City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome.

It is 5:46 and I will call this Bloomington City Council listening session to order. Tonight is Monday, March 23rd. Thanks for everybody for being here. We will start with Jamie Anthony. Come on up. What I'll ask you to do is uh just introduce yourself as you get started. You got to speak right into the microphone so everybody can hear you. And then as you finish up, if you could take the clipboard and kind of step over to the side and sign in so then uh he can get to the next person. So sure. All right. You got to tell the Nope. Right in there. Right on up. Right up on in. There you go. Yep. Thank you.

We got some notes. So, hi. Good evening, Bloomington neighbors and city council members. My name is Jamie and I have lived in Bloomington District 4 for just over a year. Um, I am still very much learning how the city council functions. Um, and in my effort to get caught up, I have been reading the meeting meeting minutes and watching the recordings on YouTube. Um, and I watched the January 5th city council meeting with great interest. That's the one with the consent agenda item about increasing the funding to VEP through the first amendment adjustment. And the motion passed, but it wasn't unanimous. There was one abstension and then the one nay vote. And that nay vote came from my area representative, Mr. Rivas. So, hi, thank you for voting. Um, I disagree profoundly with the nay vote, but I am not here to condemn that at all. Um, frankly, I want city leaders who disagree sometimes on how to make our community better. Um, and I'm excited for the kinds of solutions that we can come up with when we think differently and come from different perspectives. However, as I watched the recording from January 5th, I was really surprised that Council Member Rivas's name vote wasn't audible. If you watch the recording, you can't hear it. Um, you frankly can't see it through body language even. There's like nothing obvious. I relied on your comments, mayor, to let us know how the vote went. Um, so that's why I'm here. Uh, is because my spouse and I watched the video multiple times. We watched it at regular speed. We watched it at slow-mo. We zoomed in. We were trying to understand what the votes were again because I don't really know how this all

works. Robert Tools of War is all foreign to me. Um, we briefly saw your eyebrows wiggle and I have very wiggly eyebrows myself. So like I know eyebrow wiggle when I see one. Um, but otherwise it was just your words or busy. So I am here speaking today um to encourage everyone on the city council to hold each other accountable for making sure that their votes are heard. not just for the recording, but for the record because history is watching what's happening right now in our city and we need to make sure that we're accountable. So, whatever you can do within the realm of the rules of order that you have for your meetings. Thank you for holding each other accountable for your votes.

All right. Thank you very much. I I worry about what I look like in slow motion. And if you slowed everything down to slow motion, that kind of worries me, but uh it sounds a little terrifying. I bet it does. It does. Is can I ask since I think I have another Yeah, is there a process for uh eliciting a vote? Again, I will just I will just remind council members to make sure that their microphones are on and they speak into their microphones and audibly to do that. So, yeah, we will we will definitely do that. Great. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you. body up.

Good evening. Welcome.

Thank you. Uh my name is Claudia Beck and I am also a resident of East Bloomington in District 4. Uh my family and I have lived here for nine years and we really love our community here. We came here from Wisconsin uh when my husband lost a job and got a job in the school district here and it's been great. Um I'm here to share the impact on of the activities of immigration agents on my neighborhood. Earlier this year, agents were in my neighborhood, seven of them in three cars knocking on doors and peering in windows at my neighbor's house. My neighbors are a family who care for other children. They are kind and law-abiding. When I and others came to watch and make sure that our neighbors were safe, agents came up to me and another individual and yelled at us, telling us we were protecting a criminal. That individual that they wanted does not live there and has not. And I know that because Bloomington police were there in the fall looking for the same individual. They did find him, but not there. They did arrest him. He is not at that house. My neighbors went into hiding for a week because they were scared that these agents would return. When they came back, they did so slowly and quietly. They didn't watch the children that they usually do for over a month. This means a loss of child care for those families, a loss of income for this family. It also means a loss of ability to work for this family and potentially for those for whom they watch children. In addition to the fear they also have kids of their own. Another neighbor and myself have been watching out for them and making sure that they feel safe and have what they need. No one deserves to have this experience. No one. Bloomington needs to stand up and say this is unacceptable and take concrete steps to keep our people, all of our people safe. This is one example that I personally have been a part of, but there are so

