I hope I don’t have to eat my words, but this committee looks promising! They are going to be discussing what their priorities and workplan should look like for the next year at their next meeting, so mark you calendars now if this issue is important to you! They meet 1st Thursday of the month at 5:30. This blog post is from Tuesday . . . I didn’t get the details of the blog done yesterday morning, more than a few distractions with work and “not work” working on AB 583 and 568.
Getting Started!
Roll call. Meeting is appropriately noticed. Approval of minutes. No public comment. (1 other member of public, me and channel 27). No disclosures or recusals. They introduce themselves. Luis Yudice says this is the first official meeting, Christian Albouras and Yudice are co-chairs.
Albouras – Brings up how they want to govern the meeting, wants it to be efficient, wants chance to discuss. Marci Poulson (City Attorney’s Office) goes over Robert’s Rules of Order and their options for following or modifying them. There was a presentation by Mike May before the last meeting. Generally committees use Robert’s Rules and can modify them, they want to discuss if co-chairs should vote, generally chairs don’t vote. Keith Findley says that it is not just vote, but vote “and debate” – he moves to adopt Roberts rules with the exception that co-chairs can vote and debate. Seconded. No discussion, unanimously accepted.
Request for Proposal for an Expert
Brian Pittelli from the Purchasing Department goes over what is needed for a Request for Proposal. Albouras says based on discussions with city staff, that can be a lengthy process. Staff is gathering data, puts the RFP in the format needed, sends it to vendors, collect data from vendors, he will work though the process with Gloria Reyes from the Mayor’s Office to find the best candidate, he has a handout about the sketch of services.
1. Conducting an assessment of MPD Policy Manual and Code of Conduct, interviews of staff, survey of the culture of the organization through discussions and other means to gain the knowledge needed for recommendations. (Meet with MPPOA Union, Diversity and Inclusion Team, Unconscious Bias group, Amigos en Azul, Neighborhood Officers, Educational Resource Officers and any other groups within MPD)
2. Meet with training staff to review procedures of training and policy surrounding use of force, implicit bias, mental health and AODA
3. Community engagement with community leaders who are representative of the African American, Asian, Latino, Native American and LGBTQ communitites as well as a diversity of ages, youth advocacy and AODA.
4. Attend teh MPD Policy Review Committee meetings to provide status updates
5. Review past and present MPD Trust Based Initiatives
6. Review the Race to Equity report and related Police data to identify racial disparity in areas such as traffic stops, arrests and/or contacts.
7. Examine use of force trends, reporting, de-escalation, training, discipline and how MPD tracks data.
8. Review MPD Mental Health Liaison Program
9. Presentation to Committee, Mayor and Common Council on final recommendations.
The RFP will take 2 – 6 months. RFP and RFB is different. The RFB is based on price. RFP is more subjective, that is what this is. They will send it to vendors you may know, put it on public sites, there will be a period of questions for the vendors, those get submitted and collected and then he will email Reyes for the answers and everyone who asks a question will then get an answer and the answers are given to everyone. When this goes out, if you have a relationship with a vendor and they have a question, direct them to him. Part of the RFP process might be a site visit, they will coordinate that. When proposals are due he collects them, there will be two sections, pricing and technical. The evaluators see the technical piece and they grade and evaluate that, they don’t see the cost, only the staff see that until the end. There will be an option for oral interviews or presentations. This needs to go through council, needs alder sponsorship. Reyes says it will be Shiva Bidar and Denise DeMarb. Linda Ketcham asks who the review panel is. Pittelli says staff and people from this committee as well. He will lead and oversee the evaluation panel but won’t be on it. Reyes says they should id people on the committee who want to play and active role in that so they can work with city staff. Pittelli says the handout is where they are starting, Reyes and he are getting stuck on the best way to ask vendors or consultants about what they have done in the past. Since this is new, he uses examples of internet divide and where they helped low income neighborhoods, and explains there isn’t really an equivalent. He is hoping a few members will sit down with them and come up with good qualifications or questions to ask. Reyes says this is an important part of their input. They can come up with it, but its best coming from the committee, you should id 5 questions and answer how they want to see their work (PowerPoint, etc). Mario Garcia Sierra asks about the timeline, do they have time to get to know the department and research, in a couple months they will have better questions grounded in reality. Reyes says the committee guides the work and they can hold off, they do have to have a discussion about deadline of the project on the agenda, if you don’t have what you want, we will work on your timeline. Findley asks about the process itself. Staff says they like to post for a month, if it was out Jan 1, due Feb 1, 2 weeks to compile proposals (assuming 4 or 5 proposals), the evaluation panel will need to meet once or twice, they will go over the packet (honoring confidentiality, etc), Reyes jumps in/interrupts, says it is a long process, staff can come up with some standard questions that is an option too. She says it will take a long time and you could get this going. Pittelli says at least 3 months, but 4 at a minimum. He says that they will probably want oral interviews or presentation and they should go through council. Keith Findley says that we should get going, appoint a subcommittee, so they could consider this at the next meeting. Albouras talked to staff about the date is too soon, they need at least 12 months to do this work. Findley says that might be extended, but the subcommittee could meet and start. Yudice says that they will have that an agenda item on this at the next meeting because it is not noticed. Pittelli says that they could take volunteers. Reyes says that they have to wait. They tell Findley he can’t make the motion but can request it to be on next agenda. Pittelli says that members of the group can be on committee but don’t have to be an evaluator as well. Garcia Sierra says he likes having a motion at the next meeting, this is time sensitive, but he doesn’t want to rush it. Pittelli asks for other questions, there are none.
