the there were had community missionary was great because i feel like i learned a lot more about this priest distribution of condemnation letters so i mean i am you again it's always the always coming in and we had multiple comments from her and how do we let the public know how do we get out of the all the good stuff that officers do day in and day out  because i think it's important that we just look at reality you know we're going to be talking about oversight later on and that's important too and that's part of our role but how do we also not going to shout i mean i think that's what we should officers  you know you know that something could be late at night or early in the morning but  now that is a great idea and maybe just when we know that division is coming into us we could have a communication process or procedure to go back out you know to the office or might just be as simple as if we print up an e mail that writing a note on the e mail and sending it to the  get not only from your input i mean ultimately it's going to be an incident and i hope you know a satisfied citizen and your gut reaction to it is is i think going to count for a lot you know so sorry said this man that bob is going to roll call and and i will do the letters all the letters because yeah it will be multiple roll calls but and you do worry that there's a small worry that some cops will say why did not why did i get the why did own accord but but after about a year just because we do a lot of talking about the cops and what the car show to do with this in that tonight you know all people have ordered to come but that the union comes you know other one again you going to the not here tonight but we are we just finished actually new office space for her over there so i'm proud to say we're we've got to be the only like police department for say that has an epidemiologist working for it but we're committed to taking a public health approach lightning is that  mental lucian's not arrest solutions or judicial solutions so we are the tip of the spirit just what kind of spirit is that matters and also because we're a city without a public health unit without you know like new york city or philly or washington has department health brought in does not but the mayor's commitment to opioids is serious so do happens he's well talk about some data answer questions but just to you know i don't know to the you got to see both of those cities in your life time right but the difference and our work there and you talk about this maybe invited us down as guests to new york city which created with the calm staten now drug stat  as other police departments is on there so we're doing the substance behind it i know jackie and she can talk about tonight so thank you so there is a tremendous amount happening in berling and that is catching the eye nationally wellington let me just give you a few initiatives and i know one of the questions that came out are we seeing an influx of fat knol and the answer to that is absolutely are we seeing an influx of other substances we are starting to really see a huge influx of crystal meth which is for those of us who work in the field frightening when we talk about fat nolen heroin and crack  cocaine but i thought i would just give you a brief overview so you can just be aware of what's happening in our city because it's pretty tremendous we meet monthly and we've been meeting monthly since of amber of two thousand and sixteen in our  have a comsat meeting with has stakeholders both federal stakeholders we have the federal prosecutor we have federal probation brings state stakeholders the agency a human services secretary and it's headed up by the burlington mayor and the chief of police we have on average the say coms that really needs to be credited we've had some tremendous things come out of from looking at hospital prescribing practices mansion we're viewing this as a public health initiative and if you look at suboxone or bupa those are interchangeable the purpose of the medication is to stop people from overdosing and dying so that we can then have a conversation about what is the next step in your in your journey whatever that might be we have brought speakers from around the country to com stat we brought some pretty significant authors  this in physicians and doctors we have a fellow by the name of dr jodee rich out of rhode island who is doing a lot around people who are incarcerated leaving with an orphan and i think really should be credited with speaking up up and around there's a new act that just passed of the department of corrections act one seventy six either way on intake you'll be continued on your medication if you come in on medication and or forty five days prior to release you'll be offered medication and we know that people who leave the facility who have been actively using that's a high risk time for overdose if you're not preparing them with with medication so that will be offered to folks we've also been published and a number of newspapers from vioxx this were skype being in this thursday johns to ring in sin he is from iceland and we're looking at the iceland model as a prevention initiative both within our community here but the state jail and a look claire who's the prevention director they're also looking is this a prevention model that we want to look at with the state so there's some exciting things happening within com stat within our city one of the things that  to law enforcement folks talk to each other and i quickly i'm a social worker by training and i always joke and say i never thought in my career i'd be sitting in a police department but it has been an eye opener for me to be sitting and see the work that's happening in this department it's not that listed and we talk about anyone who's overdosed whether it's fail or non fatal if it's fatal we take that as a failure what did we are what could we have done to prevent