Safety, Housing, Education & Homelessness Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the safety, housing, education, and homelessness committee of Denver City Council. The safety, housing, education, and homelessness committee begins now.

Alright. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Safety Housing Education and Homelessness Committee. Today is Wednesday I almost said March '23. I'm trying to go back in time. I don't know why. Councilman Flynn wants to go way back. Do you want go back to the 1900s, sir? Just kidding. But welcome, everyone. My name is Serrano Gonzalez Gutierrez. I am one of your council members at large and also honored to be the chair of this committee. We will start off with introductions from the council members joining us here today. And then we'll go through our agenda for the day. So I'll start over here to my left.

Thank you, committee chair. Darrell Watson. I'm honored to serve the fine, District 9.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Good morning. Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Sarah Kirby, your other council member at large. Good morning. Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Senator Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Great. Thank you, council members, for for being here today. Today, we just have a briefing and presentation on Before the Bloom, Beyond the Beyond the Badge. And we have six items on consent, which we'll get to at the end. But with that said, I would love to have our presenters who are joining us here today, if you all could introduce yourselves. We know that you have a presentation. So feel free to walk through that presentation, and I will be taking a queue from council members if they have questions, and then we'll do questions at the end.

So go right ahead and take it away.

Well, thank you. Oh, you wanna

Well, yeah. I'll get started. Different Police Chief Ron Thomas. And before I turn it over to Marie Davos, who is my community engagement director and my two fantastic partners with Together Colorado, I just want to explain how I came to this program. And so as many of you know, I do a lot of independent study, a lot of reading of what is occurring across the country in terms of trends and best practices, you know, and this could be, you know, reading publications through Police Executive Research Forum, International Association of Chiefs of Police.

I tend to particularly pay attention to things that are occurring in major cities because I have access to all the major state chiefs. I meet with them about three or four times a year. So I can ask them directly about the things that they're doing and and see if there's value in bringing them to Denver. And so a few years ago, I I read an article about something that was going on in Seattle. And what were they were doing in Seattle was about thirty days before they had their recruits start their actual academy training, they would, you know, kind of do it like a community immersion with them.

And so I asked a few questions. I did some study. And then I actually thought about my own experience, you know, thirty seven years ago when I started the academy, if I can remember that far back, but and I and I kind of recognize what a disadvantage maybe I had. I mean, I at least grew up in Denver, but I grew up in Southeast Denver. I was assigned to District 2 in Northeast Denver.

So quite a different cultural experience, as you can imagine, knowing today we hire a lot of officers from outside the metro area, even outside of the state. And so I think it's highly likely that someone will be assigned to a police district that is culturally very different from the community that they grew up in. And I think there's disadvantage there. They don't understand the culture, the norms. They don't understand, you know, even some of the reasons for historic distrust. And so I think that, there's value. And before they even start learning how to become a police officer, get sort of an immersion, if you will, in those community cultures and have those understandings before they are dispatched to those communities. And so thought it was

a great

idea. Wanted to find a community partner to give us some additional legitimacy. And so that, you know, immediately came to mind, my friends at Together Colorado. And so I met with them and explained the program to them. Thankfully, they thought just as much of it as I did. And so they really dug in, worked with, director Davies and put together the program that we have, been putting forward to cadets for a couple of years now. So thank you.

Thanks,

chief. Yeah. So my name's, Marie Davies. I'm the director of community engagement for the Denver Police Department. And then with me today are our good friends from Together Colorado, Marilyn and Vicky. And we just really appreciate you guys allowing us to talk about this program today.

And did you both want

to introduce yourselves this Oh, okay.

I'm Marilyn Ackerman. I'm the transforming justice team of Together Colorado.

I'm Vicki Will Hite. I live in Green Valley Ranch.

Central Park neighborhood for me, formerly part of it. So

like Chief mentioned so well, the Before the Blue and Beyond the Badge program is a immersive training for recruits specifically planned that it's community led. It emphasizes building community relationships before tactical skills, deepens understanding of the complex and often challenging realities of law enforcement, and features powerful firsthand stories from our community members. So it is a two week, eighty hour training program. And you could see from this infographic, our recruits are hired. And then their very first day as paid employees of the Denver Police Department, they start in our Before the Flu and Beyond the Badge program.

They go through this two week field trip out into the Denver community. Then they do their six months of the academy. And then they graduate and go out to the districts. It's very purposely put at the beginning academy to create a cultural awareness lens for the recruits once they then go through the academy. They have that perspective of their Denver community as well as establishing a foundation of empathy to guide their careers as police officers.

So we started this program. The first launch date was in May 2023, so it's been going strong for two years. We've had eight recruit classes completed. And as of Friday afternoon, we will have nine recruit classes completed. 263 officers have been trained. And by Friday, we will have 300 officers who have gone through this program, which is quite a bit more than Seattle. Not that we're competitive.

We are.

Our mission statement is Before the Blue and Beyond the Badge is an experiential training program designed to provide new recruits with a comprehensive understanding of the community they serve through an immersive dialogue with community leaders, public officials, faith based organizations, and community advocates. It provides recruits with foundational knowledge to succeed as partners in the community as well as uphold the privilege of earning and maintaining public trust. These would be our five program objectives. Build trust, so establish direct connections with the residents in Denver through authentic conversations, deepen community understanding, strengthen awareness of Denver's varied districts and resources. And just like Chief mentioned, we have recruits who have been born and raised, grown up in Denver, and say they've never seen Denver like they see it in this program.

And I think you ladies would attest to that as well. Yeah. Challenge biases, we very purposely want them to look at, some of those biases that might exist then in them, because once they confront them, then then we can discuss how we broaden those perspectives. Foster empathy, so inspiring empathy through firsthand accounts from, formerly incarcerated individuals and our other community members. And then reinforce responsibility, emphasize the importance of recruits' roles as representatives of the Denver Police Department.

So our first day, like I mentioned, their very first time that they step foot into our academy is spent all day at the academy in a classroom. They get like a basic academy overview and tour so that they at least know where to find the bathrooms and how to get around at the academy, expectations for behavior and things like that through the week. We do some basic human resources onboarding just to make sure they're going to get paid at the end of it and just that we've dotted all the i's and crossed the t's. Then our good friend Mike Hess from the Denver Police Museum comes and talks to the recruits. He usually shows one of our great historical show cars and highlights a lot of the great work of our police officers and our heroes through the history.

Then our friends with Together Colorado come and give a history of policing nationally as well as locally. Definitely a complex and controversial presentation, they will go over a high overview of that in a few minutes here. And then something we found really valuable to the recruits is and they do it privately. Even some of the community members don't. You did sit in on it, but you don't sit in on it anymore.

