly just uh have some time to discuss a meeting that myself and um commissioner francis todoro had with uh the police union just to update the commissioners about that you're breaking up commissioner um bill ups um there's a motion to add um uh a communication about um commissioners bill up into dora hargreaves meeting with the police union correct a second um and we could add that to new business all in favor aye aye any opposed perfect and so now is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended second second on favor all right the opposed fantastic thank you um and now we've come to the public forum um part of our meeting so
003if there are members of the public who've called in who may want to have some discussion with us um now is the time to do so okay i have one person hold on good afternoon please unmute good afternoon you have to unmute it in order to speak okay well chill jackson we might have to come back okay um how do you unmute is it star six i push the key for them to ask the unmute oh okay all right so um if the caller gets unmuted we can come back um you all have received the february minutes um is there any discussion or correction or addition to those minutes from the february meeting i'm hearing none is there a motion to approve the february meeting minutes i'll move is there a second second second all
004in favor of approving the february meeting minutes any opposed okay thank you um [Music] so the first item in old business for us is an update on 2020 and 2021 complaints um commissioner todoro hargraves and i could talk about that a little bit um because we have a new process for reviewing complaints which um and so we have a new process that was developed in conjunction with the ann arbor police department and the city attorney's office as we mentioned last month we've been utilizing that to go back and re-review some of the cases from 2020 and um finalized some of the complaints from 2020 um and so we're in the process of doing that um and working our way through them that may take us a couple more months to get through them all but
005um we are working through those and then commissioner todora hargraves did you want to talk about 2021 sorry about that um so you should have received on the 10th the 2021 log um so uh you'll get that the whole commission should get that every month regularly so you'll see where we're at on those and that'll help understand help you to be able to see what the information managers are working on also and seeing how our progress is going so we'll make sure that that goes out on the 10th denise did a really good job of following up on that so she'll continue to follow up until we really get into a good groove of it um so we have that right now um pd is still working on both of those if you remember in
006the ordinance it does say state that the police department does the initial investigation first and then once their investigation is over then they send it to us so um until then until they get to that point we don't have anything to actually look at yet for 2021. so as commissioner jackson mentioned we are going back into 2020 and are reviewing those last week we had our first review process meeting [Music] with the deputy chiefs and the city attorney to basically what we did is we had the process that we developed in in our hands and we did the review part of the process so we came up with a few little bugs and tweaks that we're doing and i am putting those tweaks in the process now once that document is finalized um we'll forward
007that out to the full commission also so you'll have an you know an understanding of what it is that we're doing what that the information managers are working on so it was like our our pilot our test run um we are now able to access body cam video remotely we are able to see um uh reports remotely we're able to see some things without redaction but we're limited right now to three information managers per case and so there are different three different people on different cases between all of the people who were reviewing and so we had to kind of work out the process of making sure that you know person a got the you know body cam footage for their case but person d did not get that and that person b was reviewing
008different cases and so we kind of worked through some of those glitches found a couple more and are have i think pretty much smoothed out the process i'm sure we'll find a couple more glitches as we go along but it is getting much much smoother and so this is the most efficient that we have been in terms of a getting information that um actually gives us enough depth of information and um having it available remotely and all of those of course were challenges um you know security challenges and lots of lots of challenges we had but it's um i think worth the difficulty because going forward commissioners will be able to do this remotely from their homes which makes sense because um you know if people are working nine to five they may need to
009review cases at midnight and probably the police department does not want us you know in their um their building at midnight trying to review video so um it's um it's been a little bit challenging but it's been a good process and it will certainly serve commissioners well going forward so we're happy about that any questions about that process or i know you've heard about it before a little bit but okay so moving on to new business we we we have spoken and um a little bit here and we have um spoken at city council we have seen that um council member romelu sponsored a resolution in m live today there is a discussion of um the mayor having a resolution and um we have been engaged um in conversations with the sheriff's department and with
010community mental health and other stakeholders about unarmed responses to crises we understand that there is a current model where community mental health may go out unarmed and we also understand that there are times when it may they don't feel it's appropriate to go out and arm they may require a co-response from ann arbor police department or celine or the sheriff's department or anybody else in washington county and that they might deem that to be appropriate and um you know that could be for their safety or safety of clients or um certainly one of the things we think about is the fact that if community mental health goes out and there's a client who might need to be hospitalized but um is not willing to do so willingly if if there's a determination that they should