that from happening if it's a non fatal overdose then the question is how we going to get to this person the first and foremost job a subset is to get people into treatment or to get them opportunity to know that there are people out there that care and that there are resources for them i can proudly say and it took some work by a number of people that we now have every law enforcement agency sitting around the table from state police to you know the city of probation it's not a gotcha meeting it's really a meeting about how can we help folks and i have had not only officers departments say this meeting is tremendous because we're sharing information but i've had people on the street say i think i really believe that saved my life what we are doing and stop stat is we are humanizing that these are human beings who have they're in the throes of a disease and it is it is tremendous and it is it's a wonderful opportunity and i would fight any of you if you want to see substate and i and action to go through those cases that have come up in two weeks and to really problem solve how we going to get out the door it might be street outreach   one because we can talk about some specific cases that are confidential and that people's dignity hangs in the balance and also because we have really frankly sometimes pointed policy related conversations that  next week here will be in the burlington pleased parma but we share the energy and we go to different police departments a warrant in the mail that out to the acid and also community that is at the burlington sparks space on thursday at eight thirty that's a two and a half hour meeting you can call it the beginning or for the whole time or up until the break but it's it's worth it's worth checking out and that's every thursday that's last thursday the month alas there's a woman ok so the other initiative that's come out of stat is a is an initiative and i excuse the stats everything seems to have a stat at the end is what we call family stat we had the director of d c s beth mar who comes to concept say you know what we have really high risk families we have a number of kids going into foster care we have a number of kids who are languishing in foster care we have a number of young parents and we can't talk about those income status confidentiality so i would like to talk to you jackie about starting family stat so we have started a new initiative with d c s with a variety of human community players you get to family stat if you meet one of two criteria you've had three or more overdoses in a week or you're looking at long term incarceration these are the highest risk mothers and fathers in our community to come into family stat and the object of a family stat is to access services for this caregiver mother or father and to limit the amount of time we've separated the child from the parent because we know from addiction that trauma is one of the precursors that that number a high number of people who are it who are currently addicted have significant trauma events that happened at a certain point in their life so what we want to do is limit the amount of time the child in the mother or father are separated and get them immediate access to treatment and really call the community on what could they be doing better so we've had two moms owed by two moms right now that are very very high risk and five in a six year old have witnessed some pretty significant life events so through the work that we're doing in our community we have other subgroups out of step up i think i'd also just say that we have this hub and spoke system of care which i think everyone has heard of the chip in clinic  they have access for a thousand clients right now they're at nine hundred seventy six we have a spoke system of care where doctors can treat people with bugan orphan and we're working with those those individuals as well so we have some incredibly exciting things happening and lastly i think i would say you know when my position started in the chief can jump in you know it says policy in it but it quickly turned into direct service  and since i started this position in october of sixteen i've had seventy two people seventy two kind individual contacts fifty one of those folks i've seen more than twice and out of that twenty three of them we've been able to access treatment i have learned a lot by being here because you know i will have detectives call up and say i have somebody that we just brought in can you talk to them or i will have somebody that i come across and i will go to an officer or or a detective and say i need help and it has been credible learning experience for i believe for both roles in the department and it's something that hopefully will continue for for a while because i think that there are people who come to the store and have said the only time i come through here is when you arrest me like you're going to take me into your office that's by the chief is he going to like is there a warrant out for my arrest and it humanizes when they're sitting in my office and they see him walking in and out or they see some of the other officers walking were people and we're all trying to get creative and step out of the box and figure out how do we address this horrific nightmare that we find ourselves in so jackie i have a question for you just  concerned about the few people who wanted could get it is that is that shifting no it's it's not perfect but it's much better than it was before yeah absolutely much better like i said there  are two days but but this is what we know the folks who are trying to get into treatment two years ago were different and today than what we're finding right now and if if bob beck the c e o of howard center were here he would been because fat in all was really people were paying attention because of the damage of fat knol but yes we're seeing we're seeing crack cocaine we're seeing in some parts of