Okay, good evening. Today is the fourth meeting of the use of force ad hoc committee. We only
have a few more meetings left. So we're going to kind of just dive right into what we need
to do. And if you've had a chance to look at the minutes from last week, we will need
to make a motion to approve those minutes, except we have one correction item. And last
week, Cameron cops was marked absent and Cameron was present. So we'll need a motion to approve
the minutes from last week with the correction of Cameron's attendance. And can I get a second?
Okay, all in favor, please just raise your hands and hold them up for a few minutes so that
we can get everybody okay. All in favor, hands up. Motion carries. Okay, thank you.
Tonight, I think we're going to hear from Chief Dixon first. And then we'll move on to the next
item, we kind of move the agenda around. So we'll hear from him. And then we'll go on to our next
what we have after that. Chief Dixon, the chair English just interrupts that we're gonna you're
gonna call item C first right now. I'm sorry. That's okay. I just want to formality wise call
item C and then we'll return to item B. Okay, we'll go to item C, receive a report and hold
discussion regarding the police department's policies, procedures, training, and reports
relevant to the ad hoc committee's work. All right, good evening. It's great to see everybody
today we're going to jump right into presentation for tonight. And one of the purposes for us giving
you the information ahead of time was so you all could look over the policies, and we could spend
the bulk of our time tonight kind of going over so I want to start with chapter 401 with bias based
policing and see if there was any concerns as far as a language goes or if there's any questions
about this general order.
And because I'm sharing my screen Madam Chair if someone has a question can you let me know so I
can take it down? Okay. I can't see everyone when I have the shared screen up. I can't see
that many either but just if I see somebody I'll let you know.
Hey Chief, make sure you have the city value two or three screens so you can you can you won't
have that problem. Come on Chief, let's get a smile now. I'm working on it.
If there's nothing on bias based was there anything in 310 the K-9?
I have a question in general about all of the policies we're reviewing tonight.
Okay. We've talked in the past weeks about the service that you use to kind of identify
changes that need to be made based on law and things like that in best practice. The company
that you use or have all these policies been reviewed and are in line with that service that
we talked about last time. I'm sorry I don't have my notes so I can't reference the name but I hope
you know what I'm talking about. So when we get, that's a great question, so when we get these
general order updates from Lexapol they come and they're already vetted from their team of
attorneys that pay special attention to Texas best practices everything that Texas Police Chiefs
Association deems a best practice, Supreme Court case law, Circuit Court case law, and any Texas
case law. So they're already pre-vetted before they come out. We have the ability to further tailor
them to be Denton specific after that. So are there Denton specific modifications in these policies
that we're reviewing tonight? There's always going to be Denton specific things in them
because like we talked about before nothing that we're going to do here or any other city is going
to be a canned, fully canned approach right? So I'll pull up the full policy here.
Did it come up?
There it is. Okay so for bias-based policing
most of this is going to be pretty generic if you want to use that term because it covers
policing in its general sense. There's not going to be much in the bias-based policing part that's
going to be specific to Denton. This is more specific to what is required through state
reporting through TECOL every year and that's the racial profiling report that came out of Sandra
Bland Act both versions of it and then it goes into what we expect of our supervisor. So if there's
one place that is going to be specific to us here these are the things that I ask of our supervisors
on top of the ones that are listed here. We have them have monthly meetings with all of their
subordinates so sit down one-on-one meetings with their subordinates every month just to have
discussions what's going good what they can improve on general conversation because when
you're dealing with human beings you're going to get to know them so you can get to know their
their idiosyncrasies and if there's something going on with them outside of work I want them
to catch that in those monthly meetings. What I don't want is for a relatively small thing like
them taking two days off as sick to manifest itself into something bigger because we haven't
been paying attention to our officers so in addition to the supervisor responsibility specific for
bias-based policing we ask that their meeting and having these monthly meetings to try to identify
other things outside of just bias-based so we can help get our employees the help that they may need
to to better perform and better represent us collectively. Did that answer it for you, Jane?
But everything else in this one is going to be consistent with what state requires.
Was there any any other questions that y'all had?
You can go on to the next one, Jane. I have a question. Okay, who is that? This came on
um sorry I've been on video calls all day and I just can't be on the screen right now. Okay um we
really would like I know you haven't but this this point forward I mean yeah we need everybody's
screen turned on just for the sake of um seeing who's here and making sure we have enough people.
Okay so I saw that it said um that you're reviewing things like in a time you're having
the discussions with the officers in a timely manner but I also heard you say monthly so is
it that you do them monthly but the policy just says a timely manner?
Are you talking about which part of were you talking about the timely manner?
I think it was just above uh the lower case a
or it might have been lower case a under four something.
I can also go to item b while you're looking for it um I think it's 401.5 little a is
what she's referring to yeah yeah for supervisor responsibilities yes so what I'm talking about the
monthly meetings are outside of this those are in general we're talking about bias based policing
the timely manner is that when you see something that raises your alarm you need to be bringing
that so if it's a sergeant that catches something on one of their officers they need to bring it to
their lieutenant in a timely manner so that they can address it what we don't want is for these
things to be sitting on a shelf somewhere or something today you don't say anything and a
month later something happens that manifests itself and we find out later that you had this
information and that you failed to notify anybody about it. Okay so that kind of brings me to the
the letter b I was wondering how often you all review the footage it says periodically but I
didn't know if there's like an internal recommendation for best practice of how
often I'll review the footage yeah so we have quarterly audits that we do outside of the bias
based policing outside of any of these um general orders individually we have supervisors conduct
quarterly audits of everything so we want a cross section of body camera footage we want a cross
section of report writing um affidavit preparation even their cars to make sure their cars have the
equipment in them that they need whether that be cones flares any equipment they may need fire
extinguishers we just want to make sure that our officers are equipped to go out and serve the
public in the best manner they can thank you I was just wondering how often it was certainly
um was there any questions about the canine policy
I'll move to uh handcuffing and restraints
was there any questions about this that you all saw while you were reviewing the general order
chief I was hoping you could speak to um the use of restraints for people with disabilities
specifically both those with mobility impairments or visual impairments in particular
where removing somebody's mobility device or changing the way that they are able to move about
like handcuffs on a person in the wheelchair and things like that I see that it's addressed
that you know you talk about it a little bit but it didn't really have much detail um or maybe I
skimmed it a little too close closely and should have read more carefully but I wondered if you
could speak to that just a little bit so I could understand sure so when you talk about putting
too much detail in here what we don't want to do is to kind of put us in a box right everything is
going to be dependent on the situation at hand what we want to do is give them guidance because
at the end of the day general orders is really a guidebook for law enforcement so we want to
give them guidance so we don't want to paint them into a corner where they have to do a b and c
each time so if there's someone that's visually impaired and they're not being arrested for like
a violent offense it gives the officers more of an opportunity to maybe they place the handcuffs
a different way than they would someone that's violent same thing with someone in a wheelchair
maybe they don't they don't have to restrain their movement as much oftentimes people that
are found to have disabilities they're being compliant you're going to see a lot more
officers using their discretion to allow them to move about as much as they can more freely
because officers also understand if they top their mobility in their wheelchair bound
who's responsible for moving them now they're gonna have to pick them up right and then transfer
them safely from one spot to another so by and large police officers understand that when they
restrict someone's mobility they're essentially taking on the liability of then having to
physically move them which then means you have now to have to have multiple officers there
to lift someone up safely and move them from one place to another thank you you're welcome
so
any questions about the rap or any other control devices while we're here
electronic control weapons ecw is commonly referred to as tasers
was there any questions about this general order
chief i have a generic question if you don't mind please absolutely um and going through these
general orders i know there's a reason that we're doing this um have there been complaints or
