Aug 13, 2020 Use-Of-Force Ad Hoc Committee on 2020-08-13 6:00 PM

Welcome back to the city of Denton use of force ad hoc committee. Our first item of tonight will August 13 2020 will be the minutes from the last meeting. And if you've had a chance to look over the minutes from the last meeting, I will need a motion to approve the minutes Gary make a motion I need a second. Yancy seconded. All in favor. Raise your hand or say aye. Hold them up for a second. Any nays. Okay, I'll approve motion carries. The next item is to review and discuss follow up items from the previous committee meetings last week you had questions that you posed and I think we're going to have the answers to those Sarah. Yes, so included in your backup. We did draft a document that kind of summarize the questions and answers we heard from committee members last time. So if there's any additional questions or inquiries that we did not capture, please let us know. We just want to make sure we're getting the information to you during the meeting or following the meeting. But I think most of the questions were actually addressed during last week's meeting or we will have presentations and info upcoming for you. Did anyone have any additional questions that they wanted at this time for with regards to last week's meeting. Okay. So we'll go to item C, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding proposed topic areas related to use of force in the Denton Police Department, including internal affairs, training, accreditation and compliance policy and use of force and provide staff direction on findings or recommendations by topic area. Alright, good evening, Madam Chair and committee members. It's a pleasure to be here with you again. So based on our last few weeks of discussion, we wanted to take the opportunity to put together kind of the five key areas that we've kind of had recurring discussions about and questions about. And we thought if we package these individually and presented them to you individually, we could have a more robust discussion about each area. And that being internal affairs, which we talked about last week, training, accreditation and compliance policy and our general orders and then use of force. So tonight we're going to go through and if you look in your backup, you should have gotten I believe it's like a 36 page document that had all these areas spelled out with a pretty exhaustive summary for each for you to reference. Tonight we're going to do training and what I'm going to have do is Deputy Chief Frank Padgett, who's over the training division will present didn't PD training requirements, state requirements, compared to the department's additional requirements, the number of training hours versus years of service, how you obtain different levels of certification from your basic intermediate advanced masters. And then we'll have Dr. Richard Williams, who's our accreditation and compliance specialist, talk to you about our comprehensive training plan. It's a plan that we moving to, to be more intentional and more focused about what training we're offering. You know, kind of laying out career tracks for officers to better serve the public. So with that, I'll turn it over to Deputy Chief Padgett first, unless there's any questions for me. All right. I just want to let you guys know to leave your cameras on throughout the duration of this meeting so that we can have you on camera. Thank you. You're on mute. Of course I am. One in every meeting, right? Good evening, Madam Chair and committee. I am Frank Padgett, Deputy Chief of the Support Bureau of the Denton Police Department. That's a criminal investigations, training, jail, and our fleet. So I want to start tonight. The sanctity of life is the basis of everything that we do at the Denton Police Department. And that begins with training. And each officer that comes into our department begins as a basic police officer. Even our lateral officers go through the basic police academy. And what we learn in the academy is that as officers, we can only use the authority that's given to us by the public. That authority has been given to us by the legislature of the state. It's given to us also by case law. And case law is the law that comes out of courts. You know, after somebody's been arrested and then they go on appeal and different courts look at it and they decide, well, they interpret what the legislature meant by the law. So when I teach in the academy, I teach arrest, search, and seizure, and that goes -- that covers the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. In the first four hours of that class, it's not mandated by the state to teach this, but we spend the first four hours of class in Denton PD's academy getting the recruits' hearts and minds right. We set them up so that they're ready to receive the knowledge. We remind them, you are citizens. You're also the police, but the police are only citizens that have been given the authority to do certain things. So we kind of put it back on them to put them back in the seat of the citizen. And how are you going to look as a citizen, how are you going to look when you get stopped by the police? How are you going to react when an officer wants to search your vehicle? So we put that back on them. Because as officers, they need the knowledge, but they also need to have compassion, which leads to discretion. You know, is it -- the knowledge is what can we do? What does the law say we can do as officers? The discretion comes in where that is the what should we do. What's the right thing in this situation? We want to make critical decision makers. We don't want to make robots. We don't want to make officers that look at every situation the same. You know, not every problem is a nail. So not every solution needs to be a hammer. We need officers to be able to go into situations, correctly assess that situation, and then decide what is the correct course of action. And we do that by teaching problem-solving. We do teach problem-solving different methods, the SARA method we teach in the academy. So then once you're out of the academy, there's ongoing training. The state of Texas, T-COL, you can go to -- it's T-COL, T-C-O-L-E dot Texas dot org, and you can find every syllabus for every training that police officers in Texas have to go to. Every two years, there's a two-year cycle, and every officer from the chief on down has to go through 40 hours of training every two years. Some of that is mandated training. Each legislature that meets every two years will come up with different training that we have to go through. You'll see some of that. I'll bring up the presentation here in a minute. But you'll see some of that is state mandated, and that changes every two years. And every two years, we have to go through an illegal update, which teaches the officers, okay, this was the law two years ago. It's changed now, and here's the update so that you know it. Because on September 1st, when that law goes into effect, we need to know it. So there's T-COL. There's our basic curriculum. There is our -- and each -- you have the basic proficiency certificate that you get, then you have an intermediate and an advanced and then a master's certificate as a peace officer. And each one requires different things. Some of it is training in the classes that you have to take that are mandated by the state, and then some of it is time in employment as an officer. Because we understand that some of the training is on the job training. It's experience. It's putting yourself in those positions and applying the knowledge that you have to different situations. So we have T-COL. We have -- we went through a PERF review two years ago now. That guides some of our training. Dr. Williams will talk about our comprehensive training plan here in just a little bit, and he'll go through all of the things that led into that plan. And then, you know, the last thing that really drives our training is the 21st century policing pillars. And that's being trust and legitimacy -- sorry -- policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education, and officer safety and wellness. And that officer safety and wellness, you know, that's getting officers well so that they are mentally well themselves to deal with the next call. And they're not holding things in and bringing that baggage to the next call that they go to. So let me bring this up. That's not what I wanted. Okay. So this is our basic and intermediate training. You'll see the courses there. Our basic academy is 716 hours. Then field training is another 742 hours. And our field training is when the recruit graduates the academy, comes into field training, rides with a field training officer, a teacher, for 12 hours a day, and they do 742 hours of that training. They may do more if they're -- if we find that they're deficient in a certain area or if they are out for an extended period of time. For some reason, you know, they get sick or something, they'll have them make that up and do a little bit more training. And like I said, the two-year cycle is 40 hours every two years. But the basic academy and field training, that's almost 1500 hours of training that a police officer gets before they're actually able to go out on their own. The academy takes about four to five months. But then they're in the field training for almost that long as well. So it's almost 1500 hours before an officer is allowed to go out by themselves. The intermediate certification, that will be the next level that an officer rises to. Right now, the mandated courses are child abuse, crime scene, use of force, an intermediate arrest, search, and seizure, and a Spanish class. Some of those classes, the Denton Academy does 716 hours because we include two mandated classes in our academy. The state only requires 696 hours. But we throw those -- de-escalation and other class, we throw in the academy and don't wait until officers graduate to take those classes. And then -- so the -- over on the right, the hours and years of service to obtain an intermediate certification, if you have an associate's degree and gone through the required mandated state training, then you also have to do four years on the street before you can get that certification. If you have a bachelor's degree or higher, it's only two years. Because you've had that -- if you have that bachelor's degree, you've had some education. And the state takes that into account that you've put in the work to earn that degree. If you don't have any education as far as a degree, then you'll see the hours go up and the years of service go up. You have to have the hours of training plus the years of service to be able to obtain that degree. Legislative mandates, if they're not part of the academy, if we don't take them in the academy, let's say officers that graduate this year from the academy, well, in two years, the legislature decides, well, there's another course that we mandate. Well, the officers that graduated the academy this year didn't get that course. So they're going to have to go back, do some in-service training, and go ahead and take that course. Right now, the legislative mandates are body-warm camera. If you're going to wear a body-warm camera, you have to have a minimum of two hours training. K-9 encounters, it teaches officers how to deal with dogs, how to read dog's body language. Civilian interaction, that's how do we interact with civilians on the street, traffic stops, doing the seven-step violator contact, which is how do we actually come up to your window if we stopped you for speeding and interact with you appropriately? The other half of that is in the high schools, we do civilian interaction training with the students. And they're taught, if you're stopped by the police, how should you react appropriately? So we're getting that from both ends. Cultural diversity and diversity, de-escalation, and de-escalation is the go-to philosophy of the Dent Police Department. We will de-escalate every encounter that we can to the extent that we can. Eyewitness identification, human trafficking, identity theft, interacting with drivers who are deaf or hard of hearing, we get that training. Racial profiling, and then the department-mandated training. Since Chief Dixon came in in October of 2018, we have mandated some extra training that will get us to where we want to be in the future. We've had Autism 101, we teach us officers how to interact with persons that may be experiencing autism. Autism is on a spectrum, so you may have people that are completely nonverbal, you may have people that are very high functioning, and anywhere in between. So we've seen instances where officers encounter someone with autism, they believe that person is intoxicated based on their observations, and this will teach us officers how to distinguish that, how to draw that line, how to take the step back and say, "Oh, this may not be an intoxicated person. This may be something completely different, so I need to approach this in a different way." That was really good training. Human relations, how to interact with each other in the workplace, how to treat each other with dignity and respect. Fair and impartial policing, that covers the explicit and implicit bias. Animal abuse investigations, the duty to intercede, that's on the front of our plate right now, is you have to have the duty to intercede. It's required by the department, but it's required by us individually that to be good officers, we have to be able to intercede. I mean, that's what we're doing out there when we're called to a call, we're interceding. We have to be able to see that within ourselves and stop another officer from going over the line. Going back to what I teach in the academy, you have to be able to respectfully, at least respectfully interact with your, or interject with your supervisors and say, "Sards, I'm not doing that. That's against the law. I don't think we have enough to put this guy in jail. We can't do that, and respectfully, I'm not doing it." We have to be able to do that. The duty to intercede really covers the not so overt. It's easy. In a TV show, what would you do? It's easier to interact or interject when something is overt, but what is your duty when things aren't so overt? That goes into that. First line of supervisor training on violence