many more like this. And I think our city is better than this than allowing families to live in this kind of fear. It's not who we are or it shouldn't be. And I think you as a council do have the ability to make choices that represent us and that keep our people safe. None of us want our families to have the experience that my neighbors did. We're a city that protects our people and creates space for them and therefore our community to thrive. Thanks. Thank you. Else any questions? Great. Thank you, Anita. Good evening and welcome.

Good evening. Hello, mayor, city council members, uh, city manager, and some staff. I was devastated to learn that a community member died in this building while under Bloomington police custody. Desiree Desiree, excuse me, Marie Rosel was 29 years old. From what the city has shared, she was arrested around 5:00 p.m. on March 12th. Her family says that the Bloomington Police Department was informed that she had severe asthma and anxiety, which can cause life-threatening panic attacks. Approximately 12 hours later, her family was informed that she was dead with no additional information provided to them at that time. No matter what a person is accused of doing that has brought them into our city jail, if they are under the custody of the city of Bloomington, it is our responsibility as a community and your responsibility as a local government to ensure that their rights are not violated. Desiree Rosel died in Bloomington police custody and it was our city's job to care for her while she was here and she is now dead. She died in this building. I hope everyone understands the impact of that. Our community and the family of Desiree Rosel deserve transparency and accountability and her family deserves reparations. A 29year-old woman is dead. As a human who has anxiety myself, I know what it feels like to be unable to breathe due to anxiety and a panic attack. I reviewed the communication from the family's GoFundMe account as they were raising money for a funeral for their loved one. As of March 15th, they still did not know the cause of death. According to publicly available data, we the public don't understand what the cause of death is, and it's left to our imagination to wonder what happened. That a seemingly healthy 29-year-old woman would die. will under the watchful eye of our local police department. I'm deeply concerned that she may have died alone and scared in a jail cell, having asthma and enduring a panic attack that was maybe not taken seriously, or worse,

that she dial died while a member of the police watched her struggle to breathe. The community deserves to know what happened in that jail cell. Did our police witness her panic attack and not take it seriously? Was help or medical aid rendered to her? Are the officers who are responsible for monitoring detainees in our jail being held accountable for the negligence of her care? Our community deserves answers and her family deserves answers and I'm asking the city council to provide them to us.

Well, and I will say, Anita, those answers are forthcoming. They don't come forward in in a matter of moments. And the cause of death is a matter of uh the Henipin County Coroner's Office. And they they're they've often taken more than uh more than a week or so, two weeks or whatever to determine cause of death and make it a public note. It's not for us to say what that is. And I think it's also not for us to jump to conclusions about what might have happened or how how it happened. I think the most prudent thing would be to wait and get the details and the facts before we before we make any statements about accountability or reparations or or uh questions about whether or not the police did or did not do anything. I think what we'll do is wait for the facts to come out and then respond accordingly. I do hope that you recognize that when we have had people die in police custody across the United States, we haven't always gotten truthful information from local governments and the community has every right to feel anxious and skeptical about the information that may or may not come to us. As we recall, George Floyd had a medical emergency is the official response that we, you know, received in Minneapolis. I'm not saying that somebody was on the neck of this individual. I'm not. But we are left to wonder why someone died in this building under the custody of our police department. If our government is supposed to be caring for them while they're in our custody, it's concerning to me that somebody who was otherwise, according to their family, healthy would have died. And I do think that we should have answers. And I do think it's okay for community members to feel skeptical. agree 100% we should have answers and we will get answers and then we will share them with the community and we will then

act upon whatever details are brought forward by the the medical examiner and and act accordingly and I mean I can't tell you anything more than that because we don't have any more information than that at this time and uh prudently the city isn't going to say anything until we know anything our police department and and the rest of the city we're not going to say anything until we know what the facts are. Well, I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. Thank you. Quick quick clarifying question. Question, council member.