011be hospitalized for their safety that only a sworn officer has the ability to take them to the hospital without their express consent and so there are some cases where community mental health has felt like that was appropriate we however have been thinking about the ways in which people come in contact with the police and um find themselves in situations that would be that are more dangerous because police are armed and in many of those instances it can reduce the risk to everyone if crises are handled by people who are trained to respond to crises unarmed that does not mean disarming people who are currently armed it means finding people and finding a model where being unarmed is the standard is the baseline and developing that kind of public safety for the community um and so
012we know that there are several models out there and we are encouraging the exploration of those um we've all had conversations with many different groups of people and um i was fortunate to have a conversation with council member song and the mayor and one of the things we were talking about was thinking about things that we haven't seen yet here and um the necessity for us to stretch our imaginations a little bit more in terms of um what's possible for ann arbor i think one of the things about covet is that everyone zooms now and so it's pretty inexpensive to collaborate or consult with people in california or oregon or other places and find out how they're doing things it doesn't require a flight anymore um and so we're really hopeful that we can think
013of some things that we haven't tried in ann arbor yet and that might require i suspect it will require some expertise from other places conversations with council um and i'm sure the city administrator about how some of those things might be executed but um we are hopeful that we can um certainly engage in those conversations and that as these resolutions evolve that they will include some thinking that has not been seen heretofore in ann arbor commissioner todora hargreaves were you about to say something on that actually i i do i know when i spoke at the um last council meeting in regard to the resolution that was previously brought um one of the things that i specifically mentioned was that we at ikpak were looking forward to being part of the conversation um and i
014think that we do uh have a reason to be at this become the table specifically for the few things that you did point out because there are times when um individuals may feel they do need a police officer there and that's going to bring in um the policies and the procedures that the police department currently work with that may or may not need to be changed and so i do believe that we we do have a seat at the table um and much like i said during the last meeting it's something we need to continue to discuss with the county as far as how these calls get dispatched and who is involved in them and who isn't so any other um any other well i think one of the things that that so uh the
015mayor's resolution and dc3 that we um that i'm i talked i spoke to at the last council meeting are not identical and maybe dc3 is the overarching goal and maybe and maybe the mayor's resolution fits within that goal i i don't know exactly how well they dovetailed together however i think one of the things that um we appreciated about dc3 was its acknowledgment that there are communities who have been injured more by the war on drugs and punitive um and differential policing all over the place um and disproportionate um sentencing and convictions which we have seen in ann arbor uh in washington county sorry um and so we think that it's important to kind of address that notion that there have been some communities who've been disproportionately injured by that there was also a note
016i mean there was also a um line item sorry about um [Music] about expungements which we found to be um important and related to certainly reimagining public safety but also um a little bit outside our bailey but wick but certainly within the idea of sort of um restorative justice we're thinking about programs for disadvantaged kids and so those are things we certainly hope will you know sort of continue to be a part of resolutions reimagining public safety going forward um i believe council member uh laura you had your hand up first and then council member song yeah thank you for bringing this up um many of us uh haven't really took a deep dive into the resolution that the mayor and other council members have brought for the april 5th agenda but i i can't
017speak to uh dc3 that's been referenced in in terms of redirecting the marijuana excise tax that's been coming that's coming back has came back to the city um and we wanted to uh prescribe it in a way when i say that as the co-sponsors the original co-sponsors or myself council member nelson and hayner was too put them into programs that don't currently exist as you're describing getting creative getting imaginative also in response to the unearned response concerns that we have and unfortunately we saw yet another mass shooting um uh just you know yesterday um but to back back to this is to obviously involve a pocket poc is in all the conversations that that council members have when it relates to these matters and as such you see that in the proposed resolution uh it's
018coming forth on april 5th uh where a is clearly identified in that and um but here we wanted to talk about a lot of things and in fact since that passage i had some exciting conversations with staff about you know what could be done with this money um in terms of expungement and diversions and um you know the the probation officers aren't as busy anymore as they used to be um so anyhow really restructuring um you know uh some of the some of the resources that we have here to address the needs of going forward because we are obviously going under a dramatic uh criminal justice reform throughout this country um and anyhow we're going to be seeing you know three organizations with professionals and resources to better handle um and better care for for
019things so i won't go on too long about this but i am excited that it did get unanimous support um we i think had it by the end six co-sponsors uh including the mayor um so it was tremendously supported and really allows um for uh funding on programs that you mentioned earlier currently don't exist so we can get creative and people can start looking at ann arbor as the beacon uh for programs uh more so than than we have recently how's your memory song hey um so um i appreciate that little bit of background on councilmember and louie's uh resolution it is really exciting um i know the city had already been working on um some programs related to use of specifically foster care youth and having kind of like a summer works or actually