Review of Council Resolution and Request for Extension of the Deadline
Yudice says the next item is council resolution. Yudice says the due date is July 2016, they feel that the committee started late, for whatever reasons, it would not be possible to do an adequate job in that time frame given all the responsibilities the committee has and if they are going to hire and expert and that takes 3 – 4 month, they can ask for an extension. The 2 alders indicated they would be willing to consider an extension. They want to discuss that and make sure everyone understands the charge of the committee. He says it is to review policies, procedures, culture and training of MPD and $50,000 was for the expert to do that work. He says the co-chairs want to create a roadmap and timeline of where they are going and know how long it will take to get there. Stephen Marsh clarifies that an expert will review police policies, procedures, culture etc and then we review the findings? Yudice says that is the item on the table. We are not just reviewing RFP and hire, but they participate and make decisions about recommendations for changes. To dig deep and have a good understanding with the help of the expert. Findley says they are doing the review and one of the tools at our disposal is hiring a expert, we do the report and recommendations based on a analysis and investigation. Garcia Sierra says the expert was also going to create the road map, to help us understand what the community wants, we may need to set up community forums as well, we put it all together what people are telling us. Yudice asks the city attorney for input, she agrees with what they have discussed. Paulson suggests they might divide up the policies, the resolution divides it up and you might break it down into subcommittees, or the whole committee can talk about all the areas. Matthew Braunginnn says it would be hard to break up, it ties together and if you divide it, you miss connections. Our diversion programs are filled with black Madisoninans and its all tied together, it would be a disservice to break it up. Yudice says at least in the beginning. Many committee members are in agreement with that. Yudice says in the beginning they all need to participate to get a broad discussion. He says at this point we are making sure everyone is on the same page on what their responsibilities are – in the initial phases of the work they need to all participate but they might id some work to assign to subcommittees. Findley says that they might want to think about first steps, who they want to hear from and what info and materials they want to have access to. At the first meeting they wanted to know if they could get the report from committee on body cameras, training manual or materials, we need those things to review them. He wants them before they go much further. Yudice says Schauf will share, the policy manual is on line, they won’t print it unless people want it. They will get the report on body cameras and contact info for committee members, but they can’t reply all because then that is a meeting. Send questions to staff or the co-chairs. Veronica Lazo says there is a presentation by Captain Roman, that was part of what influenced them not to have cameras at this time. Sean Saiz and Garcia Sierra were also on that committee with Lazo. Yudice asks about the deadline, immediate agreement that they need more time. Braunginn says this is a lot of work and the more thorough they are the better the recommendations will be. He says the more they can look to other cities the better, Seattle is doing innovative things, we need time to sort through that to see what are good practices and see what will work here. They ask for a motion to ask staff to work with alders to extend it. They are suggesting 6 months more. They are looking at December. They all agree to request that extension, a motion is made. Unanimous.