against ... Oh, this is IACP training that we did, International Association Chiefs of Police. We were a recipient of a grant, and we had about 18 months of very intensive family violence, domestic violence training. That was first line supervisor training on violence against women, identifying and responding to stalking, determining the dominant aggressor. Who is the dominant aggressor? You go to a domestic ... I think Cheryl was saying earlier that she stepped into dispatch earlier, and they told her that there was 12 to 15 calls a day of domestic violence. How do you determine the dominant aggressor when both people have bumps and bruises? When maybe the one party seems to be more aggressive when officers are on scene, but when you dig through it, really, who started the interaction? That training helps officers ... We don't want to go to a domestic and arrest everybody. We have to be able to investigate and determine which one was really the dominant aggressor and which one was simply fighting back. Improving our response to non-fatal strangulation assaults. We have a lot of domestics that are strangulation assaults, and strangulation isn't always easily identifiable. Maybe the marks don't show up immediately, so that's hard to see sometimes, so we had training on that. How do we improve? How do we ... We brought the fire department in so that they would see the effects of strangulation assaults, because they may get called to a scene or they may remove somebody from a scene before we get there, so we brought them in so that they would have a better understanding. Integrating victimless rights. Preparing for and learning how to survive vicarious trauma. Again, that goes back to officer wellness. Officers are exposed to vicarious trauma. The calls that officers go on, the things they see, that gets bottled up and that overflows. How do we get the officers to be able to filter that better so that when they go from a really bad scene to the next scene and then they deal with somebody who's just not being nice to the officer, how do they respond effectively? NIMS and ICS training. That is the incident command training. If we have a tornado here in town, how do we train? How do we work with the fire department, the airport, solid waste? How do we interact with the rest of the city so we can get the city back running? The escalation I talked about. Taser, OC spray, baton, Narcan. Narcan, that's something new for us. We received training on that very recently and have been able to save several lives that people were overdosed on heroin and officers were able to respond, deliver the Narcan and those people recovered, whereas they might have died had the officer not been there. We had one officer, I think he responded and saved two or three lives within a week. Standardized field sobriety test. That's the standardized test for driving while intoxicated that we do. Well, we have trained the trainer and we have certain certifications that you have to go through on a regular basis. Emergency vehicle operations. How do we operate our vehicles? In emergencies and non-emergencies. Defensive tactics and then active shooter. We went down to one of the schools and did some active shooter training. We get actors that -- so it's part of that critical decision making. We bring actors in so that the officers have to respond and they have to decide who is a threat and who is not. You know, so we do that training. Going forward, Dr. Williams will talk about the comprehensive training plan that we have for the department and that includes from the academy to a special assignment. You know, what does a sexual assault investigator need for training? What does a narcotics officer need for training? What does a training officer? What does the people that are going to teach our officers? What do they need for training? And then what is the training that the department needs as a whole? Dr. Williams will talk about that. Questions? Nancy? >> Chief, I know I understand it, but a lot of people on the committee probably don't understand. Can you go back to the first slide where we were talking about intermediate in the hours that's mandated for training and all that dealing with intermediate training and the academy? Not that one. The other one talking about the hours. >> So I just want the committee to know that the hours that's on the right-hand side over where it says intermediate hours, those are in addition to the required courses and those are actually training hours, not hours that's where people actually just come to work. Some people might think that the 2400 hours is working hours, but those are actually continuing education that officers actually have to go through in order to actually receive that certification, not work hours. So that's continuing education. And the education has to be approved by TECO, which is the licensing agency for the state, so you can't just go take a class on the water, basket weaving or something, and think those hours count towards the education hours. >> Right. And those hours, too, those hours are what time did you spend in a class, whether that's you're sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture or you're going through scenario training. Scenario training is taking the knowledge that you have and applying it in situations or whether you were driving a vehicle for eight hours on a track. That's actual class time. >> Thank you. I just wanted to make sure they understood that was training hours, not working hours. >> Yes, sir. Thank you for that. >> Chief, my name is John Veins. Can you hear me okay? >> Yes, sir. >> I have a question, please. Actually I have two questions. The first is can you talk about let's say updates, having training updates? And then secondly, can you talk about when your supervisor recognizes that a subordinate is in need of additional training, talk about the process that's in place here in Denton. Those two specifics, please. >> Okay. When you say updates, do you mean updates to the training that like say you take a arrest, search, and seizure class in the academy and then you take an intermediate arrest, search, and seizure once you're out of the academy, that update or are you saying the actual -- how often is the curriculum updated? >> Well, let's say for example I've been an officer for 15 years and I had some training in my first two years. You know, it's just like anything else, you need a refresher course from time to time. So could you talk about is there a refresher course that we take the officers through just to make sure they're staying abreast of any changes that may have occurred. And then secondly, if a supervisor notices that one of the subordinates is in need of perhaps sensitivity training or something in their annual review, they realize that it would be good that they go back and take something old or take something new to kind of help them in their development. >> Yes, sir. The legislature comes out with new laws every two years so we get a legal update every two years and every officer is mandated to take that update training. Yes. And then to your point about supervisors, if a supervisor recognizes any deficiency, they can send someone to training any time they want. >> Do you know if that occurs regularly or is that kind of an exception to the rule? >> I would say I don't know how regularly. I know that officers will -- I get training requests all the time. They have to fill out a form and they say I want to -- because training costs money so it has to get approved up through the chain. So I get requests all the time. You know, how do I -- I want to know what the current practice is for murder investigations. I supervise detectives so I'll use that as an example. I want to know what the current practices are. I want to know what the current law is if I want to search a cell phone. I want to know what the current law is if I want to get, you know, certain records or submit a subpoena or a warrant or that sort of thing. So whether that's -- whether that's the officers asking themselves and they just want to be better or if that supervisor is doing it, it's probably a mixture of both. I know that if a supervisor does recognize that deficiency or we have any disciplinary action, we'll have a training component with it. And that disciplinary action may not be, you know, hard discipline. You know, it may just be this wasn't a big deal, but I think you still need training in this area to get you better. >> One last thing, chief, and thank you for your indulgence. I -- the incident in Minneapolis kind of is paramount in our consciousness. And so we have an office -- we had an officer there who apparently had received several reprimands and several -- how would you say -- notifications of inappropriate behavior. So I don't know if there they had a mechanism in place where once you recognize this person's having difficulty, let's put them through training and let's make sure that we do everything we can to make sure we make them the best that they can be on the streets. And that's my last question for right now. Thank you. >> Yes. I don't know what they had in place. I know in Denton we actively look at officer issues. And, you know, they'll do things on the street that, you know, it's not illegal, it's not a violation of policy. It's just somebody will go, you know, so-and-so did this, you know. I think we need some arrest search and seizure training or something else or some human interaction training. >> I think that officer had 18 disciplinary actions and his 19 years of service with that. I'll go to Pam and then we'll go to Jamie for questions. >> Thank you. Deputy Chief, can you tell me what kind of mental health training that you offer for your officers currently? I know the chief is working on training for the future, but can you tell me currently what's available, please? >> There's we have autism training that the department offered that's not mandated. We do have some mandated courses as far as mental health. And then there's also a mental health peace officer. It's kind of a step above the basic class that officers get in the academy or in the extended training if they didn't get it in the academy. >> Do all officers receive it? >> Not all officers get the peace officer training. They don't all get that. Not to that level, anyway. >> Is there any other? >> Back to-I'm sorry. >> I'm sorry. Is there any other training? >> There-I'll just point to the autism. The mental health peace officer certification and then the dealing with people with mental health class that they get. >> Okay. Thank you, sir. >> Yeah. And can I go back just real quick to Mr. Bain's question? We do have an early intervention system. You know, if an officer has so many uses of force within a certain amount of time, that pops up red flags to supervisors to say, hey, you know, this person's had so many uses of force. We need to look at this. The supervisors can look at it and say, okay, yeah, you had so many in this amount of time, but they were all reasonable. Or we can look and say, you know, you've had maybe not-maybe they weren't all the same thing. Maybe it was a use of force. Maybe it was a discouraging complaint and something else. And we kind of put those pieces together as an early warning system to say something's going on within its officer. You know, it may-we may need to look beyond and, you know, maybe something that weren't officer's personal life. Maybe they've gone on some really bad calls, had, you know, several-been on the-had infants die, you know, maybe three infants die in a very short amount of time. You know, so that officer may be dealing with something that we need to look at and maybe bring in peer support to help that officer work through those issues. Okay. And if we have participants with discipline, if you keep getting in trouble, your discipline's going to go up, you know. And again, that doesn't have to be for the same thing. It could be a pattern of, you know, we look at it as a pattern. Is it a pattern of bad decisions? Whether it's use of force or discourtesy or whatever it is, is this a pattern of bad decisions this officer is making? And we need to get to the root of why is this officer making these decisions? Is it training? Is it our policy? Is it something personal with the officer? Thank you so much Deputy Chief for this explanation. I have two questions and then one comment, and so I hope you'll give me some grace as I walk through all those. My comment is that I am incredibly grateful that the department has taken proactive steps to support and understand the needs of those with autism. It is important for me though to just say that I don't really classify autism in the same type of behavioral and mental health category as I feel like Pam's questions were addressing. So autism is a developmental disability that impacts the way that people communicate and interface with the world. It's not really a mental health problem. And so I do think that there are some additional steps that we in the City of Denton can take to address mental health calls that our officers are going out on, but it's really important to me that we make some distinction there. And so I hope you'll forgive me and give me an opportunity to just kind of make that comment as an educational moment. Absolutely. Thank you for that. In terms of my questions, and they go to what Mr. Baines was speaking to a little bit, sort of a follow up from that. And it is, are there particular types of calls that our officers may go on that then mandate additional training? So for example, if we have officers that attend, I mean, they're dealing with catastrophe and trauma every day, right? But if we were to have a mass shooting or a mass murder or something like that, are there particular types of incidents or calls that in and of themselves necessitate specific types of training, refresher options or whatnot for our officers? Good question. I don't think there's a specific type of call that would mandate training, but if we had something like that, a mass shooting, a mass murder, a tragic bus accident with a lot of kids that were injured, our peer support team that we've started, we would engage them so that they could counsel the officers and either decide, you know, maybe certain officers need additional counseling or maybe they do need