Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the public safety work session on Monday, February, 3rd, 2025. This is the first time that we're in this room. It's supposed to only be for a couple months. A lot of supposedly, it's not always work one time, but because of the renovations of this building, parts of this building, we're in this room and live streamed. Today we actually have two topics on the agenda, which really are sort of a blending of two. The first one is the briefing on the police accountability board. The second is the update on the police accountability board complaint data tracking. They're combined and they're shared in the same informational packet. And I know Ms. Farag will explain that shortly. As we begin, I'd like to thank Ms. Susan Farag for preparing the staff report for both topics and for once again, and always assembling a most informative packet for us. And unless the committee members have anything to say, I'm going to ask the panel to please introduce themselves, ask if they have any opening comments and then turn them is for Rog for her to lead us through the packet. I've been told that we have to continually cut off the mics as we go, so I'm going to cut to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. Testing testing. Probably everything's still. I just wanted to add. Well, thank you for the first statement. We've done what confidence you had. Congratulations. Now we're over it. And the music game begins. Yeah. Right. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Bishop Walker, Paul Walker, chairman of the Police Accountability Board. Just a quick opening statement. I'm proud to have worked with the Police Accountability Board. or when it has accomplished since its inception in 2022 and its continued functionality in 2024. Related to foundation for future members of the board, the county executive charged me with leading the board and creating a collaborative atmosphere that would foster and maintain a healthy consistent team effort. I embraced this charge by framing our responsibility and the complex field in which it must execute other mass painting of moving trade. As members of the board we grew together, learned from one another and and became a functioning body with a unified vision. We continually review our commitment to our mandate, to our individual responsibilities, to this community, which consists of residents and police officers alike, for we are one community. The board's duty is to review the outcomes of community complaints of police misconduct such as racially biased policing and excessive use of force and to recommend sound policies to improve police accountability. We embrace this mandate as a total process. We consider policies that might prevent future misconduct through improvements to the ways in which officers are hired and trained to the policies that govern their conduct in the field and to disciplinary process itself. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Forrest Gilman Riley. I am the administrative director for the Police Accountability Board and Administrative Charging Committee in Montgomery County. I'm as excited to join this role in August at late August of 2024. The principal work of the police accountability board in 2024 was laid out in its annual report. And they focused on further developments and testing of the dashboard as well as their work on reviewing the freedom to leave Act and consideration of consent searches. The board committed itself at its first meeting in January of 2025 to establishing a new ad hoc group directly responsible for reviewing the outcomes of disciplinary matters and trying to develop a consistent common scheme for categorizing the information in complaints, particularly during this period of time where we don't have access to a fully developed case management system to track that information in an automatic fashion. I want to thank Ms. Farag for all the work that she did working with us over the last few months in preparing requests related to budget and preparing for this hearing. We have to do this. Good morning. Good morning Susan Farrag Council staff can you hear me okay some far away. I also want to thank the Police Accountability Board and staff, Mr. Gilman Riley. I've been very helpful, been very available for my myriad questions over the past several months. I'm just going to give a brief overview of the PAB ACC and go through the packet. As you know, there are nine members on the Police Accountability Board and five on the administrative charging committee. All positions are filled currently and all members have completed their required training. The approved FY 25 operating budget is about 788,000. And that pays for two full time staff members, the salaries for the PAB and the ACC members to independent council and compensation for trial board members to attend training and sit on all trial boards. As chair cats mentioned earlier, there are two items that have been combined. I've combined them into one packet. And the reason I did that was if I had separated them, they would be very redundant in nature. So I'm just going to try to go through them a little more smoothly. Last year there were some data discrepancies identified between PAB data and at least three of the law enforcement agencies that included MCPD, Gathersburg City and the sheriff. Those disparities alone do not mean that there are any mistakes or irregularities. It just we had not had time to get reconciled data during budget deliberations. So the council had requested that the PA be come back and explain that before the next budget cycle starts. As Bishop Walker also mentioned, the PA be issued its 2024 annual report, which was delivered to the council before December 31st. The ACC has authority over seven law enforcement agencies in the county. They also accept complaints for the park police, although the park police is a by county jurisdiction. So it goes to the state administrative charging committee. My focus over the past couple of years has been looking at the PAB and the ACC's staffing resources and their IT support and any other types of resources they need in order to fulfill their mission. It's a brand new disciplinary framework. The L.O.B.R. law enforcement officer Bill Wrights was repealed. This