the state fat cut into crack cocaine  we're seeing a fair amount of crystal meth right now we're also seeing a younger dynamic one of the things we were just talking about this morning that we can talk about treatment until we're blue in the face but if we don't have stable housing and jobs as ability for folks the not makes it that much more of a challenge to get sustained recovery for folks so my question is we've been talking about recovery and it sounds like the work that's been done is amazing are you involved in any of prevention yes yes and so that's why we're bringing in a fellow from iceland to our concept meeting on thursday and he's going to talk about this model called the iceland model so com stad is not only a city in alliance as a a work roup because it's connected to the way it's my role has access to the health department in the prevention group at aid app which is part of the health department so yes are we talk a lot about treatment and that's kind of how it's been i used to be the clinical director for the state we had this enormous multi million dollar budget in treatment in this little budget and prevention i think we now we need to do better with that and i think our secretary of agency human services is aware of that but to answer your question yes so prevention is very enigmatic it oftentimes requires like system first of all derelict drug abuse resistance education the dare program of the ninety's like the research on it says it was not that successful as a french initiative a lot of prevention involves like issues of parenting the iceland model is really deeply rooted in their culture so it's a big bear to engage in successful prevention but there's another idea of prevention which is worth noting and you can go back to the aids crisis is that you prevention through treatment which is the more people who had the viral load of the hiv virus suppressed in them the less they were spreading that virus so heroin is not contagious in the sense that like hiv viruses but it is a social contagion in some ways meaning like you know people who are highly addicted and we you know we give a philosophical talk about this but people who are highly addicted to opioids tend to organize the world around them to support that addiction that involves inviting drug dealers to their community and saying i'll sell these drugs on your behalf if you keep me supplied right involves persuading your friends to use drugs if you're a parent using drugs in the home it's your children or as the end to adolescence or elevated risk at center of their all of that so in the long term we're dealing with things like the ice the model in the shorter term just getting as much affective treatment out there as possible is a way to spread the prevention of the opioid epidemic and so one of the things you come away with we have the sort of gift with opioids you don't have with other drugs which is that there are medicines that are there sponsorship to the addiction detroit has some efficacy with alcoholism but not that much others know like antidote to there's no nor can for cocaine or  meth but you can you can there's no buprenorphine or methadone for cocaine or math but we have because of the way it interacts with the body on the opiate receptors of an orphan is like a lighter version of methadone it has remarkable clinical advocacy so we're finding with policing we're really what we're finding the police are in a position to help with this but is it there all these opportunities where we can we can kind of persuade or cajole or at least make up available the there universally making buprenorphine available to them reduce their post incarceration retaliates by two thirds so the two thirds reduction in post incarceration mortality for opiate addicts when you treat them with in prison and then hand them off upon release to another treatment so part of our work here in the city is sponsoring state wide legislation that mandates the same treatment protocol here is and we're island that's ramping up now that was a product of  our research and our lobbying and our collaboration the other thing is when cops bring somebody to the emergency department for an overdose i think i've said this in the past but for months and months the hospital was presenting data at a community stat saying the number one thing that happens is they get reversed ninety something percent of the time they get reversed just are kind of left to their own devices hey we save your life we reverse the overdose now you're discharged the remainder of the time basically they died the second most prevalent outcome was so the hospital said what can we do to bridge that gap one easy thing was putting recovery coaches in the emergency department the other thing and it is the pilot that starting now is prescribing the emergency department and if you go back two weeks the new york times their front page above the fold story was very few hospitals in the u s are giving out you can or from the emergency department are the ones who are doing it are really saving lives and we are right on the tail of that here and that was because when you asked dr wilson from the east i was tired of showing that the number one outcome was we just let you go the number two outcome should die the third thing that we're looking at is in the needle exchange which is you know our cops accident and so you can see you're getting a very police focused response like this drug reduces mortality the long term projects require real investments and systemic changes recovery for the people who stabilize and prevention that idea of the treatment is important should be so that's not something that you have to sell i don't think i but what my quip what prompted me to ask you is i looked at this the health department statistics by county and state wide we went down last year shouldn't county we went up to forty one overdose deaths and my question was what's