Jul 16, 2020 Use-Of-Force Ad Hoc Committee on 2020-07-16 6:00 PM (AMENDED)

Good evening, everybody. Thank you for being here again on the second meeting of the use of force ad hoc committee. We have a loaded agenda tonight, so we're going to go right into the first item, which is item A, the consideration approval of the use of force ad hoc committee meeting minutes. Did everybody have an opportunity to read over the minutes? Okay. We're going to do it a little different because first I'm going to need a motion and a second and then when it's time to vote on it, I'll need you to raise your hands if you're in favor. And then if you're not, then we'll come back and then you'll raise your hand. So do I have a motion for the minutes for the last meeting? So moved by John Baines. Okay. A second by Jamie Blanton. Okay. The first was the John Baines and Jamie. Or was that Pam? Okay. And then all in favor, can you raise your hand and hold it up for a minute? Okay. And those not in favor, can you raise your hand? Okay. Motion carries. Onto the next item. Did everybody have an opportunity to go to the use of force simulators? Okay. I did not. Okay. So I think a few of you guys are rescheduled for another time. Okay. Can we get two or three people to let us know the ones who did go, what your experience was like, Gary, I know you went, I saw you. Chair, I thought it was outstanding and I commented to the city manager that I thought it was brilliant to allow us to go through that process very early in our journey. It's not a joking matter, but I died once. I was pretty good, one out of six. But I don't think you would hire me. I think that was the reality. Rhonda, I saw you leaving. Unmute yourself. Well, I too was very impressed. I died once too, the same killer, but I shot somebody right between the eyes. So I was pretty proud of that. It was really interesting. I mean, really what I thought was every, every person ought to have an opportunity to go through that. It was really challenging. Yeah. Who else wants to talk about their experience? Madam chair chambers, I thought it was a great experience. It certainly gives us a different perspective as to what those officers have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And I really think every leader in the city of Din, ought to have an opportunity to go through the simulator. Anybody else? Yeah, I thought in as much as the experience was what it was. I mean, I was with Gary. I got shot real quick. Willie Hudson, he gave me a D. I said, I don't know how that's. But I think as much as that experience, it was also the dialogue. We were the last group, so we got to stick around afterwards. Okay. Officer Green, Yancey was there with us and just to be able to dialogue back and forth about different realities that was combined with the experience was really formative and meaningful and fruitful, I thought. Anybody else want to talk about their experience? Okay. Well, thank you guys for participating. And then we'll capture it again for the ones who didn't go. We'll talk about it again about what your experience was, or did you have anything to say or wanted to contribute to that and let us know how that went. The next on the agenda item is item C. Receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the presentation and review of the state civil service law and meet and confer contract provisions related to the investigation of allegations of police misconduct and review of data from the Denton Police Department regarding complaints and disciplinary actions. And it is going to be a little different tonight because after each presentation, then we'll have discussion. So if you could hold off or take notes so that when we, we can just move this meeting on just a little bit quicker and then ask our questions at the end. But Mike Kronick is our deputy city attorney and he's going to do this presentation. And Mike, I would ask that you would tell a little bit about yourself so that the committee knows your experience. Sure. I don't remember what I said last time when our first meeting, but I was a police officer for the Dallas Police Department from 1983 to 1991. I worked patrol in the Northwest part of the city up where Bachman Lake and Love Field is. Then went to law school in Philadelphia from '91 to '94, came back to Dallas and was one of the attorneys for the Dallas Police Association, Dallas Firefighters Association, handled all kinds of employment matters, including I went out on every officer involved shooting, which usually, unfortunately happens in the middle of the night on the worst weather. I represented officers in disciplinary appeals and did that from '91 to, no, from '94 to 2000. 2000, I was hired by the city of Austin Law Department to be the employment attorney for the Austin Police Department. And for the next 20 years, I was the employment attorney for the Austin Police Fire and EMS Departments. I was their legal advisor for their internal affairs division. And some people would probably say, "Well, you're biased against police because you were an officer and you represented police officers." I kind of think it's just the opposite because for the past 20 years, my job was to represent the chief of police in Austin, trying to get the discipline upheld. And I was pretty successful. Part of what I'm going to talk about is what officer appeal rights are so that you kind of understand that it is pretty difficult in today's day and age to fire an officer and to keep that officer fired. And I think after my presentation, you'll have a little better understanding of how that is. I came to Denton in April. I retired from Austin, came here. I know chief Dixon. We worked together in Austin for a number of years and that's one of the reasons I came here. And I am the employment attorney now for the entire city. Since I've been here, most of my work has been police related. Not that there's a lot of misconduct, but it just seems like police departments in the cities that I've worked tend to have the most work of any other city department. So I appreciate your being here tonight and I'll try to go through this as quick as I can. So what I'll do, let me upload this presentation. The presentation primarily is going to talk about Texas local government code chapter 143. That's commonly referred to as the firefighter and police officer civil service act. So if you hear me talk about a reference chapter 143 or the act, it's the same thing. There's five areas that I want to cover and as Cheryl said, after each one, we'll have a break where you can ask some questions. But the first part I want to do is provide an overview of chapter 143. So you have an understanding of what that is. Then I want to talk about how a meet and confer agreement can change that. So I'll have to tell you what a meet and confer agreement is for those of you that don't know and how that can change chapter 143. The third thing I'll talk about is the provisions of chapter 143 that are related to investigations of misconduct against police officers, the disciplinary actions that can be imposed, and then an officer's rights if he or she is disciplined. Then what I'm going to do is talk about how the meet and confer agreement has changed that. And the last thing we'll talk about and Assistant Chief Smith is going to cover the last section. And I think you'll find real interesting is going to talk about data for the police department from 2015 to 2020 related to complaints against officers and the disciplinary actions that are imposed. I kind of think you'll probably have more questions about that than you will about the contract and the law, but I may be wrong. Chapter 143 of the Texas Local Government Code. The very first part of it says this is the purpose. The purpose of this chapter, and this is word for word, is to secure efficient fire and police departments composed of capable personnel who are free from political influence. And those are the key words, and I'll tell you about that in a minute, who are free from political influence and who have permanent employment tenure as public servants. Chapter 143 only applies to those cities whose voters had an election and approved it. The voters are dead and approved chapter 143 for both your police and fire departments. And I believe that was back in the 1940s, so it's been here for quite a long time. You can see this little note I put here because a lot of people always ask or say, well, police officers should live within the community in which they work, otherwise they're not vested in it. Well, chapter 150.021 of the Local Government Code specifically prohibits a residency requirement for police officers. Now, you could, through the meet and confer process that I'll talk about in a minute, change that. You could put a provision in that agreement that officers have to live within the city. However, from a practical standpoint, I don't think the police association or the city would require officers that are currently working here to sell their house, to take their children out of their school districts. But if there was an incentive or a reason to, you probably could put a residency requirement for future hires. It's not in the contract, but I'd just like to point that out to you. So what is chapter 143? What does it do? It addresses the hiring of police officers, the appointment and removal of the police chief, wages and benefits, promote the promotional process, disciplinary actions and appeals, confidentiality of police personnel files, and that's including the investigative files. And the very last slide that I talked to, I tie this point into potential citizen oversight of the Denton Police Department. 143 also talks about mental and physical fitness evaluations for police officers. Now, if you remember on the prior slide, I talked about free from political influence. The purpose of 143 is to prevent a police chief from hiring family members and friends and paying them differently than everybody else and only promoting them and only hiring people of a certain race or certain religion. 143 sets forth process for hiring and promotions that is supposed to establish a level playing field. So that's pretty much what chapter 143 is. The meet and confer process, some of you may know what that is, but there's a provision in chapter 142 that applies to cities like Denton that are over 50,000 that have adopted chapter 143. For cities like Austin and Houston, San Antonio that have a population of over 460,000, there's a provision in chapter 143 that applies to them. But for Denton, it's the 142 provision. And meet and confer is a purely voluntary bargaining process between the city and a police or fire employee association. There is no requirement to meet, there's no requirement to bargain over any specific subjects, and there's no requirement to even reach an agreement. So if the police association contacted the city manager and said, "We'd like to meet and confer with you over wages and benefits," the city manager has the authority to say thank you, but we're not interested in it at that time. However, if the city manager and the council and the association do want to meet and confer, then we can bargain over wages, salaries, rates of pay, hours of work, and other terms and conditions of employment. Other terms and conditions of employment is pretty broad, but it includes things like leave and benefits, disciplinary actions, those types of things. And if you, if the city and the association agree to a meet and confer agreement, that agreement can supersede or preempt a state law, a local ordinance, or a rule adopted by the city or the city civil service commission concerning subjects like wages, salaries, rates of pay, hours of work. Simple example would be under state law chapter 142, police officers in a city with a population of over 10,000 are entitled to 15 days vacation a year. If the city and the association wanted to, they could agree to lower that to 10 days, or they could increase it to 20 days. So that's just kind of a subject that the association and the city can agree to if they want to. And if the city and the association sit down and negotiate a contract and come to a tentative agreement, the agreement is then submitted to the membership and it has to be approved by a majority of the association's membership and a majority of the city council. So if the majority of the association doesn't approve it, it doesn't even go to the council. I had a situation in Austin in 2017 where the association approved the contract, but the city council voted it down. So we had no contract and we negotiated for another year till we got one. If an agreement is reached, it is a legally binding contract between the city and the association that is enforceable in state court. And just to give you an example of some other cities that have a meet and confer agreement, and this is just some, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Abilene, Temple, McKinney, San Angelo, there's a whole bunch of them. And every agreement is really different. They have a lot of similar provisions, but each one is negotiated based upon the needs of the specific municipality. Just to give you an idea, usually I've been involved in probably about a dozen negotiations with our police, fire, and EMS unions in Austin. And in my experience, the unions are usually interested in negotiating over wages and benefits and officer rights during an investigation. The city's interests usually are, they want changes in 143 to the hiring and promotional process, which increases diversity as well as discipline. So that's just kind of a highlight of the law that the city and the contract that the police department and the city are operating under. And I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone might have about either one of those subjects. - I have a question, Michael. This is John Baines. When is the next negotiation for meeting conferred to, or will it occur? - The current contract expires on September 30th of 2022. I'm assuming, and Todd may need to speak to this, probably a few months earlier. I'm assuming that the association will notify the city or vice versa that they'd like to discuss negotiating a successor agreement. So probably not going to sit down with them until probably the spring or summer of 2022. - My last question on it is this, at this point is, are there any items which are currently under consideration for that forthcoming contract? - I'll defer to the city manager on that. - I'm going to defer to Chief Dixon who's been more recently engaged in those conversations. - So there's a number of things that I'm going to want to bring to the table this next contract. And most of it has to do with further professionalizing the organization. We're looking at formal education requirements coming into the department as they promote up into especially supervisory and managerial ranks and looking at other ways that we can continue to stay. I want us to be ahead of the rest of the profession, especially up here in the DFW area. It's so competitive up here when you're looking at recruiting and retention. I want us to be on the upper cusp of that. - I will say contracts can always be reopened if both sides want to do so, but I don't know that I don't think that's really been considered at this point. Depending on what