training, that sort of thing. But it's about the officer wellness in that case is how do we get the officer well so that when they go back out on the street, they can interact appropriately? And then sort of a follow up to the question and the sort of refreshing moment that Officer Green offered us about the table and chart of the hours of training required. I want you to explain it to me like I'm in second grade a little bit, okay? So let's say I have a bachelor's degree and I have been on other police forces before coming to the City of Denton. Let's just say for the sake of this conversation, I was on a police force in a neighboring community for 10 years before joining the Denton police force. Based on that chart, would I be required to do the 700 and some odd hours of basic training and whatever the 400 or 600, whatever it was for my level of experience? Or does it reset when I move to a different municipality? Sorry. Like I said, just treat me like I'm in second grade. I'm sorry. I completely understand the question. If the 716 hours that we do, that is for that state mandated basic training for police officers. If that officer was a police officer in another Texas city, they would have gotten that training already. Okay. So they come to Denton and we make them go through some abbreviated training. You know, how do we do things in Denton? We have a lateral, we call it a lateral academy. It's about six weeks and we send them through that training and we send all of our new, all of the Denton recruits that graduate the 716 hour academy also go through another six weeks of Denton specific training. Okay. And then, so that officer that's in, that was an officer somewhere else for 10 years, they come to us, they go through that six weeks and then they do field training also. Again, that's abbreviated because they already, you know, know the basics of what they're doing. You know, they don't have to learn how to do a traffic stop anymore, but we need to make sure that they're going to do it the way we expect them to do it. They're going to treat people the way we expect them to treat people. So they do ride with a field training officer as a partner, but it's not as long as a basic recruit. That's just learning how to do things. And then the hours that you talk about, does that reset? No, that's state mandated training and they would have already had those hours in the 10 years they were with that other department. Does that make sense? Just extrapolating out, one of the things that I feel like our committee has learned over the past several weeks is sort of the culture that Chief Dixon expects in Denton and how it does already differ from other municipalities, not just in Texas, but for example, like in Minneapolis, which I think, you know, sort of necessitated or began some of this conversation. So are you telling me that that abbreviated training for lateral training is where they're going to get the, this is how the culture and experience and the people of Denton are different than where you were before, including attitudes of citizens and things like that are just, this is how we do a traffic stop as opposed to how they do it in Lubbock or whatnot. Absolutely. They're going to start learning Denton police culture. And then related to disability, I saw that you do some training on autism, you do some training about working with folks that are hearing and visually impaired for all of the other spectrum of disability. 57 million people in the United States with lots of different kinds of disabilities. Are our officers receiving any training related to any of the other ways you could divide that population in some of these other trainings that they receive? I would have to look at the state website and really look at that training and see how it's broken down. So I can get you that answer. I do think that we are uniquely positioned in Denton with two universities that serve significant populations of disabled students and residents that then maintain their life and employment here after graduation. And so it might be something to investigate. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I'm going to go to Yancey and then Willie and then Pam. Go ahead, Yancey. Madam Chair, I'll hold my comment until everybody speak. That way I might be able to address everything in once because I got some answers for Janie and Pam regarding the mental health aspect of the training. Okay. Okay. Willie, you got to be off mute, Willie. Hit the button. We can't hear you. Come on, Willie. You had it a minute ago. Can't hear you. Can't hear you. I promise we can't hear you. Let me see if we can do it here. No, I got it. Okay. There we go. Okay. As I sit here and I'm looking at what we are charged to do, what the city council has asked us to do, develop a report of clear findings, conclusions, and achievable recommendations that promote the use of best practices in the use of force policies and trainings for the Denton Police Department. That's what they've asked us to do. So in my mind, I'm starting to figure out what should that report include? What are we supposed to recommend as a group? So I'm trying to put mine together so when we finally get to this decision part, then I can say, this is what I think is the best practice for the police department to use. Now, we've been presented with this information about the training. So I've got a question about that. That's an awful lot of hours. And as it was explained, this is not doing working hours. These officers are asked to go through all of this training. I don't think there's... Well, I was going to say I don't see how they can do it, but that's not my call. I'm working on my recommendation in the training area. So the question I have about the training is, is there a prioritizing way or do you prioritize which training is first? When are the officers able to go out and actually do their jobs, the ones you've hired, and be able to do the job and fulfill all these requirements of the training? Who determines which course they take first? And then make sure I get all this down like I want you to answer it. Is there a priority as to when you take whichever course or when you get the training? Who determines what that is and when you officer get to go out and do the job after you've completed the courses? Or is that a factor? Do you have to complete all the courses before you actually can go out and do the work? And the reason that this is important to me is I'm going to recommend something about that training. Some of those requirements that the chiefs have initiated and what the state mandates that I think are excellent and they should be done quickly and that should get more priority and that's going to be my recommendation. So I need to know the answers to those questions. Thank you. Yes, you want to go now? I can. So what let's you because you're the last one with the statement and then we'll go back to Deputy Chief Pageant. Okay. The first one I guess it was a year towards Pam and Jamie is dealing with the mental health aspect and the other disabilities and everything. So the officers get 40 hours of crisis intervention training in the basic academy. So that's just one aspect of it. So they get a broad spectrum of crisis intervention and how to deal with people in crisis, both mental health and with disability. I think Jamie asked a question on as far as specialized training or in stuff like that. One of the specialized units that we have here at the department would be traffic. So if you have a fatal accident or a serious bodily injury accident, the regular patrol officer is not going to work those crashes. The traffic unit will because they do have the specialized training to go out there and map the scene and try to put the pieces back together in order to figure out how the crash occurred or why the crash occurred. And for you Mr. Hussbiff as far as prioritizing training, basically most officers once they get done with the basic academy, they want to prioritize their training on getting the intermediate license. So they'll go through all those intermediate classes first and then start working on advanced classes and other specialized training that they're trying to because some people might want to be a detective, some people might want to go to traffic and those are different specialized training. But most of the time when an officer get done with the basic academy, him or her and their supervisor sit down with their sit down together to map out when these classes occur because not all these classes occur here in Denton. They occur in the Metro Plex or some are even far off. They'll sit down and look at the schedule and see if they're able to take off work if the class is held on a work day or if they're able to get their time you know elsewhere on attending those classes. So I don't know if that cleared up some of the questions that you guys had. But may one for me is who determines which class they take? Can I answer that? Yes. The priority of classes is it's a close race between state mandates and chief mandates. The state mandates are law and then chief mandates are running right there with them. So that's going to be the priority of training and then anything past that you know it's the officers can train for you know to get their intermediate or advanced certificate. They might want to train because they want to become a detective or they might want to become a traffic investigator. All of that is selective and that is based on the needs of the department, the funds available for training and then you know we want officers to self-actualize and to do what they want to do. If they want to be a traffic investigator then we want them to become one because if you're doing something you want to do you're going to do it better. But we may not have space for a traffic investigator and don't foresee having one for a while. So we may not allow an officer to go to reconstruction school because that does take time out of the regular job. It does cost quite a bit of money. So we have to prioritize those things through department needs past the state mandates and what chief takes the mandates. Did that answer your question Willie? Yes thank you. Camion? Can't hear you. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay. I had a couple questions. One of them was does the do the officers at the DPD receive any formalized training around working with LGBTQ folks? Is it is it coached an implicit bias? Like I'm just wondering if there's any specific timing around that? Biases, correlations, those types of courses cover that to some degree. I wouldn't say that there's a separate and above course that would address only that community. Is there I'm just I'm just assuming that maybe you and Yancey a few other officers on this call might have gone through some of these trainings. Do you remember being trained on any instances of like maybe a traffic stop or responding to a call with folks that identify as being transgendered? Yancey's shaking their head yes. Yancey can you answer that? This part of the implicit bias training but also during the academy we do what's called practical so basically you learn the book work and then we go out and do hands-on activities and like a scenario based type training and we do have actors that act like that on so for the recruits before they graduate the academy they do have some experience or exposure I should say to that type of culture or whatever but it is touched on in the implicit bias courses. Okay I appreciate hearing that. I just think it could be something important that should be added just not just around transgender folks the entire spectrum of LGBT folks but in the incident that someone gives you their name and they present differently than their driver's license like that's very common and so I think officers should be trained around the fact that that's like something that happens with that community. The other question I had is that I'm very glad to see that every officer is getting some training around domestic violence. Having been a survivor of relationship violence myself I'm glad to know that. I was wondering if there's training specific to what I would call relationship violence or violence that's not necessarily just with heterosexual couples if that makes sense like how to recognize that if you're called out to an incident where there are same gender couple and recognizing it as domestic domestic violence possibly it could get overlooked so I was just wondering if that is a part of that training or if additional training might be needed for that. I will say and we've gone through a lot of training in the last two years so forgive me if I forget that we may have some training out there but part of that IACP grant that we received we did have some training specific to LGBTQ+ and we had a sheriff's deputy for Cleveland County Ohio or Clark County Ohio I'm sorry she's part of the community and a police officer and and she provided that training it was excellent and there was some other additional training put on by IACP for that and what what training is out there that you know of that we could implement? I don't know that I do know of a training that you could implement but I know that those individuals exist in our community and that there may be things out there that aren't necessarily police specific but you know could you know it could be for anybody interacting with that you know with the community so it doesn't have to be specifically for police officers to be good training for us. Yeah I agree with that and then I think my last question I guess some of us are still kind of wondering around like how often officers are getting these trainings it sounds like there's a lot of training hours that people have to go through but from what I could tell from the diagram that you had up there's a there's a good amount of diversity trainings at the beginning during the academy and then some additional that aren't required by the state are those slots of trainings required to be done more than once ever or do they get implicit bias training every two years once a year every six months every five years you know like are those trainings repeated or is it only repeated if the state mandates an update and do they get the whole training in or just the updated portion. I know that's a lot of