to me these seem so generic i have i can't find a problem with them so we're just reviewing them
for the sake of making sure we understand what's in writing or well because because most of these
all of these policies that were going over all the general orders that were going over they all
relate directly to use of force which is what the committee was put together for so we just want to
make sure like the very first meeting we remember that we had some discussion about language that
was captured in those first few general orders we just want to go through all the ones that relate
to use of force so we give you all the opportunity to see them to hopefully understand them a little
bit better and then if there's any question about the language captured in them that we kind of talk
about it and if there's room to change that language around we discuss it and then maybe
we change the language a little bit but that was really our purpose for kind of everything we did
giving a broad overview then go through the use of force simulator and then coming back and now
having these discussions well my general comment is they're quite generic i don't find them offensive
it does give you some leeway so i guess the exercise is just mainly to give us the opportunity
to see what's in writing is that correct correct all right thank you and thank you for the taking
us through it thank you certainly
we just thought it'd be a better use of everyone's time especially on the committee so you could have
more thoughtful conversation to kind of give you these general orders ahead of time so you can read
them and then we can come right in and just have this straight to it if there's any discussion we
need to have and then we can move on to other business that you all find you know important
so we're done with the ones that we're going to cover for today we'll come back i think in two
weeks and then cover the last few and we'll move on madam chair thank you and i hope you guys are
taking notes because well you know of the things you want to discuss are the things that you think
that need to be addressed or changed because we only have a few more meetings a couple more
meetings actually until we have to actually start putting into practice what we want uh what changes
we'd like to see so thank you chief dixon um next we'll go back to um item b which is
wait hold on yeah item b receive a report and hold discussion regarding
the public comments received at the first public input session that was last week and public
comments received through online form and provide an opportunity for committee members to share their
stories experiences or explanation for why they joined the ad hoc committee and um does anybody
want to start first don't okay donna donna i can't i can't hear you you're on
yes um we're to hold a discussion regarding the the public comments that we got last week
and uh the public comments that we got that were phoned in and received online you should have that
and provide an opportunity for the committee to share their stories experiences
and explanation for why they joined the ad hoc committee okay i don't mind starting okay um i
actually joined um on behalf of twu i was recently appointed by the governor to be student regent
so i was sent an email regarding this committee and um i just found it really interesting i
um i'm still you know kind of getting used to um our purpose and um i do really want to make
a change i do not live in denton but i know that um there are still concerns i understand
that there are people that do not see an issue but if there was not an issue we wouldn't have
this committee to begin with um so i'm just here to listen and um apply any knowledge that i may
have so we can figure out a solution for the betterment of the denton community yeah
does anybody else have any
ronda did you raise your hand yes i'll say i'll say something okay um well i have a phd in
psychology and a 34 year career in public health so um i would think that all of these when the
mayor asked me to if i wanted to serve i said yes because i'm pretty sure that some of that background
helps me to think about these issues i hope carefully i also did a lot of academic work and
research and conflict resolution so looking for alternative ways to solve problems both between
individuals and uh and groups so my academic background and just general interest that's why
i'm here thank you ronda gary did i say you raise your hand
sure yeah our team way of denton county works with a number of nonprofits
community as well as working very closely with the city of denton and um unlike many
nonprofits who specialize in micro social worker direct service we do a lot of our work in the
area of system change oh uh system change of this nature and then the work we do with respect to
community needs assessment uh really makes us very interested in being part of helping in this in this
area and on a personal level i'm absolutely committed to this process and making sure that
we take this opportunity uh at a national level and here locally and denton to make some significant
change for the people who live there thank you gary jamey
and then you next yancy so um i have to tell you that i received um through social media
some inquiries about myself um prior to the public comment and then after the meeting closed
suggesting that perhaps i don't have a disability because you can't see it on the screen and so
before i talk about why specifically it's important for me to be part of the committee i want to state
publicly that for any of you that haven't met me or for anyone that watches um our presentations
online or on the dtv site that i have cerebral palsy and i have been a lifelong wheelchair user
and as a result of my being in a wheelchair i've had the opportunity to advocate for people with
disabilities on the federal state and local level and believe that it's important to do so
and so i am here for a multitude of reasons but i want to share one particular story
that might help the public to better understand why having a person with a disability serve on
this particular committee is important when i was 19 years old i was advocating for additional
changes to be made in the city that i lived in in the time and there were going to be
um decisions made out county bus service and transit service in that area and as a rule of
the conversations the discussion that was being had was to make the number of accessible buses
that would be available to the public and so myself and a number of my friends protested
in part by chaining ourselves to a city bus as an older person and a mature adult i'm not sure i
would make the same choice today that i did then but the person that was chained next to me was
thrown from their wheelchair injured and ultimately died as a result of their attempt to protest so i
understand the moment that we're in is very much about racial equality and justice for people that
experience excessive force as it relates to the color of their skin but i think that the use of
force and understanding the policies around them impact our entire community
thank you jamie and i'm glad that you're serving i i am sorry that um
your participation was called into question but and and i don't feel like that you should have to
explain to people um if you're disabled or not a lot of people are disabled and it is just not
shown visibly and so um i think that we all come from different places and spaces and we all have
different experiences and that's what makes the world go around so thank you for sharing that
with us and thank you very much for participating okay i think yes you're next
yeah so i uh i was asked to be a part of the committee and uh i accepted the nomination to
be a part of the committee for a number of reasons one it's a lot of misinformation out there
about law enforcement in general uh but by and by and large didn't you can't just paint law
enforcement with a broad brush you have to take specific incidents that happen in your community
and try to you know make your community department a better department uh over the
past couple of weeks i sat back and i've actually reviewed all of the videos that
uh the recorded meetings and stuff and i started questioning my own cell phone why am i a part of
the committee because uh most of the meetings that we've had and nothing against the committee or
anything we've gone against the mayor's charter um we've gone everywhere from you know the chief
and even the city attorney i provided us information regarding state law uh and what the police
department here in denton is bound by as well as the chief providing the policies that
at hand the officers here have to follow by uh it seemed like that we brush over those and we
some members of the committee might have an alternative agenda to try to have this committee
as something put together outside of the scope of what the mayor actually want us to be uh to
come back in a couple of days actually a couple of months a couple of weeks to provide suggestions
strictly regarding the use of force committee i agree that we all come from different backgrounds
and we have you know various stories or whatever and i appreciate all the comments and all that
me myself i actually have stories where i've been racially profiled as well but that didn't
pertain to denton pd or it's a local agency so i can't just say well denton pd is bad because
this happened to me or whatever so i still i'm still glad that i'm a part of this community
uh maybe i can answer questions that's regarding you know why denton pd does stuff a certain type
of way because there's a lot of misinformation uh out there and it's the community is not informed
about a lot of stuff i think we saw that in the first meeting where a lot of people felt that
officers graduate the academy one week and they're on the street on their own the next week
and that's not the case and then a lot of you guys didn't even know that there were different levels to
uh the certifications that officer receive and the specialties that officers receive
so me i'm out to put that information out to let you guys know the reason why denton pd does the
things that denton pd does but at the same token i also want to make sure that we stay on task
because if we start going down these rabbit holes we're never going to be able to come back
in the 90 days that the mayor gave us to discuss use of force which is basically what we were
we were designed to do even council member davis who's uh tried to get us back on track last week
but in my opinion he was shut down uh when he was trying to you know say what the council want from
