Ann Arbor Independent Police Oversight Commission 1/26/21

001the january 26 2021 meeting of the independent community police oversight commission will come to order ms deness can you do the roll call i certainly shall win jackson present okay commissioner walton president commissioner altman president vice chair todoro president commissioner mary i see you okay commissioner phillips president commissioner carter yeah okay and let's see commissioner burch present and our new commissionership president okay and we have council member song and council member ram lawyers preston as well okay we have a quorum perfect and is there a motion to approve the agenda moved is there a second well second all in favor any opposed none hearing none um so i want to introduce our new commissioner makaya ship who is our our youth member she's a public policy major at the university of michigan she's already had

002a paid position as a field organizer for rashida talib she happened to meet um representative talib uh during a public policy fellowship that he was that she was able to gain while she was still in high school um makaya worked alongside um other paid workers who were all adults mind you she directed social media initiatives she engaged never voters and first-time voters and created some youth voting campaign videos she's also gone to lansing to lobby state representatives and she was recently featured on an nbc segment on first time voters and it's called bipac gen ziers are voting for the first time and hoping to decide the fate of their swing states the video is about five minutes long so if we get done a little bit early i'll show it to you guys it's quite

003impressive and if not i'll put the link in the chat um she's she's done a plethora of speaking engagements she's quite compelling as i'm sure you'll come to know and we are very some of us have had a chance to interview her and speak with her multiple times and we are very excited to have her on this commission because we certainly need um the perspective of young people and we're actually expecting to put her to lots and lots of work so we're happy to have her for that as well so welcome makaya we are very grateful that you um decided to join our commission and we hope that it's as rewarding for you as it will be for us because um we're going to ask you to do lots of stuff so thank you so

004much for joining is there anything you'd like to say having sure sure um i'm super excited to be here um i definitely plan to definitely follow through with the work that i'm put towards um i'm definitely going to be consistent i have a lot to offer i feel like um different perspective and i've definitely been introduced better than i can even introduce myself so thank you for that um and like i said i'm just excited to be here well thank you very much so now is the time um in the process where we can have public comment denise do you see anybody out there no no at the present time there's no one okay um so what we'll do is we'll move on and then if we have time at the end which i suspect

005we will um we can have some time for public comment at the end okay if there are any callers um you guys had a copy of the november meeting minutes we did not have a december meeting sorry can i just check something is it public comment or public forum it's public forum i misspoke and for that i apologize just because i know it gives us different roles i wanted to make sure that very different rules it is a public forum and um and we will engage in that at the end of our meeting if anyone uh calls in thank you for that it's important for us to say it um everyone has a copy of the november meeting minutes is there any discussion any corrections of those or is there a motion to approve them

006as they are no move second second thank you all in favor of approving the november meeting minutes any opposed already thank you they are approved we have some old business so i wanted to talk about our training so um we need to start making sure that we let denise know all the training that we've done so we need to make a report of what we did in 2020 so if you could forward her any 2020 trainings you've done that you haven't yet if you could do that this week that would be very helpful and um and and you could do that intermittently as you complete a training in 2021 you could send her um a note and say hey this is what i did this is who i did it here's the date um and

007i wanted to talk a little bit about what training entails because training could be formal classes at naco training could also be reading so we all have a reading list and i know i've given some of you guys books i've dropped some of them off at your homes but we have a bunch more in i have a box because we got multiple copies we have lots of different titles but we have multiple copies um and so if anybody needs to borrow those to read those that certainly counts as training there are journal articles and i'll try to um uh link you guy uh i i can send you guys a list and if you um are interested in i'll just send you the pdf i don't want to try to send the pdf of 60

008articles out um but but that certainly counts as training um sarah and i went to a training on friday i think given by the game i think it was friday but we definitely went uh given by the american bar association and georgetown university and it was about active bystander intervention for police and if you've taken an intro to psych class you know the term bystander intervention it refers to the concept of when you're in a group um it's very hard to intervene in something that's going on and so we have lots of incidences where everyone's standing around and nobody's doing anything and it's not because people are uncaring it's not because they're terrible people it's because overcoming um being able to take a step to intervene is actually quite challenging um and so in the

009training they talked about an incident that was quite salient there was a senior officer and he was arresting an individual and he did several things wrong while he was in arresting the individual and there were lots of junior officers watching him do this and none of them said anything to him because he was a senior officer and they put the suspect in the back of the police car and they proceeded to take him to jail however because he was handcuffed incorrectly he was able to bring his hands to the front of his body and because he had not been searched correctly um he retrieved the gun from his waistband that the end that had not been discovered by the senior police officer and he moved the partition and shot and killed one of the police

010officers who was taking him to jail that's a huge problem because all of the people who were watching the senior officer saw that the the the person had not been um searched correctly and at any point any of them could have said something but they didn't not because they're horrible people but because it there's a culture not just in policing but in medicine in teaching in whatever in the united states that makes it more challenging to intervene and so um this program has been put together it was used in new orleans um when they were under a consent decree so they're kind of motivated to do it and they called it epic which is ethical policing is courageous and what they did was frame it as if you step in when you see an officer

011or your fellow officer doing something inappropriate you are helping the officer it is not that you are being disloyal you are actually being more loyal because you are potentially saving them from getting fired you're saving them from getting killed so they have this very salient example um it was also it's also currently being used in baltimore and is also being used in some other um mid-size cities that are not under a consent decree to some great effect and um so we went to a talk and we heard a lot about the program and um i was very interested in it because it's one way to promote culture change within a department from kind of going to the us versus them mentality and and sort of loyalty is not snitching thinking about loyalty within the police

012department as being protective of each other so i ran the program passed a bunch of police friends of mine um who who thought it was useful i got a chance to share it with chief cox i'm sure he hasn't had a chance to look at it yet because there's a lot there's a volume of information out there on it um but but i was able to um to have a talk with jerry clayton about it and um i said you know you don't have to read all of this i know you're super busy just let me know what you think and um he called me and we had like a two-hour conversation about it because he was so excited about he's already signed up the sheriff's department and he himself is actually going to be

013trained so we'll get to see what it looks like locally um and and see how it does at least in the sheriff's department so all that to say even going to something like that is certainly training right we learned about options for police this is not necessarily oversight right this is not something that we would participate in it's something strictly for police um but one of the jobs that we have in terms of oversight is thinking about policy and thinking about how to prevent some of the incidents that we see so of course complaint review is a huge part of what we do but i think that thinking about policy and thinking about prevention is probably equally important to complaint review and so in that vein we learned about some strategies that are being used

014around the country to be useful and then we also did a training last thursday with corey mills of the police department on kind of showing us what their implicit bias training looks like um and so if you do any of those things if you go to a training on your own if you attend a session somewhere else um all of those things count as training um and and if you ever have to pay a fee a 10 fee or 20 fee to attend a training or something that's certainly something that's covered within our training budget and so denise could pay for it or you could get reimbursed for it probably it's certainly easier if she just pays for it but um so i just want to make sure everybody understands kind of the things that

015can be involved in training i think everybody needs to do a certain amount of nicole training but there are so many other things out there and i'll try to do um when i hear of things even if i'm not going i'll try to put them out in email in case anybody else wants to sign up i i found out about that the able or epic program at the last minute i think i signed up 20 minutes before it started um but if anybody has any opportunities like that we should definitely share them among the whole email list and i will give everybody makaya's email she's got an eggpock email address now um so that she can be included in those you guys have any questions about training or thoughts know i i have a uh