But they have a reflection time. We give them notebooks where they sit down and reflect on the day what they learned, but then also talk things through with the recruiters, with academy staff, because then they can be transparent and talk about, well, that, I don't know how I felt about that, or that made me a little bit uncomfortable. And then here also from the perspectives of fellow recruits of what they were digesting and chewing on that day. So they do that every single day. And then the next eight days of the program are spent going out to the districts.

And I think many council members actually get to present and talk with the recruits, go out in the community with them, which we value that leadership from you so much. But the purpose is that it's not sitting and listening to a PowerPoint, but they're going out visiting businesses, visiting parks, talking to community members. We even have a little bit of a joke where we have speed dating in a lot of the units where there's small group tables, and then we have community members who just rotate around just to give their perspectives, but allow for that intimate, transparent conversation to take place from all the different areas, of Denver. And then our final day, which is really the pinnacle of the program, I think most people will say it's their favorite day. It's definitely my favorite day.

We go out to the Denver Dream Center. And, the day encompasses many different activities. But really, the idea is for the recruits to talk to people who have overcome a lot of struggles. Many of them are previously incarcerated. But just hearing that perspective, I think, adds so much to, their careers and and their perspective as a person, serving the city of Denver.

You'll see in these pictures, the first one is our small group conversations. And the recruits will just go through, they share, and then the program participants at the Denver Dream Center share too how they grew up, you know, what motivates them, what excites them, all those various things just to get them to come together. And they will always say at the end of those conversations, they're surprised how similar everyone is. It's just some people end up on different pathways. Some end up in jail, and some end up serving as law enforcement officers.

But it's just such a bonding, close experience. It's neat to see there are very often tears, and really heartfelt moments there. And then while it's very untraditional, the other picture is our recruits go out and and walk around the streets of Denver, and hand out water and snacks and talk and engage with some of those individuals that are down there. And they're super uncomfortable. I mean, we walk with them and view how hard it is to but if they just ask someone, how's your day going?

How are you doing? Are you hungry? Do you need some water? Just the really great, amazing conversations they have with these individuals to build up that empathy for them in the future. And then something we implemented at the very beginning of 2024.

So each day they've had their debriefs. They've had their personal reflections in their notebooks. We, as a group, sit down, talk about the program as a whole debrief. Sometimes the Denver Dream Center participants join us, Together Colorado, any other community members that want to join us and just talk about the program. They're also really great about giving those of us who have planned out the program feedback, what they liked, what they didn't like. I will often chuckle at them.

Some of the things

they don't like, I don't care because I want them to feel uncomfortable. I want them to experience all the different things. But it's still nice to hear and get that feedback as

well

as what really impacted them. But then we implemented just a capstone project where they just, over the weekend between the Friday, which is the end of the program, and the following Monday, they turn in a 500 word capstone essay, talking about what they learned, what made them uncomfortable, what they enjoyed, and and just that overall perspective. And then we all get to read it, which is just a joy. I I truly love it, and I've kept all of the essays, looking at how we can maybe use that information. But but what they experienced and how they grew just in those two weeks, is fascinating.

So one of the biggest conversations that people obviously have is measuring short and long term impact. It's very hard to measure trust, measure engagement, measure empathy. And so we're working on that. That's a changing conversation constantly. But from the beginning, when we sat down and planned this, we worked with the mayor's OSCI office.

And they created a survey for the recruits. And the recruits take that survey. It's an anonymous survey at the beginning of training. And then they take it again after the training. And then we're looking at possibilities of maybe doing it later down the line in their careers just to see if they still remember that impact, and if it's still affecting them.

But that data is managed, owned, by the, mayor's office of social equity and innovation. And then they give us back the reports. We have lots of open ended questions too, so it's valuable for us all to hear that feedback. But we are feeling and seeing promising results so far. One of the really outstance outstanding data points is that these recruits have strong and unwavering beliefs about community and about trust.

And so whether it's at the beginning of the training or at the end of the training, 96% of the recruits said they strongly agree or agree that public trust is essential for policing. So that is clearly unwavering belief in their core, which means we're hiring the right people. And that they also have 97% either strongly agree or agree that it's important for officers to understand their community to be the most effective in their police work. So it's nice just to see that and see that confirmation. And then we do have the open ended questions, which are always so interesting.

I know Chief, in particular, likes to know why people wanted to be a police officer and what motivates them to be police officers. And so this is one of the questions where we have actually seen a significant enough change to highlight it from before the B4B training and then to the end. So you'll see here with these bars, the blue bars are how the recruits respond before the training. And then the gray bars are after the training. And so before protection and safety is the reason and what their motivation is to be a police officer.

But then we found after the training, that goes down by 6%. And we actually see a rise in community policing and trust building, that 14% of them say that that's their real, motivator. So that's neat to see, just that shift. And then if we continue to do some of that data testing to see how that continues on in their career. And then some of the other impacts that we can measure or quantify is the vast amount of community partners that we have.

It's staggering to see how many people are willing to come out and partake in this training of our recruits. This is a list of just a handful of our community members. There is a handout that was provided to you ahead of time that lists many of our community partners, but that's an ongoing list that changes every time we do this. Yes. Yes. But we've had over 80 community partners, and they asked to participate in this program. They want to be a part of it. They love it. They enjoy it, and they see the value in that program. And that's always encouraging, to me.

And then the other, impact that the Together Colorado ladies actually pointed out to me that I think is really neat is to see the buy in from DPD leadership. We all know our commanders will do as Chief Thomas says. That's not really without question. But they will openly say they were skeptical of this program when we first started it and when we told them they had to do it. It meant that the recruits, graduate two weeks later.

And so that's two weeks later that they hit the streets. But as we've done it, as these commanders come participate in this program and view the outcome of the recruits when they graduate, they see the value in it. They bought into it. They like it. And actually, three of the six districts have voluntarily, chief hasn't told them they have to do it, done a continuation of the program.

Once recruits are assigned to their district, as patrol officers, three of the districts have, required, them to participate in neighborhood community engagement to help remind them and kind of bring back that that B4B, mentality, which I think is is really neat to see. And then the biggest question, that has come about, very often, for all of us is why Together Colorado? And, very naively, will say I didn't expect to experience, the pushback pushback that we've received. And then Together Colorado has also experienced the same pushback from their communities of why are you working with them? They're not our friends.

And constant, constant pushback of why Together Colorado. And I think it's ironic, but it's also is the point of the whole program. And Chief was very deliberate in bringing them on board and planning the program from the beginning. And so there are many reasons for that. One of them would be, centering diverse, voices, encourage authenticity.