comes out of this committee, we'll just have to see. But I think for right now, the contracts in effect and we'll go back to the negotiating table in 2022. - Thank you very much. - I have a follow-up question. I'm sorry, go ahead. - Go ahead, Paul. - You had mentioned that since you've been here, most of your time in your position has been spent with the police department as opposed to the other departments. And that's been your experience in other cities as well, you said. Maybe add a little bit of just clarity to why that is, why you've been given an ordinate amount of time here since you've been here to the police department and then in your experience that that's typically the case other places as well. - Sure. Chief Dixon is trying to make changes to the existing policies and a lot of my time has spent been helping them do that. There's been a few disciplinary cases I've been involved with and then this committee. And then also there's been some discussion about maybe trying to have some form of civilian oversight in Denton. I was one of the primary drafters of the oversight process in Austin. I wrote the majority of the language in the Austin contract that dealt with oversight. So I've been doing a lot of work on that, just researching it and preparing that if that comes to fruition, some of the legal and contractual challenges. And that's just most of my experience in Austin. The police department is really the most high profile. Most of the litigation involves police departments. Police departments can take away your freedom and your life. And it just seems like everything in my experience with the police department is always high profile and an emergency and needs to be handled right away. So Denton is no different than Austin, even though Austin is 10 times bigger. - Thank you. That's really helpful. - Anyone else? - Yes. My follow-up question was in regards to the contract itself. You said that it won't be eligible for succession or renewal until 2022, but that it can be reviewed under certain circumstances. I was curious if in your experience you have ever been part of a situation where it was revised in advance of the contract and why that decision was made in that case, if you have an example. - We did in Austin, that happened with at least one police contract that I can recall. And I don't remember exactly what caused it to be open, but we did go back in. We revised it where we put in, I think it may have been some oversight issues, but we also put in a provision where we included or created an incentive for officers to move back within the city, given the city council, the authority to offer some financial incentive to officers to move within the city limits. But anytime you wanna reopen a contract, it's a bargain. So if the city, for example, wants to negotiate a change in something, the association is certainly probably gonna want something in exchange for it. And that's really a management and council decision whether they want the city to go back to the table or wait till the new negotiations. - Thank you. - Did anybody else have any questions? - I have a question. - Okay. - There's a mention of mental and physical fitness evaluations. What are the mental health assessments? - That's a statutory provision where if a question comes up about an officer's mental or physical fitness, for example, if the chief believes that an officer is suffering from PTSD and not capable of doing the job, there's a process. It's a three-step process. The first step is the officer goes to his own physician and we give them the essential functions of the job and the physician determines whether or not the officer can do those essential functions. If the chief questions that report, then the Civil Service Commission can appoint a physician or psychologist to conduct an independent evaluation. And if those two reports conflict, then the commission can appoint a three-doctor panel whose decision is final. So it's a lengthy process. It can take several months. Ultimately, it could potentially result in the officer's termination if they're not fit to do the job. But we always have to take into consideration the Americans with Disabilities Act and see, for example, if it's a physical disability, we have to see whether or not we can accommodate that. But there is a specific process if there is a physical or mental question about an officer's ability to do the job. Okay. And just as an addendum to that, are recruits screened with any kind of mental health assessment? I'll defer to the chief, but I believe they do undergo a physical as well as mental evaluation. Is that correct, chief? That is correct. They go through both a written and they sit down with an interview prior to being hired while they're in the process. What is the written mental health assessment? It's whatever our doctor on contract right now is using. Typically, it's something that's relative to the NMPI. Okay. So an updated version. Yeah. Minnesota Multifaceted Personality Inventory. Okay. I might want to follow up on that a little bit later, but thank you for that. Does anybody have any more questions before we move on? Okay. Let's see. I'll make sure that I get to the right one. So the next part I want to talk about is investigations of police misconduct. And here's a flow chart and then I'll talk about each one. The first step is we get a citizen complaint or an internal complaint, which could be from a fellow officer or a supervisor. So we get a complaint. It then goes to the Internal Affairs Division that investigates it. Internal Affairs does fact finding. They do not make a recommendation whether a policy violation occurred or not. If you have any questions about that, the chief can explain that. They do fact finding. They then give those facts, fact finding to the officer's chain of command that reviews those findings with Chief Dixon. The chain will make a recommendation to the chief whether they think a policy violation occurred. Their recommendation is not binding on the chief. He can accept or reject it. And if the chain does recommend that a violation be sustained, then the chief will schedule a disciplinary review hearing. And at that meeting the chief will have the involved officer present and the officer's chain of command. And I'll go into it a little bit more about what happens there. And then the chief makes a final decision as to whether to sustain any policy violations and then the appropriate discipline. So under Chapter 143, let me say this. One of the things that I think you'll realize at the end of my presentation is, let's say you see a video on TV of an officer doing something that clearly is inappropriate. And that video is sent to the chief the same day. People or some people may say, well, that chief should fire that officer right away. Don't even wait. The video is clear. No question. Go ahead and fire him. The chief can do that. But I think after this presentation, you'll realize that if he does that, there's probably about a 99.99% likelihood that officer is going to get his or her job back. And that's part of what this presentation is to show to you why that might happen. So under Chapter 143, a police officer can only be suspended, demoted, or fired. And you may have heard the term indefinite suspension. That's the civil service equivalent to firing. So a suspension is something short of firing. A demotion is being demoted in rank, or an indefinite suspension is firing. Police officer can only be, one of those things can only happen for one of these 12 enumerated things. And I'll just let you take a minute and look through the first six, and then I'll switch over to the next page. And then, so those are the first six, and they're not in any order of importance or anything like that. And then here's the other six. Most police officers are suspended for a violation of paragraph number 12, which is a violation of an applicable fire police department rule or order. The police department has general orders that set out standards of conduct and a whole bunch of other. I think the department's policy manual is several hundred pages long. But in order to suspend fire or demote someone, you have to fit the conduct within one of these 12 categories. And I can tell you that's very, very easy to do. Usually it'll fall within number 12 easily. Everything starts with a complaint. The complaint can be the person alleging to be the victim of the misconduct, a person who witnessed it. It can be someone that's anonymous. It can be another city, a police department employee, or let's say somebody calls and says, I don't want, or somebody sends a video and we don't know who it came from. The police department can adopt the complaint and be the complainant. So everything starts with a complainant. Probably the most, I don't know, some of you may have heard of something called the 180 day rule. This is probably the most important rule for disciplining a police officer that's subject to chapter 143. And what that means is any complaint can be investigated. It doesn't matter when it happened. I had a complaint in Austin that was more than 10 years old and the person filed the complaint and it was way outside the 180 days. And what that means is an officer could not be suspended, indefinitely suspended or demoted if the act for which the officer is being disciplined occurred more than 180 days before the discipline takes effect. So if the chief fires me today, he cannot fire me for something that happened more than 180 days ago. After that 180 days is up, the most discipline that can be opposed is a written reprimand. So you can imagine what happens when somebody comes in on the 178th day and complains about serious misconduct. The chief basically has two days to do something under chapter 143. Now I'll explain in a minute how the meeting confer contract has changed that. But that is the general rule. You cannot suspend, demote or fire someone for something that happened more than 180 days ago. However, there is an exception if it's criminal conduct. If it's allegedly related to a criminal violation of federal, state or local law and the officer is still subject to prosecution under the applicable criminal statute of limitations, that 180 day clock starts on the day the department discovered the criminal conduct. So for example, if the criminal conduct occurred 200 days ago, we're outside the 180. But if the chief just found out about it today and the officer can still be prosecuted for it, then the 180 day clock starts today, the day the chief found out about it. Now the good thing, and I applaud the meeting confer agreement, that changed the 180 day rule, but not for the criminal stuff. The criminal 180 from date of discovery still applies. But for everything else, the chief now has 240 days from the date of the alleged misconduct to discover. So we went from 180 to 240. And then on top of that, the chief then has another 180 days from the date of discovery to investigate and impose discipline. So now potentially the chief has up to 420 days to impose discipline rather than 180 days. I think that's a great provision. In Austin, we've tried repeatedly to get the police association there to increase the 180 day rule, and they steadfastly have rejected that. So I think that's a great extension. And again, as I mentioned, that extension does not apply to criminal. And I'll explain in a little bit how we deal with that criminal. And here it is. If an officer is indicted for a felony or charged with a misdemeanor, a class A or B misdemeanor, if that happens, the chief can suspend the police officer with or without pay for no more than 30 days after the criminal charge is disposed of. So let's say we had an officer today who was indicted by a grand jury for family violence, assaulting his spouse. The chief then could suspend that officer without pay until the criminal charge is resolved. And I'm sure you know sometimes criminal charges can take years to resolve. So the chief can suspend that officer without pay. And once the criminal is resolved, then the chief has 30 days after that to impose disciplinary action. Nobody wants to pay an officer that is accused of committing a crime to sit at home and be paid. And in my experience, I can't think of a single instance where a police chief has let an officer sit at home being paid while they're under criminal indictment. Being arrested is not sufficient to trigger that provision. The officer has to actually be formally charged with a crime. 143 has a provision that says even if the officer is found not guilty or the criminal charges are dismissed, that doesn't mean that the officer can't be disciplined because in a criminal trial, the officer doesn't have to testify. The standard of proof is higher in a criminal trial. And criminal trial is determining whether the officer violated the penal code. In internal affairs investigation, the standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence and it's whether or not the officer violated department policy. So and the last point I want to point out is if the chief wants to indefinitely suspend an officer, but doing so would jeopardize the criminal investigation, the chief can protect his right to suspend the officer indefinitely by sending a letter to the attorney general, notifying him that a delay is necessary to protect the criminal case. And I have personal experience with this and I can tell you why that's important. I know there's been some criticism of the chief waiting to impose discipline when there may be a pending criminal investigation. I had a case in Austin where an officer was accused of sexually, he offered two women, he would let them go if they perform sexual acts for him. They had warrants and he said I won't take you to jail if you do this for me. The chief of police at the time indefinitely suspended the officer even though there was a pending criminal investigation. The officer went ahead and appealed his discipline. He then you and that appeal took place before the criminal case. The officer then subpoenaed every single person involved in that criminal case, including the victims and was able to get them to testify under oath about what happened. The officer then was able to use that testimony in his criminal case. So that is why the chief will send this letter to the attorney general to postpone taking disciplinary action because he does not want to jeopardize a criminal case. So that's the provision that deals with if an officer is charged with a crime. In chapter 143 the legislature was keen and sensitive to that. That's why they put that in there. I just want to talk about the investigation and there's just a couple more slides and then we'll take some questions. As I mentioned, internal affairs does the fact finding. They will obtain all the relevant information including any body worn cameras. They'll get the reports. They'll interview the officer. They'll interview witnesses. The chapter 143 does not give an officer the right to a union or attorney during a internal affairs investigation, including their interview. Chapter 143 does not require the department to show the officer any of its evidence before they do the evidence before they do his interview or her interview. There is an exception though state law allows an officer to review any body worn camera video of the