Hopefully this is on. Yeah, just a quick clarifying question. Do do we I'm assuming we have an internal process uh investigation going on as well within the system and that includes an um um interviewing the officers that might have been there at the time and so on and so forth. Does that I'm assuming that's not on the same trajectory as the as the coroner report, right? They could happen in parallel. Do we know a timeline for what we might share on on our own internal investigation? I I don't know off the top of my head. I'll have to check in with the chief and we'll let you know.

But you're right. I mean, what the cause of death and the the internal investigation, just the timeline, the what happened and where we that's I think an internal kind of thing that's independent of that. Yeah. Okay. So we might know that sooner or later depending upon that. Okay. If we could share that I think that'd be great. Just like the timeline for that would be great. Absolutely. Thank you. Appreciate it. Cody,

good evening. Welcome.

Good evening. Um see you all again. Um, I want to talk about law enforcement reform in our city. Um, I think we've talked about this a lot as it pertains to federal agencies and ICE, but I think it's important for local agencies as well. Um, I think having a masking policy and a policy requiring visible badge and identification is something that we should have, not because of ICE, but because I don't want Bloomington police officers going around our city with a mask or without any type of identification. I don't want the Henipin County Sheriff's Office to do that. I don't want any law enforcement agency to do that. These individuals are all public employees. I have the ability to look them up. It's public information. I can look them up. I can find out what their names are. I can find out what their salary is. There is no reason for them to be able to hide their face because they're public employees that we all all of us in this room pay for.

So, let me ask you, Cody, are you speaking to a specific instance? Have you seen Bloomington police with their faces covered and with their badge numbers covered? I am talking in general. I don't want law enforcement officers to be able to walk around our city with that on. I'm not saying I've seen Bloomington Police Department do it. I saw plenty of ICE agents do it, but I would prefer if there was a blanket policy that law enforcement officers within the city of Bloomington,

no matter what department, are not allowed to cover their face for the safety of the community and because there is no legitimate reason to do it. They're public employees who I can look up. I can know who they are, how much they make, all of that. So, the idea that it's for their safety to protect their identity is ludicrous because it's all public information. Um, same with um a badge and identification. I it's not safe to have people law enforcement officers on our streets arresting people, interacting with people when we don't actually know if they're law enforcement agents if they don't have a badge or identification. So, I think it's just generally good policy for the city to have that in place so that we know who's here and who's doing what. I am also very concerned with the leadership at the Bloomington Police Department at the moment. Um, I've heard a lot of things from Chief Hodgeges about the the Bloomington Police Department not assisting ICE. And I've heard a lot of things from individuals in the community who have been harassed by certain Bloomington police officers. And I believe Chief Hodes when he says, "We don't assist ICE. Uh, you know, I've told them not to. We're not going to do that." I just don't think he knows that there are some bad actors. And it's also very troublesome that we have somebody who just died in the jail right underneath our feet. Um I'm a criminal defense attorney. I've visited people in this jail before. I know that it's not very big. There's not a lot of space. I've been in many, many jails and I've seen a lot of people who are constantly

monitored. So, I agree with everything you said before, Mayor. We need to see what the facts are. We need to let the Henipin County Sheriff's Office do their investigation and figure out, you know, who's at fault, if anybody. But my concern is we don't know what would have happened had she been monitored. Maybe she still would have died. Maybe they could have saved her. But if she was being monitored the whole time, they would have at least seen it and been able to try. But by the time they got there, it was too late. And an arrest, I think everyone in here agrees with me, should not be a death sentence. And again, I'm not saying that Bloomington Police Department did anything to intentionally harm this individual, but it was certainly negligent that she wasn't being monitored the whole time that she was in there. Um, I think with everything that happened through Operation Metro Surge and now with this death, it's pretty clear to me that Chief Hodes does not have control over the department anymore. And I think for the safety of our community, it would behoove this council to look into finding a new police chief. Thank you. Thank you. I will say, and we've said it before, if you see misconduct by Bloomington police in the field, please report it. Not generalities. You see their face, you've got their badge numbers. Report it specifically what's happened and who they are. If there are bad actors out there, uh they will show themselves and and it will be taken care of. I've heard a lot of generalities about these bad actors and and these different things. Give me some specifics and we can act on it. can't act on generalities like bad actors. And I'm also going to say I think it's