questions but I was confused about that. No the the state mandated updates it's whatever you know the state is mandating for that two-year cycle so it may include updates to those previous you know diversity trainings it may be something completely different you know so that's where the training that the chief directs comes in in getting us updated trainings for those specific topics. Bo is next. I'm looking here at this use of force and taser reports that Mr. Cronin gave us from 2015 to 2020 and you know thinking about the interplay between discipline training based on each case and it looks like where there's follow-up training recommended in some of these various cases there's it's there's a number of them there's taser training one of them was emotional survival for law enforcement training another one was de-escalation I think there was a couple of de-escalation training some are still pending and so I'm just wondering number one if if there's a use of force situation that is deemed inappropriate in the complaint and sustain and it leads to training are these just sort of going back to the same trainings they already had on de-escalation or is it you've had that training and it didn't settle in and so specifically we're gonna have another kind of training or a more focused de-escalation training or taser training and then number two just I think for the committee and for we'd love to hear from you just sort of man in terms of use of force situations where are the gaps in training that you perceive that need to be revisited does that make sense what I'm asking yes and the gaps Dr. Williams will talk about a gap analysis that he did and how he came up with our comprehensive training plan but as far as discipline and the training attached to discipline that's case it's case by case because it may be that you know the officer used the tool completely wrong so he needs the training on how to use that tool the taser so to speak or for an example how to use that taser correctly or the training may be the officer escalated the situation and that led to the use of the taser so that officer she needs to go back through de-escalation training so a say a policy violation or use of force that we deem needs training while it may involve the taser it may not involve the same aspect of what went wrong in that case it could be they used the equipment wrong or they escalated the situation or you know something like that so the training connected to the discipline of use of force complaints that's been sustained is case by case individualized for the person based on the incident is that what you're saying yes it's not the general training that you go through in the academy or even in the you know further follow-up trainings no it'll be individualized for that person what what did we deem in that instance what was deficient and we need to fix the deficiency so if the use of the taser you know the equipment the equipment was used correctly as far as physically you know according to the way you're supposed to use the equipment then we're not going to send we I mean we may but we may not send that person back through the taser training how to use the equipment we'll send them through training that teaches them when and why to use the equipment so like on this first one that says citizen led officers on a 20-minute high-speed vehicle pursuit before tire deflation and crash officer deployed taser but at the time citizen was only passively resisting that's not a taser how to work it issue that's a that's a how and why do you deploy issue okay but that still fits under taser as opposed to de-escalation or something else in terms of the training needed I mean it said that they could be both but yeah it would fall under the taser training as into you know how and why are we supposed to use that tool okay you know if the officer didn't you know and by de-escalation training you know maybe that officer went kind of escalated the situation themselves their actions escalated the the need for the taser that's when you would go through the de-escalation training but the you know but yeah in that case it's how and when to use the equipment what's appropriate okay one more question it's really helpful to know that it's it's a specific sort of personalized training the one that was emotional survival for law enforcement and maybe we'll talk about it later but where the officer responded in a way unbecoming of an officer it says here can you give us a sense because I think those are the sort of cases that are concerning in use of force cases where yeah it's unbecoming an officer it's wrong clearly what would that training entail if it was personalized for an officer that acted in a completely inappropriate way such that it was you know a suspension but then emotional survival for law enforcement is that am I supposed to hear that as what you were saying earlier about man there's just high stress levels going on in the officer and they need to get themselves right that's exactly what that's about okay because I think that's the I think somebody brought it up earlier maybe it was Mr. Baines about and if that stuff sort of builds you know how do we know the training's effective for something like that so that it doesn't just happen again I think that's I know it's somewhat subjective but I'm just trying to draw out what is happening in these trainings that are personalized based on objective incidents you know right now that's in that instance you know it was something that we saw with the officer that they they need to they need to they need training on how to relieve stress from themselves okay Willie can you turn your phone on mute yes I will thank you hang on Gary did you have your hand up okay Donna and then John I just wanted to know do you have a scale to measure the effectiveness of these trainings because again as cameo on address there are several trainings so is there any way for us to see how effective these trainings really are I'm sure there's studies out there that you know we'll show different results on trainings internally you know we'll base it on does this person have the same problem again does this officer have you know recurring problems that's the basis of the effectiveness does that person respond to the you know we do the training and we ask the instructors how did that person respond to the training well they didn't respond very well they kind of blew it off might be the response and then and then our response has to be something different or you know he really that officer came around and responded well and I think they're good to go now thank you okay John Chief Padgett I want to thank you again for taking the time to to patiently answer all of our questions I have a couple of examples I'm going to lay out and then I'll ask my question I have some friends and clients who are who are firemen and they tell me about suffering from PTSD because they've seen things like accidents where people are picked up in pieces or they have to use the jaws of life to get people out of vehicles and accidents so that's and then you've got police officers were friends who had to deal with a very difficult criminal element drug dealers murder investigations and things like that and you know most of us citizens can't imagine the trauma that these officers are having to deal with and so I would think after a while if you're dealing with some very severe elements you become cynical and a little bit insensitive so when you have officers that are in these kind of situations that have been in these situations what do you what kind of training do you offer to make sure that they they remain whole wholesome and not nonsensical I don't know if that's too complex a question to ask but I think you get the drift of what I'm asking you know the biggest thing that we offer offer is our peer support you know and the the counseling and being able to talk through those things that are creating stress you know those things get bottled up you go to call after call after call and you know the people that you give CPR to don't survive and and the baby is is is hurt and you see those things over and over again in the ANSI you know going to the crashes and fatality crashes over and over again that builds up and if you don't have a pressure release valve somewhere then it may spill over you know unfortunately for a lot of officers it spills over at home and ends up in divorce and that sort of thing but our biggest not really training but our biggest outlet for that is peer support where we can get to those officers and you know if we have a fatality crash we're going to offer peer support to those crash investigators so that they can talk through it because if you can talk through things then they don't build up as much and and for example you know when you're dealing with the criminal element of the more unsavory the element I think you become rather cynical at least this is my assumption I don't live in that world but I can only imagine you can become a little callous and a little insensitive so how do you address that you can and I think you know I addressed I addressed that when I teach the academy I addressed that by reminding officers you are citizens so and your spouses are citizens your kids are citizens your mom how would you feel if your spouse got pulled over and was treated in this certain way how would you feel if your mom was pulled over and treated in this certain way you know and remind them that that when you put the badge on you're not somebody different you're still part of the community you're still a citizen so treat people the way you want to be treated you know we have to remember yeah we deal with you know the worst of the worst but can can we treat the worst of the worst still like a person yes we can and yes we should you know and that's what we have to that's what we have to do is it doesn't matter what crime has been committed we still need to treat that person with dignity and respect and that starts in training and it should go up through you know every supervisor should be watching their people for that every field training officer you know the field training officer is the first supervisor we have in the police department and they should be watching their trainings and watching each other and making sure that we treat everybody with dignity and respect thank you very much cameo yeah i have a follow-up question to mr bain's question i'm a social worker so from i don't want to say day one but pretty early on in our educational careers they're talking to us about self-care because the nature of our work is dealing with other people's trauma often helping them through part usually the worst times of their lives when they actually need support and it sounds like those are similar things with the profession that you have so i'm just wondering if it sounds a little hippie dippy but if officers are taught anything about like ways and mechanisms in which to take care of themselves to help deal with the trauma that they're engaging in every day and that's question number one question number two is around the peer support group and counseling i hear that that's offered i'm very glad that that's offered to officers i'm wondering if it's optional or if it's mandatory sometimes for folks to receive that after a certain level of incident just wondering how those folks are being supported through those kinds of traumas i'll i'll let chief dixon answer that question so i know that you all have heard of peer support team a couple of different times and and maybe this will give you a better point of reference for it we just restarted that team about a year ago just a little bit over a year ago probably 13 months now and what they do is if we have we had a fatality crash on the interstate where someone was trapped in their car and our officers had to watch them burn to death so we make it mandatory after calls like that for them to go to a critical incident debrief because that one called there's something about that call it may not have been the actual act of what they saw it may may have been a site it may have been a scent it may have been something that could be the tipping point for them because they have just left a call where a six-year-old had been subjected to violence or sexual assault or domestic and now they're going to that horrific crash so yes we make those mandatory debriefings we call in and in fact in that case and at least one other that i can think of we called in extra support from sam houston state university for them to bring uh peer support counselors up and we had upwards of 40 people going through these critical incident debriefs in their mandatory and then we opened up for them to have optional follow-up counseling or sessions that they needed after that because what i don't want is for us to lose someone because we didn't take care of them so we're taking it very seriously and when you hear peer support it's kind of a a canned term that's thrown around but i can tell you since we started in the 13 months that we've had it here they've been called to other jurisdictions in north texas up into the panhandle to help other agencies that really haven't come to the point of embracing exactly what you're talking about camion how do we get past that stigma of if you speak out that something's affecting you that you're weak and i think by and large our profession has come a long way we still have a ways to go in in fighting that stigma but i think we're a lot better off now than we were before is there peer support for folks that haven't gone through a critical incident so like for instance i'm hearing okay good i'm just i'm hearing like domestic violence child abuse uh who knows what all in the same day and then you have tomorrow so i'm just wondering if there's like optional support that they can tap into even if that level is a lot absolutely we have several volunteers stood out the department i have a sergeant and a detective that headed up and they get contacted on things that are even outside of work they're just an open avenue for employees to go to sworn or civilian to help them if they can direct them to other resources if they can talk them through it themselves if they can connect them to other you know other things then that's exactly what i want them doing and i intentionally stay