incident prior to the officer being required to provide a statement about that incident. So that's really the only thing that the officer gets to review before they are interviewed. And if you remember, I think last time our first meeting I talked about the Supreme Court's Garrity decision statements a public employee is compelled to provide as a condition of employment cannot be used against that employee in a criminal prosecution arising from that incident. That's an important component of an internal affairs investigation because in a criminal investigation an officer cannot be compelled to say anything. They cannot be forced to incriminate themselves. But in an administrative investigation, an officer can be forced to give a statement to internal affairs. And that's why the Supreme Court said an officer should not have to be forced to choose between incriminating themselves and their job. The meeting confer agreement member I told you that it can change certain parts of the law. Well, there is no requirement chapter 143 as I mentioned that an officer has the right to see any evidence before their interview. However, as part of the negotiations for the current meeting confer agreement, the city did agree to allow the officer to have these rights in connection with an administrative investigation. The office, the subject officer, not witnesses, just the officer that's accused of doing something wrong has the right to be represented by an association representative and or an attorney during their interview with internal affairs, as well as during a disciplinary meeting with the chief. But the representative is there and is an observer. They can't interfere with the investigation. They can't tell the officer don't answer that question or tell them how to answer it. And if the representative doesn't obey those guidelines, the chief has the right to remove that person from the interview. And it'll be continued without the officer having a representative present. Witness officers do not have the right to a representative during their interview. It's just the accused officer. In addition to that, the contract allows the officer who is the subject of the investigation to review certain evidence prior to their interview. That includes a copy of the actual complaint at least 48 hours before their interview. And what that means is the officer cannot be interviewed until at least 48 hours have expired after they get that complaint. So if the officer is the subject of an investigation, we have to give the officer a copy of that complaint and then we have to wait 48 hours before we conduct an interview. The officer can waive that. If they just say, hi, I just want to get this out of the way, they can waive that. But if they don't, we have to give them 48 hours. And I'll answer any questions you have in a minute. The officer also has the right prior to their interview to review any videotape, photograph or other recording of the operative conduct or alleged injuries, which is the subject of the allegations. So for example, if an officer was arrested for DWI and there is an in-car video of the officer driving and doing the field sobriety test, then the officer gets to review that prior to his interview because that is the operative conduct that's being investigated. If an officer is accused of using excessive force and causing an injury to someone and we have pictures of those injuries, then the officer is allowed to view a copy of those pictures because those are photos of the alleged injuries. The officer also has the right to review those portions of any documents in which the officer is alleged to have lied or left out important information. So for example, if an officer is alleged to have provided false information in a search warrant, then we have to show the officer what part of that warrant that we contend was false. And then if it's the officer also has the right to review any report, supplement your use of force report or other statement that the officer wrote regarding the operative conduct. So for example, if an officer wrote a report about using force, and it's an excessive force complaint, then the officer gets to review the report that he wrote about that. Let me just cover this and let me just see. Let's have a couple more slides and then I'll answer some questions. So once an investigation is done and Internal Affairs has done their fact-finding, then the chain of command makes a non-binding recommendation to the chief on whether or not a violation occurred. And here are the different classifications of complaints. Sustained, the investigation established that the alleged misconduct did occur. Not sustained, the investigation failed to produce sufficient evidence to clearly prove or disprove the allegation. Exonerated, the investigation established that the act complained of did occur. Yes, I did use force, but it was justified legal and proper. Unfounded, investigation established that the act complained of did not occur. And then a policy violation, the investigation revealed that the act did occur and may or may not comply with department policy, but it was determined that the allegation and misconduct could have been prevented had the policy been more clear or complete. So basically, you know, the policy just wasn't as clear as it should have been. So those are the different classifications and ultimately the chief has the final decision on what the final classification is. And then if the chain of command recommends that a policy be sustained, the chief will schedule a disciplinary meeting with the officer and the chain of command. Prior to that meeting, the meet and confer agreement gives the officer three hours to review the investigative file. It does not, that review does not include the summary that the investigator wrote, but the officer gets to review all the witness statements, all the reports, all the documents, all the pictures, all the videos. And in a disciplinary meeting with the chief, the officer has the right to be represented by an association member or an attorney. At that meeting, the chief will give the officer the opportunity to explain what happened. The chain of command and the chief get to ask the officer questions about what happened. And once that questioning part stops, the officer and his representative will leave the room. The chief will then discuss with the chain of command whether they think a violation occurred and then they make a disciplinary recommendation. Ultimately, then the chief decides what he's going to do. The chief will then bring the officer and his rep back into the room and inform him or her what the decision is. I know that's a lot of information and I covered a lot there, but I'd like to give you folks the opportunity to ask any questions about any topic that I covered. I have a quick question. You mentioned that the 180 days and the 240 days that the city now has adopted, it all pertains or it all has to do with when the chief finds out. But what if there was misconduct or anything else, a complaint, anything, but it stalled out maybe one level or two levels below the chief? Is there any accountability for that? For the department? I think I can speak for the chief that if a manager knows about something and didn't take appropriate action to report it, I think the chief is going to hold that person accountable. Is that a fair statement chief? That's a very fair statement. I get briefed very regularly on a daily basis from assistant chief Smith. So he and I work very well together and I have the utmost confidence that he'll bring every complaint to me as he should. Now I do want to tell you why making the chief be the person who becomes aware of it is really important and you folks may, it made the national news. We had a school teacher down in Austin that was thrown to the ground by a police officer and it was on video and the officer's chain of command knew about it and they took care of it. The chief of police in Austin at the time did not know about it. When it finally came to the chief's attention, 180 days had already expired. The chief could not take action because when someone at a command level knew about it, that knowledge was imputed to the chief and the chief was outside the 180 and he could not fire that officer even though he wanted to. So making the day the chief becomes aware of it protects the chief's ability when a lower ranking member did not take appropriate action at the time. So that is actually a good thing. 180 days customary, is that a customary amount of time? Those amount of days, 180 days, is that a customary amount of time for an investigation in law enforcement? I'll comment and then I'll let the chief chime in. I'll tell you what, the chief, he was actually I know he was in internal affairs for a while as a lieutenant so I'll let him address that. So by state statute we have 180 days, actually we have 240 here and that's by state statute in the meeting confer contract. I'll tell you that the majority the vast majority of our cases are disposed of well before that time. But it is problematic when a person comes in after 160, 170 days. The department is really under a crunch then to get it get it done and people have various reasons for not coming forward. I'm not but we unfortunately we that that 240 days really is a big plus. So I commend the department and the city for for getting that extension and then 180 days on top of that. I think that's great. I have a question. Mr. Baines go ahead. Are you sure? Yes sir. Are you sure? Okay thank you. I have a question. We live in the days of video now and I think this is a state and the situation I hate to mention the situation but I think it precipitated a lot of things for the good the one officer in Minnesota that kept his knee on the neck of that young boy yes he was a young man. The chief there fired that person and as you mentioned a lot of times the officers get their jobs back and this particular individual had a history of incidents where there should have been done something done previously and so I'm saying all that to say this that if these the 143 basically says it's hard to get rid of an officer that has a history. How are we going to rectify that problem with 143? It's long it's a long answer long question. Yeah it you know it every case is fact specific. I can't tell you what those 17 complaints were on that former officer and whether anything was sustained or disciplined but I I'm comfortable in saying where there's smoke there's fire if I feel pretty confident that if an officer here had that history that the department would do an in-depth investigation to determine what the problem is because there's something there so I really can't address that but we do and I know that the chief will use progressive discipline if an officer has disciplinary history that is one of the things that the chief will use in determining if you have a history of sustained complaints and you're not correcting your behavior then progressive discipline is going to be imposed. Let me say one thing about that Mr. Baines do you remember offhand what the police association president said after the chief fired those Minneapolis officers? I do not I'm sorry. He said they were denied due process he didn't comment about what they did whether it was right or wrong he said they were fired and they were denied due process and he may be right now they have pending criminal charges but it is very possible if they go to arbitration an arbitrator may agree that these officers were fired before they even had an opportunity to provide their side of the story so that's my point that a police union or association while maybe not necessarily condoning the officers actions will still say that they believe the officers are entitled to due process so I guess time will tell what will happen with those cases. Did I answer your question? I think you did it's a it's we're in a very difficult environment right now we're trying to come up with policy and an approach that you know it's going to be difficult to take care of everything one size will not fit all but I think we're making the effort to do the right thing. And one thing that you will see when Chief Smith gets to the disciplinary part of this the Chief Dixon has a I believe a different philosophy on discipline than his predecessor so I think the message will get out there that officers realize that there's a new sheriff in town so to speak and that white what might have been tolerated in a prior administration is not the way it's going to be handled with this administration. Thank you thank you very much. My question is along similar lines it's in regards to records of officers that may be transferring or desiring employment in the Denton Police Department who may have experience elsewhere in North Texas or across the country. I'm curious what sort of documentation can be shared or is shared if I'm a police officer in a neighboring North Texas community or from some other state and I transfer here or have a desire to work for Chief Dixon what kind of record or history are you provided with as to how many of these types of complaints and the outcomes of their complaints understanding that there are differences and nuances across the country some of the conversation that we had in our first meeting was about general employment retention and things like that and so I'm curious how do we learn as our community if the people that we are potentially hiring come with some history of complaint. Let me see the Chief Dixon or maybe Chief Smith can answer that a little bit better than I can. Sure so we have our recruiting officers that will do complete backgrounds no one can just summarily transfer here they have to go through the entire hiring process like everyone else. Now if they're a prior service officer recruiting will go over to that department they'll look at their file whatever they're allowed to look at by law they'll go in there and look at their internal affairs history if there is one and if there's one from out of state where we can't get that information we'll send them up to wherever that department is to do it in person because it is important to me that when we're hiring people that they're reflective of the type of human beings we want working for all of you so we're not going to skimp and cut corners when we're hiring folks. When you look at us having a test the civil service exam we'll typically have between 70 and 80 people show up we'll end up with a list of 40 or 45 and from that 45 we typically may be higher six to ten so we're not just hiring everybody that comes looking for a job. I can tell you that unfortunately not every police department is as diligent as Denton is in checking officers prior backgrounds so officers are they call them gypsy cops I think sometimes able to go from one department to another. I've got another question we last time and some of you can help me out with this in chief maybe you can speak to it we talked about and I can't remember if it was specifically with use of force situations that that eventually comes to you and you make the determination and one of the points of conversation that we had was around the potential of those outside of the department being a part of that committee that decides whether that goes to the next step you remember this conversation