So if it was just CPD planning this training without outside voices, we could take these recruits to the happy go lucky feel good places of the community and kinda keep them in a bubble. But instead, by having community partners like Together Colorado, they've said, hey. Have you partnered with this group? What about this group? And they keep us on task and reaching out to the right partners, which I think really shows how authentic and real this program really is.

It builds trust through transparency that they, again, were in this from the beginning, building the program from the beginning. And they see the good, the bad, the ugly of all of it. They're aware of the data, all the planning, and all of that. But that shows that we're willing to bring everyone into the conversation. And then it creates space for change.

Last week, I will remember, we had a panel from the deaf and hard of hearing community come and share. And there were two women. One had mentioned a traffic stop and one had mentioned a domestic violence situation. But really courageously, we're vulnerable to our recruits and talking about what it's like when you're deaf and you're pulled over by a police officer and the fear and the confusion that comes with that. And while in the end, it was a positive outcome, just kind of sharing, like, what it felt like for her, she was trying to call her dad to see if her dad could help during the traffic stop.

But that transparency shows our officers how can you better engage with the community members when these situations arrive, and it's so, so powerful. But these community members, Together Colorado's willing to come to the table and have these hard conversations with us because it will serve the community of Denver better. And then also, it models courageous engagement, right? How can Chief say to his recruits, I want you to engage with all different types of the community, have those conversations that can be uncomfortable, and not model that himself. And so we model that through our partnership.

And I think one of the great things you're about to hear, the presentation from Together Colorado, But it's tough, and it's tough for the recruits to hear. It's controversial, and it does talk about some of the really difficult parts of history in law enforcement. But then these ladies and the whole Together Colorado group spent two weeks with the recruits, and they become close with you guys. And so they know your perspective, and they understand your values, but they also see you as human beings. And that's so, so valuable for all of us as leaders.

And so we are modeling that through this program. So with that, I will pass it off to you ladies to show what you discussed with our group.

Time council

members are getting in the queue. So maybe about another minutes. I also wanna welcome councilman Hines to the meeting as well. Thank

you. Can you run the slides, Vicky?

I can't believe this. Oh,

course. So

as I said, I'm from the transforming justice team of Together Colorado. And I want to piggyback off of what Chief and Marie said about why we said yes. First of all, we were pretty surprised by this phone call coming from the Denver Police Department to build this program. And once we heard about it, it's like, why would we say no? We're being asked to sit at the table. We don't usually get asked to sit at the table. We're pushing on the other side of the table. So this is an opportunity to practice what we preach. And we are a multi faith preaching kind of group. And so we built this together, probably about eight months of work beforehand.

We were meeting every week the last two or three months. It was amazing commitment on our team's side. But I want to also tell you that Together Colorado is not transforming justice. We also do climate justice, immigration justice, affordable housing, and health justice. So we are just one segment of two fifty faith leaders, churches, and synagogues, and mosques across the state that work on different issues.

So we're going to give you a really high level overview of what we do on day one. We are a two and a half hour presentation with the recruits with some breakout sessions to get them to be vulnerable and intimate with each other and with us. Because that was one of our priorities when we built this. This cannot be a PowerPoint racial history presentation. We've got to hear from them and know where they're at, and they can learn more about us.

So I'm going to read these two slides. But the rest of the slides, we're kind of just going to have you read them because there's a lot of slides that we show on day one. Our goal is an entirely nonviolent justice system, particularly jails and prisons. Violence robs human beings of their dignity, is contrary to restoration and rehabilitation, and should have no place in a system of justice. Everyone who is touched by the justice system victims of crimes, perpetrators of crime, people accused of, detained, arrested, and incarcerated for crime, regardless of guilt or innocence, law enforcement and corrections officers and court officials and the family members of all of these groups are all part of the community.

We oppose the practice of state and federal governments handing responsibility for building and operating jails and prisons over to for profit companies. It is wrong to profit from the pain of other human beings that such profit incentives always lead to attacks on human dignity, and they take our society down a path of moral debasement. A true justice system must include a deeper awareness of how trauma affects us all and a commitment to supporting all people in the justice system in healing from trauma.

So we start with the big picture. And we kind of walk through this slide, a simplified version of our American criminal justice system. We know it varies by jurisdiction, but we walk through the colors and tell them things that's happening in each one of these areas. We conclude by saying our American criminal justice system is amazed. Some people get in, and they don't get out.

We show this slide because The United States leads the world in mass incarceration. This is a slide from 2024, so it's up to date. It's from the prison policy initiative. It's showing incarceration rates for The United States and Colorado, and it's comparing us to founding NATO countries. So we have the highest incarceration rate.

And worse, every single state incarcerates more people per capita than most nations. We show how Colorado stacks up against a place like New Jersey and Louisiana. We make them ponder on this question. Does locking more people up make us safer than other people in the world? We quote, former Colorado, senator Pete Lee.

Unless we believe that The United States and Coloradans are more evil than other than people in other parts of the world, then something's fundamentally wrong with our criminal justice system. We believe that any meaningful reduction in incarceration happens at the front end before people are even put in prison. More than 80% of all the rest are for low level nonviolent offenses and conduct related to poverty. We talk about the school, the juvenile justice system. Over thirty percent of people in state prison were first arrested before their sixteenth birthday.

We believe that every child deserves to grow up in supportive environment that respects their humanity, oppose their dignity, and responds barely to mistakes and mishaps. We have some contributing factors, a racist movie, the birth of a nation. Actually, this one well, we don't have time to go into details about this, but a very racial movie that we know a lot of people saw, maybe not the recruits, but their parents or their grandparents, whatever, and biases and things are passed down. We actually play two minutes and something of this video, from the NAACP because it kind of was the birth of the NAACP. No black people were in the movie.

It was white people with black faces, But they also portrayed black people as being laid well, because of that movie, black and brown people often presume dangerous criminal criminal guilty even when they have done nothing wrong. The movie portrayed us as as being ignorant, lazy, being thugs, a whole rapist, a whole bunch of things. And there is still conscious and unconscious bias and racial discrimination against people of color by law enforcement and the criminal justice system. We show a quote that came from well, Rich he wrote for Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman, who got a year and a half for Watergate. But this is his quote.

And yes, we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. So the drug wars were designed to incarcerate people of color. And because of the drug wars, you can see an increase even from 1980 to 1997. I think 1993, we had a lot of harsh sentencing laws here in Colorado.

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws this one really shocked us A five year sentence for five grams of crack cocaine that was used mostly by blacks. To get the same five year sentence for just powder cocaine, you needed 500 grams, which was used more often by whites, a 100 times more. We go through some policing facts. We have three pages of this, and we end with the one that says well, this one, people with multiple arrests are more likely to be poor, unemployed, have less than a high school education, and have serious health needs, and that United States police kill far more civilians annually than any other wealthy nation.