is a brand new framework. Well, it's approaching three years. But you know, it has to be as transparent and accountable as policing itself. It has to be seen as legitimate both by the community members who want to file complaints, particularly for community members who have traditionally historically distrusted police for a variety of legitimate reasons. But it also has to be viewed as legitimate for the police officers whose careers are also put at stake basically depending on the types of complaints that come in. So the 2024 annual report has a lot of information on administrative charging committee decisions. According to their annual report, they received to 120 complaints December 2023 through November of 2024. During that time, they also issued 43 written opinions during the first three quarters of 2024. You will note that not every single month and time period matches up and some of those 43 decisions that they issued were from complaints filed in previous years. So I just wanted to make that clear before I went on. The written opinions addressed a total of 130 allegations made against 67 police officers. Out of the 43 written opinions, the ACC issued 24 administrative charges in 12 of the complaints. That means of the adjudicated complaints, the ACC issued at least one charge in almost 28% of the complaints and against 22% of the officers and there are charts on page 4, the show and outline of the complaint data. Also on page five there is a chart that shows the most common types of recommended discipline. Most common was a letter of reprimand and they did recommend termination in one case. most common types of recommended discipline. Most common was a letter of reprimand and they did recommend termination in one case. As I stated before, my major concern looking at both of these was identifying the needed resource needs so that they could fulfill their mission. Staff support is at the forefront. They currently have one administrative director and one senior executive administrative aide support both the PAB and the A-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C- the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state agency also provides integral operational support for broadcasting public meetings. The council added $200,000 to the FY 25 operating budget for two independent council positions. One supports the PAB and one supports the ACC. One of the items that I had requested for this briefing was information on how many hours ACC and PAB members worked each week to help assess whether or not either or both of these entities needed to be able to devote more time to case work or whether either entity needed more support staff to assist with operations. The PAB has advised that they don't systematically track or report their hours at this time, but they are open to serving its members and tracking that information on a trial basis. That's something that we can talk about a little bit more in upcoming budget deliberations as well. In terms of complaint data tracking, as I stated before, there was an identified discrepancy in data between the PAV and at least three law enforcement agencies. As the PAV noted in its annual report, it is working on internal data tracking systems to develop robust data collection, tracking and reporting capabilities. But this work is more complex than they initially thought because complaints can include multiple allegations, multiple officers and even multiple agencies that are involved in one complaint if city of Rockville and MCPD Respond to the same incident there may be complaints against more than one agency and The varying scope and phasing and titling of the departmental policies Which are different adds a further layer of complexity for their review and one of the examples Mr Gilman Riley gave was that MCPD's policy on courtesy Has a different range of conduct in Rockville City's policy on courtesy and human relations. So that adds more complexity. So even though the tabs has been working to try to develop a case management system, it may need to be more of a relational database than initially thought. And the PAB and staff have been looking more at whether or not it should be an in-house TABS solution, or whether or not there is an off-the-shelf case management system that might be more effective to help support the work that they're doing. The other concern with the data discrepancies is that while the PABS required to transmit any complaints it receives to the relevant law enforcement agency within three days, there's no reciprocal requirement that law enforcement agencies do the same. So the law enforcement agencies in the county have been transmitting their complaint numbers on a regular basis, but it occurs monthly rather than within the same three day time period required of the PAB. And since they do not yet, since the PAB doesn't yet have a data management system with full functionality, the data often must be manually counted. And that leaves room for delays in reconciling those complaint numbers. So as I mentioned, there are two different possible approaches to developing the data and case management systems that would best serve the board and internal product developed by TIPS or the off the shelf case management system. And I did want to point out that the governor's office on crime control and prevention recently contracted with the police executive research form or PERF to conduct an implementation analysis of the Maryland Police Accountability Act. And that report highlights Carolyn County's software implementation as a quote promising practice practice. The five law enforcement agencies there purchased the same complaint case management system, and that was done through a series of grants. And that allows complainants to file their complaints online through a single portal. Their county's office law also purchased an iPad for each law enforcement agency to have on hand. So that if a community member would go to a police station to file that complaint, they would have private access to an online system so they didn't have to go through an actual police officer. So the couple of things that I was looking at in order to really provide the robust types of complaint information that the community and the council may be interested in seeing, I do