from the first meeting. I do so we have a use of force committee that meets but in lieu of that the entire chain of command reviews every use of force all the way up to assistant chief Smith as you'll see when he does his presentation in a minute the vast majority of our internal affairs complaints are internally driven meaning that we catch a lot of things even more things than we would get from the public you'll also see that when the public calls and makes a complaint we typically find more violations that come out of just that one complaint that we see when we're looking over the the entire call itself okay so I guess my question was what we were talking about in the last meeting was more specifically focused on use of force situations I was just wondering how that squares with the flow chart that you showed Mr. Kronig like that's the same thing so if someone sees a use of force that doesn't look right to them they will send that up to chief Smith he'll bring it to me he and I will look at it ourselves if there's a violation there we'll open up an internal affairs investigation on it and then I'll run through that same exact process as it was laid out okay so what we were talking about last time was even it was more toward the front end of the flow chart where the arrow was it was like right deciding if it needs to even move forward and be investigated and some of the people in the committee here were saying perhaps on use of force situations it'd be good to have community members but that was at the beginning of the flow chart okay thanks I think when I remember having that conversation but and I remember I think someone said we could we could look more into that having civilian representation on that committee because my question at that point was why isn't there why isn't there someone that's a civilian I think someone said it's it's I mean it would take a lot for a civilian to be trained to know all the ins and outs of all of that which I completely agree but I think that's something that's it can be a recommendation the further we go and the more we know that can be brought up that there should be some kind of we completely trust in the chief and the chief of police and the assistant chief and everything but there still has to be some some accountability to the public I mean I don't see why there wouldn't be Mr. coding if you can talk to us are there other use of force committees in other cities that have civilian representation I don't know or is that like I'm part of no I don't know if there's use of force committees as such I know example for Austin we have an office of police oversight I know the police department has a force review board I don't believe there are any civilians on that board they're all police officers I just not familiar with enough cities to know if they actually have civilians involved in the review of use of force on on the front end I think I'll have to find out I was reading an article they had the civilians around there were even like criminal defense attorneys it wouldn't just be like someone that has no experience I'll have to find that see if I can send it but is that a possibility even anywhere in the process that civilians can be part of that process chief Dixon or Michael yeah I think there's a way I need to look at the issues it's going to really depend on what's this person's role typically I think you all know there's a body worn camera statute but there are there are some very specific rules that apply to when those videos can be released and who can see them typically any in camera videos like from you know mounted inside a police car those are going to be public we may there may be some exceptions to releasing it right away if there's pending criminal and stuff like that but for the most part videos I think members of the public at some point in time might be able to see them but it's really kind of just depend on the circumstances but there's probably I don't want to say absolutely yes but if if there's if the committee recommends that and there's a way to legally do it I certainly don't think the city manager or the chief would have an objection to that so are those videos public information in car videos are but again the the department or the district attorney could not want to release them if they think it's going to affect a pending criminal case that's in car videos and again the body one camera has a specific statute with those videos can only be released under certain circumstances and certain criteria that kind of the general rule is all information in the hands of the city is public that's the general rule except and then there's some exceptions so we would need to know specifically what is public information and what is not if we were going to go that route if you tell me when when this panel comes to making recommendations I think you just need to be as specific as you can what you want to see and why and then we can we can all look at it and determine whether we think we we can do it my philosophy is not to say no it's to try to find a way see what works can do it yeah if we can do it we'll find right okay thank you and look like anybody else says mr. Kovac one question yes sir pulls in other cities where a neighboring city or another law enforcement body would serve on that panel where they have the professional expertise but they're outside of that sitting that police department I'll defer to the chief I I mean police departments ask each other all the time to review things and to help out I don't know if chief Dixon's aware of if he's ever done that you know chief I have not called them in for any administrative purposes but for all criminal purposes we are not going to ever investigate ourselves I am totally against that so whether it's a neighboring organization state organization we're going to bring someone else in to do those but but I think the chief certainly has the right to ask another let's say if you wanted to ask the chief of McKinney to take a look at a video and get his take on it I think that would be appropriate because it's helping the chief to make an informed decision so I don't think that would be inappropriate I have a question what is the process of seeking out a third party look like and how is that determined to investigate a third party for a criminal yeah like if you are I think the example was having McKinney look at something or if there's an investigation that's needed that's internal in you would secure a third party agency what what does that process look like how how how is it determined like you already have like a list of agencies or just want to know what that what that so for criminal investigations we have the Texas Rangers that do it now for us here if that were to change I would want to look at an agency that's at least our size or larger that someone that has the investigative capability to be able to do it and is it required that you use the Texas Rangers or is that just how how were they how is it determined that they would be the agency well that was actually in place before I got here but there are state agencies agency that's used across the city across the state to do those criminal investigations I mean they do public corruption investigations they're charged with that in the state of Texas they're charged with doing criminal investigations anyway so it's a natural fit okay I mean we could use the Dayton County Sheriff's Office I don't know if the next biggest city around here would be Louisville or somewhere like that but I haven't really had to do that I will say from an administrative standpoint the Internal Affairs Division of the Denton Police Department does not have to be the only body or is not the only body that can investigate administratively both the contract and the law define an investigator is an employee or agent of the city so if if there was the city manager has the authority and the chief to request someone from outside the city conduct an administrative investigation and that may be where there's may just depend on the facts may involve if I'll pick on assistant chief Smith if for example he was accused of doing something wrong I don't think Chief Dixon is going to have his Internal Affairs Division he might but investigate an assistant chief he may want to ask the city manager or the city manager may decide on his own to hire someone outside the city to do that investigation because it involves a high ranking member of the police department but we all know chief Smith would never do anything to warrant that so okay unless somebody has anything else I'll move on to the next part of my presentation let me and chief Smith will be up in about about two minutes so so let's say that the Internal Affairs does an investigation there's policy violations sustained here's the different types of discipline under chapter 143 that can be imposed a written reprimand now there are things lower than that like oral counseling and you know training but training really isn't discipline in a sense but this is really the formal types of discipline a written reprimand which can't be appealed a temporary suspension of 1 to 15 days which the officer can appeal an agreed suspension of 16 to 90 days and what that means is the officer and the chief agree that the officer is going to be suspended anywhere from 16 to 90 days and since they're agreeing to that that can't be appealed and then indefinite suspension as I said is equivalent to termination that can be appealed the chief also has at his disposal of demotion and that can be disciplinary in nature or can be performance related there's two types of demotions one is a voluntary where the officer can agree that the officer can agree to be demoted and if an agreed demotion or a voluntary demotion you can't appeal it the other one is an involuntary demotion and that can be appealed so let's say if a police officer violated policy the chief can chief has a lot of options the chief can suspend the person and demote him he can do both or he can do one or just the other but if the chief just says you're a sergeant and you violated policy I'm not going to suspend you but I don't think you should be a sergeant anymore and the sergeant refuses to take a voluntary demotion then the chief recommends to the civil service commission an involuntary demotion and then we have to have a hearing and the commission or a hearing examiner and I'll explain that in the next slide has to approve it and until the commission or a hearing examiner approves that demotion the sergeant keeps his rank and keeps his pay however the chief can reassign that sergeant's duties during that interim period a lot of people wonder what can discipline be used for a discipline can be considered by the chief for promotional purposes so when someone takes a promotional exam and is up for promotion the chief has a right to consider that disciplinary history in deciding whether to promote that person if the chief decides not to promote that person and bypasses him or her for promotion that bypass decision can be appealed to the civil service commission or a hearing examiner so here's the different types of discipline and here's the appeal process there's just two more this slide and one more so if an officer is suspended from 1 to 15 days involuntarily demoted or by path indefinite suspension or bypass for a promotion the person can appeal to either the civil service commission which is a three-member commission here in the city or to a hearing examiner a lot of times referred to by arbitrators that is purely the officer's choice the officer can decide whether they want to appeal to the commission or a hearing examiner and here's the difference the commission it is composed of three citizen volunteers like yourselves a hearing to the commission must be held within 30 days after the appeal is filed unless the officer and the commission agreed to postpone it the commission can subpoena documents and witnesses if an officer chooses a commission they may choose it because it doesn't cost them anything the commission appeal is free however if the officer wants a lawyer they have to pay for that themselves a decision by the commission requires a majority vote so if thought three commissioners are present at least two of them have to vote if only two of them are present which is a quorum then it has to be a two-to-nothing vote the city has the burden in a disciplinary case the officer doesn't have to prove that he or she didn't do it the department has to prove that they did the authority of the commission in a disciplinary appeal they can overturn the discipline in its entirety they can modify it they can only let decrease it they cannot increase it or they can deny the appeal altogether and uphold the discipline commission has a hearing the decision is rendered immediately they don't write an opinion they just say what their decision is in public and then they sign in orders saying what their decision is the commission can award back pay and other loss benefits like vacation that the officer would have accumulated and then if an officer chooses their commission route only the officer can appeal the commission's decision to court and you may ask why and the answer is the commission as a city entity it would be this if the city suing itself and that that the city can't do that so that's one option in a commission appeal but I can tell you based on 26 years of trying disciplinary appeals the officers always choose the hearing examiner route because they win about 50 percent of those appeals and here's the hearing examiner must be a member of the american arbitration association or the federal mediation and conciliation service hearing examiners do this for a living whereas the commission of volunteers who were just volunteering their time a hearing examiner must have experience that hears these appeals must have experienced hearing public safety and disciplinary appeals hearing examiner has the same powers and duties as the commission the way we choose a hearing examiner as we try to agree on someone if we can't then we ask the arbitration association for a list of seven if we can't agree to somebody on the list then we take turns striking a list and the person's name that's left is the person who hears the case the hearing can take months to schedule whereas as I mentioned the commission hearing has to be held in 30 days hearing examiners are expensive the good ones charge anywhere from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a day plus expenses the party split that cost so typically if an officer is represented by a police association the association will pick it up commission appeal is free hearing examiner costs a lot of money hearing examiners provide detailed written opinions they can be 20 or 30 pages long usually takes 30 days to get a decision after the hearing so you can imagine if it takes three or four months to get a hearing and the hearing takes a week and then another month it can be five or six months before the officer gets a decision a hearing examiner's award is final and binding on the city and the officer and it can only be appealed to district court under very limited circumstances and those are the hearing examiner lacked jurisdiction which means they had no authority to hear the case they exceeded their jurisdiction meaning