So we go through, in detail, a history of the policing in The United States. You're not going to get that detail. We'd love for you to come on Mondays. But I know that that's a conflict with city council in the afternoon. Some of your aides have come, and they've been very impressed by it. We can send you a link. We did a webinar with Chief Vicki and I did last spring. And we can send you the link to that, which is more detail. But these are the kinds of history of policing that we show and talk about, especially the KKK involvement here in Colorado. Many people and maybe you don't know this as well we're the number two state in the country for KKK involvement behind Indiana.

We had between 30,035 white men registered, card carrying members of the KKK in the '20s here. And our state governor and our mayor Stapleton and a lot of our city leadership, including the police chief, were all involved in the So we show pictures about that, and we have some good conversation. We also highlight some of the Seamy Side history the last couple hundred years in Denver as we were becoming a mining police started in Denver because we were a mining community. And we had a very high Chinese population in Downtown Denver. And there was a riot that the police never even showed up for until there were multiple people dead and the town was blown turned down.

We have lots of conversations about the 175 known lynchings in Colorado, the culture wars that went on here with the Latino and Chicano families, your grandfather who was part of that. And there lots of targeted neighborhoods and cultures that were targeted. We talk about the vagrancy laws, five points, and how black people were confined to that area and how that changed over time. We talk about the years of unrest in the '60s and '70s here and the spy files that the Denver police kept on folks. And we talk about the more recent history of why the Citizens Oversight Board came into being over the shooting of Paul Childs or Jessica Hernandez on use of force, Paul Castaway killings.

And we also talk about the Denver way. There was a police culture even as early as the Obama inauguration time here in Denver when we had the Denver Democratic Convention here. There was the Denver way that you would there was a t shirt made by the Denver Police Department Union of we get up early and beat To beat the crowds. To beat the crowd. And it had a glove on it.

So we talk about some ugly things that we were surprised the chief said we could talk about. But we had full, as he said, carte blanche to talk about all the ugly side. And then we talk about the George Floyd murder ramifications in our own town as well as in the nation and laws that changed after that and other Denver Metro Area enforcement. Here's a high level look at some of the things we go into detail about the serving side of Denver police and some of the things that most of our community members don't even know that the Denver Police Department does. One of the things that surprised us was learning about Shelby and how they take Shelby into traumatized schools for kids because the kids will relate to the dog better than they would to a police officer.

And we've experienced that at the Boys and Girls Clubs when they come in with uniforms, too. And some of the diversion programs there's so many in our city that we were unaware of and how many ways that officers can avoid ticketing and arresting, and the support that we give for that, as well as our connection to helping develop STAR, the support team assisted response, and how we helped to get that moved out of the mayor's domain and into the Citizens Oversight Board and your domain of picking that person, and the growing community partnerships we share with them about those 80 or more agencies that Marie showed up there on that board. And again, I want to go one back one there, Vicki, that we also talk about how Chief Thomas, in a conversation we never got to have that we'd been planning for three years for some chief, to, how are we going to get low level traffic stops eliminated? And then he just shows up at city council May 1 until or whenever it was that May 1 it was going to start last year. And we're like, well, there's a conversation we don't have to have.

So thank you. But we also need to get some data on all of that, and that's happening regularly. So we started our Transforming Justice team in 2017 around use of force. It was a faith community event of 900 people at Shorter AME Church. And then these are some of the other things that we have worked on use of force, show ups, legislation.

Everything of those things started in Denver and then became state legislation, which we're proud that we had a hand in that. Vicki is serving on the active bystander for law enforcement committee. We were the first city to do that, and now there are 40 community law enforcement agencies around the state that are participating. I already talked about our Citizens Oversight Board and Office of Independent Monitor partnerships. We show up, as you know, with our Denver our Together Colorado pins and our agendas when you're working on the budget.

We want to have a say in yes, we love the Denver Police Department and what they're doing to build a different culture and a different way of community engagement. But why is our budget still so darn big compared to other cities our size across the nation? Where can we be putting more of those kinds of monies into resources that are helping people without badges and guns? So we're always on the other side of the table pushing a little bit, too. But we want to work with respect and with community.

And we are always working with state changes in legislation and criminal justice. These are the questions we ask in our breakout sessions with the recruits. And they have about eight minutes to discuss in small groups of four to five. And then we make them share out. And the things that have surprised them the most about our presentation was that Birth of a Nation movie that was in the '20s.

They had no idea. Most of them, only the people of color raise their hands that they say that they knew about it because they've been taught about what the stereotypes are. And we also were very shocked maybe you don't know this fact that two fifty preschoolers are suspended from school every day in our country. And most of them are black boys. Starts young. Starts young. So do you see links to racism in today's policing? Is that the second part of that question. And then what does the motto protect and serve mean to you? We ask them to go deeper with that because that's an easy thing to just roll off the tongue.

But what does it actually mean for you personally? And do all communities see that cruiser coming down the street and believe that protect and serve is really going to happen for them, or is it going to happen for the wealthy and the white? So how do you want to describe this career choice to your family and friends? Do you get pushback? Are you ostracized?

Or did you lose some friends when you said, hey, I'm going to sign up to be a Denver cop? And they have really been very vulnerable in talking about that, that some families are supportive, some family members are not. And they're not speaking to them because they've made this choice. All right. I'm going to switch gears because we're going to have a big public meeting on Tuesday, May 6, seven to 9PM at Vicky's Church, shorter AME community church, where we've had our two other public actions.

This is not going to be so much of an action. But what I say is that the purpose of our meeting is to update the community, especially our faith communities, on what Together Colorado's influences on law enforcement changes have been since 2017, use of force, show up identifications, which is the most biased identification compared to lineups and photo arrays, the Able program, this new program of two years before B, and now stopping the low level traffic stops. So those are the five things we're going to cover in a two hour meeting. It's a big lift. But we want to determine the status if the changes are working, and we want to inform community of that.

We want a request of the chief that the office gathers and analyzes and shares relevant data with the community. And we want to ask you, city council, what can you do to protect the values that we have in this kind of changing of cultural things going on in the police department? The chief can make a policy, but the chief can change. And when we had our first conversation with the chief, he's like, well, this is the right thing to do. But not every chief may think that.

And with the federal government constraints that are being pressed out around the country, we are very anxious as community that this could all go away in a heartbeat. So we want to ask you to step into this circle to say, what can you to help us protect that and determine our next steps in working in partnership with Denver Police Department and you? So what can you do to enshrine a policy that either by ordinance or proclamation or otherwise. So that's our homework for you. We've had conversations with Councilwoman Parity, Gonzalez Gutierrez, and Lewis to start having that conversation that maybe there are some constrictions that you can't make an ordinance out of something.