think that a case management system is a really important next step. One of the concerns that I saw that made reporting, made any type of real analysis, very challenging, is that of the complainants who reported, there were about 18% of complainants who failed to report gender and 52% failed to report race. And that data gap makes it really difficult to do any type of racial equity analysis when there's significant amounts of data that are unknown, the analysis becomes problematic. But I think the question really becomes why are people not reporting? So if people still have skepticism in the system itself and they are concerned that that reporting their race or ethnicity or gender or what have you, means that they will not get a fair hearing. That's a concern and that's something that the multiple stakeholders here might want to investigate a little bit more just to see if we can help improve that the trust, basically the trust. In terms of staff report, this is definitely going to be an operating budget issue. The ACC reports that it takes approximately 17 days on average to review complaints in cases where the ACC does not need to ask for additional information from the police department. But for those cases where it asks for additional information from the law enforcement agency case review can take approximately 79 days on average. So it would be helpful to better understand current case backlogs whether these delays, not necessarily delays, it might just be the nature of the beast, are coming from law enforcement agency, something outside like the concurrent criminal investigation, or resources within the police accountability board in the Ministry of Charging Committee. Because if it's within the police accountability board in the ACC, and if additional staff support would help, then I think that's something definitely worth consideration during the button the upcoming budget. While the the PAB and the ACC structure within County government are intended to make it both of them as independent as possible, there may be some additional efficiencies and operational improvements available by using current county resources such as data analysis assistance from county stat or another division within County government again. The caution there is to ensure as much independence as possible so they are as immune and shielded as possible from any political intervention. At this time, and I have put some potential discussion questions down for your consideration on pages eight nine. And I'm also happy to answer any questions if you'd like. Thank you very much. I appreciate everything that you have said and everything you have done is as we begin. I just want to very publicly thank the PAB police again. I always get concerned about that all we use in government is initials, but the police accountability board in the ACC, the charging committee for everything you've done and for everything you're doing. When we, when this state, Bishop, I don't have to remind you, but when the state came back to Montgomery County and all places in the state said, you will be doing this. They weren't as clear on what you will be doing. We all knew that something was gonna happen and should, but we didn't know exactly what the state wanted and what was gonna be the best pay-off forward. So therefore it's the expression flying the plane as we're building it. And that's what we've done. Some of it has been seamless and some of it has also been there. So we thank you for everything that you're doing and how you're doing it. I have often said to, we're not just this topic for many others, if we need, if we ask you to do the job, you need the resources to do the job. And in some cases, and it's coming from airside, our being the county council side, that we don't always budget enough or the right things to do. We don't have all the money in the world and we're not. And things get, well, we can wait for this one. And in some cases, maybe we can and in some cases, maybe we can. So I think in order from the very beginning, when Ms. Farag has mentioned the case management system that is needed, I agree with that, obviously. I have a feeling my committee members are gonna agree with that as well. The question is, what do we need need and who decides what we need? So the work that the board had put in directly last year and to extent the year before in developing the initial complaint dashboard has created a pretty clear picture for us on staff from a procurement perspective of what type of data they would like to model and how they would like to model it. Now, that unfortunately did lead us to the conclusion that the current information storage infrastructure is not sufficient. It cannot model the type of information that is going to be useful to the board and I'll point to this committee into the council in shaping policy. With the, in discussion with the board and understanding what their objectives for data were, that gives us really two broad options. As Ms. Frog said, the in-house development working the tabs or a product off the shelf. I spoke with representatives of the police accountability board in Caroline County to talk them more about their system. Using the software IAPro is what they had deployed there. As I understand it, the Department of Police here has, at least to some some level also explored or deployed IAPro. And I've reached out to try and set further discussion on that. That is a commercial product fairly robust design for both corporate and public internal investigations. And so is seemingly well suited to tracking the type of information that would be sought here. The problem in, and I'm glad you're doing research, Caroline County is very different than Montgomery County from just a number of agencies. I don't know, Caroline County doesn't have a county police force. They would have the sheriff and the state police, I guess. And the state wouldn't be under their jurisdiction, right? That would be under the state. So we need to, we need to compare apples to apples. Maybe that is the best system, but we do need to compare apples to apples. So that's one concern. I think we need to figure out as quickly as we can, because it should be for this budget, that we come back with answers for the tracking system. I would strongly suggest