020no permanent work program so that um youth aging out of foster care would be able to be placed with be matched with different departments that were looking for work and this was a partnership with the neutral zone and i was on the board of the neutral zone i was really happy to follow that progress but funding kind of went by the wayside so hopefully this is something that specifically can be be um um budgeted for in the coming years um the clean slate work is really exciting i know i chatted a little bit with attorney slay about this i i've been following this in in the states and my family had helped fund project clean slate in detroit so detroit already has a really good leg up on this um they've got uh folks in
021in in the detroit um police department just making sure that expansions happen on the ready internally before you don't have to wait for fairs to happen um and that that time difference is such a boon to families who can't afford to have a family member incarcerated or have this on their record for for much longer right um so i encourage folks to take a look at project clean slate in detroit it's really you can check folks can check their status their pro bono attorneys can volunteer they they look for other attorneys um other volunteers too as far as the resolution that's coming up the next council meeting uh um i i don't know if i would really characterize it as the mayor's resolution i think folks you know a lot of us said we're tired
022of that that's that's okay i know he's a popular guy uh but you know what i was really excited about was that i was able to pull dr jackson and then also public health folks public health folks who were really instrumental in making sure that um the national public health group asserted that race is a public health crisis right the county had already passed that that statement and the city followed along last july before i was on on board um so i'm really hoping and that that insight from dr paul fleming at the university was really really um instrumental in kind of framing this other resolution um i'd love it if we can actually start taught speaking frankly to race and policing and i was i was really really happy to reference his research um
023in the data and and and share that with the folks who have worked on on this on this resolution so you'll see some of that reflected some of that language reflected um and you also see a language on continuum of care that really reflects on you know what the county is already doing um you know i'm a social worker this is this is this is what we talk about is making sure we connect the dots and that people get the help they actually need um so i think you know so hopefully between council member rom lobby's resolution and this one that's coming up folks can kind of connect the dots so that um there's a more expansive view of what policing and public safety can look like um and how social services are essential to
024that and if we can avoid incarceration i think we're all on the same page because you know if we can limit and avoid incarceration um then it helps everyone so that's my little feel about what's coming up you might have already seen a live article um i'm excited and i'm glad to hear that there's excitement in the community too sorry um any further discussion on that councilmember romelu thanks uh just a second time i apologize for for being long but i'm just equally excited um we have um you know uh now the support and the fundage to to go after some of these programs we've been been talking about for a long time and i know the clean slate um was talked about by my colleague i'm not as familiar with it as councilmember song
025is but just speaking with our own city attorney's office i know they're doing a lot of work internally right now and more is going to be required if we want to continue with expungement and break those intergenerational issues that are the consequence of the injustice um that served um but we're there's been a lot of legislation recently that's passed that's going to go into effect soon that's going to allow people to qualify for that but right now i think there's like 30 or 40 a year but speaking with sources talking about hundreds perhaps soon will be eligible locally here for expungement and some of them simply don't have the 30 or 40 dollars in court fees to pay for the the paperwork um so i'm hoping that that resolution that was passed marijuana excise tax
026will help pay for not just the staff but help pay for some of these small fines and fees that keep people locked in these chains so you know hopefully again i'm super excited and within weeks or months we will have more detail on on what that will look like but here locally we will argue we're going to be able to do a lot of good and i want to make a plug too is council member um song was making a plug for neutral zone i'm going to throw one out there for ozone house too because they do lots of work with young people coming out of the foster care system and they have job training programs um already so i hope you guys think about them as well in terms of already established programs that
027work for young people to do job training as older adolescents and young adults and so that's something that's already within their bailiwick and um they're kind of nationally recognized for some of that work as well so we have so many good resources in this community and i'm sure there are more as well that can contribute to um thinking about some of these restorative justice issues and so that's really um exciting to think about going forward um oh i'm sorry commissioner offman i think one of the uh centers that would probably be involved is the dispute resolution center also they are following up on some of the like foster kids and some other uh issues that are related to the youth and and trying to help them out the other thing i have is what we're
028doing is it looks like we are doing something in isolation of the of the county are there some other resources available in the county that also would augment what the city will be doing um are we duplicating things are we synergizing efforts uh because really we need we need to look at not only at ourselves but also the neighbors and neighboring cities and towns etc and if there are certain programs that are available if we add to that um i think we don't have to reinvent the wheel right and your suggestion i don't know if i reported back on this but i did have an extensive conversation with kathy wyatt who um talked about a lot of things that were going on at the county level and and then i was able to have conversations