happening in burlington and then the second question that i raised to the driver what are we doing to stop i understand that you say it's there's an influx of it what what are we doing to stop it that's a way of profound i think so here's a here's something i just is in is in heroin sometimes you folks want it other times folks don't want it there's a concern that people are moving to crystal meth because they're terrified of fat and all we don't know where we're just now starting to gather but they had three thousand f test strips two weeks ago they've given out three hundred sixty five test reps in two weeks what that says are that people really want to know what's in their substance so that's one an issue to have when we talk about  county the goal is to make sure those test trips are not just that safe recovery we want to make sure that those test trips are throughout our community so that people can have have access to those and but my line is a very basic question what are you doing to stop   state of primarily being supplied by new york city suppliers which were were later to adopt fenton all than the syndicates out of boston which is why you saw number one boston and then like lawrence and was there in those  areas getting hit with overdose increases and then you hampshire got clobbered by fenton all and it really is a geographic thing it's harder to get across the connecticut river there's only one eighty nine runs up there the distribution networks are or are not accustomed to bringing it into vermont that way the men and women who bring it up on the north way of bringing up a lot more friends and all but we have not done so so all of this into the two part answer attacking the supply of drugs has street dealing out of addiction we want to get you into treatment if you're coming up here if you're not a vermont resident you take casual trips appearances on the road you know a shoe box full of affect it all and bring the money back down we're going to make a case and prosecute you and i don't very difficult and irritating to get like city level is a political data about who's dying and when the closest it comes to our records management system was a home built by vermont police department and was not designed in a way that makes it easy at all to know who died why when and where which confounds me a little bit because we're in the business of figuring out why people die but you can sort of attest to that can you give a maybe three or four down in the city over the past past summer and year compared to other past summers but i have not really been able to get like clear counts of fatalities because you have to look through any on from no i mean it just it just is frustrating and it's not anyone's fault i guess what it looks to me like everything's been going up in shetland pony until this last year and a statistics is actually doing pretty well and i just want to know why and also it has i mean we have i don't want to take credit for anything until it's happened for a few years so i think the city's on the right track and i think we have the science the seventy's and eighty's science that stigma and culture stopped us from adopting when it comes to methadone if you've been orphaned it's about zone and you exchanges in treatment and so what's amazing about it like to get again to go back to the aids crisis they had to just getting around to embracing them as far as the the data goes you know we're seeing like a plateau and we'll know by the end of the year if the plateau is is down hopefully or level but we're getting you know if you are coming out of the times and from on is one of the in rhode island for example in massachusetts are the few states where there's a plateau fence in all is definitely the biggest threat i don't think that we're going to be able to arrest the way out of it but as a matter of principle want to hold people accountable for something  same tactics and techniques as for a local investigations as we were using for federal investigations the sergeant that was running the gun the contacts unit was spent a lot of time in a federal task force and his habit of talking about  long high quality developed federal style investigations at the state and local level as well and one of the changes we made was to continue doing those with the d n a with our task force officer but to do shorter or turn around the local level narcotics investigation basically tripled the rate of those investigations and we've continued to so it's not for for lack of trying like we will hold people accountable but i got to be candid and it's not just literally fit in the in the hollowed out to this pen and then and then get caught into thousands of doses it's manufactured in factories brought in you know china and or comes in through south america so i don't think i don't think a border wall is going on here and i don't think certainly not like in one of the things our cops don't do because it is not fruitful it's like just pull over cars from out of state and say like you know let me see if we can catch some fence it's just not you just have to accept that it's going to be here and then treat the way trade our way out of it and accept some of this is a question probably for jackie what i'm hearing is it's not anyone who has an idea yeah i mean no no no i mean it's a real it's not in the heart of the question to the public health the government has to do something to save people's lives and this is a crime that's a felony that's occurring i mean it's not something to take lightly we talked to jan merchant is so to take a minute to brag about sergeant merchant when i got this job and i was still down in new york city the man who's now the chief of department of the n y p d said he was a three star chief then i mean he said you're going to meet a guy named dan merchant who is one of the best architects investigators we've seen and he's our man up in vermont and