016i wonder uh how many had attended the um the presentations by care michigan around about 12 weeks looking at the history of racism and resistance in america and if anyone did not see that i believe that the recording is on youtube i probably at one point i might just send a link to denise for anyone who wants to go and look at some of the topics that they had covered it's just amazing in view of what is happening what had happened and what would happen is is to have an idea about what's really uh going on it's it's uh it covers many many many topics from different areas and i would encourage anyone who has a little bit of time just to look at some of those i remember you [Music] making britain making us

017aware of that in the fall and i'm looking at youtube now and i see um quite a few links to some of the talks that they did so it looks like they put quite a bit of that online correct correct correct um and just choose any of the topics that you feel uh you are interested in you don't have to go through every one of them but you know it covers really um the the the history from way back from the 1600s and up so denise is there a way to um do the chat in here because i there's um one of them the history of racism and resistance in america i copy the link address but i don't see i guess maybe if i i don't see let me see if i can open

018up more no hold on uh console minimum wally has his hand up i'm sorry go ahead um councilman while we're trying to figure this link thing out good evening and thank you um and i just uh wanted to ask denise if it was possible um with the agendas if we can change the public comments of public forums so it can reflect and we get better used to using that term sure future agendas and i just wanted to welcome makaya to the commission uh it was really hard to get you approved just kidding um it was unanimous in one in in one vote uh at the council table so uh we were excited to have you here um so quickly after that approval last week and um looking forward to uh what you can add to

019this dynamic group um so welcome in and uh thank you from from the city for for serving on this commission thank you council member song and then commissioner carter everyone um tomorrow it sounds like tomorrow's going to be like a marathon of interesting policing workshops so tomorrow there's the one o'clock four stats oversight webinar i think denise had sent that out to everyone so i'll be on that at one o'clock and then the school of public health is hosting uh policing as a public health issue webinar from four to five that's um easily google googleable that's free um it looks really really promising so please don't let me be the only igbo person at these things and if i am i will be happy to share and report back out too thanks thank you i

020i never know sometimes until i see somebody else ask a question i'm like hey they're from ann arbor that's one of us okay excuse me lisa are you able to share now i have a q a but it's only only hosts and panelists can see the questions so i have that ability i don't have just the standard chat button that we use right i don't either okay well don't worry about it i have the um history of racism and resistance in america like on my screen and i can send a link to everyone um afterwards okay [Music] commissioner emma uh mary has her hand up and on your muted uh you mentioned some some place yes just now the second place at four to five they have some can you repeat that please it's uh

021the u of m school of public health is hosting a webinar called policing as a public health issue i can send you the email with the details anon because i was i sent that one yeah that would be good thank you i shared this with at cds our last council meeting too so hopefully we can see other council members join us so thank you for sharing that commissioner carter that's her handout i was going to um say that some i think it was sarah that sent out uh something from the police chiefs association yes had a lot of very good information and there was about an eight minute uh video that was also really good uh awesome but you know i'm going to have to get with denise because i think things are being i

022apologize i have a couple of different email accounts and i have not i guess these announcements are being sent out on the icpod email yes so i'm gonna have to figure out what i'm doing wrong because i'm not getting that email and you can tell me the preferred email you and i seem to be able to email okay correct he can email and i got the what sarah had sent out but all these other things i am i'm not getting um it would be easier for me is there some kind of a policy about not using a profession another professional email no there's no policy i think in the beginning we all wanted to have separate email addresses because they were made public and you might not want your professional personal one out there um

023but but whatever email address you want to use is the one that we will use and so if if you can just tell us which one to use and we will follow your direction oh however city attorney slay is weighing in on that yeah hold that hand okay okay okay um so this is for the benefit of foia and i know this um commission more so than others can probably appreciate that uh transparency is required for the police but it's got to be transparency required for all of our boards and commissions as well in the event that we get a foia that says i want all police or any epoch related business from dr jackson to stephanie carter we'll have to go through your personal email account to pull that out and that's not the

024most comfortable or the best practice and so i would encourage all of you to use your ipoc emails and if anyone needs help doing that i'm sure miss denise is at the ready to get started and that encourages that supports the transparency that we're asking um of our city partners as well um in addition to that um francis and lisa we've all been working really hard to try to come up with some procedures for you and we have discovered with the help of our fantastic it department at the city that the best way to transmit documents for when you're doing complaint review is to be able to log on using your city account um especially during the times of covid um when we're not going to be able to really get in a room and

025show a video or something on the big screen but logging on to the a2 central our city centered web page is going to allow you to review the confidential documents that you'll need to do if you are signed up for complaint review so i would encourage all of you to use that if you do have right now an arsenal of xbox related emails um in your email i would recommend that you forward those to your yourself at ikpak that way if there is a foia we can be 100 compliant with it and okay and the ability what we want ultimately is to maintain the ability to review um attorney slay was referring to complaint review things but that could include body cam footage or um reports that um that we need to review in in

026assess in in the process of a review and there was a time when we would all troop down to the police station and sit around in a closed room and do that kovid obviously put a stop to that but i think one of the things that we talked about was that if anybody's involved in doing complaint review it's going to be more efficient if we can continue to do it remotely going forward um the system and and so we all have a2gov email addresses and they can be reinstated they were sort of dis they were put on pause for some time but they can be invigorated and renewed and um um and thus we can sign on to a server with those and we can do it asynchronously which means if somebody has to do

027it at 3am they can do that they have to do it at 2am they can do that such that we can all be ready and prepared for a meeting having seen all the confidential work uh you know the products that we need to see um and so denise is in the process of restoring those um email addresses for everyone and um so that we'll be able to use these these servers even though we're not working from a city computer and that'll provide some security um and allow us to do it probably more efficiently even after covid it just was too challenging to troop down to the police station and get everybody in one place at one time and you know we had those discussions about trying to do that between nine and five and and

028that was not really appropriate for a volunteer commission so this is going to work a lot better for everyone and so everybody's a2gov emails will be restored and if you haven't been using them we can start using them and we can figure out how to streamline the password process um because that was not easy but we can do that and everybody will be on the same page so um any other thoughts about training any imminent trainings anybody wants to share right now um before we move on all right oh i'm sorry go ahead council member ram lawyer thank you cher um i just while we're on the issue of emails and communication um stephanie had brought up thank you um i'm just wondering at what level are communication sent to council members um there is

029a lot of communication that occurs between commissioners much that probably will will stay at that level but is there a threshold at when communications are shared with council members because that sometimes uh i don't hear things until some sort of action is needed by council and i'd rather be more abreast of of what's what's actually happening amongst commissioners um so i know it's a little awkward you could take it offline some other you know but wanted to address it at this point you know just put that out there can you tell um what kinds of stuff you haven't been included in that you'd prefer to be included in like do you want training emails yeah i guess that's the a conversation we can probably have you know at a later point but i don't really

030receive any emails um you know on on matters unless there's a particular issue that that needs to be escalated uh but just on more of not to say you don't get a million texts from us yeah well it no not a million it's not too bad it's it's definitely we had some time off there and it's good to be back um but i guess is there anything that the commission would want us to be aware of it's it's more of that i just don't want to be stepping on any toes and and being presumptuous i just but i also don't want to be left in the dark and i'm not sure where that line is i think on the big picture things um we try to include you guys um like the next item on