this committee uh my and that's my view on it he was shut down and we even ended the meeting with
in my opinion certain members wanted to go about their own way and have different meetings outside
of this meeting uh which if you want to talk about history since we brought that up last week
in my opinion if everybody's not inclusive now where history is repeating itself because it's
going to be part of segregation because i don't know if i'm a part of that meeting are you talking
about the police department because you don't want officers on the committee are you talking
about this group because they're disabled so i just i'm glad to be a part of the committee
but at the same token i want to make sure that we stay on task on what the charter that the
mayor actually put at hand and value the input for everybody that's actually trying to give you input
thank you and and i appreciate you keeping us on task uh willie and then um donna
willie turn your mic on
can't hear you
hello can't hear you space bar and you should come on will they hit your space bar you should
be able to come on hit your space bar you should be able to come on willie
oh we lost willie okay oh here are you there willie you still on mute we still can't hit you
can the host help him out
i don't think so hold on no he has to do it
oh there you are willie there you are good yes so sure you're just trying to mute me
you know i i have to agree with the uh the young man who uh just spoke because i was confused
because i wasn't there the first night when you all got the charge so it's really helpful to me
tonight to hear and then what um uh the council jesse councilman mcjess uh davis said in his
remarks and so i just need to now i'm focused i know what the charge is so i want to stay on
that charge i even got it printed up so that i could look at it look at it and make sure i'm
i'm straight because i would most certainly like to talk about stuff that i want to talk about
i've got a lot of stuff and i just want to use this platform to get it out to ask questions about
it to discuss where i came from to talk about what my interests are and all but come on guys
we either got to decide we're going to do what we're asked to do as as we gather information
and i know many times we just kind of go different directions but we're we're sincere about them in
that we're hoping that they help us make the decision we're supposed to make that the city
the mayor has charged us to make but we really have to be careful and all of us have to monitor
each other and just maybe ask nicely what how does that help us what are you what is your point
toward helping us move toward the charge now that's what i'm going to be saying i'll be listening
for that tonight and some of the things the main thing that they have on this this list of what
we're supposed to do is to develop a report are clear of clear findings conclusions and achievable
recommendations that promote the use of best practices in use of force policies and training
for the denton police department key dentons police department
um uh recommendations that are achievable and towards these things that they're looking
forward to so i've got it here before me i asked for it and now i know what to do and i'll be
trying to accomplish those things tonight and from this point forward well we're going to have
discussion uh and start diving into that so i look forward we look forward to hearing from you
uh willy and um get ready all right okay now now you got to mute yourself so we can go to the next
person all right okay okay don't go anywhere just mute yourself all right all right okay oh you got
it uh uh donna just had a quick um comment on that on both what you had to say mr answer green and um
mr hutzpah i believe um i just being as a student um i kind of feel like that's a little bit
aggressive towards me and i know that's probably not how um you intended it to be the way that you
responded um for people outside or um within our school district per se they kind of just want to
know that they're safe and i don't know if even me whenever i provide input or based off of what
our students say if that is tapering away from our central target or what we're supposed to be
discussing however i feel like for us to get to the place that we want to be is if we have different
perspectives and i don't mean to i don't mean any disrespect by that um however um it's just you know
kind of our job too
uh i don't think that was directed towards you um there there's a lot of moving parts
a lot of moving parts going on so um just just hang on um thank you though john i thought you had
your your hand up yes uh thank you um i would just like to i'll try to be very brief and just
say i'm glad to be on the committee i was asked to be here um uh growing up in the city of houston
i had a lot of very difficult experiences with the police and i've learned in my almost 70 years
that you cannot lump people you can't lump black people you can't lump white people you can't lump
police officers and so uh my participation here is to help us to do the very best we can to be the
very best city with the best practices possible and i'm just happy to be a part of the process
and thank you for the charge that came from the mayor and i too commit to working toward that goal
thank you jamie did you have your hand up again oh okay did any did anyone else want to speak
okay camia
yeah um so my background i think people were sharing their background a little bit
uh my background is in social work i came to denton as a student at unt and um
i kind of fell in love with the town uh in fact my parents said to me early on you're never going
to leave here and i told them yes i would because i was determined to go to new york um and i love
it here uh i love denton a lot um i've created a great support system here and as a social worker
i've been connected with many agencies and denton um nonprofits i've seen uh i've seen the
impact of collective power and community um i felt that year for the first time in my life
which has kept me anchored here and that's why that i do organizing an activist and advocacy work
in this town and that is ultimately why i joined this committee i think that
um i also want to ensure that the policies around police use of force are
what's the the ones that we develop or suggest um are the ones that are safest
for the people that live in our communities um but i want to also point to um
the fact that there are communities experiences in denton with police that have happened here in
denton with dentin pd that have been harmful and not to say that as everyone's terrible
or whatever but people have had those experiences and at every entity at every profession there's
room to grow and i hope that we can utilize the input that we receive from community members
to help us inform the way we shape these policies so that's what i'd like to share
and uh i'll pass it to someone else
thank you anybody else want to share
and your luck
thank you good evening everyone um i was
a member of the city reached out to the denton independent school district and asked if there
was anyone that was willing to participate on the committee and the superintendent recommended
actually two of us um and the city said we only need one so um here i am but um in my
and and i'm a resident of denton county um graduate of university of north texas and
all of my kids went through the school systems but as an advocate for children um that's a big
reason that i'm excited to serve on this committee um to allow our students to have a voice um in
their upbringing i wasn't able to attend the meeting last thursday but still went through
all the materials and watched the video um and i guess it seemed that there
is a lot of
um concern about the committee even being put together and a lot of that concern
um it appears to come from people who are looking through a lens where they've not ever had any
um negative experiences so i understand why they're coming with that frame of mind but we also have
to consider uh the members of our committee who have a different lens um and make sure that their
voices are heard as well and that we implement practices that will allow all citizens of denton
to have those experiences where they're wondering why we have a committee like this together
um and that's not the case yet but i'm hopeful um that as we work together as a committee
that we'll get to the point where everyone feels like um they can be safe um in their own city
definitely want to have uh or excited about getting into the conversations when we talk about
how we can be more proactive um and build positive relationships especially with our
younger students um to build that trust with police officers before um they have a negative
experience that frames how they forever will view um police after that experience so um that's a
little bit about me and my background and why i'm excited to uh work with you all to make the city
of getting even better than it already is thank you angela jay good evening everybody my name is
jumo bowler i don't understand why my uh owner says jay's phone i haven't been able to correct
that so i'm sorry but i just name it that and that's why i named my phone that's what it is
but uh as far as me and joining the committee uh my wife had talked to me about it my wife katina
talked to me about it and me being in law enforcement over 15 years and all kinds of aspects
as far as juveniles um being a supervisor or didn't kind of share his apartment and so on so
forth she thought that maybe that you know some of the things that i've learned and an experience
would be able to help this this this committee so that's the biggest reason i've joined this
committee and i'm very excited to be here so we'll see how things go thank you uh pastor chambers
i can't hear we can't hear you got it thank you guys so uh i'm very excited to be part of
this committee let me first say i think the den police department and chief dixon is doing a
wonderful job uh but there's always room uh for growth there's always room for change and so i'm
here uh to be an advocate um so that we have a better police department so i'm grateful
uh to be on the committee and thank you so much thank you travis
hello okay okay thank you um so my i was approached um and asked to be on the committee
as well i guess from uh you know to to share my perspective uh and one of the main reasons why
i chose to be on the committee because i wanted to i wanted to hear the community um that's part of