helps us make all these cases so the highest levels of the n y p d knew that we had this gentleman dan is running their contacts now and he is in a very affectionate way he sense to this he's the rain man of this he knows the players the people where they're coming from make every fentanyl trafficking case we can get but we we seized for example i can call chester the she's a kilo and a half uncut of heroin oh and it affected nothing it did in there were no pharmacy robberies there were no desperate drug reps there was no you know increase in the price the informants were not saying my god i mean withdraw like you can seize a kilo and a half which is enough to supply the entire city  for x number of days and it affects nothing is is the is the answer the our answer is that the only way to deal with this is to treat our way out of it so i think this is multi faceted i think that right i think in this department you have narcotics unit going out working with folks issuing warrants doing arrests that's one component the other component is to work with folks recognizing right that we have a vast majority of people who don't want to do this and so are for in them some sense of hope and then we talk about the prevention in the end of action so i can say burlington is coming at this it is incredibly all hands on deck multifaceted calling our nonprofits out about what could you be doing differently calling our state partners out our federal partners out and working with law enforcement and shit in county so we don't have enough time but we could go through all the initiatives there's a multi faceted trying to get at this issue phenol number one i will say one thing though that there is no street level dealing that goes on in burlington so you will not see that when i got here there were people standing on the corner of north st you looked out unlike pitching drugs that doesn't happen i mean we we would we would be really swift and aggressive and there's little tolerance in the city for street level dealing so every person who deals is dealing out of someone's house is a guest and usually it's a person who is addicted and if there's one way that we could make good progress it would be focusing on the people who host the dealers they don't even deal in a motel it's not like you just not going to door motel in but they sometimes treated in jail i think that's an avenue where we could really focus our approach but it would require the judiciary to be like a real unified partner in this and if you disparage response to a low level i'm sympathetic to want to treat them and whether they're in jail or not i always want them to be treated i'm not saying that i agree but i think what island has a great job are treating its prisoners for addiction our judiciary is all over the field when it comes to how they treat the person who comes in can get in and see the calm step proud past comsat meetings in the days ok review of civilian oversight initiative process the next steps so i will start i guess i actually so so that's our so that's our responsibility to keep monitoring that keep asking questions do we have confidence in don't have we're not jury and judge the sheet off where we want more information we're not getting it information that we cannot information that we're not supposed to get or we don't trust the way that really unclear to folks what are we supposed to do and are we doing it so i'll give you my opinion that we can open up for discussion based on the  that if we don't have the power of the authority to do an independent investigation or from some and then if and there would be a conversation and you know it's that's his boss and if we don't feel that that's resolving the issue let's say we don't see that we get what we want is and i think one  i think your role is to be that sort of lance right yep work and we can do that here and you know is there anything like we need to have i'm thinking we're testing this model out but we're testing it out for ten and we're looking at it from all different angles but how far can we take this as a police action it does talk about oversight it's it's anticipating some degree of independence at least i'll leave at least that is the impression that you know i think oversight committees creek independent bodies are newly appointed something new it's an initiative being created and that is they're involved with it is really part of the management of this department we have management responsibility over all for the department we approve all the procedures that take place you know so you know we we are sort of part of management as opposed to an entirely independent bus lanes and processing them you know from a distance and and i don't know if you know that one quote i think then doing before this every came in frankly my my experience chief and correct me if i'm wrong is that before this was here the procedure was not a whole lot different that you would state police have a portal you can find where you can make a complaint against them on line book by used to be before it partially take to complete reporting process of the hand when we when you made that with the fact that for the first time year you're seeing the actual civilian complaints on mediated by the reports you get or what are entered in reported by the person the complaint ever is the police have often found themselves on the commission and that it's just a lot of you know going along to getting along and rubber stamping but i plan to review and then beyond that liked it sent to which you feel your any of your beholden to the city i mean i'm i want to be clear that i'm not overly concerned with what we've been doing and that we continue to do it i don't want to create a misunderstanding you know we go into executive session and we hear stuff and we you know we question you but you know you're you know we're relying upon you really to a large extent and department so