029with the executive director and others at community mental health and so absolutely much of what is being talked about here has to be done in coordination with the county um because it doesn't make sense kind of ann arbor is not an island and so um we only have um you know our council only has control over its budget but um there is an understanding that there needs to be coordination with the county and that other municipalities will likely be considering in what ways they want to participate you know for example it would be very challenging for community mental health to have one kind of response in ann arbor and another in saline and a different one in pittsfield township and a fourth one in ypsilanti for example um so we know that there is quite
030a bit of coordination that needs to happen um and it doesn't look like right now anybody is it seemed perhaps that people were thinking about duplicating what cmh already does but um it turns out not to be the case and so um but there is as you're saying um an understanding that everything that happens here you know much of what happens here will have to be coordinated with the county so that it can work seamlessly and so that there isn't too much stress on you know the systems that exist that work across the whole county level um one one other thing is is also recently the the sheriff had waived about half a million dollar of fines of the individuals who were incarcerated so that is really something that the uh would benefit that was
031amazing all individuals that are um affected by by that and and uh i think later on i'll probably add a little bit at the uh different subcommittees and reporting i can also report a little bit on the uh crew and what we are doing and up in our subcommittee related to some of these issues being addressed and you know because there have been some programs like this around the country there's now data on what things like that can mean for a family or for individuals um when they have fees like that waived um when they have um you know drug offense charges expunged that you know for things that are now not illegal and um you can see how that impacts college students who aren't eligible for for federal loan programs or sometimes aren't able
032to do housing because of those kinds of things and we see how families are impacted when they get out from under fees for mandatory health screenings in jail for example or um you know when they were being charged for haircuts and so one of the things that the sheriff did that was um so progressive in addition to waiving the fees was kind of look at how those fees are charged going forward and so thinking about you know how we're going to charge people for these things that we deem to be mandatory as you might get processed through can we change the way we're doing that so there's not such a financial burden and so um it was wonderful that they were able to come to an agreement with the county and um allocate funds to
033um sort of expunge those fees but also that they're thinking about how to restructure them in the future so um the other people won't be won't have that same burden as well so um these are things that are um really interesting and um helpful and and and i would say in my personal opinion overdue but we're very excited to to see them happening and we're excited to see more as we think about how we can change public safety and how we can make it um make it worthy of how we see ann arbor right and that's a big thing it's not you know just the police it's not just community mental health um there are changes that need to be made in lots of different places and um we're excited to be thinking about them
034um particularly as we think about you know sort of unarmed crisis responders and maybe unarmed um you know work in other ways like you know traffic enforcement for citations that are civil infractions um does that require an armed response and so those are things that i hope we are thinking about as we go forward and just thinking about how we can do public safety better how we can be maybe a model for the nation but more importantly than that how can um public safety exist in ann arbor in a way that suits this community in a way that and you know and sort of rises to the expectations that we have for each other here um uh commissioners bill ups and todora hargraves do you guys wanna talk about your meeting with the union or
035union representatives or sure i'll start and uh commissioner todoro hargreaves if you want to jump in and make sure you cover anything i've missed that would be great so on march 16th we had a meeting with representatives of the officers and command union uh to discuss uh basically it was a meet and greet uh and part of the process was to discuss miscommunication and misinformation uh information like the union didn't want to meet with us igpak wasn't interested in meeting with the union all of those things that have been floating around which were not the truth we had a meeting to discuss that and to talk about uh common desires for um epoch and the police union to work together and be successful uh with the whole area of oversight uh we talked about the
036fact that there will be differences and disagreements that we are an independent group of 11 commissioners and but that uh our job and role is different than theirs uh but that we're working together to build bridges uh between them and with the community as a whole to get the community to understand what's happening with police officers but also uh for the police officers to understand what's important to the community uh that is a two-way street uh we talked about the process of of us reviewing uh reports because there was some miscommunication around that and and they were uh understanding now of our committee of three and the processes as to how we review things as a matter of fact they were very excited well very supportive of the fact that um we want to view
037body cam footage as a matter of fact uh they said a couple of the officers said they want us to make sure that we see all of the body cam video around uh situations um we agreed to meet again in april just to have an open line of communication to discuss um as things come up um differences or to explain positions and commissioner to dora hargreaves am i missing anything no i think you covered it all very well um you know it wasn't a very long meeting um we both asked we asked them questions they asked us questions basically just to clear the air and get to know each other um i thought one of the questions of interest was they wanted to they were interested in why we wanted lean access and when when