out of that information loop because that is a huge detractor when you have people that are reaching out for help if they think the chief is going to find out that uh you know yancey's having a problem over a call that he took if yancey's afraid that i'm going to step in and take him off the street he's not going to talk so i they have very clear direction for me i don't want to know who you're talking to unless there's a public safety reason that i need to know if we have to intervene to protect yancey from himself or protect other people from him then i'll step in he for alumnus in wine my name is situations so if i am on that list that mr he was referring to earlier where we were disciplining me for some action or inappropriate activity are are these peer support resources mandated at that time as well potentially you're making me go to a training about why i used my t-shirt and i'm required can you guys hear me i'm sorry my internet went a little crazy yeah also also requiring me to seek out this peer support group is it you is it a two to a dual situation that's happening so actually on top of the training i don't even send people to peer support if i think you're having problems like that i'm going to mandate that you go see a physician before we bring you back to work and then in terms of additional resources for your support group or for these other types of really important self-care and counseling resources is that something that you would wish or desire for additional support about and can you tell me a little bit about that if so well they're constantly networking just in the 13 months they've been in existence they've grown a great network in north texas and beyond of resources where they can direct people to in fact we were just talking to two weeks ago about two other resources they're bringing online so there's nothing that we need to help them do that it's just really getting out of their way and giving them the ability to go out and do it they do a wonderful job at it thank you chief dixon and i guess we'll go to the next presentation you have yes dr richard williams who's our accreditation and compliance specialist he would like to take a five-minute break before he comes up before he speaks i want to touch on one very important point that we hadn't talked about yet if if we put all of our officers 195 officers through one 40-hour course so that's the mental health peace officer course that takes 40 hours if i make it mandatory for the entire department to go through that that's the equivalent of three and a half years of a police officer being off the street and that's one 40-hour course that's just to put it in perspective how much goes into getting officers training and prioritizing it because it's not as simple as saying i want you all to go take this 40-hour course we are taking a significant amount of resources off the street which we then have to replace and backfill but we also have to plan out how long is it going to take us to be able to do that so i just want to set kind of set the stage for when you're talking about this comprehensive training plan why it's so important that for me that we start moving in that direction okay thank you chief and we're we're going to take a five-minute break hopefully we'll find willy and see if he can turn on willie you are signed on the two devices and we need you on the screen so madam chair we're gonna we're gonna sign off for just a few minutes and you can stay on okay all right thanks all right what did you uh need me to do uh we need to see your face sir that's not a pleasant thought well it is what it is okay okay we are back from our five-minute break from uh we are back on the use of force ad-hoc committee meeting and we are going to go into the presentation from dr williams and i will turn it over to you well good evening everybody and i and i'm happy to be here with you again uh i really appreciate what you guys are doing this is a very important conversation that we're having uh just a just a little order of what i'm gonna what i intend to accomplish is i'm going to talk about the training plan and the training needs assessment how we put together the training plan then i'll talk about accreditation and accreditation process and during those two presentations i'll try to fill in some gaps i wrote some notes for some of the questions that you asked previously and i'll try to fill in some gaps if that if that's okay if you have a question you'll feel free to stop me and ask your question and and i will answer all right any questions before i get started all right very good so the the training plan so to so one of the one of the first charges that the chief gave me when i got here was to work with the training division to put together a comprehensive training plan and so we put together the first comprehensive training plan for the den police department and so before we put together that training plan we did a gap analysis and a training needs assessment and we employed a mixed methodology to do that collecting both quantitative data and qualitative data uh and so how we went about doing that is we conducted at least 15 focus groups with every work group within the police department and then we conducted at least one focus group with community members and we got community members to come in and give their their input regarding what they thought didn't pd's training needs are and then we looked at what were the statutory requirements for training what training was required by by t code or crediting body for uh police officer licensing what training was required by uh the den police department the chief through our policies as many of our training is is required through our policies what training is required through tpca out the the accredited the accreditation uh body that we're participating in and then we looked at we asked officers about what training they desire not only the training we look at not only training they need and they're required to have but what training would they like to have to help improve their skill set as police officers so we put that so that was the the qualitative uh data collection and then we sent out every person within the police department both non and sworn a survey a survey of what what they thought about our training current training whether or not they thought that their training needs were being met what training did they think would help improve their job performance uh and and to make suggestions regarding additional training that they would like to have and so we color we pulled all of that data and we put it into a comprehensive training plan that covered every area of the of the department and let me back up not only did we do a focus group with the community but we did also a focus group with the criminal justice system as well the da's office participated the judge participated uh and so we had several people the city attorney participated so we had various people that participated in uh this focus group so that we could get so we can collect some good rich diverse data about where we thought our training was and where we thought we needed to go with our training and so that yielded our annual training plan which is a very robust training plan that that affects recruit training it affects supervisor training it affects officer training it requires in-service training it affects non-sworn training sworn training uh and so to to to wrap it in in in a nice little ball the chief has said on numerous times that training is becoming a way of life for the den police department and that's evident in the our first ever training plan any questions about the training plan all right so we're going to have a question please sure sure mr bang's uh dr williams uh uh having not not to be disparaging or to speak ill of anyone of the past i simply want to know uh why there was never a training plan here before and and why do we see i can envision the need for it but talk talk to us about the genesis of this how do we come to this conclusion that a training plan is necessary and how is that different from what we've done previously so i can't really speak to the past but i can't speak to the present one of the things chief dixon requested is that we that we look at putting together training and we identify what our training needs were and that's why we did the gap analysis and the training needs assessment and that's why we met with every work group within the department and the outside entities and the community members so that they could help us identify where our training gaps were and where our where they thought our training needs were and so that's that formed the genesis of the training uh remember i guess a couple weeks ago chief dixon mentioned the perf report and the perf report made several recommendations regarding needs of the department and a lot of that required training uh then we had again we had the the t code requirements where the state requirements state laws change every year so we had to identify what's current what are the current state requirements what are the current statutory requirements for training and so all of those things helped inform this training plan now why there did a training plan did not exist prior to that that's not a question that that i can answer uh but i do know the the genesis of the training plan that we put together well and kind of as a follow-up um how does denton differ from other departments is this something new that that is kind of a that departments are now doing that they haven't done previously or is this just we're just kind of catching up to where some of the other departments are presently so i think it's a little bit of both so just during our first meeting i gave a little bit of my background during my back you know in my career i spent 25 years as a police officer and i experienced uh voluntary accreditation processes and i experienced uh compelled accreditation process i call it through a federal consent decree and one of the things that they require was that we put together a comprehensive training plan now prior to that i will admit that we had never put together a comprehensive training plan uh for my previous agency in new orleans prior to being required to do it or compelled to do it by the federal consent decree so to answer your question a little bit uh i'm not sure if it was a practice in other agencies but i know in my experience it was not a practice in my agency and when i got to denton it had not been a practice in denton but i can't i can't i can't speak to uh the law enforcement profession in general thank you any other questions about the training plan all right so i'll move into accreditation and accredited and that's a good segue into accreditation so mr baines i can't speak to uh whether or not other agencies had training plans but as it relates to accreditation uh we actually what is accreditation accreditation when you get a third a third party that comes in and vouches and verifies and vouches that your agency is uh is compliant with certain best certain industry best practices in in our industry that's law enforcement and agencies across the country in the 80s and 90s uh decided that they wanted to improve the standards for law enforcement in the 80s and 90s that you know some of the things that were going on in the 80s and 90s that prompted that prompted those agencies to want to uh employ standards for their agencies so you had agencies that were seeking accreditation through what is called the uh commission on accreditation for law enforcement and that was put together by the the international association of chiefs of police the national associate the national sheriff's association and also the national black organization of law enforcement executives but here in texas texas did something a little different texas decided that they wanted to prescribe training specific to texas they wanted to identify the the needs the training needs for texas so the police chiefs here in texas got together at as a as a part of the texas police chiefs association and they identified 12 critical areas for law enforcement that's in that information that you received they identified those 12 critical areas for law enforcement that impact police liability but that could result in police liability and one of those and as it relates to use of force one of those major areas is use of force so those critical areas include the use of force emergency vehicle operations and pursuits search seizure and arrest those fourth amendment rights care custody and restraint of prisoners domestic violence and agency employee misconduct off-duty conduct not just what they did at work but what they're doing away from work that reflects on the police department selection and hiring those personnel issues selection and hiring and sexual harassment complaint and internal affairs management which you heard a lot about the past few weeks from chief smith narcotics swat and high-risk warrant warrant management engaging in mentally ill and the developmentally disabled which you talked about earlier today property and evidence management so they decided hey these are areas that expose police to great liability we think that we need to set some standards specific to texas police departments here in texas so they came up with those areas and under those areas they identified 168 best practices that they felt that police departments should comply with in order to become accredited in texas we have to comply with those things to verify and validate our activities and one of the things that that that does is that makes sure they ensure that the police department is looking at these things that the police are looking at these things that they consider these things as we develop policies as we develop practices as we develop our training and so these things help inform and when we do that it help inform the decisions that the police chiefs make regarding their management decisions and how to and how and why does it do that well as a part of accreditation we're required to look at things critically and provide annual reports and in these annual reports it's just not a collection of information it's just not collecting data but it's what are we doing with that data what type of analysis are we doing with that data and how is that data impacting