you know i mean  example we you know that was to sit on an independent committee they don't help manage the state police except to the extent that when they determine that there's going to be disciplined committing about all the nuances and helping to basically run a run the state police it's a separate independent body and that's not what we are and the perception of that out there is what i'm more concerned about but i think you have to be clear that it's not necessarily as transparent perhaps to some people who have helped put this together separate from the police commission and maybe not i'm not i'm not so i don't need to go and no i wouldn't say because quite frankly i think our role we don't play is making sure that things are transparent and that we understand we can get ahead of our chief and we understand the philosophy that they have enough for my opinion to have a separate now separate entity what are we doing a police commission because that separate entity still is not doesn't have any more power than we would have they would just be another group of citizens doing the exact same thing and if they weren't happy they would have to go to the mayor city council so that group doesn't really have any other power than we do i think your point though is that we've got a person they were for the city council refers to oversight if you look at oversight and you look at how true oversight does usually involve a degree of independence that we not put i mean as i said it's direction but you know you're top we're tied into sort of the overall think the it's getting looked at and that will be the problem because someone will start to challenge perhaps challenge that independence and i'm not suggesting we not do it the way it's being proposed but i think we should nuances that are that we're talking about here and that you know we can do what we are clear about what we are doing more so than suggesting we create another body i mean as i read the literature and some of the big cities that's what they do because it does that and it comes to us you know i think that's the question i have is the degree of independence that is that is perceived by our community when we make those dishes that we want so there's full transparency and we are  say to me i get what you're saying but the other feel but i had to get to know and understand it part of being a police commissioner is my it's i've invested a lot of time in trying to understand the department and that gives me then better information so that i even know if the chief is making good decisions or not it's hard to do that in a vacuum so i'll give you know i give you an example i mean we have a labor contract that includes our commission sitting as i think it's the second or third step after the chief in the process of reviewing discipline answers and i think i've told people this before but you know you know that we would come to the chief with a grievance let's say and the chief would deny it so our next step was to come to the cross that with this wave our right to go there right now you know that's just one example but you know we are currently still owes we're going to hear the facts we're going to let's say agree you know i think we've we've compromised i mean it's a pallet he sets up a oversight committee and creates it from scratch in a point five people who don't have that long history who does independent and or their resources department eccentrics stature for dealing with internal behavior that we don't our oversight is not about what happens if an officers later does something internally that's dealt internally because they're all city employees is that accurate to what points were really if you go off to someone so as has got to go because of what happened before he does that he goes this back he lays out what that discipline is going to be and why even he believes that that officer should be terminated they discuss it as an independent body they agree with him he goes back he fires our direction exclude that then we really have two tracks that we're engaged in if i'm correct one is a citizen complaints that offices so and so you know did something you know to and we would have to and it to me at the same time the department investigating that if again discipline as well as the or you know any of these serious things maybe there isn't even a citizen complaint made from it so i think this has been discussed before the chief is from the point that you know he be letting you know about these major  these major to e mail so i mean i think that if you look at the impetus for you know and i see i mean have having work union where you're coming from is is is clear and correct at least the concerns but when you look at oversight in the commission it also wasn't about internal matters such as you know excessive tardiness or even your engine of your  about it was if you look at christine answer being taken seriously transparent window into say the the world i've seen everything that they've had to offer and it's being done well so that so i think you're actually right i mean i'm not you are right about  the worry that this is contract language about grievances that is not that wasn't a concern of the people constantly if they want as much civilian to be candid as much civilian honestly control is possible and how we discipline and then my feeling on that is my job as the chief is to impose discipline and then my job is also to account to the citizenry about how i've done it in a way that holds me accountable and honest i see that as being employed for or when i see that is oversight that goes beyond disciplinary oversight its oversight about about you know how the police department operates and i think that we may disagree i think that was the intent and i guess lastly as a as a minor thing it large the council for folks may argue that the mayor is only go that but i mean if you look at the models and some of