they did something that they weren't allowed to or the judgment was procured by fraud or collusion or some unlawful means the officer bribed the hearing examiner and something like that the good thing about hearing examiner appeal both the city and the officer can challenge the decision in court so based on my experience as I said officers always choose this route when I represented officers in Austin and Dallas I always recommended they go this route because they stand a better chance of winning so that's uh that's the appeal process and I'll entertain any questions uh the next next section is then going to be uh chief smith on the data on complaints so happy to answer any questions that you folks might have about the appeal process uh Michael how often do we have appeals here and then to my understanding uh since chief dixon has been here I think we've had one is that correct which which the city one and prior to that uh any ideas the appeal hearings themselves I do not know offhand that actually went to a hearing I don't know and chief smith thinks there may have been one there's been one chief smith tells me okay well uh before chief dixon came was there any any other appeals that you can think of under chief howell in the past few years yeah we can't think of any offhand uh the contract the meet and confer contract does have a provision that says if an officer is suspended up to five days they're allowed to substitute a crude leave in lieu of days off and several officers recently have chosen that which and if they make that choice then they waive their right to appeal I'll try to hold my questions to a minimum so thank you okay no is there another question I'm happy to answer it if you have one well I'm just trying to think you know it's like if in previous administrations there were no disciplinary measures then you would have no reason to appeal and so if you have a more disciplinary environment right now then there's going to be more instances of appeal so one of the one of the slides will show you uh disciplinary actions between 2015 under chief howell up to just a couple of days ago under chief dixon so that might help you uh understand a little bit of the disciplinary suspensions there have been 19 in the past five years um seven under chief howell and 12 under chief dixon so we'll go in chief smith we'll go into that a little bit thank you very much mr kroneck what else does the civil service commission do is that specifically connected just to the police department or is that other aspects of the city as well just police and fire uh they handle things dealing with uh entrance examinations promotional examinations fitness for duty uh discipline uh that's primarily it in in officer green was correct me if i'm wrong you had mentioned uh after the simulator that there's another commission that's made up of citizens that's connected to the police department as well i guess i'm just kind of wondering how many different groups there's an oversight committee or something is maybe what you'd said there's this commission no i was referring to the civil service commission is basically who here is our disciplinary uh appeals which is what michael was just talking about okay so you're the same group you're talking about this and this is the the one group that has citizens that's primarily connected to the police department yes not only us just the fire department as well police and fire are both civil service here in the city uh bo i'm sorry i was going to ask because uh sheryl aren't you in some kind of committee that helps or works with the police department i'm on the advisory committee for the police academy for the police academy so so bo i'm on i serve on the civil service commission as does uh commissioner prada we're we're the two we're two of the three commissioners for civil service honored thanks for clarifying that honor is all mine and i can tell you based i can tell you based on my experience with with both them and uh lily and they take their role very seriously any other questions on the appeal part if not i'll uh shift over to chief smith on the data which i think you'll find very interesting okay let me get to that all you need to do is just use the arrows to move the slides okay good evening everybody my name is bobby smith i'm the assistant chief of police uh it's honored to address you tonight i've been with the pd for 25 years almost 26 years now and i've been in this role for a couple of years this month so as part of my job i one of my main functions is to provide guidance and oversight over the internal affairs division and that's currently staffed with two investigators a report directly to me and of course i report directly to the chief of police and uh i communicate with our internal affairs division on a daily basis i know about every complaint that comes through and and uh like i said i provide a lot of guidance and oversight on making sure that uh procedural justice and due process is handled across the board so what you're looking at here if you can go to the upper left of this slide i think you might have seen this number before the 525 that's a roughly a half a million contacts uh contacts in the last uh five and a half years those contacts generated a grand total of 539 uh complaints of misconduct so as you look across out of that 539 uh 324 of those had a disposition of sustained meaning that the uh the misconduct to that was alleged did occur from that 300 and that's a 60 percent of the the grand total out of those 324 i'm sorry out of the 539 that is 215 you know were from uh were considered external from civilians uh and citizens i mean and that was a 40 percent of the total now just by some sort of coincidence 324 was the number of internal complaints and i'll talk a little bit more about that i want to get to the middle of the of the screen but that uh that 324 is what happens internally most of those are initiated by a supervisor if there's an allegation of misconduct or they witness something some of those are employees having some issues with another employee but the vast majority those are supervisor related and so if you move to the far right of the screen the e stands for external so 53 percent i'm sorry 53 of the complaints and that's going to be out of the 215 were sustained for 25 sustainment rate and then internally 271 out of the 324 were sustained that's an 84 percent so again a lot of supervisor oversight in that area the um yeah i'll talk a little bit about that 84 a lot of that has to do with supervisors observing the misconduct and a lot of this is very minor natured so we're talking about things you know that you'll see in the middle of the screen here performance related operation of police equipment police vehicles so a lot of that stuff is just something that the supervisor or the manager can observe and so it's prima facie when it comes to the the incident that it did happen and so it that's that's just one of the big reasons you have higher level uh percentage of sustained complaints internally so if you look at when i look down at our top five allegations and these are the allegations of misconduct the the highest number is performance related and what that means is is that the the officer or the employee was involved in some sort of conduct that is deemed unsatisfactory and so it gets looked at in other words it could be something like just doing the wrong thing the wrong action maybe letting someone that should have been held accountable for something maybe not doing the right thing there and then if you see below that the operation of police equipment and police vehicles so police officers are in cars all the time they back into light poles they do things you know that because they're in cars all the time and most of that is very minor natured they might leave a ticket writer printer on top of a car and drive off in the printer is a million pieces attendance this is very common folks oversleeping maybe you know not showing up on time maybe missing a court date things of that nature now discourtesy is a little bit more has a little bit more external generated it's a little bit more external generated when it comes to complaints we have do have a few internally and then when rounding out the top five is service complaint now service complaint is actually a little bit of a misnomer it's it was it's probably been misused as a as a categorization of complaint and but it shows up in the allegations and most of those would if you go back and read if you look at those most of those going to be performance related issues when it comes to service complaints if you look at the bottom of the screen there out of all of these these complaints we had a total of fourteen use of force complaints since January one of two thousand fifteen that doesn't include anything that that's happened that doesn't include everything that's happened this year we're a little bit behind on some of the just reconciliation efforts when it comes to our our internal affairs software but the fourteen years of force complaints we had three of those were sustained with one suspension and I threw in taser because taser is directly related to use of force but sometimes those allegations fall under the actual taser policy so there was four of those and all four of those were sustained with one suspension we also had four bias or racial profiling complaints and zero were sustained those were all exonerated on this screen here if you just go to the top right for me for just a minute you'll see the five thirty nine that's the total complaints I went ahead and broke this down year by year so starting with that top level data for complaints you can see it's broken year by year and you can see that it progressively goes up particularly in two thousand eighteen and two thousand nineteen and there's there's some reasons for that number one in two thousand eighteen we adopted a reporting system called blue team that ties into our our storage system which is IA pro and Chief Dixon's with Chief Dixon's leadership on this we took a very concerted effort to make sure that we were documenting performance related issues or any sort of misconduct or and we were before two thousand eighteen a lot of this stuff was decentralized it was housed in the desk of supervisors and there was a lot of just discretion that was off that was used by sergeants and lieutenants but we as a concerted effort we centralized it more and we started we made a commitment towards documenting these issues and so you can see 2020 is really light when it comes to the numbers but again we we're going to we're going to have to get in there and make sure that our numbers are caught up so as you go down you can see you can see this I won't go through every one of these but you can see the categories the sustained comes up with the 324 you can see your external complaints as they as they go up a little bit through the the years to 215 and the external sustained and if you go down to on the bottom left there where it says internal you'll see the complaints and they were for three years in a row by just sheer coincidence it was 58 is the number that came up all three years between 16 17 and 18 and there was a huge jump in 19 to 96 so we broke this down by race when we looked at it and when it comes to our total complaints that were external that was 215 46 of those complaints were final filed by black citizens 17 by hispanic citizens 115 by white citizens and you can see four in the asian or other classification and then we had 33 records where the race was not listed or it was actually listed as unknown here is the disciplinary suspensions by year this is something that mike alluded to just a few minutes ago and you can it's a busy chart but if you start at the upper left and you see that there's a total of 19 that are listed there and then if you go down you see a one day and you go across the board that's a one day suspension without pay and then you can see it goes down with the level of suspensions that have been handed out a popular number of days for suspension is the five day suspension as you can see chief dixon has handed three of those out in his tenure and then we had one 16 day suspension that happened earlier this year we've had two indefinite suspensions one of those was appealed we talked a little bit mike talked a little bit about the appellate process but it did go through the appeal process and the city of denton won that appeal process and the it's my belief that that that that happened because of the the system that chief dixon has put in place with our with our disciplinary review and so this is a breakdown of the other types of disciplinary corrective action if you go to the upper left with me you'll see the top three that say verbal counseling documented counseling and written reprimand that's a hierarchy right there those three verbal counseling is the equivalent to coaching this is for very minor issues somebody like i said maybe somebody walked in five ten minutes late for work one day and it's their first time a lot of those will result just verbal counseling then you get to documented counseling and that's a little bit that's a little bit more serious it's it's uh you really kind of spell out what happened you you really try to work with a person to try to fix it and uh but it's we just need to document it a little bit more and then you get to written reprimand which is one step below with suspension and the written reprimand has pretty serious language on it about what will happen if you don't correct the behavior then you have performance improvement plans uh we we actually call these epips it stands for employee performance improvement plan and we've uh we've gotten a little bit more it's been a little bit more robust in the last two years and we're using that to try to correct officers performance and then we also have a number of training dispositions where we're getting making sure folks are are getting the training they need when they have some issues and uh we also had 21 cases where the action taken was not listed so we're going to have to go back through those and double check everything through an audit we've been auditing it in any way but we need to go back and double check all of that i don't know what's supposed to be there but okay with that i'll open it up for any questions i have a question um on on the um like verbal counseling or the documented counseling um would would it be fair to say that maybe uh some of these disciplinarian acts are for newer officers or more seasoned or is there a right a high ratio of maybe newer officers that would be getting these kind of warnings and counselings or is it just across the board it is across the board but yeah when you're talking about young maybe newer officers you know depending on how minor the because some things are really minor especially internally driven issues okay you know and so yes the whole idea here is to bring people to the point where they perform at a high rate at very high standards and so it's like anything else in life you got to coach people and you got to give an opportunity you got to give them an opportunity to to improve their performance so you can't come down too hard on these minor nature things because you end up you may end up tearing the employee down their goal is