that. And I also know that because of the multiple agencies that we're dealing with, Maybe Montgomery County has more police agencies in it and any other, well, no, that's not true because Prince George's County, every jurisdiction has two or three police forces in there and they're gonna get good friends. So I don't say that, I say that trying to be funny, but I don't know what they use and how what they would be, if they have a tracking system and how that would work. And with that, I'll turn it over to my committee member. Thank you. And yeah, just to clarify, because Caroline County, of course, is very different than Montgomery County, but it does have the Caroline County Sheriff's Office is the equivalent to the Montgomery County Police Department in their structure because that is the primary law enforcement agency for the county. And then they have smaller municipal departments, like Ridgely, et cetera, that exist within their boundaries, just less of them than we have, and less mileage. And I thank you for pointing out all the many things related to data, and this is very helpful. It's challenging whenever you're doing something new to know how the factors are going to play out as they're collected and what, you know, we have as noted where people don't always write their full gender or where they write an initial instead of or where they don't put it at all. And I wondered a couple of things. One, where for the complaints where gender and demographic data have not been optimal, and recognizing that we don't currently have a system in place for going back and reconciling data that needed greater clarity. Were they tend to be in complaints where there were ultimately charges brought, or were there other things missing, meaning was the failure to include the demographic and or gender data, something that was also akin to lack of overall information in the complaints, meaning that they didn't proceed any further. Or was the other information robust? They just did not include the demographic data. Do you recall? Oh, button, sorry. Yeah, thank you. I can say that in all of the cases that the administrative charging committee has considered and issued opinions in that body had sufficient information to draw appropriate conclusion in its discretion. The use or the inclusion or not inclusion of demographic data since they are not, it's not required to be all included as part of a statutory release sufficient complaint. That has the potential to affect the ability of the board to perform subsequent analysis of those decisions. But as far as we can tell, it has not impacted the ability of the committee to evaluate or issue charges. Yeah, and just add to that and reference to what, of course, you said, reference to the board to be able to accurately with pinpoint, you know, visualization, look at these charges because of this dashboard, in capricious. So it's very important and when we've been pushing for, you know, with tabs and working well spearheaded by a board member, George Luberdance, really pushed us that board. Asport, we're very hard. You probably saw that in the report, but I think it's important to be able to track accurately ethnicity and different other information in these complaints. On the board side, to help us find and research these trends. It's very important that we would definitely be doing a great service to the community if we can create something that helps the community track and we at track as well. Yes and age too right age being a big like all the all the many pieces. And I note the phrase longitudinal was used in the in the packet and I consider it at this point longitudinally aspirational right because we have we're not that many years into it to do your over-year data analysis, and especially as we make adjustments to figure that out. But in talking about, again, back to Caroline County, and them having grants that they did and go caps comments, I was wondering whether, sorry, Governor's Office of Crime Control. Governor's, what is it now? It changed. It's Governor's, it is back to go-cap, but it stands for something different. So it's Governor's Office of Crime Control and Policy. There you go. All right. Whether they are going to or has there been any discussion about setting standardization so that the state is giving the directive as to how best to do these things and then the locals can put that into practice because again you want to be able to capture things and knowing as Ms. Frog pointed out that certain agencies have different policies that have slight variations in them but that can make the analysis somewhat different. At least if we had a standardized way of collecting all of the information across all of the jurisdictions and you know thinking ahead on that procurement side if it is something that needs to be done outside of tabs, putting it together, is there power in having a standardized solution that all of our jurisdictions use to help inform this work and the overall efficacy of having switched from the LEOBR process to the current one and heightened that transparency across the board for all jurisdictions. I just had one thing to add to that. There is no police accountability board at the state level, so there's no one entity making those types of statewide recommendations. I don't know if Perf is gonna come back and look at that additionally, but I did wanna point out maybe this is what Bishop Walker was gonna say and I'm gonna see to him. One of their main recommendations for the 2024 annual report was a standardized complaint form across all of our law enforcement agencies. And I think that would make a really great foundation to start the process at least here in the county. Yeah, can I do that? Exactly. Yeah, exactly what I was going to say, that we have suggested just that in one million across all the municipalities, and within the county. And I think if I was tracking part of what you were saying, well, counseling in Locate is within the state itself and all the counties. One of the things we did last year, I'm tracking the question correctly, part of your question is we did have a first meeting with all chairs. Yes. And that was a productive meeting. I think something like that would help as well, meeting with the different chairs and the administrative directors