But what if you made a proclamation around you must, as the police department, do a continuing program on racialized history of policing? It doesn't have to be called B4B. It doesn't have to be this exact thing into perpetuity. But what can we enshrine that will secure that some kind of training that is community engagement? And as we've learned from former police officers who are now in the bias training world, don't use the word community policing because that has an old connotation of we go into community as police and we tell you what you need.

Community still needs to be telling us what they need and how we work around that. So we want both maybe from you as well as ourselves. We want to know what the training data is about ABLE, use of force, show ups, and B4B in our own community, and include who was trained and how frequent it's being trained so we have that accountability and transparency with city and community. But we want to mandate some of these things into city culture. Denver is this is where it happens in Denver.

And what we have learned working in Together Colorado with show ups and with use of force, we have it now enshrined in state law. And that's great. Those two things are secure at the moment, but not a B4B project and not a Low level traffic. Eliminating low level traffic stops. That would be fantastic. So we're open for questions now. But we all want you to come on the sixth. And if you can't be there, send your aides. But we hope that we're going to have at least 200 people at Shorter. We've sent out community invites to all of city folks as well as church partners or congregation partners.

Well, thank you so much for going over really quickly. It might be great to maybe dive a little bit deeper, and we can talk to council members to see if they're interested in actually seeing the full training. But thank you for doing the high level overview. And thank you for holding the meeting on a Tuesday for that meeting so that we can maybe try to be there. Alright. I have some council members in the queue, starting off with councilman Flynn followed by councilman Torres.

Thank you, madam chair. Actually, Tuesday is not a good day for at least for me because that's we have a lot of subcommittees meeting meetings on

Tuesday evening

for Mike Mike. But chief or Marilyn, I don't know who can answer this. What has the civil and I know this is at the civil service commission that is involved in this well before this. Is there any interaction with Civil Service Commission about, you know, integrating any of this into their process before it gets to hiring, making an offer?

No. And so, you know, as I said earlier, Seattle does this for thirty days, and that's because they, in essence, own them at that point in time. Right. I they are not Denver Police Department employees for me to direct them to do anything until until the day that they're hired. And so that's why from the day that they're hired for, you know, two weeks, we introduced them to that training.

Now what I would what I would like to do, and and I think civil service is doing tremendous work around shortening the time frame between application and hire. What I would like to do is is sort of have them in pocket much sooner, and then maybe there is an opportunity to, to present this, this module to them, prior to them starting their, you know, their actual academy training. You know, I recognize the challenge of extending our twenty six week academy to, you know, two more weeks to twenty eight weeks before they can be of service to the to the community. So certainly, that is something that I will that I would be interested in. But right now, I think the civil service is is doing all they can to just keep their heads down and manage their current process.

And and I I will acknowledge that they're making tremendous strides.

Do the recruits are paid on the starting on the first day of the academy. And this is two weeks before that.

This so this is this is this starts the day that they are hired. So they are given a final offer. Accept that offer, and they show up at the academy day one. And that day one is when they meet these two fantastic ladies and and start that program. Okay. So that

my next question is what is the cost of

this program? Yeah. So in essence, there's really no cost. So we're not paying our our community partners. There's no staff that we're paying to do this. This is all on duty resources that we are employing for this. So really, the only cost is that of time. So it it's just creating a two week delay in rolling out to the street.

Yeah. The vans and the gas.

Yeah. I spoke

to We have vans that move them around.

Are some there

are some

So there's gas I've seen them.

Just before they come down to my counsel office. Thank you. Just one thing. When Chief White was chief and civilianized a lot of the positions at Maryland, just want to push back a little bit. The data that I saw then was that Denver had a lower per capita budget for police and officers per capita than comparable cities, including cities that had, quote, defunded police like Camden, New Jersey, which was lauded nationally after George Floyd for how they defunded. They had more officers per capita and higher budget per capita than Denver did. So I would like to make sure that we're right sized.

I think we have less officers per capita, but we have a larger budget, and that's sometimes a concern.

That was but that was the same thing. The budget per capita also was lower than those other cities.

I thought we were still at around

40 a large budget because safety 46. Safety from my seat, safety, keeping people safe is the most important function of the local government. Because when I can't keep you safe in your parks

That's our

your

homes, on your streets

That's our value.

I think that's why it's

That's our value as well. Right. And we've read public safety vision. We didn't read that today to take up your time. But we believe that public safety is not just policing. We believe it's better parks, better rec centers, better schools, better places to walk freely day and night. So we can can put resources into those kinds of things so that there is less Like

Federal Boulevard, which is a high injury traffic corridor. Policing on Federal Boulevard is only part of the answer. DOTI has to come into play, certainly, as do other agencies.

Exactly.

Yes. Thank you, madam chair.

All right. Councilwoman Torres followed by councilwoman Perry.

Thank you, madam chair. Thank you very much. This is a really reassuring partnership. And I think the depth of it and the specificity of the kind of curriculum that you're bringing is really powerful. So I really appreciate that it doesn't come across to me as tokenizing, as superficial in any way.

But I'm sure it still feels like you're only able to scratch the surface with the time that you've got. I do want to share that one of the things that I'm reminded every time I go in, even in talking to my own family, and I'm wondering if this comes up in how you talk to new folks coming into this line of work, is that for any interaction, it just takes one to all of a sudden set your mind differently to how you interpret or interact with power. And there are men in my family who have spent the rest of their life constantly reliving one bad interaction that felt really unjust. And it colored, I think, the rest of their life on how they viewed authority and law enforcement as something that would easily and at any opportunity utilize the power that they've had over another individual. So I wonder if that comes up at all when you're talking to folks.

Thank you, Judith.

Go ahead, Vicki. I was

going to say, yes, it absolutely does come up Because we asked them to look beyond that uniform because everybody's human there. But even the one with the deaf folks, they talked about the power. And we want the officers to come into the interaction in a way where they see the people as human and not exhibit that power that they really deescalated might be the person's worst day. So we want them to look at them in the eye because they translate something, love, caring, some compassion, something like that. But we want them to look at the person and actually deal with the person, not from that power authority thing.

Because we do talk about some communities run away as soon as they see them. They don't want to see them. You can add.

And we have a lot of the community groups that come in and do the inservices. We added the Muslim community a year ago. And timing hasn't worked so well with holidays and all and with some of the protest stuff that happened down at MSU. But they talk about some of the terrible experiences they've had just because they're wearing their hajib or whatever. And they've had stereotypes where they've been arrested wrongfully and maybe not in Denver, but in the Denver Metro Area.