031the agenda is talking about um well actually a few items down we're going to be talking about the budget and that's something for which we will need you guys expertise as we're getting it ready um and so and obviously we have a meeting set up to kind of talk about that um you know even before we get started with it so certainly those kinds of things if you want to know about training stuff we can include you in that um i think it would be helpful i mean i don't need to know who's going tomorrow to do something per se but um i just feel a little probably not as well in tuned with with the ongoing some and i just you know and i don't need to know it you know i i want

032to be respect be respectful and i guess we can we can take it again uh as a conversation with with leadership and councils as to what and denise of course is to what level when the commission what type of communications will come to council just as an ordinary you know but i think right now what i'm asking for is more to what degree i don't know okay well i guess we can talk about that tomorrow yeah all right anything else on training so francis is going to talk a little bit about the standardization of the complaint review process and if you could francis maybe back it up a little bit and talk about why we even have to go through this so um you know when we first started we were going round and round

033about trying to put together a uh process of how round robin grouping commissioners were going to review reports and we had a flow chart and everything but we never actually reviewed any complaints and so then we went through some different changes with the uh police department administration personnel and um lasts i guess it's it's actually over a year now but in the um fall of 2019 we started working on another process that seemed to streamline things better and um the police department were providing us a uh spreadsheet which was their summary sheet of the complaints as they came in and um that that was working pretty well until we went into quarantine with um covid and some other things came up and we got um kind of stopped for a while there and then when

034we did start up again the spreadsheet was missing information it didn't quite look the same there were some questions there and then um some other folks at the city um tom crawford started meeting with us more regularly and some additional questions then came up um we've had um assistant city attorney slay working with us more closely over the last four months or so to to come up with a process that doesn't change and what i mean by that is what i was just discussing and how we started with the flow chart and then that hit a road bump and then we hit more road bumps and during this whole time there's never been a process that everybody followed um personnel would change and somebody would interpret something differently and we hit a roadblock again and

035so right now what we're trying to do is come up with a process that is agreed upon by the city the police uh the city attorney's office and dick poc that is going to be in place so that when the day comes that many of us are no longer here anymore um it's still the same process um we need that uniformity to make sure that every complaint is going to be reviewed in the same manner so this isn't just about us reviewing complaints it's also about the parties involved in the complaints and everybody should get a fair share shake and everything should be reviewed in the same manner and so um it's it really is something that needs to get done um for the betterment of our process and for our success um so where

036we are now with that is um we've met with um assistant city attorney slay and uh the deputy chiefs um and we we are very close to coming up with something that is more formalized it also dictates timelines so we're coming up with um for instance this spreadsheet will be given to denise and therefore us the same date every month we are coming out and it's going to be on the blank date of the month denise should receive an up-to-date spreadsheet and that spreadsheet is also going to be set up in a way that can be shared with all the commissioners so that regardless of the information managers who are actually reviewing the complaints and seeing the file in its entirety this is something that'll be set up in a manner that all commissioners can

037review the information that's in there let me jump in for one sec francis um one of the things the city wants to start doing is making sure that there are only three people at this time who can see all of the confidential information on any particular case i think that um that causes some problems for us particularly as we are there are some of us who have more experience i'm reviewing cases than others and it might be better for us to review them four or five at a time until everybody gets kind of used to the process but for now we're restricted to only having three people and those three people who get all of the information on any particular one case are called information managers um and so although there will be many people

038reviewing complaints three people will work on one case three people on another case and so that's what francis is talking about when she's talking about information managers yeah that thank you for catching that um because i did forget to refer back to that is something that um this city is asking that we go back to that was originally discussed when we first started um but uh we we thought that we would be able to move away from that um but they are asking that we do follow that which is in the ordinance so you can find more information about that um in there so we want to make sure that if you're not an information manager the commission as a whole is still being updated on all of the complaints so that you'll see the

039complaints how many we have what they are about you know is it something that came out of a traffic stop is it something that came from an accident is it you know how was um is the complaint about that the officer is rude or is the complaint about that the officer mishandled private property um those are the kinds of things that we would be looking to try to make sure the commission as a whole is aware of those things and what we're looking at so that we can look at patterns in practice and that's really important for us to look at that's why everybody needs to be able to know what all the complaints are about even if you're not reviewing the details of each case and one of the things that the commission will

040get as a whole also on there is you're not going to see the officers names but you are going to see a number so um the the uh professional standards has given each officer a random number so it's not affiliated necessarily with their badge number or anything in their file but each officer does have one but information managers see the names right the information managers are able to see the investigation in its totality minus lean information because that's one thing we still don't have we still don't have that ability to see um lean information and i think as much as that seemed to be a huge hurdle in the beginning it turns out not to be so much a hurdle for us now because most of the people who file complaints are regular they are

041people who don't have any criminal involvement at all they're not um i think i think the perception was that it was going to be mostly people being taken to jail who had complaints against the police but that's not what we've seen at all we've seen um citizens who have complaints against the police and so there isn't lean information associated with them so it turns out that that's not such a huge barrier for us we did have one uh body cam that did need redaction because you know there was a driver's license was held up in front of the camera so that has to be redacted but then we also had another case where it needed no reduction at all anan you know i was wondering like in the last year we've been meeting you know

042virtually pretty much and i don't have any idea in this year how many complain the police have what kind of complaints we have it's been a full year you know and is that information available like if i say what was the situation in 2020 how many complaints the police had what kind of complaints i still don't know i i didn't know either though yeah i'm sorry to admit that we just got that full 2020 information doesn't make sense like maybe we can have a monthly report as a mem as a commissioner like in the month of january the police have three complaints and this is their nature right to get more than that you know yeah you know or or like like they were all these uh you know black lives matter the demonstration and

043i will have fully no conflict with the police that happened but i don't know if somebody asked me my answer would see i don't know and it doesn't make sense like you're on a police oversight commission and you have no idea how many complaints for a whole year how many complaints what the nature what happened during i mean there's something missing what we're doing yeah so that's and that's exactly what we're looking at and what that was is you know um how things were presented to us and then in some cases that that spreadsheet um wasn't necessarily there might have been stuff on there that we as commissioners couldn't share with the public so that's where now we're coming up with this process to make sure that the police are providing us that spreadsheet in

044a way that we can put it out there and that we we're not the public we'll be commissioned you know what i mean you can't share this with the public but we're not the public you know what anand we had a very long gap where we got no information from professional standards so i could not answer the question either and i could not tell you how many complaints there were i would say that there were 22 complaints in 2020 but that's wrong and i know it's wrong but the spreadsheet i had in front of me said 22 on it um i think it's actually closer to 38 but we did not get that information and so we had a huge lag in information flow from professional standards to us um we have not reviewed body

045cam footage in months i'm sorry we haven't reviewed cases in months um there has been a standstill on that and part of of the reason why um francis has been working so hard to make a standardized process that cannot be changed by individuals is precisely because of that yeah thank you i i agree that one of the things is is if if we weren't asking and saying we want the spreadsheet we weren't necessarily getting it and that's why it's so important that we have a process in place where they know the police know that on you know the x date of the month this report has to go to denise did we not get i remember that we got in the past when we were meeting face to face we used to get complaints and