incredibly irresponsible to imply as you have been that something happened in that cell below us that the Bloomington police were responsible for. I very specifically said I am not putting the blame on any Bloomington police officers. I am not saying any Bloomington police officers did anything to cause her death. Cody used the phrase the an arrest should not be a death sentence.

Yep. and she got arrested and died because she wasn't monitored. I'm saying there was negligence. I am not saying that anybody did anything specifically. I am saying she needed to be monitored while she was in that cell. That's good law enforcement practice is to have everybody monitored while they are in your custody. And she was not monitored for long enough that she died alone on a concrete floor. And again, you don't know that. You don't know how long she's monitored. You don't know what the gaps were in the monitoring. You You We don't know that. Do we do Cody?

We don't know that. I do know from my experience that had somebody been watching her in that cell, they would have at least been able to try and they walked into the cell and found her dead. Thank you. Thank you, Paul Coat. I've learned that my topic is on the agenda this evening, so I'd like to save my time to another resident. Very good. Thank you. Then we will go on to Will Will Clark. Go ahead. Okay. Uh Laura Peterson. Laura Peterson. All right. Thank you. Here we go next. Sounds good.

Hi. Um good evening. Welcome.

Have lived in Bloomington for 29 years in district one. she's not here. Uh this is my first time speaking to you all. First, I do appreciate the statements and resolutions you've made about your deep distaste for ISIS tactics and your care for the vulnerable community members here in Bloomington. Uh I would like to address two things tonight. the issue of federal agents masking their identities, realizing that of course you are sick of hearing about this and local lack of enforcement of our laws. I didn't want to sit here tonight and discuss the same things you've heard over and over without some understanding of why you have chosen not to act. To that end, I've listened to the council meetings and listening sessions. I've listened to the St. Paul city council meetings. I've carefully viewed the presentation from the Bloomington city manager on February 9th with his recommendations. I've done all this to try to better understand why other cities have taken actions against the wearing of masks by federal agents and why you haven't. I still don't understand. On February 9th, the city manager presented his recommendations to the problem of masked federal agents. He shared two things. First, that federal agents follow federal law. True, but there is no federal law that requires federal agents. There's no federal law that requires them not to. There simply is no federal law. There's no nothing speaks to it. where federal law is silent, state and communities are free to make their own laws. This is something we can do. Secondly, he shared that there has been a letter written by the House and Senate leaders to their colleagues calling for these reforms that Bloomington residents

have asked for. And he further stated that it wasn't our issue to address. Well, to no one's surprise, no action has been taken on the letter in Washington. And the St. Paul City Council recently passed an ordinance banning the wearing of masks by ICE. And they explicitly stated in their city council meeting that they expected the St. Paul police to enforce this mask ban. Why can't we? If the answer is there's nothing we can do about it, I I just don't see why that's true. to my second point about public safety here in Bloomington. Mayor, in your statement of March 5th, you reaffirmed that public safety in our city means safety for everyone. However, our city is allowing dangerous practices to occur. We are allowing, as I have personally observed, rampant violations of traffic laws by ICE vehicles, speeding, running red lights, swerving in and out of marked lanes, and operating without license plates or with mismatched plates. Frankly, I have never seen so many vehicles without license plates in Bloomington. Once you start looking, they're everywhere. If we really want to let residents know which side we're protecting, I believe that enacting a masking ban and enforcing it would be a good first step. I understand that local police are reluctant to write tickets to federal agents, but isn't it their job to cite those who break our laws, regardless of whether it makes our police uncomfortable? And how does their reluctance support your stated goal of public safety? I would also like to note that Chief Hodes has emphatically stated that our Bloomington police have not been asked to assist federal agents and that we have a policy about not assisting them. But what he's not saying is that it would be illegal for them to do so. He's just saying we haven't been asked. I would ask that we go further and enact an ordinance prohibiting our local police from assisting federal officers.