our police operations so one of the things someone asked earlier i think i'm not i don't remember who asked the question but somebody asked hey when we do the training how do we know that the training is becoming is is effective right i think someone asked that question right how is it effective and how are we measuring the success of that training well based upon what we're required to do now now keep in mind this is our first annual training plan this is our first comprehensive annual training plan so we're we're just implementing this plan and so these are what we're looking to this is how we're looking to measure whether or not the training plan is being effective so we're looking at patterns in those annual reports that are and they kind of intertwine the accreditation process and training so as a part of the accreditation process we're looking at those patterns the patterns that you mentioned the use of force the annual use of force report annual discipline report annual internal affairs investigations report annual vehicle pursuit report and when we look at these reports we're looking at patterns you know what what are we learning from these patterns the types of the the types of patterns the frequency the officers that are involved in those type of incidents so we're looking at all of those things to help inform training and so when we look at the numbers at the end of the year so that analysis helps inform the training and it will continue to help inform the training and then based upon that we can measure whether or not we've been successful how are we going to measure success all those numbers decreasing so with the complaints what type of what type of intervention are we and training are we employing to affect internal affairs complaints or what type of intervention are we employing to affect vehicle pursuits or what type of intervention are we employing to affect response to resistance or use of force type complaints and so we'll be able to measure whether or not that training is being effective by looking at those numbers and seeing where we're improving all those numbers decreasing somebody had a question i'm sorry so as a part of accreditation i mentioned that the accreditation requires us requires the department look at things that will help the chiefs make informed management decisions related to personnel related to process related to equipment somebody asked a question about refresher training and when we identify training deficiency i think someone asked that question and i'd like to fill in that gap a little bit so whenever so we started a new program last year and that program is called we call it epip for short but that stands for employee employee performance improvement planning and we put together that program and there are certain activities that will prescribe a person to an epip or to an employee performance improvement plan and we know that that performance improvement plans are not unique to denton i mean agencies across the country use performance improvement plans uh so we initiated this employee performance improvement plan so that to give supervisors a tool a tool to use when they identify deficiencies uh that officer may be having performance deficiencies and that officer is required to participate in that in that in that program the supervisor puts together that that plan with that particular officer and it may require training it may require some type of course it may require some other type of activity to show that their performance that they've successfully completed that that performance improvement plan and that the deficiency has been improved or the deficiency is no longer a deficiency if i might say i think someone asked about other specialty type training so there is some specialty type training right we have the active shooter training we have the response to disasters training we have the required nims training which chief padgett talked about the national incident management training that's a national training required by the federal government of all police departments that all of our police department members participate in including the chief we have scenario based training that's that's coming up we have the similar the simulator training that some of you all participated in which we got good feedback from and we have some new training that we're bringing uh just recently we participated in a conference on active bystandership uh i don't know if anybody's familiar with bystandership or with uh active bystandership but that's a new program that's uh that that's being started nationwide and what that involves is and and before i say what it's involved is similar to and chief padgett mentioned it uh it's similar to that show uh what would you do right it's it's it's an attempt to put another another tool on an officer's tool belt to use uh we teach officers how to shoot we teach officers how to run we teach them the law we teach them how to conduct investigations but this active bystandership involves teaching officers making them aware of how to respond when they see some type of misconduct where they see some type of assessor force or whether or not they see some uh see their their peers losing their temper and getting ready to do something that they should intervene in to stop or to help and so this active bystandership training uh is something that is getting started across the nation they're getting ready to do uh train the trainers across the nation and we've requested three spots so that we can train we can get some of our officers trained to deliver that training to the rest of our department somebody mentioned the explicit and implicit bias training that's training that the chief initiated initiated the process of bringing that training to denton last year in fact last summer it just took a while to get and that training is a three-step process where there's command command community training where the command staff and community members train together regarding implicit and explicit bias and then there's the train the trainer just recently in june we had 26 officers that were trained in fair and impartial policing explicit and implicit bias who are preparing to deliver that training throughout the department and so someone asked i think someone asked hey is this training is going to is that going to be something that's going to be routine yes it will be i don't think that we've determined what the frequency is going to be yet but it's not going to be a one-time training it's something that's going to be routine uh and we're going to do refreshers but what that frequency is going to be has not quite been determined i don't think and that initial command community training was scheduled in march but it was postponed because of covet 19 but that training is actually the command community portion of that training is getting ready to take place september 10th and 11th of this year and there may be someone on this in your group that's scheduled to attend that training any questions about accreditation so far yes ma'am ronda yes i'm not sure it's about accreditation or if i'm going back to your earlier talk but um are officers ever given an opportunity to assess themselves and see how that would differ from their supervisors assessment are you speaking of their annual evaluation or you know as an example so i can't speak to whether or not all of the officers have done it but i i will say that uh it is a process that's beginning to be employed by the den police department and where you can evaluate yourself and your and your supervisor also do your evaluation and you see where where where you meet right and you can see what's the difference between your perception of your performance and the perception of your supervisor okay so that is at the beginning that that doesn't necessarily continue throughout someone's career it may be something that we continue but right now we're beginning so many different projects this year between last year and this year and it may be something that we continue just think about it i think i think it would be very beneficial okay thank you anybody else have any questions bow did i see your hand up uh jamie i have one question you hey hold on jamie your internet is going in and out so we can't can you try it again okay there you go maybe now yes um there's a hundred and sixty eight i think different accreditation steps or processes that were identified i wrote that number down i don't know if i have what that is correctly um but my question is the reports and the patterns that you're identifying are they made publicly available in any way i know that some of them have been made available to this committee i know that there are probably legal implications for maybe not sharing all of them but i am curious if the work that you're doing the analysis strategic work that you're doing is in any way publicly available and if you mentioned it i missed it so sorry so right now we're going through the process so it's not publicly available right now but um uh you know but i'm sure at some point it will but i will say this and i think the chief is okay with this that if anybody has any questions about our accreditation process and our participation in accreditation feel free to call me or make an appointment to come by and i can i have no problem with walking you through exactly what we're doing it's not a secret that we're going through this accreditation process uh and it's a part of our practice of of internal and external procedural justice right uh we share this information with all of our personnel and we we shared it we we've shared this information with you through this report that we pray we that we prepared tonight so i don't think that uh it would be a problem for you if you wanted access to see what we're doing because i mean this is your police department so i don't think i don't think that the accreditation process is something that's secret and just for my own understanding can you tell me approximately how many police departments in our region even or in the state of texas have gone through this accreditation process and our or maybe police departments of our size that are accredited because it is a pretty extensive endeavor so i can't tell you uh by agency size but i can't tell you there's about 155 agencies that have completed accreditation and there's like 30 i think about 38 that are going through the process right now including us and then there's i think almost i think 15 that are preparing to go through the process and just because i don't understand the full scope can you give me 100 is about what percentage of all departments well i can tell you there's about 1200 law enforcement agencies in texas so john did you have a question uh no i didn't sure i wanted to just comment on the on the uh on the peer process uh and this was uh something that we picked up years ago when i was working for a major corporation and i've incorporated it in my own business when we have annual reviews and it's quite interesting to see how people see themselves they basically go through and and they do a self-assessment and then the supervisor does an assessment and then we sat down and we talk about uh the you know are we really having the same perception are we seeing things differently and it's quite interesting you know rather than the finger wagging where you you you no no no yes yes yes it's a little more interactive and a little more well received when you do that and i think that that's a i'm glad to hear that that process is is uh being undertaken by the dentin police department thank you okay you can continue dr williams so just a just a little thing about the the accreditation a little more about the accreditation process and what it entails so what the process entails a team of chiefs and former chiefs that get together and and they form your accreditation team and they come in and they do but once you complete the application process which we've already done and you're accepted and you enter into a contract with tpca the texas police chiefs association which we entered into our contract in march and we we uh we began the process uh in march the official officially began the process in march the team comes in and they do an initial on-site assessment of your operation looking looking at they're trying to identify a baseline and to see if there's some glaring issues that might hamper your ability to become accredited so we had that process once they once they completed that on-site process then you're assigned a tpca coordinator that you work with hand in hand that you submit proofs of compliance those 160 and and it said 166 jamie but it was actually 168 and that actually just past weekend was that we were notified that it increased to 170 best practices that we have to comply with and i'm proud to say that the two best practices that they that they added included the duty to intercede and included the banning of choke holes and neck restraints which chief dixon had already implemented so it was easy for us to comply with those right away so uh thank you to chief dixon for his forethought on that uh so they come in they assign us this coordinator that we work with and we're required to submit in our first year we're required to submit proofs of compliance for those 170 best practice in an electronic format and also they're going to come in and visually inspect when they do the final on-site assessment so right now i'm working with the coordinator and i'm submitting proofs of compliance and you can look at that report there's a report a spreadsheet that i put in the information that you have today i think that shows the status of the uh the best practices whether or not they've been submitted approved whether or not we have a current general order that's working or whether and if it's clear then we haven't done much with it at all i don't know do you have that do you have that that sheet is that yes is that no sarah did you um include that sheet in their packet should be in the reports okay is that right dr williams yes it was in it should have been in the reports on this on the slide i guess and maybe i'm not operating the slide right now so i have a phd but my phd is not in technology so i haven't you know so i haven't been operating that slide because i feel like i'm talking to you