to get a really high operating employee okay thank you anybody else yeah i have a question or a comment um i'd be really interested just in the 14 use of force complaints um since this is the purpose of this committee if um be further elaborated on i know that yes i said it's since 2015 but i'd like to see a breakdown by year uh i'd like to see who uh who brought that up for attention was it an internal or an external um who's the one that brought that up and who investigated who decided that only one of the one of those um complaint should be held upheld and then what was the consequence you're talking about so the use of force right 14 the and if you wanted to add the taser one in there i mean that makes 18 but but specifically the 14 use of work for uh force complaints right no i actually went through every one of those 14 and i looked at them and um you know there was three that were sustained and all three of those were captured through internal review in other words the supervisor doing his or her job saw something ran it up the chain of command and made sure that it was investigated properly now if you look at the other 11 some of those uh for instance there was a couple of those instances where the officer placed his or her hand on a on a person just to stop their movement and they were trying to walk away and they were being lawfully detained and the person filed a complaint for use of force so you have some of that um you know i i i can't sit here and go through every one of them i but i can tell you that i did go through every one of them and i did not see any in my and and this is me looking at it i didn't see deficiencies with the investigation it would just be helpful for us to read the language uh for us to look at each one of them ourselves i don't know what the process is if we would be able to read what whatever you were reading uh i think that would just be helpful there's certain information that we have to protect under under chapter 143 that's a decision i that's i would have to defer to uh mike and chief dixon on that as far as releasing that information but in general uh you know some of the information i can pass along here uh in the taser you know the taser issues there was a total of four um complaints those were all no no i'm sorry those were not all captured internally but i think the majority were and in each one of those incidents uh there was discipline associated with it one was a suspension and that was under chief dixon's tenure is mr konig there so he can let us know what we're going to be able to see with those 14 i'm gonna have to think about that because those if they didn't result in a i'll go into this in a minute if they didn't result in a suspension of at least one day they're confidential by law um uh let me look at that issue and and i will promise you that if i if i think you can see them then i'll certainly will make them available to you i'm just not sure um because this is a volunteer committee and and you'll see that this this goes into the whole issue of oversight and what what citizens uh especially who aren't even employees of the the city what they can see so let me let me look at the issue discuss it with chief dixon chief smith a little bit more and we'll we'll make available to you what i what i believe we legally can i just i i just think that i mean i that's the whole purpose of this committee right is to review use of force and i'd like to see what we're reviewing if it's even necessary i want to know who made the decision that it was a you know that it was a simple yeah i tried to grab arm and he resisted arrest or was it more than that uh let us let us talk to michael let us talk to michael and see if we if at a minimum we can put those in a uh in a table format at least to provide some general data um and we'll try to figure out a way to at least share um the generalities of the case if possible if michael thinks we can go a little further we will but uh at a minimum i'll talk to him about trying to put it in a format we can at least discuss jesse we don't need to know the person's name i'm sorry cheryl yeah right remove the person's name i think additionally you shared with us the race of the complainants that were external but not any information about the officers that were involved um and so generally just i understand that you can't potentially release individual records for those 14 in their totality but potentially if we could get some aggregated information that would help us to understand um the circumstances and the background of those situations i think that would be helpful we'll see what we could put together and bring it back to you jesse i saw your hand up sure some of the same ground that's already been covered with other folks that i think for the committee's purposes anonymous information you know with names redacted whatever makes it easier to get the information to the committee because i think we can all recognize the danger in let's say out of those 14 there's even one that's not substantiated that's driven by something beyond actual events and and the damage that can be done to uh to an officer's reputation even if it's just uh putting it out there with this committee so um i think i think anonymous or or somehow scrubbed results or a table or something like taunt said would be very helpful and i just wanted to add to that i noticed that of those 14ish complaints there were around seven that were sustained but only two suspensions so i'm wondering if we can figure out what the action was for the ones that were sustained but there wasn't a suspension um i'd be interested to see what happened there as well right with the 14 actual uses of force allegations there was three sustained there and in that case those cases there was one uh that was a five-day suspension there was another was a documented counseling and the other one was a written reprimand those are the three disciplinary actions that were taken in those but one thing to keep in mind about use of force items you know there's different levels of use as a force that and so uh in in some cases you know if it's egregious or in some cases if it's you know grabbing somebody that may be a little too hard so there's different there's various levels of that and and actually most of these uh i do believe i believe that out of the three uh uses of force i think only one of those was decided by chief dixon i believe and just to clarify i guess i was also adding in the ones around the tasing um and and i just wanted to mention that right you're right so if you add the tases into the that's four plus the 14 that's 18 and so yes and there would be a total of seven sustained you're right i think that would be really interesting to see too like you mentioned what the levels of use of force so i mean if most complaints were grabbing an arm you know were there any that were more so uh you know just if there could be some kind of difference and often put on the table too well yeah i'd be glad to provide that if you know if that's something that we're allowed to do i provide you with the the basic information about it and well i think your your basic framework too because you've got either intuitively or formally when you're looking at it after 25 years and understanding this is not that and i think in general we would be able to maybe all the same information you do to say that but i think just knowing your categories if you've got four categories from egregious to yeah uh accidental to everything in between you know how many of those categories there are that you're intuitively as you're looking at it right that would be helpful just to to for us to i think know there's four general categories i'm thinking through and these three go to the chief and this one doesn't you know right but i also want to say something real quick and i i didn't mention this earlier but i think it's very critical to understand the process by which when it comes to a complaint of use of force it's it's called it's a serious nature complaint and previous to chief dixon the investigator on on a case provided the disposition and uh and when chief dixon came in that was changed to the system that flow chart where you saw the arrow so there's a much more deliberative process and not taking away anything from his predecessor but the process is much more deliberative and he's and the key thing about all of it is that the investigating uh officer whether it's the i in this case would be always an internal affairs officer doesn't make the the recommendation for the disposition that is something that is done in the chain of command with chief dixon making the final decision so um i think that's a key that's a very key point to the process right now yeah bobby i think we can sit down tomorrow with michael and and just kind of see how far we can go um if we could put this information in a spreadsheet that doesn't in any way uh violate any 143 or any of the rules that we've agreed to and just so we can talk through some scenarios with we're happy to do it and i think we can kick off our next meeting with a summary of that data and to the extent that we're allowed to under the law so you've got our commitment to working on that chief at a more general level i know i think gary henderson asked this question last meeting about culture and where you see the department at i know these they're doing it very respectfully but both the assistant chief here and and mr groenig have said you know when you showed up there's been a new chief there's a new sheriff in town people have felt that from your perspective in regards to culture what have you seen systemically in regards to discipline that you've tried to come in and um in address knowing that you know even if it's shown up to a meeting five ten minutes late these are the kind of things in a culture that lead to more disastrous consequences if not addressed how have you viewed that overall and just kind of love to just hear your perspective that they've both spoken to in various ways so i really wanted us to focus on how can we make our organization better and a lot of that comes to supervisors starting to have monthly meetings with their subordinates lie tenants starting to have monthly meetings with their sergeants deputy chiefs having monthly meetings with their lieutenants and the executive team we meet at least once a week sometimes we meet more than that so that's where you see a lot of those coaching documented counseling is going in right there because they're seeing little things and i want us to catch those little things and address them before they manifest themselves into a tragedy because by then it's too late that's when you're looking at what is it a mistake of the mind or a mistake of the heart when people are committing policy violations so we're looking at these more holistically now we're really taking and i'm putting a lot of the onus on the chain of command we all go into a room together i start with the lowest ranking person in there for them to give me what they think what's their recommendation they want they think something should be sustained if it is why when it comes down to days off what do you think is something that you would recommend and why because if our leadership from the top down doesn't understand the why behind the decisions we're playing against ourselves and we're not improving employees and with that every time we have a policy violation definitely when we give a suspension out there's got to be training associated with that got to be tied to it or else again we're playing against ourselves we have an onus as an organization and myself as the chief executive officer to make sure that we're not setting our employees up to fail and if we're not giving them the training they need the training they deserve and the attention they deserve we're negligent in the manner of not setting them up for success and i want to make sure that i don't let this time pass you've got some amazing men and women wearing this uniform here in the city of denton working for you every day two of them are on your screen right now in yancey and travis they come to work not for the money they don't come to work to get accolades they come to work to serve you and they do a magnificent job of it so i don't want that to get washed out as long as we're pleased by human beings we're going to have discipline associated with that we have to make sure that we're doing it the right way which is why we use indefinite suspensions very judiciously very cautiously because i don't want on the back end someone to get their job back through the city and now they're back and they're emboldened even more because they've gotten their job back so i think where we're at now we're about halfway to where i want us to be but we're going to get there michelle i have a question yes ma'am um i'm really interested in the racial dynamics in our city because we have really large inequities and i'm sure almost everybody is aware and i was looking at the slide the complaints by race and noted that it says if i can read this 21 percent of the total complaints were made by black members of our town and i'm curious if you what kind of thinking you might have done about this and also are black members of the community more likely to complain about black officers or white officers have you have you delved into the dynamics that's something that we we have the data on that when we when we're talking about complaints made by citizens the race of the citizen we also have the races of the officers so we have that information and what do you make of it and can't we see it yeah i think that's something that we you know as long as i mean i'm sure we're going to talk about this more but that may be something we can lay it all out i'll defer to city manager and chief dixon on that yeah we'll start the next meeting with both of the data tables from what we were previously discussing as far as those use of force cases and these but the short of it is there's no pattern of our african-american community complaining on one race of an officer or another okay thank you i think um and i don't even know if it's possible is there one specific area of the city that you receive more complaints than the other or is it just a well-rounded all over on um number of complaints i don't have that information right now ma'am that's something that um we'd have to look at to see if that's available to us okay we'd have to look at locations and addresses you know when i looked at this when i spent the last couple of weeks looking over information that is i did use uh just the person's name and their and their uh their race and gender and the same with the officer so that but as far as location where it occurred and address i don't have that data yet i haven't looked at that is that something we we could get at a certain point i'd have to see if that's available uh i think it is i mean this the system that we have has a lot of different searchable data fields okay chief smith i have a question go ahead john thank you uh chief smith i have a question uh when i'm looking at this complaints by race these are people from the community complaining against the police department right for the most part there is one little copy out there that i have to explain okay prior to 2019 uh we didn't have