046this is how many complaints and yeah there are and this this is their nature not necessarily we reviewed them because that took a time yeah for them to yeah but we would see the cases but they say you cannot review them now because they have some information our confidential we cannot show it to you and they have to clean it up and there but we saw complaints but like in the last year we didn't see anything i think we could um we could just make a standard agenda item that we just say how many new complaints since the last month and how many there are total we just do that every month going forward um but from september to december that number wouldn't change because we didn't get information it makes sense because that's basically

047our major thing is to you know look into the complaint of the police in the practice of the police you know that's that's what we're there for and if that's missing it's a big chunk of our work yeah no i agree with you we we were doing that you're right in january and february because i remember we were giving those updates at the meeting and we were going back and forth with the spreadsheet and then it just kind of you know didn't work that way when we were in quarantine and once things went through so i think that now that we're really getting our um dug into getting this process in place we'll be able to go back to that okay commissioner asmr are we the ones who are going to basically have the items

048that we are going to ask the police to provide uh whether it's number of complaints the type of complaint etc etc the progress of each complaint um so that can be standardized so when the police are providing us with the information um that is the the form or formula that they would be using every time they are addressing these uh incidents uh because i see over here is like chief of police is the one who can update us on this status it's just an ordinance over here right of of these incidents uh because what if we have to contact the complainant about what is really happening with their with their um you know if we don't have the information if we don't have the data um and if it's not standardized uh we can't uh

049really analyze the data in a way to say that was a bias no bias this or that so we need really to make sure that the information that we get is enough to make some kind of judgment even even as preliminary as uh it is or as as brief as it is right the um the information managers are going to have access to the entire file so you're going to be able to sit down and actually see the original complaint and the the officers names and all of the investigation done by professional standards and you're going to be able to review that the information managers are the full commission will not is not able to see everything but the the information managers will be able to put together their recommendation from their review and share

050that with the commission and and i think if if if i understand what you're saying muhammad um one of the parts of standardization is um making sure that all disseminate all information is disseminated the first time so for example there was a case with two officers and we only saw body cam footage from one officer and we're wondering where the other one is and they say oh we'll have to go back and get that that that should now be ready all the time the first time and so when you review any case you should have all of the information at hand every time without us having to say well yes we would like to see the body cam from both officers so um if that's if that's what you mean that's part of the thing

051that francis is also trying to um uh standardize so that when we ask for body cam footage that means all of the of the relevant body cam footage um that when we ask for reports that's reports from all related and and that we're not going to have to piecemeal okay in 30 days then show us the next thing okay in 30 days show us the next thing um and and so that's part of what we hope will be improved by this process yeah we don't want to be we don't want to continue to be in a position where we're getting information only if we ask for it yeah because then you're you if you know it's kind of the situation of you don't know what you don't know and i think we did have some

052assumptions early on that a bunch of information would be provided because that's how it was done in the past right um when we transitioned uh it became obvious that that wasn't the case and so now we're trying to write it out so that in 50 years from now when we're all you know sunbathing in florida and other people are doing this job then they will always get all the information all the time um chief cox did you have a question sorry i did not have a question i was just going to demystify a little bit of this stuff we had a total of 29 complaints in the year 2020 so if that's helpful um yes i just wanted to provide that not a mystery not a whatever 29. um so i i just want to

053clarify that with you thank you and you know what um we could we could do one better too because sometimes we have complaints that we don't investigate ourselves and so the numbers might be a little bit different if it's like an internal police complaint and it comes to us that's not one that we investigate so that wouldn't show up in our numbers either right and those are those little uh things you'll see when we finish the process and we provide it to you you'll see that too that if a complaint comes to us that is more of an internal um denise immediately forwards that to the police you know she'll make a note of it that we received it and that it was forwarded to the police for investigation but we do not have um

054we are not authorized or empowered by our ordinance to do um internal complaints to review internal complaints council member rome lawyer did you have a question too yeah um thank you um the information managers uh i apologize but are these static the same three or a few subsets of three is the whole commission rotating rob robin it's not the whole commission but it is a subset so there are maybe three let's say francis bonnie and i are on one particular case and then muhammad and anand and francis are on another one and then jude and makaya and i are on a third one kind of how it was originally thought to to be done but kind of uh didn't didn't take root yet um um and different people have different interests and reviewing complaints yeah

055not everybody was comfortable with reviewing complaints because they didn't have the training and experience so um that the names i'm sorry are the names going to be privy to the information management so the police officers are just the numbers assigned to them if they're going to see the names as well we will see the names okay and also we'll have a um a chart that we fill out now that we we're sort of getting caught up we're almost there um where we can say who the information managers are for each case and the reason why that becomes important is because denise needs to know and the police need to know because they need to know which body cam footage which uh which commissioner should see so they they need to give us access to those

056files but they wouldn't want to give me access to a file that i'm not reviewing for example so they will only want to give access to those information managers so we're going to have a chart that everybody has access to and everybody can see who the information managers are on every single case okay well thanks for um everybody who's been involved in that trying to do this type of work it's it's um it's been a commitment um the attorney's office will send counsel you know every month or every other month it seems like every month you know a list of all the cases that the city is currently in litigation with and and it's confidential information that we receive and i would just ask maybe you all can lean on the attorney's office to model

057something like that for this commission so once a month you get an update you know this one is sustained this one was unfounded this is these are the ones that are active and you have a dashboard of what's going on with with the cases and the investigations and where they are in in that process and you know uh the attorney's office again already does this for counsel with the matters that we deal with so i just was gonna throw that out there perhaps maybe someone will get picked up and maybe something will be done or maybe it's already being done that way we actually are working with tom crawford to make a dashboard that we can make public on our website okay and and so we are negotiating with what information can be included on

058there to the public obviously it'll be numbers of police their unique identifier number that's been dreamt up by the system um but we're trying to make sure that it can be substantive but um we've had many requests including uh you know mlive that we put that information on our website and so we're working on how to do that and make sure that it stays updated cool so you got an output that's looking out as well as something that's internalized you know obviously uh some confidentiality to it uh and and just lastly i this is like one of the things that i would as a council member would be interested in seeing as denise reports out to the commission you know on a regular basis this would be this would be a an item that would

059definitely interest me good public information just a good practice to be transparent about that um yeah so we'll we'll continue to keep you posted hopefully by next month's meeting we'll have something more substantive that's prepared in draft for you to review um if we're ready to move on we could talk a little bit about the next item which is potential budget cuts um tom crawford asked he didn't ask us but he meant to he he forgot us again to ask every city department to come up with um a um a state and impact statement to indicate what would happen if we had a five percent budget cut what could we not do with a five percent budget cut and so jude is our budget guru and um she started working on that question um and

060we there were a lot of ways that we thought about approaching that the question itself and um i think um our response is due fairly soon so we will provide a response to the city fairly soon do you want to jump in here yeah sure yeah um it just and and guru is just a laughably generous time um so yeah we were asked about a five percent cut to the budget and there was a very specific template that we were asked to kind of give back impact statements in and and uh try as i and we could it it's really trying to cram a you know square pagan for a round hole with that format because it really was designed more for sort of city departments you know the the igbo being the only commission

061with the budget it was kind of difficult so uh we've actually written up a statement instead just kind of explaining the case for it i certainly can cut and paste and cram it into that format but it doesn't seem to make any sense to do that for the sake of it so we're checking and seeing will just our statement work in lieu of that uh you know kind of in love that specific format but we are um trying to to push back as much as possible on a five percent cut for our budget uh just simply because even though uh for a variety of reasons one of them is our budget is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars but only fifty thousand of that is really in any way within our control because the rest