guys like we're in a in a meeting and i'm not doing a presentation per se but maybe if i click on this yeah because we don't have a slide dr williams oh well maybe maybe i need to click on this and see if it's if it's on here right okay all right uh is it in the slide uh can somebody can somebody give me a hand here hang on yeah okay yes yes so sorry i didn't go through all the visual aid if you want me to start all over from the beginning i can right uh no sir thank you there's a lot of information i talked about that i could have been showing you a visual aid but uh i'm glad your attention was on me uh so here is a is a spreadsheet that shows the status of where we are in the in submitting our proofs of compliance and there's a little legend here at the where there was a legend somewhere maybe it's at the top now there's a legend here that that that tells you how many have been submitted how many and approved how many proofs and and documents submission forms were submitted includes those two new standards how many are currently being worked on now how many are currently the general order is currently in draft how many require some training and then other how many had not been addressed as of yet and so when you look you can see that those that are those that are blue they've been submitted and proved and approved by tpca those that are in brown have been submitted and awaiting approval they're under review those that are yellow we're actively working on and some of those were actually cleared this week this slide hasn't been updated but uh a number of them have been submitted this week uh there are a couple that require some additional proof of training and then white there were a couple that had not been addressed yet 726 and 110 and i know you don't know what they are they don't have the descriptions there but there were two new ones that were added 225 was added this week and also 611 was added this week if anybody wants deeper information about this i mean feel free to contact me i have i'll be more than happy to talk to you and share that information with you any other questions about accreditation so once we satisfy each one of these proofs of compliance then they come in and they do a final assessment and when what they're looking at during those on-site assessments they're looking at our hard copy files remember i have to submit electronic files and also we have to keep hard copy files so that they come in and review those files and then they come in and talk to our personnel because we can tell them what we're doing but they come in and talk to our personnel and say hey are they really doing what they say they're doing right are you aware of the budget are you aware of the departmental changes are you aware of those policies right uh so they come in and they and they physically observe our physical plan as well do we have backup generators do we have a communications department uh do we have inventories do we uh they come and review our property and evidence room so those are things they come in and review our response to resistance records our training records so they come in and review those things on site to make sure we're doing what we say what we're doing not just what we're reporting that we're doing but they come in to physically look and and verify that we're doing what we say we're doing and once that happens the assessors and again the assessor consists of a team of chiefs and former chiefs that come in and do these evaluations and once that happens then they submit a report to the uh tpca accreditation committee and then they decide whether or not our agency becomes accredited and then that accreditation if they agree that we should be accredited then are recognized it's called the the texas police chiefs association recognition agency recognition program which is an accreditation program basically and so it once they decide that we can they feel that we should be recognized then the chief and members of the department are presented with recognition at the annual texas police chiefs association conference and then officers get a nice pin that they can be proud of to show that hey we are and we are an accredited police department and and based on my experience officers are very very proud of becoming accredited and also the community that they serve become is very it's very proud that their agency is accredited has become accredited and as jamie mentioned it seems like a lot of work and that's because it is it's a lot of work to become accredited especially your first time becoming accredited uh to my knowledge this is the first time that the department has ever sought accreditation and this will be the first time that of course the department has ever become accredited and so it's a lot of work and it's a heavy lift in the beginning yes it is any questions about accreditation about the accreditation process yes dr wiamons how long does the process take and when do you anticipate the process to be complete that's an excellent question so the process tpca gives you tpca ah thank you very much i told you i didn't i wasn't an expert in technology good to see you all again so good question mr bangs uh so the process tpca gives you 24 months to complete the accreditation process and what was the second part of your what was the second part of your question so when do you anticipate us completing that process we're hopeful that we we're working very hard right now and we we have accomplished a lot and we're hoping to uh be a become accredited at the april conference in 2021 so we we so we plan so we are ahead of schedule now there's some things that have kind of some bumps in the road with covet 19 and then some some other uh construction related planning that could impact that but right now we're on track to complete this this process in april of 2021 even though they give us until april i guess of march of 2022 okay i think uh willy had a question sure go ahead mr mr husbit you gotta turn it on willy i can't hear you there you go okay thank you who determines which accreditation plan do we choose or is there only one plan that you can choose to become accredited and if if there are more than one if there's more than one plan that that you can subscribe to why did you choose the one that you did or the the city choose the one that they did choose to have this accreditation process put in place and what are the what are the pros and cons of being in this particular program or process of accreditation so that's a very good question excellent question mr husbit uh so there is more than one accreditation there's the kalea accreditation which i mentioned earlier that's the it's a national accreditation to commit the uh uh the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies which is a national and one of the largest accrediting bodies and then the texas police chiefs association here in texas is one that the texas police chief association offers one of the major differences and and it's somewhat comparable but one of the major differences is costs so the the kalea accreditation is is very expensive uh and the texas police chiefs association there's some costs associated that with that but it it's it's it's it's easier on our fine it's just it's almost just as difficult but it's it's easier on our our finances uh to participate in this process uh and that that's the major the the major difference anybody else have a question okay dr williams you can proceed so that's our accreditation process in uh in summary if you again if you need more specific information i can give you more specific information uh feel free to contact me by email or come back come and see me at the at the office i'm always available and i can walk you through this process in more detail if you like we can walk you through the training plan if you like we'd be more than happy to do that but at the end of the day this accreditation process and this training plan is is going to help us continue to be the police department that uh you want it to be the police department that our city manager wants us to be the police department that our city government wants us to be that kind of concludes my presentation uh thank you all so much for your attention today bo you had a question wow i missed that no he just raised the same dr williams yes sir i'm just you mentioned earlier the the research that you guys have done the mixed method approach of qualitative quantitative sure one of the things i'd asked the deputy chief earlier was just about the gaps that you guys have discovered particularly in regards to the training regarding use of force okay you know uh you may not have it right in front of you but maybe if that's something that is documented somewhere that we could get just what you found through those through that research you know i know that you've showed us everything that you're working toward in the accreditation but i was just wondering if you knew anything off the top of the mind you know in terms of what gaps were surfaced in that particular area so i don't have that information available right now but i can have that information for you prior to at our next meeting thank you but the information is available yes it is available we do have i just don't have a copy of the report to speak specifically to it right now thank you anyone have any more questions okay thank you dr williams you're very very welcome i look forward to seeing everybody next week thank you so much are we meeting next week yes yes i look forward to seeing everybody next week thank you so much so before we um wrap up this meeting um did anybody i think sarah had a survey that she sent to everybody to start putting input did anybody do their survey want because yeah we don't well sarah how many surveys do you have uh i checked a couple days ago i think there was only two received so far this is the survey that lists your top three things is that what you're talking about correct yes and you sent that in the email because i don't what if i have more than three things um that was a tool that we had proposed using to kind of group together what some of the recommendations recommendations might be from the committee we can still use that tool to get individual feedback from you all but i think with what chief dixon had proposed tonight is kind of that we've gotten those five topic areas in regards to use of force so um at the next meeting chair i'm not sure how you'd like to handle it if you if you want to take training for example as one topic area and say are there any specific recommendations in regards to training for use of force right um and then go forward with each of the five areas and kind of put it together that way i'm happy to to develop anything the committee wishes to have in order to help you form your recommendations um so staff willing to help i have a couple things i guess i um thought next week was a community input call it is but we will have something before we start taking calls like we did the last time okay and um also i've i've been doing some research on the community police oversight board and i know we had mentioned that maybe like there should be a task force of people to work on that but i don't know if that got organized but i wanted to say i've been doing some research on it and the from dallas there's a community oversight board and also there's an advisory council that's made up of community members so i just wanted to say like maybe some folks could get together and i don't know sarah if you could put a call out whoever wants to work on this we can have a call or something um to work on that otherwise i can maybe email you the research that i have compiled in a document uh as a suggestion around that oversight board because it's something that our committee said they wanted to recommend that's what i'm saying i don't know if the the survey is going to be able to fit everything that i have been compiling okay if it helps you um our attorney mike kroneck has put together a few options for the committee to think about that meet the state statutes and our meet and confer currently and just for you to kick around so there's there's actually two or three four different ways that something like that could be structured and we do intend on having one full meeting to present some of those options to you so we're happy to kind of save you a little bit of the research he's already got a position paper that he's working on right now and we wanted to just give you lots of options to kick through at one night i appreciate that and i also tweaked the information from the research that i got for the city of denton to make it more how i think our community is so i'd still like to present what i have found out if that's possible and share that with the chair or the committee or whoever might want to work on that um but yeah i just wanted to add that in that like we had talked about that and right i wanted to bring that up all right um i have a couple more questions so yancey um don who and jamie so go ahead yancey i just uh want to request information from uh mike uh the city attorney can you possibly provide the committee with uh what is the purpose and the charter and everything dealing when it comes along with the civil service commission because i think that a lot of people on the committee don't understand that we already have somewhat of an oversight board which is in terms of the civil service commission so maybe if you can provide information to them regarding what is the charter and the status and the purpose of the civil service commission they might answer some of their questions and let them know that some of these things are already in place so i think that'll be some good information that the committee probably would like to review thank you sure i'm assuming you don't you don't i'm sorry go ahead mike i'm assuming you mean when i do my presentation uh at that time or i don't think you're asking for me to specify that right right now right no okay no not right now i'm just saying that even if it's beforehand maybe you can get it to sarah and sarah can put it out in like an email form or something because i and this is just me from the inside uh looking out i know a lot of anti-workers and i know the committee doesn't and they probably don't understand what the civil service commission