the ability to categorize where we weren't using the ability to categorize internal versus external in the actual number and this is kind of confusing but there's an ops number or an investigative number so these two 15 were represented by the citizens that we recorded in the complaint there is a possibility that some of the citizens uh did not file the complaint themselves that that we filed it on behalf of the citizen there is some possibility of that but generally speaking it is a complaint out by the system and my second question which is related so if these citizens are complaining about the police generally what are they complaining about well when you saw that top five stuff there probably discourtesy is the one in that in that those categories uh but i will say this we can break it down by citizen complaints to determine what their highest level of allegations are but if i i can tell you just from anecdotally from my experience a lot of it is performance related they weren't happy with the performance of the officer or the decision making of the officer or that the officer was just courteous and in his demeanor or her demeanor thank you very much camion who else had a question you have a question camion yeah i did so i was trying to get off mute so i have a couple questions um the first is around this complaint by race uh breakdown i was wondering how does our um breakdown compare to the percentages um of our dentin population by race and also like how it might compare to other cities or cities of similar size and population of ours i'd just be interested to see if we could at all i don't know if you all have the ability to get data from other cities but i'm just wondering how it could compare to see um where dentin's at in comparison to other areas um and you mentioned that there were more ways to break down data around this and you mentioned that you use um a breakdown around gender and race and all of that i'm wondering if there are any indicators in the um software here at with our city that indicate folks is gender if it's not male or female like if they um identify as a trans individual or a non-binary individual i'd be interested to see if any of these complaints came from our lgbt community if that is an intersection that is captured well ma'am i don't think that's actually captured right now when we go back and look at the data i mean this and we've had this system since 2013 uh and uh i do not believe there's a cat a category in there now that doesn't mean it's not available through some sort of research but generally speaking i don't think that's a data entry point in this system that we currently have my question was just going to be about language okay that was um when i was looking at that i think the spanish community it was really low it's like eight percent which is good or it could be that it's not complaining that they can't complain in the appropriate language so i'd just be interested in that as a data entry point as well did you get that chief smith i'm sorry what was the actual question i i thought you was you just wanted some information did you have a question about it though yeah no the question is the question is that whenever the hispanic the ones that you're getting from hispanic population if any of them um have if any of the complaints have come in in spanish and how are those routed my concern is maybe someone wants to complain but they can't speak or you don't have anyone available so i'll just be interested right right i totally understand that and of course we would we would always we always make arrangements whenever we can but i do understand there might be a barrier to want to file the complaint in the first place i totally understand that but um we do have spanish speaking officers at our department and we would always facilitate that somehow we would never turn anybody away because of any sort of uh language barrier yes ronda i have a comment on canyon's question uh it didn't actually get answered about uh the percentage of the races in denton properly um i don't have the data right in front of me but i have looked at it before uh hispanics are about 25 of the population and i think african american or black whatever term you use is about nine i thought it was 11 okay somewhere yeah between nine and 11 yeah certainly a lot fewer african americans and and in terms of the percentage of the population as to those making complaints yes katina if you take that go ahead katina and then john um so i would like to see the nature of the complaints may be ranked by severity are we able to look at that like do you have categorizations where are some of those complaints to where you know like rating i'm i'm just using hypothetically like a ranking from one to ten or a type of or a type of complaint um like excessive for sexual you know just do you have them categorized in that way or is it is it are you able to uh pull that data from your system yes ma'am okay yeah that's uh you're talking about allegations you can you can you can sort anything in the system by an allegation you can you can pull i can figure out exactly how many of each allegation we looked at five and a half years is what we use for this uh this presentation this is what what i was told to look up but you know this particular system dates back to 2013 but yes we can we can look at it the way you described now and and we can break it down by race we can break it down by gender uh the allegations you can break it down by officer you can do it you know there's there's a lot of there's a lot of functionality there thank you john uh thank you sheryl i was going to say that um when you look at the numbers and the african-american community represents around 11 i would think the hispanic community is around 30 and then when you look at only eight percent here i don't know that that those numbers kind of tell you something you know i don't know what they're telling you but they're telling you something that you you have and the white population is around 50 i think 45 to 50 and so but those numbers seem to to to line out but somehow we're missing information from the hispanic community i don't know maybe the service is adequate or or like like living was saying we've got a breakdown in the ability to communicate there and i i do want to say i know chief dixon and um some of his other officers are trying to kind of bridge that gap right between the hispanic community maybe the trust maybe the lack of trust to report crimes and things like that i know that there is work that that is being done and i think that that's something that's very relevant uh you're right i mean i think whether city of denton or denny county we're more than 25 just alone in k-12 at the dentin isd it's 31 so i know way more i'm just not why uh you know and like you said maybe the service is adequate but i i don't mean to be a negative nelly but i think it's probably better well i can tell you yesterday speaking to that lily and i had two um ladies call me and we had a discussion for about an hour and they were both immigrants to our country and they spoke exactly to what you just spoke to is how we have been coming uh closer together in the last year and they would have never called the police department for what they did yesterday and that was to help them and in the course of an eviction that they were going through and asking us for assistance even though they knew that they weren't here legally they still didn't they had enough trust in us that they reached out to us so i think we are making some some ground here that's good and i know that hopefully uh i know karama kind of put a stop to it but hopefully those meetings will continue katina so could it possibly be um because i see the unknown and not listed i know um sometimes there's nuance to hispanic and latinx uh communities and how they identify could that potentially be an issue that there's more um that there are more um hispanic or latinx um complaints but that they that there's no proper classification for their ethnicity or you know how they identify culturally if i may if i may i don't know and i'll just i'll defer to assistant police chief but i know that for me uh it'll say hispanic non-white or or sometimes i'm hispanic but i'm included in white it depends you know who's dealing with me um so i don't know how that's done but that can very possibly be what's going on and i've noticed that where it'll say hispanic and white um and so i'm wondering if that if the white um if some of the hispanic numbers are are lumped in with white or unknown not listed i definitely believe it's possibly about the unknown or not listed we're going to have to like i said we're going to have to go through those and figure out what the problem is with those 33 records and see so the numbers could change dami i was curious if chief you believe that you have the resources that you need to communicate with our community about how they may go about filing a complaint both in english and spanish and in any other forms or um if you have the communications resources that you feel like the department would need to help educate citizens about how they can move forward if they feel like they have a complaint to file we do we have an amazing well we have a great relationship inner that in the city being able to use resources both with our public information office and with corporate communications here at the city additionally we work very well with twu unt nctc and get an out joint messaging so we have introduced a number of ways for people to reach out to us both online and in person they can go online and send in a complaint anonymously through email they can call and leave messages they can come up to a police department we can send people out to meet we've opened up as many channels as we can but we're going to continue to try to get better communication now because we have other communities in our city that aren't latinx hispanic they come from the middle east eastern asia places like that so that's really we're trying to make them a broader focus one thing i wanted to add real quick and uh on our website we do have uh we do have a spanish-speaking option on our website when it comes to making complaints with the department i don't know that it's been utilized i don't think it has but it's there it's an option for our spanish-speaking community would you possibly be able to share with me what other intersections you you all capture regarding the the complaints aside from race and gender well obviously there's the standard stuff with uh with your date and times we also can capture it by supervisor but it all depends on if the data was filled out correctly one of the things i did find is that some of the records are not complete so you have to you have to fix those i think in some instances and we're dedicated to doing that from here on out but there are a number of data points and i don't have them all right here in front of me but it could be something as a shift it could be a supervisor that's assigned to the individual there's information about the officer i think there's actually information there's some ways to capture some information about the officer's background things like that but i'd have to take a little deeper dive in it to determine how how much quality data we have there did you have anything else specifically yeah i mean i guess i'm just wondering if you all can provide to us the data points that are captured around the person who's making the complaint and the data points that are captured around the officer in which they're complaining about um because it seems like i don't know i'm just wondering what is bringing up for me is that there are i think people have looked it up some barriers it could be for people to feel like they can make complaints and i think that this committee is like likely interested in trying to reduce those barriers because it would just help um with transparency with the police department and citizen trust so just wondering like what information you all might be able to share around that because it could help us in determining if there are barriers to folks making complaints or who better understand who might be making complaints and who they might be making complaints about without like names or anything just like the things you can actually document about right cameron i'd like to ask you a question were you specifically asking if um we can do a better job of identifying the lgbtq community i'm thinking that but not just that like our aging population people with um disabilities like all types of things that's that's kind of what i'm leaning at is like there could be trends that we're completely missing um because of if we might only be and i get that maybe there's limited time but if it's a form that folks are filling out that they can make a complaint if there are sections that allow them to put things about themselves they might right um so that's my thinking around that i'm just wondering what information is captured i can tell you anecdotally that i saw a pretty strong representation of mental illness in some of these complaints as i went through a lot of these and i know that that's a it's a big thing for our community is to to provide the right uh you know collaborative approach to mental illness and i did see that when just in this again this is just this is not a data-based summation it's just simply anecdotally i saw a pretty strong representation of mental illness in some of the complaints something um i'd like to uh chime in something i wanted i'd like to know how many um how many officers like like what's the protocol for identifying yourself like as an officer and how many people that have put in complaints without knowing the officer's name or like without knowing who the without knowing the officer's badge number whatever it is that's a great question and you know over the last couple of years i've been involved in every one of these complaints that come through and and occasionally we'll get a complaint where the the complainant doesn't know the officer's name or maybe in fact it's actually more common to not know the officer's name but they can provide us with the details that we're going to need and we seem to have a very strong record of determining who those people who those officers are so if somebody complains of misconduct and they don't know the officer's name as long as they can provide us with some basic details we'll we'll be able to determine the officer's identity the protocol though for an officer to identify themselves is they're you know they're typically they need to identify they need to say who they are they need to say their officer so and so but if the person demands more information they they like a name and a badge number they're required to give their badge i am curious if the training for officers as it relates to folks with visual impairment specifically includes badge number automatically because any member of the community could walk up on somebody with a visual impairment and declare themselves a police officer so i'm just curious if that's part of the training i know that may not be a question you guys can answer tonight but it is something that's being brought to my mind as we're having that conversation well i can tell you mem that i don't remember anybody ever