038i explained to them the only reason we wanted lean access was so we could get to the body cam footage then they understood and they were like yeah you know we want you to see the body cam footage so um i think that the the more that we're able to see that um more effectively without lean being used as a reason for it to take so long um we just realized we were all on the same page and we really did all we both had the same goal which was to review the body camera footage so i think that um helped um definitely clear the air which is exactly what we were trying to do with the meeting so it was good and it's important to point out that um the vast vast vast majority
039of complaints that we get are not from people in the criminal justice in in the in the lean system and so um lean stands for the law enforcement information network and which would allow us to see information about people um who who may have some criminal information in the system but because most of the complaints the vast majority of complaints we get are from citizens who have no criminal background lien becomes unnecessary in the beginning it was thought that it would help us review complaints faster because the city attorney's office or the police and or the police would have to would have less to redact um it became clear to us that that wasn't really necessary because that's not who our complainants are and and it took a while for that to become apparent to
040us um as we began to get more and more complaints it became clear that mostly they're citizens who who don't have the information in lean and so um you know that that isn't a part of the redactions that have to take place right when and when you look at the body camera footage some that we're seeing there's no rejection needed so the idea up front that it was going to take a long time to get us these videos um it just actually didn't come to fruition and there was a little bit of adjustment that had to be made on the part of you know um like city attorney's office was different people were doing redactions for a while and so now um we we have a very consistent input from the city attorney's office and
041so that's much more clear and much more streamlined and attorney slay work works much more closely with the police department and so that works um really well and so there's just a really smooth understanding of what they need to redact obviously incidental information information coming across a radio that's unrelated to what we're looking at we wouldn't shouldn't be privy to that so that might be sort of redacted something like that or um but it's not the kind of um reaction i think we thought that was going to have to be necessary in the beginning so um so nothing that um that like we thought would happen but that just took you know us getting adjusted to who our complaints are and um understanding what the process would be and so these are growing pains and
042turned out that that was one that really worked well and that it wasn't something that we needed to have i think we thought it was really important in the beginning but as we got to do the work more we realized it just it wasn't as important as we thought it was so that's great um great for them to hear that that clarification from us um and to go through the you know historically how this came about and where we were at with it so it was good to clear the air that way well i think it was um you guys did a great job and it was great to um clear up some of the miscommunication um but also just to open the communication channels so that there can be you know a an easier
043exchange of information um back and forth that could be certainly useful um the more informed we are the better we do our work any reports from any committees um go ahead no go ahead just we have uh just regular meetings with the human um rights commission about the crew report and we came up with a few points that we need to focus on because there are other groups in the county that are working on related issues of the crew report and we have um decided on things like mental health as one of the issues second is on the probation and payroll and that requires imposing some kind of fines sometimes or so on individuals who are not in a position even to pay for these small infractions and what that does to the the the
044cascade of one thing leads to the second and and you start with something related to maybe a few bucks at the stop sign or so and you did not pay and then now you are being brought to the court and uh imposed more on you or sometimes you might be apprehended or placed in jail for some time and and you have to pay for that so um the issue is i think the idea is is working on something like that across the county and we'll we say to wait and see what they are doing and also helping out those individuals by having them informed of what they need to do in case they have this issue they don't need to run away the other thing is is also there was an issue related to individuals
045who sometimes um drive without a license and and those individuals um they are not doing that because they want to break the law but because they don't have the means to acquire the license and there was some kind of talk about having other organizations that might help in sponsoring some of those individuals who are in in this type of bracket financial socio-economic bracket that probably would benefit from such funds or so and that would alleviate the problem of having this type of violation and the other point is the data and this is something that's lacking if we are going to be pursuing anything in the future if we don't have data we can't really do anything so we want to have like individuals who are uh being ticketed or being uh uh placed and brought
046to court in and all that and how those individuals can be helped what type of data available to them how many uh are coming from ann arbor versus other uh towns and cities of the county so we we need to have this type of data as individuals we cannot do that they need to have someone who is really a data expert to do that and we can probably integrate the data any way we want based on our needs or what type of study we are going to be doing so this is an ongoing type of conversation that we have and and it's very uh interesting to see um spectrum not from just us over here in town in an arbor but also across the county thank you um commissioner birch i lowered my hand instead
047of unmuting myself um i don't have to go first if um commissioner princess dora was up next or councilmember ron you know what you guys are moving around the screen and i thought you were first but i apologize thanks and go okay um just a few things that i wanted to update everyone on so last month i got to meet with the tenant leadership board at avalon which is comprised of different residents in the community they sit on this community engagement board called vocal voices of community advocates and leaders and they discuss advocacy and engagement opportunities for their residents um and it was a really interesting conversation they definitely just had a lot of questions about what it does um you know how you know we can continue to provide updates to them about things