And that was really powerful for these recruits to hear, oh my god, I had no idea that I make those kinds of judgments and those biases. So we talk about biases a lot, that you can't help what you've grown up with. I mean, we all swim in this culture. And some of the things that some of the organizations have pointed out is the people of color have just the same biases who are going into law enforcement as the white people, because they have been taught that black people are dangerous. And shared that with some of the commanders and some of the trainers. It's been wonderful to see that vulnerability.

Hear a lot from white people who have had harm. So that's good too. So they don't just think it's just, you know What color? Yeah. Just people of color. So

Let me just add a little bit of context. So after they go through this two week program that that following Monday, so that's actually going to be this coming Monday that I get to look forward to meeting with the entire class. And so what was that? 263 times, I have I have asked individual recruits, why are you here? You know? And because I think it's important to for them to understand their why because I think that's important for them to get through their career to continue to remember their why. And 263 times, I've never heard somebody say that they took this job to enforce the law, to hold people accountable. It is always to help people or to provide for people. That is always people's why.

And so have them been harmed? Yeah. No, exactly.

There's an element to this that reminds me a little bit of the social media dialogue around man versus bear. And have you seen that? Right? So asking women, would you rather be in the woods with a man or a bear? And they choose the bear.

And it's been shocking to men who react because they never perceive themselves as as more dangerous than a bear. And why would women choose that? And so I I think it's just a really interesting, analogy for we go we we come into a space because we wanna do good, but we don't always understand the perception of the other person who is seeing me come into that space and what their experience has been with people like me before I even walked in the door. And understanding that it's not just about my perception coming in to be a good doer and public servant, that I'm interacting with a lifetime of injury and experience and fear that might be coming from the other side as well, that they don't always see me as like a hero walking in, right? Even though I feel like we're The first class, a two year old?

What was she? Well, how old was she?

She was between three and four years old. We went to the Boys and Girls Club up in Montbello. And this recruit, maybe five'ten, five'eleven, and they were wearing business casual that day. And 42 of us walked in there. And this little girl immediately came up to this woman, soon to be officer, and said, are you going to be a good cop or a bad cop? It leveled her. She was like, how could a child this small have this impression already of a cop? And so we had a good debrief around that. And she was one of those that thought, oh, everybody loves cops. She said, well, not everybody is not afraid.

But I invite you also to join us this Friday if you have any free time down at the Dream Center, because that is exactly the whys we talk about in our small groups. I have had a six foot four, three hundred pound recruit crying in my lap because I turned him and I said, you've got to have a why in there. And he just burst into tears to talk about his childhood and that he had an abusive father. And he says, I don't ever want to have anybody show up at my door, and my mother is the one who's the problem. And we have these intimate moments I love that.

During these two weeks. And the former incarcerated men at the Dream Center share very personally their whys, why they work there, and what happened to them. And that opens their hearts up.

And it's amazing. My only final comment is and thank you to the chief for working with me and Councilwoman President Sandoval on the 2T initiative to allow immigrants and non citizens to join police and fire forces. But that also means an entirely new population is going to be coming in. Two, just a national space where we talk really negatively about immigrants. And so just want to see if that can become some of the conversation that you begin to set the stage for. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Next up is Councilwoman Parity, followed by Councilman Watson.

Thank you guys for coming and doing this. And thank you, madam chair, for scheduling this in chief. I keep not being able to make it on the Mondays. It's always on my calendar, and we meet on Mondays, so it's hard. We talked a couple of weeks back. And I know that I had introduced you guys to a couple of researchers that do a lot of research around criminal justice. You look happy about this, so that's good. I really like them. I'm curious to know what came of that meeting. But in particular, one of the things that they mentioned to me when I was talking to them about B4B, which was a separate meeting from you guys talking to them, is that there's research out there that shows that things that can really move the needle on these kinds of perceptions can wear off over time.

And so that is where my mind is at with this. You have some demonstrable impacts on how people are perceiving their role. It seems like the information is landing, which is no small thing. And I'm glad to hear that a few of the districts have started to voluntarily extend this or come back around to it. But that would sort of be my biggest next thought is sort of like, how do you bring people back to that mental space when they have been in the job for a really long time and just become a lot more jaded, become a lot more cultured to what may be preexisting law enforcement culture in some parts or pockets of DPD.

So I'm curious what your thoughts are about that right now. And then the other thing is that to me, when we're starting to think about, as I know you are, measurability, data, how do we show the impact and check ourselves on that, which I love about Together Colorado, that you're always thinking about that from the jump. I would be curious if there would be a way to measure whether officers that have been through this program, in addition to their self reported sort of understandings, also have less complaints or that kind of thing. So that's what I'm curious about is where your thinking is about all of that. And I know what you're thinking about it.

So we've had conversations with the chief and the data people at DPD. And some of the things that we are already working on measuring, we're hopefully going to have some of those statistics at our meeting they're working on them right now is measuring and we don't have but two years of classes so far. But compliments and complaints on these badge numbers compared to Elisa was talking about doing a separate group of maybe only four years on the force plus the whole pool. Because the whole pool had a very different culture no offense when you joined compared to the culture you're trying to create now, which is very different. And so we have that.

We have payouts. I mean, you guys are facing those all the time at city council. We don't want to see these officers involved in any of those payouts. We're hoping that we can show that. This research group, we're going to ask for a meeting soon with chief.

And they also recommend that we try to somehow backflow to go into the other parts of the staff. And maybe we can do that through some grants, that we could do a mini B4B to people who it doesn't have to be the visiting of the community, but maybe in their own district and maybe with some of our police history stuff so that they can hear that too. I don't know. We're still in that brainstorming phase. I heard a statistic yesterday at B4B from another group that you really can't get good data until this is at Servicios, that you can't get data until it's been in existence for about ten years to know if it's really working.

I was like, well, we don't have that much time. But I can hear that. I also want to point out that there are at least two laterals in this B4B group that I met yesterday who I was surprised were in the group because they're now only having to do the six week program. I don't know how that's working, but they were in the B4B. And that was one of our concerns that we shared with chief, and clearly, you already fixed it. So very nice. So we had two laterals in the group this week, two weeks.

And if I could just add to your point about how do we continue this down the road after this is maybe the accumulative effect is worn off. I think during chief White's time, there was a mandatory course. I believe it was called Respectives. There was very much the same content, and I think it really regrounded folks with why we're here and talked a lot about implicit bias and things like that. And so that is something that we have done before and can certainly recreate again.