saying that i i don't remember being part of the training and and maybe it's because it hasn't really come up as much you know with with officers and so maybe you know how things are if something is not happening frequently sometimes it's it's just not something that's that's probably thought about but it's a good point you also have hearing impaired individuals and so there's ways to make sure that they get the information they need to correct me if i'm wrong is this the complaint form yes that is that's on the website and that's getting that's going to be updated shortly by the way we've got some new ideas that is that's the website right there pointing out okay um have you so you said it's going to be updated pretty soon have you guys put those updates on there um will there be a box for people to fill out their race will it be a box for people to like like be more specific about how they identify because a lot of because if these are the complaint forms this doesn't it doesn't like the color of the person or the sexual orientation whatever it may be of the person may get left out in these boxes it's definitely not my field of expertise when it comes to that i don't know if some folks may not want to fill it out but what you're saying is that it should be made available to fill yeah yeah okay yeah oh i agree with that and so that's okay donna donna so uh yes donna diamond on behalf of uh twu um some of the students are um concerned that cultural competency and sensitivity um is not really being really being um implemented in your trainings um what can you say about that well i'm going to defer to chief dixon on that uh i think that's more of a question for him who wants to do that so we understand that there's always going to be training gaps in police departments so one very concerted effort that we've undertaken in the last 12 months is one putting together a comprehensive training plan we're being more intentional more directional on what training we're bringing here we just had fair and impartial policing come here and train the trainer we had 20 people from within our organization we also opened it up to outside agencies to participate in that that is one of the best um implicit bias trainings for law enforcement there are in the country we're bringing them back to teach the executive team as well as community members so we're going to have about 30 of us in that class we're being very intentional on bringing more different types different styles of that because we understand you can't just have one training and then drop that and not let it go it's got to be ongoing it's got to be very directional it's got to be very intentional so in the next couple of years and i'm not i'm not going to speak for yance here or travis on this call but they'll tell you that their training has really picked up the pace in the last 18 months and i will say that cultural diversity is a mandated class by tico that uh you must go through in order to even pass the basic police academy so cultural diversity as well as other cultural classes and to the tune of the way we interact with the public with other types of disabilities are now mandated classes by tico does anybody have any more questions because we're going to just about ended and sarah from the uh this from the um city manager's office is going to um get on and kind of get us where we need to be for the next meeting and the information that we've requested yeah i i have a question okay actually the communication that just occurred answered my first question so i do appreciate that and that was the um implicit bias trainings and how often those occur but looking at the sustained complaints corrective action document it says that there were um six incidents where training was provided can we get information on what type of training was provided for those corrective action pieces yes we'll attach those to that same graph this is mike again i have two more slides and that's it okay i think these are important it'll explain something uh oops you folks had asked can you see the complaints and there chapter 143 specifically deals with personnel files there are two there are two files maintained by the police department on each police officer one is called the a file and that's because it's section 143.089a that is the public file maintained by the civil service commission and it contains accommodations uh performance evaluations those parts of a internal affairs investigation if the officer was suspended for at least one day so not only does the chief file a disciplinary memo with the civil service commission for the suspension but the underlying internal affairs investigation also becomes part of the public file that's the a file the g file is the confidential file that's maintained by the police department and i underlined i'll read it a police department may maintain a personnel file on a police officer employed by the department for the department's use but the department may not release any information contained in the department file to any agency or person requesting information related to a police officer that's the problem that underlined language means that any if there's an internal affairs investigation and the officer was not suspended for at least one day demoted bypassed for promotion or indefinitely suspended that internal affairs investigation is confidential by law we cannot release it to anyone outside the police department there is some exceptions to the city council the city manager and the city attorney and i won't go into the defined points of the law that provision right there can be only changed by the legislature or through a meet and confer agreement and as my last point points out this restriction is a significant restriction on the ability for citizen oversight of a police department that's subject to chapter 143 in the austin meet and confer agreement there is a specific provision that allows this confidential information to be reviewed by the police monitor there as well as the citizens review committee so when you ask to see the files that did not result in discipline i need to consider whether or not i believe there's an exception to this rule or the statute that would allow you to see it so that's what i'm going to have to kind of think about but that is the law and currently the meet and confer agreement does not provide a provision that would allow anyone outside of the police department the city manager the city attorney the city council to see those confidential files so that's all i have but i thought it was important to point that out and the last thing i just want to say is i'm hopeful that let me stop this i hopeful that this this presentation that i did makes you realize that it's not as simple as just fire the officer today there's a lot of due process and contractual and statutory provisions that the police department and the law department has to file when it follow when it comes to the investigation of alleged police misconduct so unless someone has any questions about those last two slides i am done thank you mike okay thank you sarah okay so i'll take the last item i'm going to ask rachel she can bring up the slide so just wanted to review what is proposed for the next committee meeting and get the committee's direction so when we did review the draft schedule with the committee at the first meeting we had two public input sessions so the first public input session is planned for next week thursday july 23rd and i'm just going to add in after hearing some of the committee's questions tonight regarding the data we'll probably spend the first part of the meeting actually reviewing your questions giving you providing you some of that data that you've asked for tonight and then the second part of the meeting for next week would be this public input session so we've proposed it as follow but we'll take the committee's direction so it would be an opportunity for citizens to call in and speak to the committee to share their experiences their stories their thoughts or their input regarding use of force in the police department citizens would have a proposed maximum time of four minutes per speaker we propose that to be consistent with our city council meetings and public input the committee members may ask clarification questions to the citizens and then the meeting would be proposed to continue until all so the citizens have spoken or no longer than 8 30 p.m we do have a second public input session plan so for some reason not all speakers could speak at that meeting they could be scheduled for the one in august in addition to providing the opportunity to speak by phone directly to the committee we are also proposing to develop an online form for citizens to submit their input electronically what we would do is then compile all of those responses and send the written comments to the committee we do kind of a first round to provide you what we receive within the next week but we would go ahead and leave that form open probably through the end of august so that citizens through the next month can submit that input to you for your consideration as you're coming up with recommendations and findings to report to city council if we move forward with this staff will go ahead and release a press release tomorrow we can push it out through our social media channels through various community groups to try to get as much public input as possible for this committee to consider and then the second public input session would be planned for thursday august 20th and then we just also outlined i'm just looking ahead a little bit further so the committee knows what may be coming at future meetings it's kind of an agenda for thursday july 30th which includes more discussion in regards to some of the use of force policies that we have not provided an overview yet so we'll go ahead and take um committee discussion is everybody okay with the four minute time for the phone calls okay yeah you're just so i'm clear we would not have really any other business or discussion as a committee that night we would be simply to hear public comment correct no we go ahead sarah so it is up to the committee i'm just hearing the discussion tonight thought it might be valuable just to be timely to some of your questions for additional data maybe take the first 30 minutes no longer to to take you through some of that data but that certainly could be up to the committee's direction or we could take public input first and then follow up can i ask a question sure how how i've watched some of the recent city council meetings and i recognize that when people have comments to make it can go for a long time so i'm wondering i see that it says six to eight thirty does that mean we're not taking any more comments at eight thirty comments until they're done until they're done and if there's more the cutoff will be at eight thirty okay and then there'll be another session where if they didn't get through this time they'll continue over into the next public session session yeah i just want to offer offer up an option because i don't know how many people might register or call in that we could possibly hear those updates on the 30th when we're having more info about use of force from the police department and allow for more time for public comment but that's just my suggestion but i want that's an option well that that could be fine but i think that since you ask it and we're um right in the thick i think we should stay consistent with the meetings and the information that you asked for that we bring it back so there's not a big time lapse in between that and we could probably knock that out the first 30 minutes and then um we would have more time for the for the phone calls and the questions and comments yeah another thing i wondered is whenever you guys say call in are they going to be calling a certain phone number are they going to be calling it through like the zoom it would be uh calling by phone to speak to the committee and that's how we have established it for the city council and for the other boards and commissions and there's just some technical and security reasons why it's very difficult to do um allow individuals to call in by zoom with video content yeah what's the number uh we will have that for you tomorrow morning i don't have it off hand but we'll give you a press release um that we could then share out to the the community cool yeah that's what i was worried about i'm thinking like we gotta want to tell as many people as possible so thank you lillian i was just gonna ask if you could send a spanish version of that press release i would be helpful okay city council if there's someone that's speaking in spanish if you would allow double times for that message to be translated sure that's a great question i actually um just messaged um about an hour ago our director of public affairs to line up an interpreter um for next thursday evening um and yes we can do it in spanish as well for the press release um it are they're going to be uh what's the registration process i know like for the county meetings sometimes it just seems like they are straining a net you know with trying to weed people out to keep them from basically calling in or coming in so i just want to know what the registration process looks like and how easy it would be just for an everyday citizen to be able to call or you know get on the agenda for the meeting sure that's a great question um and we've learned a lot through um having our city council public comment and that process and making sure um it's easy for for citizens to call in so they could call in beginning 30 minutes before the meeting would begin we have call takers that would be available they would record their name and contact information and tell them they would be given a call back and they queue them up so they don't have to wait around on the line for maybe potentially an hour to two hours they would be given a call back cued up and then put through to speak with the committee and then we are able to ask them questions is that correct that i read that correct yes we would propose um to be again consistent with city council that you could ask some clarification questions um so if something wasn't clear um in terms of the the experience that the resident was sharing um that you could ask them those questions excellent thank you anything else sarah uh nope unless there's any other comments from the committee i just want to make sure we have clear direction if we want to take um the first 30 minutes to review some of the data and questions we heard tonight or if you would like to delay that until the the 30th meeting i think that we should take the my i think we should take the first 30 minutes to review the data that we've asked for and then go right into um the calls from the citizens okay okay does that require a motion or we're just going to just uh by uh show of hands okay first 30 minutes aye okay thank you thank you is that is that it sarah that is that is it okay so this will conclude the meeting for tonight um we will be back here again next thursday and the first 30 minutes we'll go through the data that we requested and and any questions that we have and then we'll go into public comments so i want to thank you all for participating again tonight and we'll see you next thursday