062of it is shared city costs for things like i.t and everything that that all departments have to share their cost of and then um you know our personal costs and things and we really don't have any control over that so really our actionable section of the budget is about 50 000 uh so if we were going to try and come up with a you know the 7 500 cut within that budget to to be five percent of the overall we'd really be taking a hit of 15 to our budget if that makes sense if that works out that way uh so at the very least i would propose that we should just be looked at to see if we could cut 2500 of our uh discretionary budget the budget that we actually do have control

063over um but that still is quite a big chunk to us um one of the things that that you know i also want to point out within that is the amount of money that we're returning back to general funds um not in any way to try and claim that you know it's rollover funds because the city doesn't do that and we understand that but just really is demonstrating we don't spend funds unless we have a reason to this commission hasn't likely spent funds it hasn't i'm waiting to get back the exact numbers for this year here today and admittedly it's been a very strange year but um i still think we are yet to see a year with a quote unquote normal sort of budget time for higbock which is why i am quite pushing

064back quite heavily on the idea of taking a five percent cut going into next year that's sort of my stand on it right now um [Music] and and of course i i support that i'm not sure i know that every penny matters from every department i'm not sure twenty five hundred dollars from igpak is going to be um that helpful to the city but i understand it could do something um but we have been so responsible with our budget and we have not spent a penny on um we've not spent an unnecessary penny but we've also saved the city thousands of dollars when we didn't have an administrator for several months francis and i became the administrators we didn't have a temp we didn't have a substitute we didn't have anybody so there were no

065expenses as far as that went um we didn't do because of covet of course we didn't do training in the normal way some of us did virtual training but but that was so scaled back um we did community outreach in a whole widely scaled back way and so we just didn't have the expenditures um in this year's budget we will return quite a bit to the general fund but we also did that in the 2019 to 2020 budget we returned you know tens of thousands of dollars back to the general fund that we didn't use um we were able to go to a conference but we drove um and so we just paid registration fees and um so we've been very frugal and i think we have always thought about spending money with an eye

066to spending the taxpayers money and being responsible um for that and so i think what's going to happen is that now that that we may be able to do more training hopefully in 2021 our fingers are crossed and this budget um that we'll be talking about is for 2021 2022 so keep that in mind it's not for this budget cycle um hopefully that will include vaccines for the entire world and we'll all be able to do what we need to do vis-a-vis training but also outreach um and so we expect that we probably will use all of our budget and that we might spend more than we have spent in the past and then the subsequent year kind of go back to the middle because we will have there's a bunch of things we need

067to make up for like a bunch of people who could have done training last year did not do training um because of kovid and so um we we are pretty sure that we're going to need every penny of our budget this year um and and so i i i think our position is gonna be that we need to hang on to our little twenty five hundred dollars worth of money council member ram lawyer yeah thank you um appreciate the the the time commissioner uh walton has put into this she's been helping us from the start with our budget and has done a great job um you know explained it very well that you know the discretionary part of the budget would would be affected greatly by this and i just remember during the formation of

068the commission and when the task force first asked for a budget they had asked for one percent of the um overall budget or something to that effect that amounted to over three hundred thousand dollars um that that obviously wasn't granted in a much smaller budget was was put in place as a placeholder they really didn't know how to come up with that number because the commission hadn't convened or anything so in some sense it was an arbitrary number that they selected of 150 000 to put in as a placeholder and since then it's been you know uh hasn't been a consistent go of things and we don't really don't know what it's going to cost for a commission to do really its work and the commission has shown itself to be extremely good stewards of

069the taxpayer dollars and not do anything ridiculous with with the money and very careful with any any type of spending um so these are very good points another point that was brought up was that the the police contract you know gave the the police two percent raise at a time where um you know we're asking for departments to take a cut and executive level to have a freeze so i think a strong argument can be made if we can find the money to pay the police two percent increase and we we should be able to not ask for uh a cut to this commission so i will be advocating for no cuts to be made we'll see how that goes um but things are looking decent um you know the federal government state government aids

070cares act money came into the cities coffers offset a lot of other type of income that wasn't generated or didn't come in through parking revenue and such but i think we need to stay vigilant and remain good stewards of the money and hopefully there won't be any cuts and there won't be anything like that uh what i at least right now what my my fear for the city and other is that the subsequent years we really haven't really felt the effects of what's going on now until probably fiscal year 23 fiscal year 24 is we're going to start really seeing the the the effects of what's going on right now with the city's budget um but is the surplus that's been left over for the last couple years it's do we have an exact figure

071on what those numbers were i know the first year wasn't a full year maybe for the commission and and all that money's been given back i don't know if anyone's got it at their fingertips you know what i'm i'm going to try to do an estimate and i'm going to reverse engineer it and just look at what we spent that year it wasn't a full year but also when we asked that of the city um they came back and said that we were not considered a separate entity then so they just didn't keep track of that number and then um and and so they didn't keep track of it until this year and so we can see how much we've spent thus far in the fiscal year which is pennies but um and so we

072can guesstimate how much we're not going to use this year how much will be returned but um we we don't know for the previous years because we weren't considered separate is what this will be our only year that we actually have right reliable numbers yeah and it's not you know i think we need to spend so i can see how much we spent as of december 2019 but we weren't considered a separate entity so when that money got returned to the general fund in 2020 they they couldn't tell us what that number was because i asked denise did all that research and then um we can see how much we've spent thus far and we could guesstimate what we'll do between now and june and then we can see how much will be going back

073this year but um you know it's um i i do think i'm very glad you brought up the point of the police i think it's a really tough argument in the community to say we have such a tiny budget and you want to cut that but you gave you know police officers a two percent raise and you did it in a time when you knew the the the potentially hazardous situation the city would be in due to uh the tax base being shifted and that was a conscious decision and so you want to us you know to contribute twenty five hundred dollars seems probably not it's gonna seem logical to most citizens so um we'll we'll see how that goes but i have full confidence in jude and i think that we have crafted a

074very strong argument and we will submit it and we'll see what happens um and we'll keep everyone posted and also dude you were going to make an ask of everyone tonight anyway yeah i was yeah i'm just going to before we move on i did want to make an ask there is still work that needs to be done on the budget just in terms of the city isn't necessarily tracking our budget you know and holding us to what we said each line item would be we have flexibility within that but it is still really good to have an idea so we don't overspend earlier in a year and leave ourselves short later in the year etc so i would love to get from people um thoughts and ideas for how the budget should potentially move

075around this year or if there are specific trainings or projects or other things that are going to have more of a cost one thing i already know is that we definitely need to shift around internally and have more money going to that outreach there's nothing there wasn't enough in there this year if this year had been a normal year so i definitely know things that need to move around already but i i you obviously i i only know what i know so i'd love to hear from you anybody else if you can shoot me an email in the next say two weeks and let me know of things you're thinking about or know of and then i can see what i can do to piece everything together and so if you guys think of things

076that you might want to do particularly outreach folks if there are things you want to do that you haven't been able to do and you anticipate being able to do them in in late 2021 because the budget year starts in july so let's hope you know lots of people have vaccines by september what kind of outreach would you do um is there training that you would want to attend in person somewhere um we we know that lots of trainings are going to be done virtually so um the international association of chiefs of police um i think um that's the link that sarah sent us yesterday um some trainings they do only for our police but other trainings they do for the whole community and they've got some very interesting trainings um this fall um i