the reason why i got into law enforcement because i've been a police officer now for four years i've
been a black man obviously longer than four years so i know kind of both sides of where everybody's
coming from um one of my goals and my plans was when joining the police department was to
provide a positive impact on children's lives particularly minority children uh to speak to
mrs rick's point um since since being a police officer i have been involved in the school
districts i've participated in the elementary schools uh you know doing uh lunch with a leader
with the schools uh reading to the students and things like that so i've been active as far as
trying to you know reach out to the community reach out to children um as ms rich stated earlier i do
believe reaching out to the children is where where change starts uh and and giving children
a positive uh impact with police officers and a positive experience prior to um typically when
when children are impacted by police officers is using in a negative light uh and it doesn't even
have to be anything violent uh you know a family member going to jail it could be a car accident
you know so which could still be a a tragic incident and so police are i guess linked up with
tragedy because that's typically when you see a police officer you don't see police officers when
you know when everything is is good and and everything is peaceful you know so that that's
one of the reasons why what got meant to law enforcement and then also to be a part of this
this committee and then uh lastly i think um i think uh yance you may have mentioned you know
about lumping everybody together in the group you know and uh and i agree with that you know
there's there's bad people in all professions in the world but law enforcement is the only profession
that when one person does bad the entire profession is frowned upon um there's doctors and lawyers that
malpractice and you know doctors take a patient's life and we're not out in the streets and
protesting the medical field you know there are bad teachers that have inappropriate relationships
with students and that one teacher may be apprehended and brought to justice we don't and
then we sent our students to school to go see that teacher the next day so again that that's been my
mission is just to show a different side of law enforcement and you know to hopefully bring a
positive change to to denton texas and show our community that you know what we see on the news
and other cities or other states that's not always the case and you know that's why i wanted to be a
part of this committee and a part of this community and the police department thank you thank you
did i miss anybody
well i guess it's my turn then huh um my experience is a little different um i'm
from los angeles which is a much larger city um than denton texas of course um my father
was a military police his whole career after 20 years of the military was in policing
until he retired from uh being a regional supervisor for alcohol beverage control in
new orleans my stepdad was a la county detective for uh for the sheriff's department um and i grew
up in south central la so i i've seen police on both sides um my experiences with the police
have been on both sides they're good cops and i've seen bad cops i've seen good white cops
and black cops and i've seen bad white and black cops um and so i was in um i didn't move to dent
until 2002 i was there for the rodney king um i was there uh when the city was on fire um the
reginald denny incident happened 20 blocks from where i lived um i so i i lived one part of where
i lived um it was different set of crips so my experiences um with the police department
have been a little different as i mentioned last week when we had a caller talk about pcp
we did have a gentleman who um broken our house in the middle of the night and he was on pcp
um and we fought him um my mom and i and then she shot him and um and he still kept walking after
um being shot twice so um you know we all come with different experiences
good badder and different um so i try to stay proactive um since i got to denton i became um
i have three kids who've gone through didn't isd so i became active in the schools i ran for school
board and i've served on many boards and have been active in the community i'm also on the advisory
board for the police academy so the said training that um that everybody talks about is one of the
things that we talk about when we meet what the community is concerned about where can we add more
training um to implement for for the officers to go through and things of that nature so um i've had
some experiences here um in denton with the police department but at the same and and they've been
favorable and some haven't been a couple haven't been but um when you're involved you know the
right people to talk to and and that's what i did so i continue to be uh in the community
and working with the community because um not all police are bad i come in from the city that i came
from um and come in here and looking at these issues um some of them are very minute um compared
to uh la pd and the sheriff's department and although nobody is exempt from having problems
with police or any other agency um they do exist and they can always get better and that that is
why i stay involved in my community hey katina hey there i'm sorry i'm i've been listening in but
um i was driving so that's okay we're glad you're here yeah um but i just wanted to chime in i guess
i'm the last person um i was asked to be on the committee by the mayor um myself and my husband
um jamal um and i'm originally from memphis tennessee and i'm from the infamous orange mound
which is the oldest african-american community um in the country that was actually built to be
specifically an african-american community and we've gone through um all the things the you know
from being a thriving community where our teachers and doctors and lawyers lived in our neighborhood
to then um it being crime-ridden because of the war on drugs and just politics and three strikes
you're out in criminalization of black and brown people to now being gentrified um and you know
people that have been in the neighborhood for generations like my family um are experiencing
what gentrification looks like i um came to unt as a school of music student i also attended the
university of memphis that was my when i graduated from high school i went to um university of memphis
go tigers um and i've been a lot like sure i've had positive experiences with the police and
negative i mean um on the university of memphis campus there were many african-american officers
and that's one of them taught me how to parallel park i mean i have police officers in my family
i have uh negative experiences with black officers with white officers and for me i have you know i
have we have three sons um 22 15 and 13 that we have raised all in denton because once we got to
denton once i got to denton and then my husband followed a year later from university of arkansas
and then we married a year after that um we decided to stay and make denton home and it's been
hard for me um because my kids are often the only black kids in white spaces and there are
not many welcoming spaces for black kids and then there's such a polarization that black kids like
my black kids who are you know nerdy and geeky and like japanese and like anime and skateboard
and you know all the different things they they they they're in this middle space where they're displaced
um from just so many different cultures and so you know we've had to wrestle with that in my um
i just want equality i mean it for me it's not about liking the police or not liking the police
because the police officers i know are and that we have relationship with their phenomenal people
um i just think that there's a system of injustice that african-american people by and large are being
impacted by and and because i'm black i'm a black woman i have black sons i just want a better
future for them i want them you know my oldest son has been pulled over by the cops handcuffed
in denton um and treated horribly and i and and you know he he is upstanding in all the you know
but because he's tall and black and has dreadlocks you know we've been pulled over in front of our
own home and asked what we were doing in our own neighborhood and that was the only reason why we
were pulled over so um i don't look at you know i know the gentleman was saying that uh the profession
of police work is the only one where people are um once once a bad cop does something all of them
are are aligned i think that's in every profession i'm in health care and i see that with doctors i
see that with teachers i do see that with various professions but the police profession it's a very
powerful one it's there's a strong power structure um that has been historical that has been
generational um that has lasted for centuries and that was established to oppress people um and a
lot of those policies before black officers could even become black officers there's a good old boy
system that needs to be dismantled and i mean you know it and that's the way i see it it's not even
about the race of the officers it's that it's a system that needs to be dismantled and when i say
dismantled i mean i'm just saying assess and evaluate it to where people groups aren't
criminalized so that's why i'm here um i was asked and i do work in the community independently
um i love dent and i love black dent and i just want to see equality and equity and i want black
boys to respect the police officers i want them to have um to see police officers and not be afraid
because of everything that's been going on in our country and india thank you katina
sarah did you want to um i think did you have something you wanted to talk about the next
sure if you want to move into item d yes okay do you want to call item d we're going to move
into item d and uh sarah's gonna bring that presentation or come forward with that
um so item d um just wanted to review there are four meetings left for the committee um they are
to be held on august 13th august 20th september 3rd and september 10th um just by way of reminder
august 20th will be that second public input session um so on august 13th um we'll review
the remaining policies that chief dixon had referenced if there are any other topics or
information that the committee wants to hear or learn about i'd ask that you get those to us asap
so we can plan to get you that information as quickly as possible as the committee
we'll have to start moving into the next stages of forming recommendations common areas where you