Without this, our local police can change their policy whenever they want. Lastly, I'm going to start speaking really quickly. Thank you for joining the Safe and Stable Communities Coalition. I was pleased to read about that on our website. The site, however, was last updated on February 2nd. and an earlier entry noted that a legislative agenda was to be announced on February 19th at the state capital. There have been no further updates on our website about that. I had to go to the city of Edina website to read about it. Interesting. I did note that one of the agenda items for that coalition is to prohibit the use of masked agents during local operations. So, this is an issue that is important to you. ICE is still here. There are drones being flown every night all over this city. You know that, I assume. The time to act is still now. You've acknowledged that you're fearful of taking actions that could escalate tensions, but we are behind you. We support you. We're begging you to reconsider inaction on the issue of masking. And so I ask, what are the reasons that you didn't put this and other requests up for discussion and a council vote? Thank you. Thank you.

Will I wasn't planning to speak tonight?

I got on the agenda. Um, so I'll try to be brief. I do I did see some of you this weekend at a public event and I heard that there were some good positive uh productive caring conversations. So, thank you. Um that's always been my experience when I've had offline conversations with uh everyone up here too. So, I appreciate that. Um, and I will just say on the masking piece, I had a bit in here, but I'll just say I would point out that um, the president did tweet today that it's not a requirement to wear a mask of ICE agents. They can do so in public and not be, you know, putting themselves in danger. So, another piece to consider as we think about the masking issue that keeps coming up. Um really I just wanted to come tonight based on um you know what happened over the weekend, what we're seeing today. Um and just a reminder I think about this a lot. Um a couple of weeks ago I talked about how we have seen that this administration is extremely creative in implementing ways to support their gra for power, right? And so Bloomington needs to be just as creative in imagining how to combat that. Um, and so what we saw over the weekend and into today is ICE has now been deployed into airports, right? And while they're not in Minneapolis, there's probably a political reason for that, right? It would not have gone well. Um, so it's possible that they will be there. And we do know that while they are there to backfill TSA staffing gaps right now, we all saw probably that most of what they're doing is standing around and looking at the identification screens as people come up. But that may change, right? They may have a different role as we move forward. Um, the important takeaway is that the administration now has and is using a fully funded force of federal agents to

do their bidding when other areas won't do as such. Um and so one of the public topics tonight um that's coming up is a great demonstration of a discussion around being creative in staying ahead of what the federal agents are trying to do or what the federal government is trying to do in support of those efforts. And so I applaud that we are doing that. I look forward to that conversation tonight. I thank you for doing this. Um, but I also want us to remember that other things are coming. Elections are around the corner, right? Buildings and monuments are being asked to be renamed in dedication for folks. Curriculum topics are being challenged, removed, forced upon communities. And so, it's important for us as a community, our leaders, to be creative in the decisions that we make. Bloomingtonians have demonstrated we're not afraid to stand up and support our allies against bullies. We will have your back. We will be here for you and we will stand up for you if you stand up for us. So, let's keep being creative and continue the discussion. And thank you for letting us do that.

Thank you. Thank you. And you took us right up to 614. Well done. Council, any questions? Any comments? If not, thank you all for being here this evening. Uh, council, I look for a motion to adjurnn and head down to our regular meeting. Motion by council member Dallaso, second by council member Robertson. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I opposed. Motion carries 40. We're adjourned. Thank you all for being here tonight.