077think everybody should think about nicole training um and i think everybody should try to attend the conference at least once because um there is nothing like being in a room with 500 other people who are thinking about nothing but civilian oversight and you really get steeped in the understanding of the principles and the techniques and you learn all kinds of crazy things i think francis was in one talking about how to tell when the police show you body cam footage if they've clipped anything so like she's got some really high level skills and we went to consent decree seminars and we heard um crazy amazing attorneys general from all over the country and so i think everybody should try to do that if it's in your ability to do that at least once um and

078i know most people weren't able to do that so that's something i think we can all think about and one other reminder just with nicole is if you do want to get the certification through them you have to have attended a conference so that's something to bear in mind as well if that's something you're working toward yeah and and then do so many hours of seminars so i think we went in 2019 and then i got certified this year because i kept doing more and i know other people are on that pathway too so um but so there are lots of things we can do virtually and lots of things that we can do hopefully in person one day but sometimes even the virtual things have a fee and so understand that we have a

079training budget and it's very important to use it because everybody needs a certain level of training so that um you know that the public has confidence in our competence um the 2020 any questions about that [Applause] about spending money training budget items can you know while he has his hand up like just real quick i just you know make making sure that there aren't any needs that this commission has has thought about that need to be addressed but we're afraid to ask because of of of the budget was was there anything that we're keeping ourselves from doing because of the budget i just want i want to be aware that we're not constricted in the work that that needs to be done because of the fear of of that so i make sure that there

080isn't that that that hanging over and choking off work i i think one one of the issues that we might have which might cost us a little bit of money is to retain uh a uh legal counsel or or a council yeah that that that was in the ordinance in that ordinance so if there's going to be any chunk of money probably would be over there i don't know when we are going to need that but eventually we will need that whether it's towards the end of this fiscal year or next year or so and that and that would come as a budget amendment to council that would require eight votes so um you know in the unfortunate instance that that has to happen uh we we're well aware of that that tool that the

081commission has to come back and ask for because outside counsel is expensive i mean you you just initially anything is going to cost twenty five thousand dollars minimum for any any kind of outside counsel you know so thanks for for bringing that up okay it's 7 10 and we're coming to our last item on the agenda which is the 2021 meeting schedule which i know denise sent everybody i'm i'll post it on twitter and facebook as well um and it just kind of lists all of our meetings and indicates that as of now we still expect them to be on zoom due to um the virus um our next meeting is february 23rd and then march 23rd um always as always the fourth tuesday of the month um [Music] and it looks like and so

082the schedule remains consistent i wanted to point out that when we were originally seated the plan was for us to meet every other month and i remember a few people thought oh there's no way we have so much work to do we can't do that we have to meet every month and i know last year in january of this year we met we had some interim meetings i think we met a couple times in the middle so we made a two-week mark and then we kept going and so we we didn't have a meeting in the month of december which i think was probably a well-deserved respite but people did do training in that time period um so that was really useful um and so i just wanted to point out that this schedule has

083us down for 12 months and so it looks like we're so we are scheduled to be on once a month however it is absolutely reasonable if this commission feels like we should miss a meeting in august or something so people could breathe we should talk about that if we should decide to miss the december meeting or something like that so the schedule as it is is us on the fourth tuesday of the month but this is something that this commission can decide um and so if we decide that we should miss a meeting we should probably talk about that a few months in advance but certainly that is something that should be dictated by us um and i think there is some um great value and everybody taking some time to do some self-care some

084people are probably better at that than others um and so to take a month off in the summer or a month off in in december at the end of the year um is entirely reasonable um council member song you mood you okay okay thank you this isn't in regards to the schedule it was um and it's not on the agenda so i'm not really quite sure where i can bring this up but at uh two council meetings ago there was a discussion with chief cox and staff on banning facial recognition software and there's been some community interest um on taking a look at that and uh council uh member medina and who's on the human rights commission liaison for that commission and i were interested in seeing if there would be interest in on this

085commission and doing a joint effort and taking a look at potentially introducing a ban um because i i know dr jackson knows this well the research on how the technology doesn't work well we don't use it chief cox and we there was no consideration for using it but as as you know as you've mentioned in this meeting a couple times now that we don't know what the makeup of council will be in the future of police of this commission and just because you know technology changes doesn't mean um well we know that in its current use it doesn't work well it's used uh it works and it's used um you know to target people of color and i i brought this up because i'd like to see ann arbor actually just kind of demonstrate how

086progressive it can be when in massachusetts it has a statewide ban after there was a ban in five municipalities so chief cox has resolution language um i'm just trying to figure out what the path would be for this commission and if there's interest in exploring this you guys probably know i'm on a tour a speaking tour so just about every week i give a talk somewhere and i talk about what oversight looks like in ann arbor and this is one of the questions i get and um i was at a meeting with an awful lot of lawyers and um one of the things they suggested is that the aclu has some of the um best research on this and that they would be just happy to come and talk to council about this and i

087know most people here are probably familiar with the facial recognition software issues but um um largely artificial intelligence has trouble distinguishing um between people of color and so you're much more likely to match someone than you would part of it has to do with um algorithms that didn't include um african-american latino asian faces in their their databases in the first place um but we've seen things in detroit they have you guys are probably aware they've had a couple of really bad situations because facial recognition software it's never intended to be used as you know a standalone um rationale for arresting someone but often people use it and work backwards from there and so there were people who were arrested who when you look at them and the perpetrator look nothing alike and those people's lives

088are turned upside down because of that experience and so um you know until ai and facial recognition gets a lot better it just seems like it will disproportionately harm underrepresented people um and and so this i think is the big um and we know federally it's still being used right so we know it's used federally on the federal level with ice and housing people have mentioned that yeah they're very concerned about its use even in ann arbor for tracking people and i know i've had those conversations with some of you individually about how it's used in different places and how it might be misused even unintentionally um council member ram lawyer you had your hand up is this or is it yeah i'm speaking a lot tonight sorry um uh just with the the calendar

089um yeah i did the notice that we got that that usually is published for the public i'm sure maybe denise has already done it so it can just be organized uh so it reads from january sequentially down to december it's a the copy that i got just kind of kind of jumbled up a little bit are you looking at it in preview mode because i did the same thing and then as soon as i opened it it's actually arranged in three columns and it looks fantastic yeah i was gonna say i had three columns yeah yeah all right well then i'm seeing it in a different layout so then we'll post it on the website too so that yes meeting dates are always on our website but also i'll post this on facebook and on

090twitter in this form um but it but um i guess i could share my screen it looks fine okay and then just the one thing is just as we just experienced in december uh getting together uh between them in the holiday season is extremely difficult i i know we're going to make these calls as we go but i'm just looking at that one as a really you know i'll make them uh and you know i'll make them but it may be one that it'd be hard to get all of us corralled at that time but that's all after i get a vaccine i am going somewhere warm and tropical and i'll zoom in if you want me to but i think everybody's leaving after the vaccine yeah we get one this commission is like virtual

091we are out you're like you have a vaccine you could meet in person we're like we have a vaccine that means we can leave we don't bill you now for our considerable time so we won't do that thank you um i think it is fine to to bring up the um facial recognition software commissioner often yeah i really would like to to i know um any of the data that these companies are are generating are based on one type of group of people and and then they start spreading that across the the board uh the the across the world and and that by itself uh does not do justice even if there is some kind of benefit of using the software if it were not inclusive and have enough data statistically uh verified data that