Findley suggests that in addition to the consultant, he wonders if they should bring in other experts in other fields to address the committee. We should think about others and make invitations. (racial bias). Yudice says that it is $50,000 but the alders said they might be able to get more money. He says it might be more than one expert. Findley says there may be local folks that would do it for free. City Attorney says that even if they pay for $100 for travel that has to go through a process. Findley asks about who they might want to hear from and how to decide. Garcia Sierra says they should look at their priorities and hear from the community. He says unconscious bias might be one. What are the big ones? Reach out to MPD but also the experts, but also the diversity in the community. What info do we need from the community and what is the best way to get it. Findley asks if implicit bias if first. Garcia Sierra says yes. Braunginn suggests they do prioritization at the next meeting. Paulson says that the agenda is broad enough to discuss it, but members of the public might be interested. Brauginn says there might be priorities and sequence, plus pertinent info to educate us. Findley and Braunginn agree, they need to prioritize and put things in order and figure out how the information they need fits with that. Yudice says that the last item is future agenda items, they can have a specific discussion about that. At next meeting we can identify specific steps. Albouras says by Jan 15 or Feb 15 we want to have 5 or 6 things we want to look into, to have a skeleton of what they will do in the next months. He wants to set benchmarks on what they will get done throughout the year. Lazo asks if we can do that on this agenda item, they think not. Braunginn says even if they can, they shouldn’t, the decide to discuss at next meeting.
Overview and Questions/Requests from Police Department
Captain Mary Schauf says in the packet is a sheet of links to their website.
Video: Policing Madison
Video: Recruiting & Training
Organizational Chart
Mission and Core Values
Code of Conduct
Standard Operating Procedures
Citizen Complaint Access
Annual Reports
They didn’t see it. They hand out hard copies. She says all the materials are available to the public. She says it is a roadmap to start their work. She says there is policing the Madison way – it’s a good snapshot in this video, they use it to recruit a certain caliber person. It is recruiting and hiring videos, you see the snapshot of our culture. The rest of the links are the organizational chart. She says the next is the mission and values, and the SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). Those of you more familiar saw all the policy and procedure in one document in the past. They took the things critical to their work, that tie back to core values, that is all in the code of conduct. This information will inform you and set priorities Keith (Findley) was talking about. These are things that were important. That is the basic framework, from the code of conduct you have standard operating procedures, all the pdfs on the website are there for you to start your work. There are a handful of SOPs that don’t live on the website – response to a hostage situation – they are sensitive so for safety reasons those are not on there. The vast majority are available to all the public. The SOP process is that they are regularly under review, admin code, state and fed law are constantly changing so they are being updated, they want to be in compliance. Right now we were discussing that our subject matter experts on vehicle operation is under review and answering questions by the chief about the discretion and latitude we want officers to have. Officers are expected to follow these SOPs and code of conduct and it guides their discretion. For new hires they have a training session, they have a police academy, they have a field training program and then they are deployed. Other agencies send officers to an academy and only field train with the officers and are deployed. For each topic area they have state certified experts, the training and standards bureau has standards that they meet and exceed. We do bring in some people for specialized training and they bring in some experts. Their people are also out and getting trainings. They can provide subject matter experts to provide a presentation on things they decide are important. Brown? asks how many in-services per year. Shauf says district phased one in beginning of year, a spring and fall in-service and on-duty firearms, use of force that is shift based, 4 season. The minimum is 24 hours. Since they have their own training section, they offer other trainings with other agencies and people can go at no cost. For people in specialized positions they have specialized training beyond that. They will bring the training section in and they can bring data on the average amount of training. Braunginnn asks if that is broken down by the topic. Schauf says they can tell you the curriculum, but not by individual officer or by topic. The fall/winter inservice had a whole morning on implicit bias. It’s called “judgment under the radar” group. They can tell you how many times it is offered and what is mandatory or optional. Brown asks if there is a certificate. Schauf says they have to fulfill requirements and that there is a satisfactory grade to maintain certification with the state. She will make sure the training section goes over what the state requires.
Findley asks about data on stop and frisk, racial makeup of stops. What do you collect? Schauf says they gather a lot of data, that is where you see detention issues on stop, they collect use of force data. Some are available to the public, but if you need data, let Mike or the chairs know and if it’s not in the format the committee needs or want. Findley asks about race of people stopped or arrested. Shauf says all arrest data is age, gender, race, charges and it’s all in the incident based reporting to the feds, the records section can tell you what is available, we might not have a report ready but we can get it. She will get more info on routine reports. Sue Petkovsek says that the DOJ reviews the data, what is the status of the data review and are there recommendations. Schauf says she has not asked about this. (I stepped our for the next part and might mis-identify voices, sorry). Shauf says she may not always have the answer, but she will make sure she gets them. Braunginn asks about stops vs arrests, especially on racial breakdown. Schauf says that they are all recorded, but she doesn’t know if they can pull that out, but who is contacted, when, etc all exists, it just needs to be in a usable form for the committee.