048that we're doing ways that they can get involved um there was even like discussion on maybe setting up some sort of like liaison role between ikpak and their residents because it definitely was plainly stated that they feel as though they get overpoliced in the sense that for calls that seem um not as urgent they felt like lots of officers will show up and then that will heighten the situation and then it frightens the kids in the community and then residents are just kind of you know unsure about what's going on so i really appreciated that i you know had time to meet with them hold space for their questions concerns and just bring back um to you all that they are really invested in the work that we're doing um you know they want to
049know how that trust and community um can be built between the police and their residents so really really enjoyed that conversation um the only oh did you have questions about that lisa um the only the couple of things were that i saw that the notice had gone out on march 16th that the aapd is accepting applications for police chaplains and that this is a new program they started i would love to connect with officer doug martell about that just kind of how it was spurred what they're thinking um you know ways we can partner with them to either help with recruitment or um just just learn more about how we can support that initiative because it definitely sounds important you know that they're wanting to provide this level of community engagement where it sounds like
050the chaplain is providing support to officers and civilians just counseling around mental health suicide awareness prevention um it sounds like a really really great program so anyway we can support those efforts um i'm definitely looking forward to a conversation about that and then lastly um so i am now sitting on the task force that's reviewing public safety on uvm's campus because i'm a staff member there and something that the outreach committee um that i lead for that task force is reviewing is the public safety app that their department of public safety has and so i was just interested in maybe that could be a conversation we have with the aapd about a public safety app a way to sort of see um on a map where crimes are happening um it's an easy accessible way
051for community members to receive alerts um just about emergency notifications and it's also a way for people to provide anonymous tips so it's um pretty user-friendly accessible um i know it definitely resonates with the students and as we're just trying to think about ways to continue to center the community and their needs wondering if an app can just be another way to kind of um reach folks we might um not be accessing in that sense so those are my updates i wanted to add to your um your chaplain question we were i noticed something about the recruitment um flyer and i was um able to get feedback and commissioner todoro hargraves was having a conversation with um deputy chief metzer and um they were really open to our suggestions um there was a a way
052that they had worded the counseling issue that was um um that they were able to revise and tweak just a tiny bit and i and um and so i know that the police department is um you know very open to teaching us about the program and and getting input about it from us and so um that is certainly wonderful commissioner todo hargraves were you next up this is my assistant my personal assistant sorry um there were two things and um i was reminded when um commissioner phillips was talking about our meeting with the officers um we've been invited to some training that they've done um we've had seven officers who have become trained in law enforcement active de-escalation training so they those seven are now actively training the rest of the department it's a five-hour
053training session and um they have invited us to attend so i was thinking that we would start with the information managers um since we would be reviewing um complaints and police officer actions and then start opening it up to others and i can send you the schedule and everything once i work that out um with lieutenant fox and others to get folks on there another training and i don't know what the other information managers are feeling but i was feeling some pain this afternoon trying to juggle logging into the city system and you know figuring out what else i need to do and i know it is important that we use the city system because of the sensitivity of what we're reviewing so um i was speaking with um assistant city attorney slay and we're
054thinking that we will set up a training maybe with somebody from it who can help the five of us get a better understanding of what we need to do to get all our logins up and running um i know we need more than one um um because we need some some other logins besides the city one so um i'm gonna be getting that training set up also so i'll be in touch with all of you about that and i'll be buying some pretty large flash drives for everybody to store their information on because people have different systems and um that we've we've seen some differences in operating systems and whether you log on from a mac or pc or a tablet and so we're trying to get all that coordinated and one thing that might
055help make this more secure is if we're keeping documents that we're keeping not not the body cam footage or anything like that but our notes on a flash drive and you might be able to securely move that around while just kind of having things in one place so i'm gonna get a bunch of those for anybody who needs those um depending on your computer situation we do not want um the age of one's laptop to prevent anybody from participating in this process or the age of operating systems etc so um if anybody is having difficulty with that um you know certainly reach out to me and let me know that um i have been able to get in i've finally been able to open up my city email i've been able to get into evidence.com
056and um my process for doing that was different than commissioner todoro hargraves and so we know it might be different for everybody else so if you are an information manager if you would in the next couple days make sure you can log into all those systems and see body cam footage that it actually plays for you um i think everyone so all five of us should have things in a file available to us and then on um in april we'll sit down with the deputy chiefs and um and review those cases together but it's good to know like what works and what doesn't work long before that so we can get it fixed if we if we need to um and then just make sure we keep working out the kinks so um council member