092this one software can or cannot distinguish between individuals i i think i would air on on on side of of caution i'd rather not uh recommend it but also what we need is if we have information from um aclu or so if they can provide us you know invite them have them just explain to us whether it's as a seminar webinar whatever uh tell us what's really happening and if they have the data um i think we should follow the data uh it is you know it's it's not it's people who are in science sometimes always have data and this data is coming from one particular group of people and we think that it applies on all one size does not fit all well said i and i didn't mean to i wasn't dodging your

093question um council member song i'm certainly happy to work with with you on this and um if anybody else is you can shoot an email um but i i think it's probably um it shouldn't be a tough thing to do at this time the police don't have the capability of using it they don't use it so we're not taking away any of their tools and so it might be a good time to think about um you know banning it until and unless it becomes proficient at recognizing all faces equally and i'm sure that'll be a few decades um there a way that i could form a subcommittee then or is that is there how is how would how are issues organized within the committee so we've done that before we have a subset of people

094who work with the hrc for example they were working on trespass and so we often form subcommittees that don't exist to study something new or to do something new and so we could certainly do that okay because i have i have the massachusetts aclu's language that's what the ordinances were based on um that the five cities in massachusetts had passed their ban and then that went up to the state and now it's a statewide ban and it was also in collaboration with the le the electronic frontier foundations work so um i had sent all these links to dr jackson last month so if there are other nerds i guess is one of i'm policy nerds who would like to jump into this world with me and then travis will find folks in hrc i'd really

095like to get a jump on this um so why don't i send those links to everybody and copy you and then anybody who's interested can reply back yes that'd be great thank you wants to do what i know lots of people are doing lots of stuff already but um and and but if um if you're interested in this as well we have people working with hrc working on the crew report also so and i've already talked to eli uh so um ellie savitz and and senator irwin about this too so there's it won't be a difficult path i i hope it won't be so there's interest and there's already um precedence so we can we can just copy massachusetts all right thank you so much i'm sorry back to calendar no no this is a

096great topic for our commission this is part of thinking about how we prevent or or perpetuate really good policing and and this stretches across policing obviously lots of different areas so thank you certainly we're happy to participate in this is there anything else that anybody wants to add there we should always have a section here and we might i didn't print the second the back side of this paper but um we uh if there are general comments that people want to make i understand the outreach committee did not have specific comments that they wanted to make this time but if there is anyone else who has an issue that they like to raise questions they'd like to ask something of which we should be aware gracia othman do we have to make a motion to

097accept the our meeting scheduled for this coming year or for this year or it's just information yes you go to me i'm sorry yeah yes it would be wise if you voted on the calendar okay so do you want to do we want to we can always make an exception to the calendar so we can vote you can always change it at any time this is just so i can solidify it we all know you don't want to meet in december we can say right now to remove december's meeting okay is there a second second look there's five seconds um all right all in favor of removing december's date from the calendar any opposed is anyone who's like no i must meet in december okay so we we can do that now and say unanimous

098vote that was unanimous and then we can discuss in the future if you'd like if we could if we want like to take a month off in the summer yes in june july august or september or some other month that might work for people if if there is i need a breather we weren't here in december but i feel like i worked just as much in december as if we had had a meeting so i know that that doesn't mean because we're here people are still doing work so that's true and i can just post that is cancelled and so you can cancel meetings at your time at your choice okay and we'll bring it up i'll make sure that we um i put a note in there that maybe we can ponder it and

099we can discuss it again in february or march if there's um if people have a strong feeling about a month in the summer that we could um take off and work independently council member ram lawyer yeah thank you and uh appreciate commissioner uh muhammad to um to remind us or remind the commission to to make a motion to approve the calendar uh i think the charter will require that it's one of those technicalities that make it official and cross our keys on that but yeah of course we've you've done it before obviously called special meetings uh this time last year you had quite a few of them we had the police chief um issue uh and there were reasons to convene on a very short notice so and then i just wanted to go back

100and since this is a kind of one of our shorter meetings it seems like i always want to get a full two hours whether the whether the police chief since he's here or to weigh in on the facial recognition at all i know that he's discussed that with us and we understand that but since uh he's here and is a public body uh maybe maybe perhaps to have a clear understanding of where the policy is for for the ann arbor police department when it comes to artificial intelligence and facial recognition for for comfort for our for our residents and visitors chief are you with us yes how you doing sir i am i am briefly spoke about this at city council before it's not a technology we currently use because it's just so unreliable it's

101kind of like it's not not even something we were thinking about using um you know when the technology actually improves and gets rid of all the bugs and all those things it would it would have a use for us but it currently doesn't and i don't really see when it will uh as far as that's concerned so it's really a non-starter for us just because it's unreliable we're not thinking about using we don't use it and we don't have any technology that has access to that do we uh while we work with other jurisdictions other uh law law agencies are they using it and then somehow with with collaboration with working with all these different enforcement agencies that are are they using it and then bringing it into our community in ways that maybe the

102ann arbor police department doesn't but some others do yeah so i you know i can't speak for other agencies i would say the federal government i think is really the only um you know agency that that may have access to it pretty regularly um state and local uh towns i i can't really speak for them but i i would say that the federal government is pretty much the only uh law enforcement agency that uses that routinely or at least has access to it i can't even speak to how often they use it thank you commissioner birch thank you um encircling back to the schedule wondering if in the spring we were planning on some sort of retreat to maybe strategically plan for the year ahead um just curious i'm assuming it's on the radar just

103hadn't been made aware of like a date or anything yet it is and we should think about a date and so i'm glad you brought it up in this particular um forum we do need to um do some strategic planning and we do need to think of a time when we can all get together on a date outside of our regularly scheduled meeting where we can think about some short-term planning and some long-term planning and sort of flesh out some of the things that we need to work on going forward um and where we see this going and thinking about public safety in ann arbor in general and how oversight plays a part in that um and so we probably need a good chunk of time i think lots of people do that for you

104know a nice part of a day i don't i would imagine if we do it in the spring we might still have to do it remotely if we have a quorum it would be subject to open meetings act um but i think that we probably need to to have a time devoted just to that where we're all thinking about these things and turning them over and kind of wrestling with some of the directions that we want to go in and what we want to focus on um and we can think about that as thinking about you know fiscal year 21 22 since that will start in the summer um so i am happy to to send around a poll or something um and ask people about potential dates are is there is there a one

105or two dates days of the week that might generally work with people that with an enough modus you notice you could meet on a saturday with enough notice you could meet on a friday is there a consistent day of the week that we should at least shoot for let's say i'd vote for friday but that's just me anybody else feel like that with enough notice they could get away on a friday yeah no we're talking about and in person or are we still what what are we talking about i think we're gonna have to think about being on zoom if we're in the spring unless everyone's just gotten vaccines left and right and um but i i think we're talking about a nice chunk of time maybe six hours or so okay from friday friday

106works for me but um i got my first vaccine last week and as soon as i get my second one i'm out of here so so anyway um if it's going to be zoom i have my computer so it doesn't matter we will live vicariously through you thank you so happy for you thank you yes glacier often even i would remind you uh commissioner carter that even if you have the two uh doses of the vaccine still you have to have the mask i don't need that reminder i i'm suffering under two um pre-existing conditions i'm old and black so i will always have my mask on [Laughter] just a reminder from an epidemiologist i appreciate it i got it we're we're always happy to have a resident epidemiologist we we um it's also good