can talk and have a discussion about what you'd like to bring forward in terms of findings or
recommendations to city council as a tool to maybe help the discussion to help the committee move
forward we did send out a survey by email earlier this week for committee members to just indicate
three areas where you have an interest in discussing further where you think there should
be changes where you think there really needs to be more attention or discussion too and then maybe
staff we could try to identify some commonalities for the committee to at least have a starting
point for discussion that doesn't limit it that you could have additional topics just trying to
give you a starting point of maybe what are some common interests amongst all of the committee
members may i ask a clarifying question so i read all the policies for tonight but i must have missed
the survey did it come in the same email as all the policies and agenda for tonight it did i can
resend it again to the committee that just means i didn't pay enough attention i'm sorry no it's
okay i'm sending out a lot of email if you could resend it separately sarah um so yeah maybe it got
caught up in the other stuff that'd be great will do i have a like i guess not logistical
but like a clarifying question also are we it sounds to me i'm digesting the information it
sounds to me like um we're going to come to one of these meetings with our individual recommendations
for changes and also submit some in the survey and then review them all together as a group to
come up with one collective thing we want to push forward or how are we getting like a collective
voice on the the report or the suggested edits or changes that we're having i guess is what i'm asking
sure so or the survey that we had sent out would kind of be a first tool for the committee to use
where you could all set send in your individual input we'd provide a copy of all of that to all
of the committee members i propose not to put names next to it we're collecting that just to
make sure we get it from each committee member but kind of send that out to help you identify
where are the areas where you want to discuss develop some recommendations you could direct
there's a number of different ways it could be handled in terms of drafting a report
for the committee to then review you could direct staff to draft some language in a report a
committee member could you know it usually that's how that occurs is you direct staff so let's say
you know by august 20th or september 3rd you're having some commonalities or things
you could direct staff to come back so that you can review it on the third or the tenth as a committee
and todd i don't know if you have anything else you want to add to that
i think one of the other processes is going on is chief dixon i've been working for the last several
months on analysis of staffing for the police department call loads there's clearly some areas
there where calls are getting stacked that we're trying to figure out what what that business model
needs to look like he's also been working and developing a plan for introducing a social work
group into the police department that would accompany be accompanied by a planes close
officers trying to continue uh you know bringing forth just a different approach to some of the
calls that we've got so we've got some ideas that we're going to be starting to vet with the city
council next week as we're preparing the the upcoming budget i wanted to be pretty careful
though about making sure that we aren't influencing the committee if there's if there's
if there's policies that you've seen if there's in these updates that you just don't think it's
clear enough you think we're lacking training you've got questions about do we are we putting enough
emphasis enough dollars in helping our officers acquire certain skills we'd like to give you the
the floor to to make those suggestions ask those questions so it doesn't look like we're in any way
slanting uh your ideas but i think at some point i would also like to uh bring forward and kind of
lay out for the committee what our thoughts are in terms of incremental upgrades well but i i really
like the idea of kind of giving you the opportunity just to to formulate your own uh issues if you feel
like there's still concerns out there that we haven't hit policies that you don't feel like
we've addressed properly we'd love to we'd love to hear that um and then we i would also like to
run by some of our ideas and you may say hey that's we disagree or that's not going far enough and
that's kind of what this committee was about is is trying to deal with uh how force is used and
avoided and you know how with the training tools that we're providing with our officers can be
enhanced and it's all it all sort of fits together but i don't want to i don't want the committee to
be accused that that we we've come in in in some way altered your thinking so i i would anticipate
kind of giving the committee two or three meetings before we do that um gary and then jamie thank you
todd yeah thank you cheryl uh along the lines of the city manager's comments i found it interesting
when we went through the use of force simulation we went through it in pairs but what was described
to our group was that most often a denton police officer would arrive on a scene alone more often
than not i would be interested to know how often that truly happens because i think it ties back to
a staffing level a budget a budget thing and use of force when you're arriving alone to me as a
layperson seems like it looks differently when you arrive alone as opposed to when you arrive in pairs
so i think you you could kind of help us with that jamie
had to find my it's okay um so over the course of our meetings i've been taking my own notes about
some of the themes that i'm seeing emerge and i think we all are doing the same um but it occurs
to me that some of the recommendations i would like to make or learn more about do have financial
initially financial implications so things like added uh behavioral health and social work
professionals working in conjunction with the police which i know we've started that program and
we want to expand it um additionally education for your officers um statistical transparency about
the types of use of force and some of the aggregate data that we have been shared being
available publicly um on a consistent basis through the website and things like that so that all of
those things the communications the staffing they all have financial implications potentially
and so hearing you say that you guys are also working on the budgets and planning and moving
forward i don't want this committee's recommendations to kind of miss the mark on that timeline
of if we do have recommendations that are gonna be financial in nature how are they gonna come up
against the budget process and your approval process with the city council uh we we will do a
quick overview on i guess i won't say quick uh but we'll do an overview on monday of the staffing
study that we um we've had recently completed that uh we're kind of doing a 10-year look on what the
call load on our department is and it's identified some issues in terms of added resources of patrol
and in investigations um there's there's always opportunities to expand the training budget and
one of the things that i've worked with chiefs uh very closely with is he's come in started
identifying policies identifying identifying areas where where additional training might be needed
from a safety perspective we just get it done if if you feel like that there's certain trainings
you'd like to see integrated into the coursework bring them up let us deal with the financial
issues um i doubt that there's going to be that you know training is not going to break our budget
um so if there's stuff like that that you'd like to see and we need to kick around we are
happy to integrate it and we've got about three or four weeks left to keep altering our proposals
and we are happy to do that ronda
where'd you go okay um sorry i'll be embarrassed if somebody tells me we've already seen this but
uh have we actually seen the uh training curriculum for the officers like day one you study this day
two this because if we have it i would like to um we can bring that for the next the next meeting
um just to kind of tag um onto what jaime was saying i know that we've kind of as we've gone
through some of the policy together i think it was in the first meeting and maybe the second
meeting um the slideshow presentations by the officers um by chief dixon um i know that we've
been asking questions and kind of digging into some of that along the way it's something that
we can revisit those things or should we just kind of just everybody individually be keeping up with
their own um their own notes to present at a at a a different time no i think sarah's keeping
are you keeping records sarah because each of these um each of these meetings are recorded
so we can go back yes and then we've been keeping some notes of some requests that were made for
example um what's in the control of the city versus the county versus you know state legislation
but if there are items that you would like to see it's very helpful if you send those in again if
you had your own things especially through that survey that we'll be sending out um that would
be helpful as well but and specifically the things that there were a couple of other things that
there were questions about and where we kind of i don't know um kind of went back and forth about
will we be revisiting that or i i mean does that make sense will we be going back to those specific
points um to review are we just everybody just needs to do their survey and individual stuff
i'm sorry if i'm asking the same thing are you talking about the statistics that we reviewed
katina just so i understand or was there different policies that you were talking about
a policy that we had some discussion about where there was word change sort of recommendation that
was in the first meeting some comments that lillian was making about some things to advise language
i don't think we have revisited that particular policy um but that was i think to my recollection
one of the only ones where we had some pretty specific word change potential word change
recommendations we haven't really had that um in as many but it was that first meeting where we
reviewed policy and i think we didn't if we did receive those policies in advance i don't recall