Findley? asks about community policing and information about their philosophy. Schauf says they have been proponents of community policing since its inception in the 1980s when they worked with Herman Goldstein, we were one of the charter members, they have been actively engaging with that heritage since the 80s. Along with the problem solving and problem-oriented policing, they have a segment on that on the webpage as well. This might show how their programs tie back to the community based policing. With the 21st century report, they lay out the 6 pillars of re-establishing trust, and they are working on their report on that, what they are doing, where they are at, they need a starting point to figure out where to go. That will come out end of the month, that is another document they should look at. It’s a report in response to the 21st Century policing report. DeMarb has mentioned that in her opening comments, she will send more documents and try not to overwhelm, but build them a reference library.
Garcia Sierra? says that he wants more information on deadly force, he says he remembers Chief Koval saying that he won’t change the policy and he wants to know why the chief has settled on that policy and if there aren’t better policies out there. Schauf isn’t sure what was in the police chief’s mind, they are in alignment with the state training and legal standards as well as some critical case law that has come down over the years. She says this is a topic where a presentation by their training team would make most sense. She would like to have the subject matter experts come in, say what the policy is and how they train it. Garcia Sierra says it is good if it is in alignment, but the truth is in who is being killed, that is why he wants to question that and hopefully we can come up with something that will impact that. Schauf says that the breakdown of the last 10 years of deadly force and demographic information. He says there may be other situations where deadly force wasn’t used with a good outcome. He would like to hear more about that. The fact that it is in alignment doesn’t mean it was right. Shauf says that the totality of each circumstance are taken into account and she thinks they should look at the areas they look at. Braunginnn says Graham v Connor and objective reasonableness is something that they should look at, there are legal and moral standards wand we should look at both.
Lazo asks about the DOJ data and what they get from other places. She says that with the communities they represent, our Latino community has difficulties with divisions of the police and they just see a badge, not just city and county and town. Someone could end up in jail and there might be data that other departments provide. Is there different data collected, is it combined or separate. If I get to jail, it’s because you put me there, but then I’m in a different jurisdiction, from all the points of contact what data do we have out of that and how does DOJ merge the data. Schauf says jail and offense data is different with the sheriff and she’s not sure what they have. The upshot is that data throughout the criminal justice system does not track one person. They also have field units. UW, Capital, City and Town and Sheriff all have some of the same jurisdiction, the sheriff has jail data, the courts also have records as people move through the whole system. Yudice says that one issue for him is that in the sheriff system, when someone goes to jail, it is captured by race but the jail system doesn’t id someone as Latino, some of the numbers in terms of arrest makes it harder to track. He says they need a good understanding of that. Even when you get stopped by sheriff, what happens to that. In her work with domestic violence victims, it is complex since they just see police, they don’t know if they are blue or brown uniforms. (city or county) Schauf says she will bring in experts as requested.
Sue Petkovsek says she participated in the 21st century policing conference and they talked about training methods – soldiers use abasement and then builds them up – how does your training work. Schauf is happy she asked, you bring them in, break down and humiliate, that is not how we train people, it’s been shown not to be effective, we bring in professionals, we have a diverse workforce with previous career and work experience, you will see that when you talk to trainers, look at the video with one of the new recruits where she talks about the experience. Adults don’t learn best in that environment, they respond to critical thinking tasks.
Jerry Vang asks about process, names and groups involved in the criminal justice system. Schauf says CJ system is a big machine, police are front end, have contacts in the field. When police have the contact and take someone into custody, they will go through the court process and it varies if it is a state charge vs. traffic ticket, police get you into the system and how the system treats you after police play a role, but it’s complicated. She can gather materials and bring someone in on that.
Yudice asks about the monitoring systems in place, how do we ensure the philosophy of the department is being practiced on the street, there is a mismatch in every organization on mission goals and what is being practiced, how does that impact the culture. What is policy vs. practices in mission and procedures.
Garcia Sierra asks about how the mental health and crime prevention units play into all of this. Schauf says the restorative justice initiatives will also be important. Lazo would like an overview of the task forces you have and how you divide that up (detective vs. nondetective work) Schauf says to filter other questions through Mike Miller. Albouras says that Schauf will reach out to Koval on issues and they will work on getting experts here. He says that the main leader of the MPD should come and chat with us to see his vison and goals and we should ask him questions. Lazo says that she would like to have a preliminary discussion first. She doesn’t want to be bombarded with info, we will band to talk about the issues. Braunginn says we might want to ask for experts outside of law enforcement, you will get two different perspectives.
Future agenda and meeting date
Future dates – 1st Thursday at 5:30 (January 7th)
Next agenda items:
– Create committee for RFP
– Discussion on Body Camera Report
– Identify priorities
– Roadmap (timeline and subject areas to be covered)
– Discussion on Responding to Media Requests