these last some of these articles that were handed out you know there's a model where you know they're independently appointed and then they have their own independent investigation in the bigger cities right you know than in the smaller cities they're still independently appointed but then they rely upon the internal you know his department do an internal investigation and and for you to come in and tell us as i said oh it to me it's more a perception issue that you know that when you come in that you've comes in to tell us about it we he's coming in to tell us civilian complaints and account for consistency and account for his or her investigations and that's kind of what the oversight people viewing us a little bit differently than how these i view us in terms of our engagement and creating in the community an accurate representation of what we are in fact doing all right i mean that's that that's about i'm essentially saying i'm not looking  sustained or unfounded and here are the cases in which they were founded and here's the comply with that with the union in the city's confidentiality requirements but we're not even doing that right now like it would take me a day or two and she had there to you guys be very helpful to be at the at a city council meeting and then explain that i think yes i think i gem i what you're saying my takeaway from what you're saying is we have a perception problem we also need to be role is in my opinion i think we can accomplish it but we need to be very cognizant of how we do it and make sure that we are doing it and that we are clear go and at least talk to public safety and say here's what's happening and laura would you we're we're just testing it there it's just written in the resolution that we have to report back to public safety it wasn't a public safety gave us an additional so we we we needed to do some back work to figure out how we got here so there's been a lot of change so michelle and i met just because you had asked for this and we had to kind of figure out how we got here so what you have here in front of you is kind of how we got here we have the draft that was is the resolution in february which you have here also that was at the point where they suggested doing something like spac and just a point now when we get here sooner and what you talk the ways in which this is  you think so that's the way it's actually played out where we do have i don't doubt that that might so i might have changed the language a role which is that it's formalized or is that just the way that's been conventionally done and i think it's probably best for me thinking about ways of making sure these procedures are generation cross kind of changes in chief that it be articulated rather than just implicit point this is just for the again for the first time i remember this because i was even on the phone with the union as the naacp all the civilian computer but as commissioner don brought up the sort of we're just rehashing stuff but we do have this grievance role here in the commission and so the idea that not everybody you know excessive force short of serious physical injury or death like it's roughing someone up so to speak you know abusive or discourteous language your racial epithets will rise above that like misconduct corruptions and it could be determination or arrest everybody comes from you coming in here and telling us and getting our we don't have we can't make a decision anyway so but you're coming in here and share what you hear the argument we've prob did and maybe we change with it but whatever it is it's kind of our decision year and then you know there really isn't a role to be played if there's an appeal to come to us and you know then it's use out there as one of the parties and that was the idea of keeping some people separate and not having them here and getting involved with approving or agreeing with the chief over it i'm not sure that you know i think it's perhaps workable i'm not sure that the perception is all commissioners and just how that gets perceived and whether the union would be interested to hear whether the union would bother coming to you know at that stage away that and just move on just because of perceptions i don't know it would be interesting for the you know for the union to to perhaps let us know about what they're comfortable commission is somewhat vague right so it's not clear whether that you know when the commission refers to a subset of the commission or to the chair of the commission or to every commissioner and i think that you could commissioners can point for that because i mean each individual commission personnel issues are really the same at these parks so i mean i think you're right that this is a plan and vibrant so you know we're we're similar right to this department you know we are you know i mean you know the executive and us kind of as citizens kind of helping to guide him when he needs guidance and support right now but not stepping back and necessarily looking at something and and i don't think it was worth anything i'm not doing anything and you know maybe we will come in before this came on and since december so i was only here a couple months when this came in but you would comment and i think there's two things happening here one is this sort of a very jurisprudential look at the process here  and the mechanisms of the accountability in the in the literally like the checks and balances between various branches of powers that council may or police department then there's also just this this honestly is this political question it's looming like what this this whole impetus this city council was was a petition by people who did not have faith in the two things that the transparency and then the advocacy of our disciplinary process i don't necessarily agree with them to be candid with you but i did think as you saw i hope that my actions that there was transparency