doing that um so it might be helpful just to send that out a second time so that when we're filling
out the survey we can highlight amongst ourselves um that space i don't know if that's okay excellent
what jamie said thank you antelope um in addition to the training that the officers see receive when
they first come into the profession i'm really interested in the ongoing training um that officers
receive from year to year or um you know if you get training in your first year and then you go
on and on and on you kind of forget that training so i'm just more interested in the ongoing and
how often those trainings come up specifically as it relates to understanding the differences in
cultural diversities of the people that you're going to be interacting with so i think um i
think that would be on the committee that i'm on so you know you know all the all the trainings
it's easy to get so we can get that from that that the academy and the additional training that the
officers have to get that is required for continued continuing education and then um what other
training that we suggest and they implement that come from the community as well
chief dixon we can get that right
yes you can we'll have it for you okay thank you that we already have it pretty much
done that's what i thought thank you yes jamie i did have one sort of statistic that i'm interested
in and if i'm alone that's fine we can ignore it but it was in regards to the public comments
that were made last week about um just whether or not folks are communicating through the non-emergency
line and how many calls of the potential like an mhmr type call is coming through the emergency
line and how those are answered and you spoke chief sticks in a little bit to like how you've
changed that up during covet times and things like that but i would be interested in statistically
kind of understanding how many use of force um or it calls that result in a use of force come
through 911 versus non-emergency well they're all answered by the same people so they all essentially
go to the same place so i don't i don't know if we would be able to really break that down
so the the individual that was calling in was just sort of talking about how it's
it in that one person's opinion it was difficult to address issues before they escalate and kind of
um how they're routed in the training that happens there so in uh in the training kind
of information that we're going to receive is that going to include anything related to dispatch
or is that only for your folks on the street um we can look at the dispatch training what they
receive over there one of the things that we're working on now as we start incrementally bringing
in the new mental health unit is getting some improved mental health training for dispatch
because oftentimes that's really where the gap is it's a transfer of information like we're sitting
here and i tell you you know the banana is yellow and by the time it gets to the end of the chain
it's probably changed colors two or three times so it's really that gap we're trying to close
and i think uh we're moving down a really creative road that is going to bring us a
lot of benefit i think okay any um anybody else have anything
go ahead donna so after the 15th will we be reconvening um so what will we be discussing
i kind of just wanted to know what the end goal of our committee is and um what will be
if you're able to answer this question what will we um be discussing in our last couple of meetings
i think the ultimate wrap-up for the committee would be you know some programmatic changes that
we're looking maybe some policy changes training changes if there is specific as jamie brought up
if there's specific changes to wording and certain policies that we're looking at kind of looking at
just sort of a holistic report back to the back to the city council and and i would still like
towards the end after we get your questions answered on training that sort of thing to run
some ideas that chiefs got by we've been listening to the committee and how you're absorbing
information uh particularly statistical information and he's and chiefs been working with his staff on
a completely different way of communicating with the public showing that outward facing information
so it's been interesting to hear what you want to see how you want to see it um so you know but again
i'm trying not to in any way jade the you know air cloud the lens you're looking through right
now until we can get your your input back but i would like to kind of run through some of the
ideas we've got that we're going to be moving forward with compartmentalize any changes to
policy you know suggestions you have whether there's a price tag or not and we'll we'll formulate
that in a report back to the council so we'll have a staffing study update she's work on overhauling
all the policies there's additional um questions and suggestions you have and then we will work
these plans and it gives it gives him and his command staff it's sort of a contract with the
community how we're going to move forward thank you
go ahead camya i just wanted to follow up uh have a follow-up question to that question which is
um as a committee that helped like create a recommendation i understand it's a recommendation
it's not necessarily that the city or the mayor will adopt all of the recommendations that we
provide um we're hopeful that they will but will we be looped back in at the end to know
what the outcome was like this is the product of what happened this is what we the finalized
product i was just wondering if we were going to be looking back in i don't know how long that
take we can absolutely probably have a a wrap-up report back to you sometime in in october november
you know what we've recommended what made its way into the budget what policy changes were involved
and what the next year looks like as a result of all these collective efforts and that way you've
got something that you know is kind of a hard takeaway that shows the the work and the input
that you provided with us but that was absolutely the reason is we wanted we just wanted different
eyes different viewpoints on on how we're doing business so we're happy to put that together
jeremy i'm gonna say before i ask my question that i am hesitant to ask it i was wishing someone else
would so i wouldn't have to but i'm gonna ask it anyway and it's really a question for you michael
and it's i'd like to understand the spaces where it would be or would not be legal for the city of
denton to consider a citizen oversight um either process or committee or board where we would sort
of be allowed to stand in that space and where it is not permitted yeah that's a very complicated
issue that i've dealt with for 20 years in austin my thought would be i'd like i personally would
like the committee to recommend and try to stop me if i'm going too far but if you want some form of
oversight how do you envision that because i can come up with a process that i think works but i
don't know if that's what the community or the city management wants so if you think there's some
type of oversight that you want tell us what that is is that a person that works for the city is that
an independent board is that who appoints that person what powers do you think they should have
because what's legal under state law and under the contract is really going to depend on
how that process is structured so i think we we'd like you to to give us some thoughts about how you
envision an oversight process working so while i very much respect that answer i don't know that
i'm qualified or that any of us maybe are qualified to start sketching that out in a way that would be
operational and so i guess my follow-up question would be i'm curious nationally across the country
what are some of the options that are being deployed right wrong or indifferent i'd like to
kind of see where cities have stepped in the space so i can decide what i like about what they're
doing or don't think will work for denton because our police department handles things differently
and we have different information that we've been exposed to so i am curious about a minimum you
could provide some examples or the city could and i understand you don't want to steer us in one
particular direction or another but maybe our committee could review all of them and make
pick and shoot cherry pick the things we agree to or not let me uh let me have the chief address
this yeah we've got a meeting i think scheduled next week don't we chief
so part of that conversation that we're having just so you all know is
i'm kind of laying out the the roadwork because i've worked around citizens review panels so i'm
used to them i understand them so i'm bringing in a couple of people professionals from a national
organization for police oversight so they can have a discussion directly with us as city leadership
on just the questions that you're talking about right now jamie kind of how do you properly
implement one because there's a there's a number of hours of training that that board have to go
through a vetting process what does that look like what that final product look like to the community
right so proactively we're going out and we're getting that information now to work towards
because you know what we don't want to do is to be a example of what not to do for another city
we want to be an example of what works and one other thing i'll say is what
what works in los angeles or new york may not necessarily work here because
we have certain state laws that we have to follow that may not be in another state and we have a
i mean confer agreement so it's not a one-size-fits-all and jamie i think to your point we've
been talking through you know putting two or three different ways that this could be handled
and we could potentially have some involvement legally under chapter 143 and under the meat
confer agreement there was i know there was a question last last week about going into all the
detail of these policies and and the state laws and that sort of thing we just wanted to try to
give the committee some idea of just how constrained and confined we are under these laws so but there
is probably a way to provide you two or three options of you know places that it could work
and so we'd like to if the committee wants us to bring some ideas to you to kick around
that we think are legally defensible we can do that but like michael says i i don't think it's
fair to necessarily throw everything back on the committee because you're just not experts in that
area but we can we can formulate some ideas for you to kick around that we think that work and