is and don't even know that we even have the civil that it even exists and in fact we have members on this committee that's part of the civil service commission that hadn't spoke up about the civil service commission so i think that uh maybe the putting information i mean i'm all about sharing information and letting people know what we already have in place maybe they won't try to reinvent the wheel i guess is what i'm trying to say because it's already there sure i'll be happy to do that and mr baines who's pointed out is actually on the commission at some point maybe could uh give his point of view of what what they do and those types of things thank you okay my question is to sarah um is it possible that we can email you that sometime um before our next meeting because i honestly did not see that's really i'm sorry i'm like i'm willing to commit so i really do apologize for that delay no problem yes i'd be happy to do so okay thank you jeremy it is possible that i am just too much of a type a an organized person for this type of committee endeavor but i'm really struggling with how many weeks we have remaining in our charge and how little conversation we as a committee have been able to have to this point we've been intaking a lot of information but we have not really had the opportunity to discuss how we individually have processed the information to be able to move forward to making recommendations and i was the one last week that suggested or wanted to know if it was possible to do work groups or something like that and i i'm just really struggling with what our timeline is as a committee moving forward and hearing that there are additional presentations that we will continue to be receiving so can somebody walk me through when when are we going to hash that out and who's gonna help us to make sure that we meet the charge that this the mayor and the city council have given to us yeah we have laid out a timeline basically that we would try to have some kind of a draft report to for all of you to discuss recommending at the council either towards the end of september sometime early october i mean i think the initial goal of september 15th probably isn't realistic for some of the reasons you're articulating and kind of after listening to you tonight you know i think we'll start off the next meeting by kind of introducing kind of the vision to deal with some of the policy issues that we're hearing come out of the committee i mean it's been pretty obvious to us what what you're interested in but i think we also need to build in more time now for you to to have those debates in those particular areas so we'll we'll provide that framework to kick off the next meeting get your input on that if you want to break down into a couple different subcommittees and take that on as long as we meet the open meetings act we can then staff and we can we can certainly accommodate you with that but this is not a this is not something where it september 15th is a is a must be you know we must meet that date i mean if we need to take two or three more meetings in order to make everybody comfortable and review the report going to the council we're going to do that so if that's what you want to do we're here with you donna um i also have a concern towards that too because my initial um thought was that this would um kind of end on september 15th and with the many commitments that i do have i'm afraid that i won't be able to provide as much input as as i would like to um with these other meetings that you're suggesting um so is there like another channel that we can put our input through um in the case that we cannot make these meetings and will it um affect us in any way um i kind of just want to know there's like a penalty towards that there's no penalty oh go ahead yeah there's no penalty at all um and if you can't make a meeting and want to make it want to make sure that your opinion is heard if you would just let you know send something into sarah she's working closely with chief dixon and sheryl as our chair to kind of organize the information and uh that's going to be the best way to do it but there there is no penalty for missing a meeting if you can't make it you can't make it but if we want it we want your information we want to know what you're thinking so i think sarah's the person that kind of to help disseminate that for everyone and we'll let the committee know what your thoughts were and you can go back and watch the meeting that you missed so that you won't uh you'll you'll be up to date up to speed when whenever you can participate willie i i know you're dying to say something because i can see it in your face so go ahead uh turn it on willie i can't hear you push the button willie there you go don't get old because it's not no fun two things i was sitting here thinking about the mandate or what this the city council has asked us to do to develop a report clear findings city manager i've been in two meetings where we've had to do something like this one was when we were choosing you as a a candidate and i please don't hold me to me saying you weren't a good candidate for the job uh just kidding just kidding but we've been on two of those and you've got certain people that's very good at bringing groups to a consensus i hope that when we get to that point where we are talking about what the report should have and what we plan to do you incorporate some of those because they were able to just like sarah's done with the five points got us on point that this is all we're asking for and just as fri what i've what have kept me on point is just remembering i'm not a person to try to tell everybody what to do i'm not that i don't have that power the committee doesn't have that power we're making a recommendation so if we have someone there who can kind of steers in in the right direction in that the majority of us agree with should be in that report i'm real comfortable with with starting that process after we get this additional information the one thing i fear is if we split up that group will have people in there who sees things a certain way then when we come back together we still got the same problem we've got to figure out then what do we do what do we keep so i think it's better if we just stay together and then talk about what it is we'd like to see in the report and with me just remembering i'm not a rule maker i don't know much about what the police do still don't have to listen to all of these reports so if i hear other people and what they're saying i think we can come up with a a report that might be helpful to the city council members i think i think if we will we'll provide kind of that we'll do a little bit better job next time of showing you the five areas that we've kind of broken it down into and why if you want to add to it or change it that's great but we felt like we needed to provide at least a starting point for you to uh to kind of agree some skids then we'll back away i think for the next meeting also something would be helpful is you you've been inundated with a lot of information tonight about training we had a lot of questions at the last meeting about what kind of training do the officers go through do we have enough budget for it that sort of thing and i think our staff did a really great job tonight explaining exactly how robust the training is and and all the things that dr williams is working on but if if you could all kind of think about you know what do you think is missing i've taken some notes that you know that i i heard from you tonight but if you could just kind of think about what what would you like to see what in your mind is missing i think that's an important part of the recommendation because how we'd envisioned this was just sort of breaking it down into training ideas we know the committee is a big the oversight committee or that concept is is is out there and we're kind of looking at it as sort of bullet point recommendations to the council at the end of the day it doesn't need to be a you know 50 page report to them i mean it's it could be a a few pages of just saying hey you know there's these topical areas we really went into um you've been you've really grabbed the reporting aspect as well so we've we've integrated that chief's already starting to work on more robust outward facing reporting so as you're talking it may not be so obvious but we're making changes listening to you and i think just sort of wrapping it up and kind of showing you what we're doing as a result of the input we're getting kind of rolls into the report so we'll do a little bit better job next week maybe putting that into a visual format for you and then we're gonna willy you and then after willy it'll be john and then pam and then we're gonna wrap it up for the evening all right one of the things that the chief brought to my attention tonight when he said how much time it would take for these individual these police officers to complete one course and how much it will cost so we need to as a group we need to kind of consider that before we start saying you need to do this and you need to do that and that i have no idea so that was very helpful what he shared thank you willy john uh thank you madam chair i'm one of the civil service commissioners i've had the pleasure of serving on the civil service commission for three years i was just asked to serve another three years and my experience there has been it's been a very unique experience listening to the police officers and the fire uh the fireman and um the when you talk about citizen input i don't really see the uh much opportunity there unless you're a dedicated uh person who would like to come and sit in those meetings which can be very technical and very um very confined we have a very uh very very strict agenda and we have uh some governing laws and the um some contracts that we have to abide by and so uh as far as that vehicle providing an audience are sufficient uh community input i basically don't see it as that recently to me as things arise and and people in the community would like to have some input to me that's where i see that that uh citizen oversight or citizen of i don't know what how to describe it it gives people a chance to talk and have input and be heard and so that's just my impression as to civil service commission and its function versus having a different committee that's geared specifically to citizen input thank you john you're welcome jamie and this is the last question and then we're gonna wrap it up so we can we've gone over kind of our time go ahead jamie i was just going to say that i think to willie's point i don't disagree willie i think we could do it all as a group i think what i'm asking of our city support is some space for us as a committee to do so i feel like we just need some time to sit together and share what we have learned and what we feel like is coming out of these conversations and start to identify some commonalities and i certainly appreciate you guys trying to do that for us but i i do feel like there's value in just some open conversation around those four or five points where we can sort of go around robin as a crew well i think and i think what they wanted to do and i think the goal was to get all the information out there so that when we did sit down and have those conversations that we had all the information out there i think what might have frightened everyone was the initial timeline of september 15th now that we know that we have more time it doesn't feel like we're so pressed together to come up and you know what i'm saying so i think um next week we'll have some time prior to the calls from the public to go over some more stuff and then we'll start delving into that but i think that because we have more time we'll be able to sit and have those conversations and hash bullet point by bullet point to come up with the solution that we have okay pam this is the last question go ahead thank you shirle um this is for yancy and it'll be very quick is there a refresher training for the mental health just i have two questions yeah so for the mental health you talk about mental health peace ups or just mental health in general the crisis intervention training that you were is there any kind of refresher after that 40 hours uh i know that's initial in the academy and then i i want to say you get like 24 don't call me on the hours but it's more training when you get your intermediate and advanced license but the thing about the specialized training you know you have to have an officer that want to take that training once they get that license in because like a mental health peace officer i'm a mental health peace officer but and i have to take continuing education hours on top of the other required hours and then now you're bogging the officer down that's something i have to want to take yes and then officer down with hours of training and that therefore you're taking officers off of the street so sometimes you got to relate with training versus the needs of the community and the department and then in the autism training was that based on an event that happened with an officer something that happened in the community or is that something you all just that was that the autism training was something i am on the academy advisory board okay and that was something that came out of a concern from a citizen who had an adult child who was on the spectrum he was you know functioning could drive and what have you but he had twitches and that was a concern and so we brought that and so that's how that was that training okay thank you so much you're welcome okay so we're going to wrap up tonight and it is what time is it it is 8 35 and we will be back next week we will have a brief presentation and then we will take calls from the public like we did prior to this couple weeks ago it will be the same format and sarah did you have anything you wanted to add we'll be sending out a press release tomorrow to inform the community of the second public input session and i'll distribute that to all of you as well okay will there be emails as well this time or online entry correct the online form is still open it has been since the first public input session and that'll remain open until thursday evening okay well thank you guys for participating and we'll see you next week