057ram lawyer and then um commissioner walton thanks i'm going to take us a step back here um i just wanted to uh thank um francis uh and uh bonnie for for meeting with the union and having a conversation breaking the ice uh i think uh quite frankly it's overdue um and it's good to see that happen um much of what i contend with outside of meetings is is just the lack of information misunderstanding lack of trust really makes our jobs a lot diff much more difficult when um when those are the the surrounding um you know feelings and perspectives that people have so uh i appreciate that quick conversation that led to some common understanding um and can lead to further dialogue um i do as i've been sitting here for a long time i
058feel that there is much more in common than there is uh uh what uh is acknowledged and so uh just wanna thank thank uh the commission for for doing that and i hope it continues and if there's anything that someone in my position can do to help that please reach out um and i will be more than happy to provide whatever i can to facilitate those conversations and dialogue i think it's very important we keep touching on it was touched on again today about trust and we need to build that trust and so hopefully that can continue and i know this isn't a perfect world and i don't expect it to be that way after just a few um conversations but i i believe we're better off with having them um and then uh it's
059it's uh i guess you know for this commission and the the difficulties it's having with the work that's being asked if there's a need for personal devices perhaps the equipment or supplies this commission needs to do the work and investigate please ask we do have a budget um and i don't think you know when this commission was formed or anyone was really thinking that two or three years ago um that we'd be doing as much as we're doing now electronically so i think it's a very um you know a reasonable request if we have to make a request for the commissioners to have the devices given to the commissioners that need it what they need so we're all working on the same platform and you're not trying to vit that's not what you signed up
060for it's not the i.t commission so um so appreciate the work that you're all doing and i'll keep polling people to make sure that people do have the equipment that they need but um council member ram lawyer is correct if we if the commission needs to purchase some laptops that need to be you know loaned out to people as they do their work then that's definitely something that's within our purview to do that obviously they would belong to the city and i think our preference is that maybe we just borrow them from the city because they will update their stuff regularly if we got something it would get old soon so that might be a better solution but you know i'll i'll be reaching out to everybody touching base with you about your i.t needs
061particularly as you review cases but even as you do other work um commissioner walton and then commissioner othman thanks i just wanted to give a quick um update actually on the budget which is sort of a bit of a non-update because i don't have final word yet but uh the city administrator's office they did accept our budget as we had just have discussed before so we are putting forward a budget uh with no cuts from from previous years and in fact actually with a modest amount extra for some additional training and i.t yeah and i i guess it was training i would say when i was training we didn't get additional money for it but we are using more rit now and it is kind of linked with the city so there is a change
062in those fees um based on what we're using and what we're doing so but but yeah with a little bit of extra money for training and along those lines after the discuss discussion last meeting um hopefully next meeting i'm going to be bringing a proposed draft for sort of a training outline so that we can consistently new commissioners come in we'll have you know some some expectations of what they'll be doing in the first 30 and 90 days to get acquainted with everything and then some ongoing things for us there's lots of flexibility and it's not necessarily you must do these four things but we're tying it very closely back to nicole's things so the 13 principles and the different tracks they have where you can specialize your knowledge over time so just giving a
063heads up and if anyone's got thoughts on those specifically on things that should be in initial training uh and things like that please let me know and and i can build them into them i've got a chance to review her um commissioner walton's draft and it is um really wonderful and it talks about sort of onboarding training but it also talks about continuing education and one of the things that that i've kind of talked about a lot is that um oversight um is a profession and um and and just as police are professionals and and other people are professionals um oversight requires a certain amount of training and it requires ongoing training and and being well versed in um you know sort of of things from case law all the way to um sort of
064current perspectives in oversight and those things are unique you know obviously from policing although related to the oversight of policing and so um commissioner walton's plan um will be very helpful for all of us who are on the commission already in terms of staying current and making sure that we are informed but also reassuring the public that we are professionals at what we do and that we do have a certain amount of training in terms of what we do um i think part of the um the training plan includes that a certain percentage of us become certified practitioners of oversight and that is something that can be done you know over time um but that it is important to have people on the commission who have retained that level of training um in addition to
065the ongoing training that people have and um and and so um part of that is just making sure that we do our jobs well but part of it is also um the public having confidence that we're doing what we're doing not from the position of sitting and just and and sort of the ideas that we judge police where what we're really doing is thinking about oversight principles and um certainly those include transparency and accountability at the fore but there are many ways of getting at that as commissioner walton stated there are many different tracks community engagement is a track um thinking about collaboration with other agencies of the track and so all of these things are very important in addition to oversight principles and so um her plan will make sure that everybody is well-rounded