that would be useful to the committee and the department as well trying to be as non-defensive
as possible about it gary on this topic and really going back to yancey your comments at the beginning
which i thought were outstanding i know i have very little knowledge on this topic that we're
discussing right now but i would love to hear where yancey weighs in and what his thoughts would be
and i think it's the wisdom of the city council and how they built this committee with a diverse
set of skills and expertise so yancey i applaud you for what you said at the beginning i'm going to
actually ask you if you could step in and help some of us who don't have your professional experience
in the area that jamie's bring bringing up so i will always welcome whatever the community
recommends but like back to what michael said because denton is unique and we fall under
chapter 143 so what might work in i wouldn't even say another state i mean another state i'll say
even another city in texas not all cities in texas fall under chapter 143 so we have the
meet and confer agreement and we have 143 that we have to follow up under so i'll applaud the
chief as well as the city already stepping out trying to seek professional help because we feel
like that is possibly coming but what is the legal in the right way that is going to actually
tailor to the city of denton because just because we come up with a recommendation
as a committee that may not fit the state law so then the committee will be you know well my
recommendation wasn't good enough or they might even throw it back well the police association
may have had an influence in that so that's the reason why the police didn't move forward
it don't have to do with the police association it's dealing with meet confer and the 143
so i hope that answers your question thank you yancey
before we wrap up um does anybody have anything else
ronda
can't hear you ronda where'd you go i don't know every time i
i'm curious if we know uh the impact of education prior to coming into police training if that has
any impact on an officer's use of inappropriate force
do you understand the question so do officers who come in yeah i understand there's actually
some police departments that require a bachelor's degree before you're hired and i will tell you
that there isn't a big gap in that okay that's what i would have guessed it's got to have more
to do with the with the training that the police get as a police officer but i'm serious thank you
i have a comment yes madam chair yes sir there were some events that occurred in
minnesota that um and then other communities around the country that precipitated uh the
creation of this committee and so i know that i'll say i know i believe that when it was created we
wanted to make sure that if we faced a situation that was quite difficult that we had policies
and procedures and training in place to do a better job than what was done in minnesota
so my my question slash comment concern is this once we get through this process
will we feel that we have adequately prepared ourselves not to become a minneapolis
i'm not expecting an answer i'm just saying that's that's kind of what's in me is we're
going to go through all of this and then at the end will we feel that all of we've all that we've
gone through all we discussed all that we've addressed will it get us to where we feel that
we're better prepared than those folks were in minnesota katina
forgot okay you can go to mr william i had a brain fart sorry i'll if i think of it again i'll
come back yes willy okay we can't hear you and i can't i can barely see you there you go there you
go game on you hey i'm going to hold on just some background noise here got to turn one of
your devices off you got to turn your phone off if you're going to be on your computer you can't
have both unmuted okay okay there we go oh she's doing it again
there we go that's it right there there you go okay can you hear me now can't hear me
we can hear you hear me now yes yes yes yes can't hear me yes we can hear you
willy we can hear you willy
willy we can hear you
we can hear you just fine oh yeah we can hear you
willy we can hear you
where'd it go willy we can hear you
ah i can't find it somewhere
hey we can hear you we can hear you we can hear you mr willy somebody text him i am i think he
turned off that's okay that's okay you gotta okay i finally got a smile out of chief dixon though
i'm trying i'm trying not to you
uh katina go ahead i'm gonna call willy if uh someone asked an interesting question about um
education and so it made me think about something is there it has there been research or studies
about um the profile of officers who are um getting um disciplined for excessive force
is there has there been data that's being been collected about maybe the type of personality the
type of background that you know just um any type of profile um that can be um like looked at or
it's how you wait me where you're laughing with me or at me like my wife does at you okay
somebody said okay let me let me see that i think i found it can you hear me now
okay so stop laughing like you something wrong with you let me uh let me add something that i
thought about what you all said and i need to it's for me i'm saying it to you let me
we can hear you we can hear you okay good okay when we have this next the meeting where we have
the we have the public talking i'm reminding myself and hopefully i'm reminding you and i'm
gonna get a light in here because i know i'm black right now i gotta work on that i gotta become a
white person just for me anyway i want us to listen at what the public says talking to myself now
they are going to make comments to myself ask questions for clarification so that i can
understand what they're trying to say because now my old objective is to get this report to the team
at on the city council rather get the report that helps the police department do what we wanted to
do uh brother baines was saying let's do whatever we can do to not have a situation that becomes
worse because we didn't do what we were supposed to do well guys that's not our charge our charges
gotta be kidding me oh that's not you sure okay okay our charges to come up with the report that's
gonna be a difficult thing to do i can tell you right now for all of us to come together with
something that we can agree on something that we can come up with that we all agree on to help the
city well i notice when i listen to you even now the committee members there are little bits and
pieces of what you say and what you're concerned about and your thought process that i can take
i'm taking as a matter of fact and i'm going to use that in a positive way so i'm just saying when
we have that net at next meeting with the public and that's the one i'm looking forward to these
reports are wearing me completely out but that as you all say it they're helpful to you but i want
to hear what the public has to say and again pull from that what i can get to help me create the
report that's going to be beneficial for what the city has asked us to do and the mayor's leadership
thank you okay thank you willy you know how to turn it back off now
yes i do okay well i can i can still hear you okay stop talking okay camion oh i'm sorry
hang on camion question though oh i'm sorry katina oh it's okay that's why i was raising my hand i
want to answer katina's question so has there been there's been a few different studies out there
one thing i think would be beneficial for the committee in whole is to have dr williams kind
of talk about the accreditation process that we've entered into which kind of addresses some of that
but the complexity of looking at the causations behind uses of force expect excessive uses of
force especially are kind of wrapped into some of that accreditation process it's also wrapped into
the peer support process because we have these officers going out and they're going from a baby
death traffic fatality a sexual assault call and then they stop you on a traffic stop and you say
one thing to them and it tips the scale very quickly so we're trying to take a more holistic look at
everything right so um doc and i were just talking a little bit so i think dr williams if we can get
him carved out probably 15 minutes to talk through that maybe next week if you guys are okay with that
it may set the stage for some of these other discussions yeah that'll be fine
camion and then ronda hey so i just wanted to thank willie for that joy for a moment that was
a nice uh uh i wanted to respond to john baines's question around like are we going to feel better
about these are we going to feel like our policies help prevent a situation like what happened
um i agree with willie i don't think that that's necessary i don't think we have the power to do
that to be completely honest and i think as a member of this committee that's one of the things
i've been grappling with is like as an individual or even as this many people who live in dentin we
actually don't have that power to prevent that so i just wanted to share that with folks but also
um to mention that when we uplifted earlier that there was a section on um during meeting one that
everyone kind of was like wondering about that policy it was airway restriction of use of force
so sarah's going to be sending that back out because we just requested it so if you're
wondering about that specific policy that's the one that's coming back around this time and that
i also wanted to uplift that i think i don't know how people are feeling about the timeline but i
think that like with the things that have been lifted up about wanting to make things more
accessible and available to the public along with um these suggested revisions to policies as well
as um the the maybe clarifying exactly how we would want a community oversight board to look
that coming up with like um a cohesive suggested policy from all of us i think might be it takes
time to do that with a group this size virtually um and so especially with all the things we've
just been uplifting so i just wanted to say that in my mind i'm thinking is the timeline that we
still have actually accurate or does it need to be adjusted so i just wanted to lift that up those
are the things that just came to my front of mind rondo is that you raising your hand yes ma'am okay
okay so i just want to say i did ask a kind of a profile question when i asked someone about
education but in general let's don't be too optimistic about personality profiles or any