I also should share with you there's a juvenile piece to this whole two weeks as well. We get a couple times where bridging the gap and things like that because we also I want to just show that this man is an innovator and a reader. I was reading the Denver Post article I don't know when this was last year when Baltimore was having this issue with juveniles who were this one juvenile was skateboarding on city council monuments and things in front of the building. And a police officer literally went up to this young boy and said, your mother must have had her bad words when she raised you because you don't know how to respect public property. And that was how he introduced himself.

And I read this, and this organization had come in and done a whole study and to retrain the Baltimore police so that they were having better statistics with their juveniles. I emailed the chief, and I said, hey, did you see this this morning? He'd already contacted the academy and said, can we incorporate this into our active bystander training or whatever program you put it into. So those are the kinds of things, though, that I think you and we would like to know are happening with our Denver Police Department. What are the trainings that they're getting, and how many people are getting them? So that would be helpful stuff for us to know, too, as community.

Yeah. And that's actually my other question or just follow-up, I guess, comment. I heard you making the ask of us that we work together to try to I don't know the right word, but make this more permanent, like give it a home in ordinance, make it mandatory in some way. We've had the yeah, there you go. That's good one. Thank you. We have had the conversation that it's sort of hard do that because the content is it's hard to get your hands around what does the content have to be, kind of. And so maybe a way to do that would be to say who in community gets to set the content into the future or something like this. It's not going to be Marilyn Vickie, but it could be I don't know. So I've been noodling on that and just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about it and pretty much just putting it into the ether for other council members to think about that.

Because you're right that anything we don't lock down is rapidly dissolving and going away right now, it feels like. So just wanted to say that. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you. Councilman Watson followed by Councilman Cashman.

Thank you, madam chair. And thank you to Marilyn and Vicky, together Colorado and chief in your office. Important discussion. So thank you so much for putting this on. My questions were gonna go similar to council member parity, and I wanted to give a quick comment. In 1998, I was the, president of the Whittier Neighborhood Association, r and o, and District 2 and District 6. I think the bone bone boundary was, Downey back then. It was, chief Whitman was chief at that point. I was walking home because to port, I have a car, bought a house, and I was like, I'm not gonna lose my house. I'm gonna be walking everywhere I go.

And I was walking from a meeting and five points, and it was about 11:00 at night. I think it was, like, a Thursday night. And this was the second time this happened to me, and I was just about to walk by where my office is at right now, 2855 Tremont, and a police car drove up. I was 28 at that time, very much know my rights, all that stuff. Officers pulled up, say, can I speak with you? And I said, was done for the day. I had meetings. I'm tired, walking. And I said, you know what? Yes.

Let's, you can speak with me. And they said, well, can you show ID? Can you do it? And they went through the whole step. And I said, folks, I'm, president of the Arno just half block from here.

I've been working with chief Wittmann's office and, councilwoman, Wedgeworth on biased policing tactics, actually, or commigoration profiling tactics at that time. And I walked them through kind of that contact. I'm a black man, but I know my rights. And this initial engagement could have caused a negative response. And about a week after that, met with chief Whitman, and we created the racial profiling task force in which we expanded to the bias policing task force because of some biased policing stuff around sex workers and folks based on perceived sexual orientation.

I share that because I think the work of speaking with recruits, having that dialogue, those officers had no idea, the relationship I had with district two and district six police and the ongoing work I was doing in community around policing. They saw a black man at 11:00 the night walk. And quite frankly, most of the homes near there, nobody was gonna be trying to case those homes. And if everybody knew how where where that was back in the day, I would be crazy if I was casing any of those homes, whether I was trying to do harm. I wanted to bring that forward because I think the power of what you are doing is that it provides the opportunity for folks to build, within New York before the badge to build relationships with officers to understand the folks they are touching or the folks possibly who could keep them alive.

Mhmm.

That's right.

But it's not just simply to reduce impacts on people of color communities. It is their safety Right. And their partnerships. Longevity as well as far as councilwoman Perry brought forward. Our task force went on for about three years. We had some real measurable outcomes, and we worked with with University of Denver students for free. They did all of our data points in Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post every year would post our data. There is a possible opportunity to work with academia to identify inside of France to have that ongoing data piece. But the point is after those three years, that that process ended. Ended.

And so the hope is to work with Together Colorado on the before the badge before the glue process. And I hope my office can work with you all to see what we can do to provide stickiness for this because I know that the relations I had, sergeant Bancroft, who became commander Bancroft several years later, who's now retired, we met during this process. She helped with facilitating those meetings, and that long term relationship worked as I became more involved over the years as she was commander of building engaged processes with police and community. She continued all those steps, all of those years later. Uh-huh.

And so there's stickiness, but to put it within some type of requirement, I I look forward to working with you and your team. So none of my kudos for you. None of my kudos for the chief and the team for doing this good work and know that you have partnerships and partners on this council to make this more sticky.

Thank you. Thank you,

madam chair.

Thank you, councilman. The next up is Councilman Cashman followed by Councilman Hines.

Thank you, madam chair. Chief, we're coming up on a year since you implemented the low level stops policy. And I'm wondering if you've had a chance to accumulate and assess data on that policy and how it's doing. When we first talked, you know, I was edge I was educated on the the issue by the Vera Institute for Justice out of New York. I was in a cohort there. And I went to the chief and and said, what you know, I'm learning this. What do you think? He said, well, I've been thinking about it too. My preference, the chief said, was to deal with it in policy. It's more flexible.

And told the chief, I'm a legislator, my preference. And as as as was brought up before Yeah. Look, unabashed. I'm a fan of our chief. I think we have an uncommon

Yeah.

Yes. Person in that role in a positive way, chief. And He's unique. But who knows how long he'll be in that position. And I do wanna get the stops policy into ordinances. My colleague count councilwoman Parity has joined me in that. Chief, where are we at with all that stuff?

You have to come to the meeting on

May 6? Yeah. You

May 6

is on my calendar. Yeah.

So I mean, we are compiling data on the significant reduction in stops, the type of stops that there are, you know, the the the justifications that are provided for stops that otherwise would be considered low level. I think that, you know, the the encouraging things to me are that we continue to trend very well in terms of lowering crime. I think we continue to trend very well in terms of maintaining, you know, public community satisfaction. And I think it is because we are reducing the number of those negative and maybe even arguably unnecessary interactions.

Do you have data accumulated yet? We do.

I mean, couldn't I couldn't tell you what it says

to them. Yeah. I'd I'd be interested in seeing what that

and and we can talk offline.

But as I said, I think the policy has got to outlive your time and So your I'll make an appointment.

And we'll have some of those charts on the screen. Oh,

awesome. Awesome. Great. Well, then I'll if I can get that data as soon as possible, chief, since you've released it to

the Well, we we haven't got it yet. They're they're promising it by May 6.