concerns that i had that i did not like or agree with that i worked my way with through the union that i think i ever mediated as far as but we also have to analyze why this happened and who will or to be satisfied and what for you know the nation this this all started at the summer that the nation was being rocked by the shooting of our own people across the country right and i'm not saying that that's not the gym in our community then they came and said whoa you know do we have an adequate window into what our police department is doing and that we have to account for that i mean i'm not strong to say it's all political but but this was you would do it the same way have something in writing that takes customs and turns them into it i mean i think that's true and then you can you have to feel the right level the right empowerment to do this job but then i also think a deeper question is literally who are we trying to satisfy and why and the answer is always going to be at least the city council and the the mayor because there are a democratically elected right but then beyond that like satisfied feedback is it any commissioner can request access to written records is it a quorum of us we sort of vote what does that i mean i would i would strongly recommend the future commissioner have access to these records the community but but asking for advice so we can change that language is our people here comfortable if we go to public safety with those recommended changes and actually let them know what we've been play here's what we've done here's the language and we need another year because we're we're still six months i don't even know we're going to do in that commissioner who's not been through this you know with us and where we're going to give six months for you to actually see the process have some input but this is what we've been doing it seems to be working we feel like we're getting full transparency i may be chief we put into this role of play we report to the city council twice each again we're reporting back to so people feel like they have information and i think to jim's point if we're not if we don't change the perception of what we're doing people are going to understand that we have to actually put it out there and yeah i mean one of the things that you said i think agreed that for the most part we were doing largely this before this came up and so if that was the case and then you had groups come in were really these groups didn't see this in place required i don't disagree and having a you know having or having a procedure far stamping a complaint i think that when the city council possesses to the community that it also understands you know i mean if i don't i don't and i don't think we are rather than just the chief reporting to  meat statues as far as i can tell and be the recourse that's laid out in this document for what the commission gets concerned about the way that it was handled it just says the commission may and then it lays out what it can do except to support so it again runs up against this question of what does the commission refer to here whether it refers to can all of us acting as a body or whether the first of what you can do individually i know that you you said you had discussions with the that the state feel it's appropriate you know to something not that we couldn't go beyond it but it was nothing ever really articulated and what's maybe being able to confer with human resources of the city attorney right or something you know that that allows it to just you know the take a concern beyond that whether that should be an individual commissioner's role did you know i think it h r and and the city attorney to see and again it depends on the types of i mean i don't know how the commission's work is i'm sure there's personnel issues you know that disciplinary issues required partner public works so here's a question to the attorney general or we can talk about the no i was also saying just as an aside that maybe the recourse for if you disagree with my findings you're saying that they have it written that the committee that the commission has the ability to bring it to others attention it may be good to start with i mean that's really the oversight really you know i mean it was we were agreeing with the chief you know but if we don't how do we create this oversight because otherwise we just you know ok well maybe all disagree because often does it anyway well you know and at that point you get to suppose we need with the chief and i disagree i don't think that idea that everybody else agrees i think maybe some or all you know that's that's another issue you know of seven of you there's there's one of us so if six you know it may be i mean i think we need to make it so that if one person's like they can't just go and talk to the city and the mayor and then that we've had that in then we've had commissioners go to the press and say i think this whole thing's a sham i mean that's you know stop and i mean if you think maybe you should be specific that a minority you know if there's a dispute on the commission on my not a minority a and write something and get out to everybody to see if it makes sense if it doesn't make sense and we need to have more discussion on it we could talk about at the next meeting and we postponed going to public safety excite like to go to public safety with a complete you know i  question and i think it does it to your point i think it would give it a little more teeth it would be like ok you know here's what our recourses ok next meeting currently scheduled for september twenty fifth consider nine hundred eighteen here's the thing i can't be at either of those dates doing a two week road trip to the i'm quite flexible except i'm hoping the twenty fifth or twenty sixth is the is the national institute of justice and rand corporation trying to set a national strategy for opioids in d c and i think that's