kind of profiles uh because the state of personality research is not um very well
developed and i'm looking forward to the conversation next week with the i'm assuming
he's a psychologist i'm not quite sure our physician psychiatrist someone who knows about
mental health the chief mentions i was talking about our the accreditation process that we're
going through ah okay dr williams that's right i don't know if he's above you on your screen
no i don't see him uh okay all right well i'm gonna i'm gonna do a little
research myself into the topic because i'm gonna have some questions about that thank you absolutely
okay so we're not gonna have a meeting next week we'll be back on the 13th
and then after that we'll have on the 20th that's when we'll have the second
public input session um that's the one that willy is waiting for with baited breath
and um i think we'll have one more time together and we'll we'll at the 13th we should start
putting these policy recommendations together and so we can get back to um because we have a
timeline um that we uh in september that all of this has to be presented to city council
yes jamie if our group i'm not suggesting we do so you guys don't roll your eyes at me i'm just
asking sarah for um mr mr helman i'm curious if our group decided that we needed to be able
to accomplish this work to break into some subcommittees based on the topic areas like
education or behavioral health or trans transparency or whatnot communication if we if we decided that
that was be a way to start tackling actually operationalizing bringing things forward to the
whole group to review i heard you say at the last meeting we're not allowed to talk to each other
outside of here but if we decided collectively to to try to tackle things in that way is that
permitted or how does that work exactly yeah we had a similar occurrence last year with the uh the
bond committee that was put together where we had a group break off to consider financing options and
and make a recommendation back to the um to the larger group um we just we had to follow the the
texas open meeting at laws and we typically don't all of our ad hoc committees so if this group
wanted to break down into a couple of subject areas um and everybody in a majority of you were
fine with that we could certainly take that approach and then those specific recommendations
could be brought back to the larger group it's probably more efficient quite frankly to operate
that way um and just kind of listening to you i think i appreciate the comments i'm just breaking
down um i guess some of the subject areas here that i'm hearing from you kind of training reporting
um there was um the way that we're framing information so we've got five four or five
different um areas that i think we could break down for you i want to see what kind of specific
questions and concerns you have and see if they slide into those topical areas pretty simply if
they do that's going to make this a little bit easier for us to organize for you and help you
get it through but i do think that's a good suggestion if there's a group that wants to
focus on on training and another group that wants to focus on you know any potential changes to
wording on the use of force policy whatever however you want to do it we're fine with supporting it
but i do think it makes sense i would i would just ask that if that's the direction you want to go
that this you know we have volunteers and that the group as a whole is supportive of it we had
we had to overcome a little bit of that opposition last year at the bond committee and
and it lingered through the final vote to the city council some of them weren't too happy about it
okay thank you todd does anybody have anything else before we yes camion sorry i have one more
thing i know um on august 20th which means we have roughly 20ish 21 days to figure this out
we heard from community members that they would like there to be some sort of alternative support
if people might be triggered or have um hard conversations that they're sharing and i'm
wondering if there's a way that we might be able to have like a volunteer counselor or a psychologist
or someone on standby to like work with folks or like maybe you know i'm just wondering if
that is a possibility if someone needs it
we can have one of our victim services counselors on standby they're not they're not a treating
physician or anything like that but but they handle crisis calls and so that sounds great
to me willie thank you for that accommodation i'm sorry willie did you have your hand up
okay then yes okay go ahead can you see me i can see you and i can hear you okay what color am i
no no hold that teeth same color you were 15 minutes ago okay i i thought of something that
i did what i did earlier and i would like to to be a part i think you're right we need to divide
up in the groups uh and the group that i want to be a part of is there are some things that i think
the chief has said uh we we've we we're doing this well and this is why i think it i i label it well
he's got some things that he's got in place he said we do this well and i i this is why i say
that it is well now what was interesting to me is he's honest enough he hadn't got into politics
yet but i'm talking him into it but he's not there yet he said i really want he's he said these are
the things that i really want input from and i think it's only right for us to hear what the chief
has to say about that we we i think the other part is is very important too we say what we think
should be done and what we think is is a good way to go i really want to hear what he says because
he was honest enough when in the areas that when i talked to him about some things i think i don't
think any less will come from him about these things so i i've learned that it's important to
hear from the person who is trying to enact these policies to put them in play to work with them and
to hear both of those we're doing this we think we're doing a good job and why
secondly these are some things that i really think we need help in and what do you think about
that area he's asking us that so that group when we divide up whatever you call that group i want
to be on that one to come up with the policy the overall objective is to go together in our groups
and come back with a policy that we give to this to the mayor to be presented to the city council
that them kick it around and i think we're going to come out with something that's going to be
pretty good i really do thank you and so you're gonna really listen willy right no didn't say that
okay i just want to make sure i just want to make sure you're consistent with who you are
okay thanks willy uh jamie i was just gonna say i am to echo a little bit of what willie is sharing
i feel like that is a space where yancey and travis can speak into as well i know we have
spent a lot of our time as a committee's talking about where we think um change could be made and
experiences that we've had with police but i also and i said it at the first meeting i don't know
that it was heard with the intent or the spirit that i have hoped but i do think that part of
the reason i'm glad the two of you are on this committee is so that you can speak to any changes
that we intend to make and how they may influence you and your peers and so as we listen to chief
dixon he is the chief in his title and has ideas and resource at his disposal but you you two are
closer to to the ground if you will and so i do want you to feel like you have space in this
committee to share how you feel like the recommendations we're going to make are going
to influence those that you work with thank you jamie yes we definitely want input because you
guys are boots on the ground for us um we sit here but you're actually on the street and dealing
with people from day to day going from incident to incident and so we appreciate you being here
okay does anybody have anything katina is that your hand ronda is that your hand
okay anybody have anything else before we wrap jesse did i see your hand okay okay i just really
want to appreciate the committee because i know that we're engaging in some difficult conversations
and one thing that makes me feel really good about being here is the diversity i love the
fact that we have so many black officers in our committee that have all of this awesome experience
and our leading voices and i appreciate the chief so much and then just everybody else all the all
the diversity that we have and all the passion and and the various passions that we have individually
that are that differ you know that are all across the board right um and that there is a space for
us to share that because also you know there's a conversation that needs to happen and so many
times that conversation is polarizing um and then things that should line up with justice
gets thrown to a both sides argument that shouldn't exist because the only answer you know to oppression
like as far as the only side is to stop the oppression and so i just want to you know we've
been lighthearted tonight and i i really appreciate that because it's been rough um and even intimidating
in being on this committee it's been very hard for me personally um and just even feeling like an
imposter i mean just to be transparent and vulnerable and i'm honored to be here but i
really am grateful that every time um you know the the more uh ferocious uh personalities like mine
that are pushing for certain things every time those issues come up chief dickson has already
thought about it he's already got things lined up that's extremely encouraging um when you think
about where um as mr baines was pointing out where some other cities are um and so i'm just
really encouraged and i just felt like i needed to say that um and i know that we're going to be
digging into some heavy conversation and everybody's got their own ideas and platform but
i really um i feel like it's great for the citizens of denton to see what it looks like
to have a thoughtful conversation thank you thank you katina we appreciate you being here
jamie was that your hand oh okay um okay so we're going to wrap it up if you guys don't have anything
else you get a week off and then we'll be back so be back uh ready to go and look for the survey
in your email again so we can get together and then see how to if we're going to break this up
in groups how to do that so we can best come together and um and then come back and and have
that so we can hit the ground running so um you guys have a great rest of the week and i'll see
you guys we'll see you guys on the 12th bye you have a good evening