107to be aware of one's pre-existing conditions that's right um but but i think zoom is probably would probably work for us because um i think i think because some of us may be in tahiti clearly um but but i will send an email to everybody actually i'll do a doodle poll go jude i was just wait probably way too detailed of a question but having designed some of these if we have to do open meetings act that means that if we're by zoom there's no breakouts we all have to be in the same place at the same time right or actually no if we break up and we're in groups of less than five we can't walk still right yes okay right and so you could do four breakout rooms to do some brainstorming or

108something or three breakout rooms of you know four people or to do some brainstorming or something like that and then come back together as a big group i mean that's totally legal yes you bet we aren't in person we could do a high ropes course together as some team bonding yeah suddenly i'm grateful for social distancing that's what what all of us really want to do ropes course let's zipline let's meet in hawaii no okay in any case so i will do that i will do send that out to everybody tomorrow and i'll just try to look for something maybe in april where we might be able to and offer some potential dates and see if people um could come together we'll also look for a facilitator perhaps to do part of it i think

109part of the work is just work with that we need to do together um but it might be useful to have somebody sort of um you know facilitating the beginning and the end of it um and then also i'll ask you guys if there are specific things you'd like to work on in it so that we have an idea of how to um you know direct ourselves so we're not just hanging out for six hours and doing nothing which would be fun but not very efficient so also memorandum while he has his hand up thank you um as someone who's regularly in six hour meetings i would just perhaps recommend breaking it up and maybe into two two meetings like three hours uh yeah perhaps not everybody comes to both of them uh the leadership

110gets stuck perhaps with with attending both i know it's a it's a big commitment more more time taken out of your your your daily lives but um perhaps maybe having two two meetings um so so that uh you're not all burned out it depends on whether it's in person or online or so if we're doing something fun you know we we might be able to hack it all in one shot but that's definitely an option i've done some that were pretty entertaining for a long period of time but they weren't you didn't just sit there and talk for six hours so you were up and about go anan commissioner amiri i i think to break it down to three hours each time if we do it on zoom because it's very hard to sit and

111stare at a computer for six hours and stay focused for me i find it you know much harder to stay focused and follow up when the meeting is long on zoom while it's in person i don't have the same problem so just a thought like maybe break it down either the same day we have an hour in between break or lunch break long one or in two two days in a row or something i think we have lots of options yeah commissioner othman yeah i just would remind that uh if we are going to propose any kind of changes to the ordinance we have to have that before in the first two years of our commission so if uh we are going to be um brainstorming anytime in spring or so uh probably a session

112would be devoted to looking at the ordinance and come up with suggestions of some of the changes that we would like to incorporate and and submit that to the city council thank you for that i think that's on the minds of many of us anything else should i show this uh this video of makaya it's about four minutes long yes i wanted to ask could we um motion to vote on the schedule motion to vote on the schedule is there such a motion to accept the schedule from january 26 to november 23rd 2021 yes no moved is there a second a second all in favor of accepting that 11 month meeting schedule say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you and we have no more official business um is there a motion to adjourn

113the meaning i really are not going to see the video i could i guess i could show it as part of official business huh yeah okay yes then let me share my screen with you can i record it or no you can send it to me i can send the link to you but i want to make sure you guys can hear it first yes can you see it yes yes yes let's see if you can hear it both my first time voting this is not what i imagined for my vote my first time voting i actually um voted yesterday like i got my little sticker and everything working in a swing state is probably one of the most intense things you could go through really see young people and gen z in specific rising

114up to the occasion i feel like even though we're minorities our voices are very strong and with the needle being pointed in either direction it's like you know one thing can just tip it completely in the opposite direction [Music] on college campuses the turning leaves mean another election season and this year a lot of gen z voters are full of hope that the voices of black indigenous and people of color could make all the difference young bypoc activists jacob maya and makaya are working in swing states like arizona wisconsin and michigan to get voters to the polls every single other day we're phone banking and reaching out to voters and just trying to find them where they are in arizona jacob martinez got interested in politics at an early age so i used to be

115involved with the republican party i was the chairman of the teenage republicans i started having a lot of like animosity and distaste for the party i'm really around the time that trump kind of took office and you know the rhetoric about immigrants really didn't sit right with me and then following the shooting in parkland we saw 17 people die students just like me um and the republican party didn't want to do anything about it now he's working the phones for the progressive group nextgen and plans to vote for joe biden we are making it our top priority to not only reach out to young voters across the state specifically you know people of color to make sure that voices that have otherwise really been not heard and ignored in the past in elections and by

116legislators that we're reaching out to them and they know that they do have a horse in battleground wisconsin maya colon also grew up conservative and says she approves of the job the president has done my father has been a police officer for the last 25 years it's really nice to see trump support for them i've been making phone calls contacting people about you know who they're planning on voting for and making sure that they have like the absentee ballots if they need and in detroit michigan mikaya ship worked with u.s representative rashida talib during the summer to recruit young voters i made a tick tock style video to teach the youth how to vote and what that process is looking like for their primaries and i was extremely excited about that because i knew that

117especially in the city of detroit not everybody had parents that were voters active voters and that knew what that process were like and so if they couldn't teach their students or their kids then who would if you're registered right here according to a pew report two-thirds of zoomers think that black people are treated less fairly than white people in the us and about half of the people who said they attended a protest focused on race or racial equality this summer were under the age of 30. [Music] in 2016 just under 50 of eligible voters actually voted in the presidential election and that participation dropped down to 36 for the 2018 midterms so will 2020 be different makaya says she's voting for biden but she's still frustrated by the lack of representation it's definitely been the

118lesser of two evils i feel like biden does have good policy in some areas but also i don't necessarily feel like he represents me as a black woman in america he just does not when you have consistent older white men running for president it kind of drains you and makes you not even passionate about elections in general overall polls also show gen z voters see both president trump and joe biden more negatively than positively but usually tend to support biden over trump but for maya it's not just about diversity of race it's also about diversity of opinion and being a latinx gen z voter doesn't necessarily mean she fits a predictable profile i personally don't support the black lives matter movement i do of course support black lives i support all diverse you know people

119i feel like being a bipod voter there is a certain sort of alignment that you should have certain values that you should have but at the same time i'm an american and so the the values that trump shows you know being pro-constitution and wanting to you know continue the legacy that our forefathers have created for us it's like yeah that's something i really i really i really enjoy you know it really resonates with my values and with their diverse outlooks and backgrounds maya jacob and makaya are hoping that getting involved will mean more representation across the board what i'm more optimistic about is giving the resources to not only one standard of people but for everyone having our black and brown representation in everything whether that be policy legislation or just on our tv screens

120and media i hope that things can really come full circle and that the things that we have been fighting for can actually start to be seen and not just something that we continue to speak about nice wow thank you impressive good job oh i'm sorry i need to make it stop that would be helpful we are so lucky to have you thank you i haven't watched that video since it came out so it's like if we see myself talk again but thank you you did not know we were going to play that today full disclosure i was just like everyone should see this i'm glad we did yes i'm glad you did i'm so glad everybody could hear it as well um so if there is nothing else we need to cover is there now

121a motion to adjourn yes motion to june is there a second second all in favor aye aye any opposed we are adjourned thank you thank you all you