Okay. Good deal. Good deal. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Madam Chair, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for the presentation. My mom was a social worker for twenty years until the great state of Texas said that the thing that you've been doing for two decades suddenly required a master's degree. So she said, I'm not going to go back to school to get a master's for something I've already been doing for a long time.

One of the things that she wrestled with was once you start working with people with addiction and mental health episodes, suddenly your world is full of addiction and mental health episodes. And so therefore, the world is full of addiction and mental health episodes. So you're giving a great presentation of very beginning. I wonder if we have officers who have been on the job for a year or five years or ten years or twenty years who if you're around people who are breaking the law because that's who you're getting called to respond to allegedly, I wonder if a refresher course or something like this might make sense. Or have you thought about that at

all? Yeah.

This is we're going to be talking to some researchers for free with grants that maybe we can be building this not just at the front end, but with others in the force, for sure. And we've already seen a change in the commanders. I have, anyway, in the two years that I've been talking. A lot of skepticism in that year one. Yeah, taking me away from doing other things I don't want to be doing. And now they're the ones who are like, I wish we would have had this. And they're hanging around to hear what community is talking about and such. So you've made an influence. Thank you.

Well, and it seems to me, I mean, as the chief said, people are being recruited because they want to serve the community. In many ways, you are centering what it means to serve the community in a way that maybe that individual, that recruit, never even knew that they could have this kind of purpose and root into the community.

We should talk about the evaluations that way. Marie's got some great stories from the evaluations or the capstones of people saying just what you're talking about, counsel.

Yeah, it's incredible. And even I've been playing with artificial intelligence and things like that to summarize some of these capstones because they're so powerful. But people like yourselves don't have time to read through 50 essays every six months of just the true impact. One of the quotes I saw last night in preparing for this was this program changed my perspective, I don't see people as a problem to be solved anymore, which to me was like, oh, that there's a much bigger world out there and a bigger perspective out there. And so it's just so neat to see that for sure.

The other thing I wanted to say, I wanted to thank you for bringing up the topic of people with disabilities or deaf or hard of hearing. There are a lot of stories to be told. I'm not going to tell anyone other than my own. I was a white I grew up in rural Texas, a white male. Did not know really discrimination.

This was an acquired disability thanks to a crash in 2008. And it is so interesting to me that there are people who tell me no and are surprised when I question whether they say no. And I believe that and I guess we as a community believe that there's discrimination against people with disabilities. And I say we as a community because Civil Rights Act of 1967, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. I mean, there are federal laws.

Laws are just a community come together and saying, these are our values. We're going to put them down on paper so that everyone knows what values are. But it is just I have the benefit and the curse of having an inquiry understanding of having a reality that did not have any perceived discrimination and then a reality that does have perceived discrimination. So those who have disabilities from birth, they don't know what it's like to question why someone tells them no. Anyway, so again

We have a couple slides. Yeah, you're going just say

Not all disabilities are visible, even. So we do talk about that. We actually DELL: have

somebody who help us present that has a disability that

Visible disability.

Right. And we talk about the ugly law that was here in GREGORY Denver for quite a while, where you could get locked up.

Just For having a disability on the street. You were supposed to stay in your home.

Yes. Yes. So we do. We go into that as well.

Well, thank you so much for Thank you. Putting this together.

And we talk also about the origins here in Denver of entrapping gay men in particular around the whole anti gay stuff in the '60s and '70s. So that mean they were treating them like sex traffickers.

So you talk about Corgi

Gonzales, the Black Panthers, we go into.

All the things. Come see. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, all of you, for taking the time and being here today. Chief, I want to thank you for being proactive in this space. And I guess my ask would be is that in any types of policy changes and things like that that come forward with DPD, this is encouraging to see the type of community engagement that was involved in this particular process, that it would be great to see efforts in an ongoing way for sure and things that come through because it's good. It would be great for the community to know that this is happening. Right?

And to be part of those conversations, it is part of that co governance and creation with community. We have people in our community talking about safety, talking about needing the need to feel safe. And there is a difference between feeling safe and being safe. Mhmm. And what that means for everybody does differ based on, as we've heard, like your upbringing, your environment, and your experiences and things like that.

And so and and I appreciate everyone sharing even personal stories because it does, I think, hit a lot of people in in a lot of different ways in a personal way. And sometimes it's one experience, but sometimes it's multiple experiences. Right? And it's also intergenerational, and we have to reckon with that. You know, I've had lots of conversations with law enforcement officers over the years from when I was a caseworker to being a lawmaker.

And I remember one particular conversation with the detective. We were working on a work group related to no knock warrants when I was in the legislature. And we I facilitated the work group that came out of legislation. We weren't creating any policy. It was just let's talk about no knock warrants and, like, what is happening here?

And and I had some separate meetings with with the detective, and he was a person of color also. And he said, I feel like we're always having to pay for the mistakes that people before us made, right, for the harm that was caused by law enforcement officers before me. And and he was like, the reason I got into this was because my family owned a convenience store, we were robbed so many times and, like, all of these things. Right? And he's like, I wanted to I wanted to protect people.

I wanted to, you know, serve my community. And and I said, I I get it. Like, it's hard to have to be the bearer of those things. But I think the way that you all are presenting this information is just it is the right balance of we are going to have this reckoning and know that we have this past and know that we have this history, but then it's where do we go from here? And how do we how do we change that going forward?

And how do we inform people and and make people aware of those biases, and how they can internalize those things in in the hope that when they're in those moments, that reaction may be different than what it would have originally been. And and one other thing I'll just share is, like, even working on Senate Bill two seventeen, law enforcement accountability, not a popular thing. I know. I had a a friend, somebody of my friend of my husband, a colleague of his his her husband worked in in law enforcement. And him and I had, like, a back and forth on on, you know, texting or whatever.

And one of the things that was striking to me is that he referenced some research. And I read this this information, and it did specifically say that the research shows that men of color, specifically black men, are more dangerous. Like, said that in black and white, which then gives the notion that they are in fact dangerous. Right? And so then you're already walking into that picture.

And so I'm just incredibly grateful of this collaboration that you all have found yourselves in, and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to continue this type of collaboration going forward in a multitude of spaces when it comes to policies with regards to our safety department. But really, it stands for all of our departments and agencies. Having community engagement is incredibly important. And I appreciate all the work that you all are doing. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yep. So look at your inboxes for that flyer. I did send you all the flyer last night.

Yes. Yes, ma'am. And share it. Yeah. So with that, council members, we have six items on consent, and nobody has pulled off those six items. Correct? So we those will go forward to the full council. And with that, we are

adjourned.