066um in that and that there is um sort of a continual a continuation of education for all commissioners um throughout their tenure on this commission so it's very very important um council member ram lawyer thank you appreciate the opportunity again um a couple things have been brought up here um the the chaplain program that was discussed earlier uh has been brought to my attention that we used to have that um for for many many many years so uh hopefully we can um go back and look at that we're not going to be reinventing the wheel there um there'll be a lot of history to see how that was done and uh just answer uh commissioner's questions and inquiry on that so uh bringing back something that did exist prior um to the last couple years
067um and then the there's i know there's a unfortunately it's that time of year where we have people coming off of boards and commissions and and you know come i think may there's a few commissioners here who are their terms are up uh i believe the process would be to reapply uh through the normal process and then of course uh myself and council members song and council members from the human rights commission will review the applications and uh and and put forth names but that's going to come up quickly uh it it just kind of jarred my uh memory when uh commissioner walton was talking about uh the budget and uh thank you so much for doing that uh you did you've done a terrific job in in the years you you've been on commission
068and putting that together and i'm glad to hear that that the uh it was approved i think the the pressure the political pressure that the commission and others in our community have put you know makes a difference um and uh we we gotta put our dollars where our priorities are and that's good to see um that was the case here and um anyhow that there's the training um we we got a lot invested in this commission with folks and the experience and i know it's taken a long time but when you start from scratch that's what happens sometimes we didn't really have a template to go off of here locally so it did take some while a while to get get things going but hopefully we can retain as many people as we can but
069it just put that out there the folks that are coming off to me that i'll give some thought on that and look forward to seeing everybody still so thank you we are on top of it um commissioner hoffman i did mention at the beginning of the meeting about the uh phase identification the software that's being used and proposed and uh uh bear my conversation with my son i just asked him about what does he think of of the system he said that over the past two years or so there was great improvement in the system itself however um the uh system uh is not good at if you have glasses if you have a mask or if you are trying to identify something from a video uh if you are trying to take a a
070still from a video it does not work the other thing he said that it should be equal to the fingerprinting meaning that if you have fingerprint it comes back to only one individual if you're going to have a uh an image or a picture and comes back with 20 individuals or five individuals or three individuals he said that that is an issue an issue with the sensitivity issue with the settings so unless there are improvements and on that front i think it's a little bit um you know he said that if it's not going to be as the fingerprinting i think that is a little bit uh not as as reliable at least at least with what they currently have so so there are some some uh um drawbacks of of the system and who
071knows maybe in the future the system will will become a little bit more reliable uh in terms of uh being used and and used properly and in uh in a helpful way so i will probably keep um also looking into this as time progresses and see what type of recommendations we would have based on on science and based on not just whether or not you know this software will go and use it and you know there is no data that will support so just we really need to be careful about that because no one is is questioning fingerprinting you know when it comes back especially if you have a good one there are partial ones you know sometimes this is what you work from but but i think if it's not going to be returning
072just one individual as fingerprinting i think um i would err inside of caution we um it's such a good point that you've made we know that right now the technology um is not as reliable as it should be but it's also not as valid as it should be in that it has difficulty distinguishing between women we know it has difficulty distinguishing people under a certain age and so there are a number of problems um with that but um these are things we'll get to explore as we work on the um you know facial recognition task force commission um i'm sorry council member song i just wanted to update folks that there's a lot of community organizing around this already and there's a site ban the scan a2.com that's already up and a town hall that
073they're organizing on april 29th um the it's a collaboration between a number of organizations in town um and you'll see that um there are alerts that you can sign up for and how to email counsel a lot of background information on the technology how it's been misused um i'm impressed it's a fancy looking site um and it looks like there's there's momentum behind this work um so it should be pretty easy going and i just want to clarify one thing um commissioner had said that this is technology that's being used it's not being used in ann arbor and there's no ambition to use it the the intention behind this was really come where the motivation behind this is coming from the community and just trying to make sure that um it isn't it won't be
074used so anyways it's abandonscanea2.com perfect thank you so much um if i am not mistaken um we are at the point where we could take public comments uh ms jeunesse do we have anyone waiting at this point were we able to retrieve the caller from earlier let's see what we have [Music] um no i don't see anyone okay um this is highly unusual but we may have done all of the work that we should have done in um one hour and ten minutes is there a motion to adjourn motion is there a second second all in favor aye aye any opposed we are adjourned somebody write this down i feel like we did a lot of work i know we do most of our work