of those said, or these are tabs inside the family. I think it's if I'm tracking right. I say that it is a great thing to do that. You were totally tracking it correctly. And I guess to Miss Farog's point about there not being a state tab oversight body, if you will, that's why I was sort of directing my commentary in the direction of go-cab, meaning as a policy advisory. And also as the entity where a lot of grant pass through funding, well at least in more standard times, came through for these type of projects that go cap could be the sort of pusher and leader of both synthesizing things and also helping our local jurisdictions to attract that funding in order to make help support that work and standardization. Are you saying that the state police do not have a police accountability board? There's not. There's an administrative charging committee and they made it very clear in their last annual report that this is a major defect policy wise moving forward to be able to recommend better policing policy to all stakeholders. So for just the state police, I'm not saying. Any law enforcement agency that is subject to the state administrative charging committee, like Park Police, the BNR, diversity police department, department of natural resources, the state police have, if someone has a complaint and not that I'm suggesting that we need, But if someone has a complaint, and not that I'm suggesting that we need, that they need to, but if someone has a complaint about a state trooper, what happens? They don't go. State administrative charging committee. There is a process in place, there's an infrastructure in place to do the complaint piece, and they report out on the complaint data, but there's no overarching body to make recommendations based on those trends that they're observing. I did not realize that. Thank you. I think my last questions were about the language on the forms and whether thus far from the complaints we've received and the types of where there might have been shortcomings or where maybe it wasn't always as clear as to what level of information was being sought. Have we done sort of a plain language analysis of the complaint forms to see where we might be able to break it down to make it easier for people to understand. One of the things the path has done and with which was mentioned earlier for us is we have broken into our ad hoc groups and one of the ad hoc groups is and has focused on the actual complaint form. Right. And one of the main focuses was language. Okay. And so I think that's something that's a a workable or working document. Okay. You know, and so I think we have improved on it. I think we mentioned it in our and report. You probably saw something referencing to that from last year's report to where and how it improved it to to this year. So it is on a radar, it is something we're creating. And I think also we're going back to the dashboard that part of it as well. Right. Being able to navigate and make it a lot more familiar. Right. Right. And I just, and, and, and Mr. Gilman Riley, you might know the answer to this. Do you know at what reading level the complaint form is set? Right? Because the goal is to try to have them actually like an eighth grade or lower reading level. So it's really playing direct language for government forms. I'm not sure offhand if we have had it reviewed at the for a flesh-caged grade level. The form itself, if you access it through the police accountability board portal, will take you through several pages of answering pretty specific prompts. Ultimately, the thrust of the complaint is calling for the narrative itself of just asking people to describe what happened. Right. Which is for much in the same way that folks when they go into the citizen wants to swear out charges before a commissioner, there is some basic information collected from them automatically, but the principle portion is simply the narrative. And I'm wondering, you know, if you could consult with any other organizations that have done significant work in the plain language arena, right? Like the Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council, for example, I know they did a lot with the NVA and also with voting forms. Just to sort of see what that, like, is there something else that could be done in the narrative section to create prompts to assist that would help guide people as they are filling out the form. because one person might write 50 words, one person might write 300 words, but you know, you want to try to give some context to help them understand what is helpful on the other end when you're receiving it. And legal forms by very nature, you know, most court forms, so you're right, like if you're going to get a piece order or something, they're not the most user friendly. user friendly, that's a longstanding challenge that we've had, but since this is a new thing, rather than going back and undoing old things, we have great opportunity to really push forward positively in making things truly, truly accessible. All right. Thank you. Okay. And it be green. Great. Okay. Great. Okay. So I was taking a look at the website where people will go if they're going to fill out a complaint form. And it. It seems to me that there might be some simple upgrades here that could potentially improve our metrics. So when I click on launch PAB complaint form, then the page that comes up to me makes it look like at first glance, and also second in my case, that your only option is to print out the PAB form and submit or mail it to 101 Monroe Street. Now it was then pointed out to me by my staff or who I texted that if you look on the right side of the screen in the margin area there is a button that says next and if you click on that button that says next now now you could fill out the complaint form online. But I would bet that there would be some number of people who are just getting to that page and being like, I'm not going to print and mail this. Don't click the next button and we lose them right there. Also for those who just do decide to go ahead and print and do the print and mail option, that form, let me pull that up again, that form under gender and race and ethnicity is not multiple choice. It's just a blank. And so I would bet that we're losing some number of people there who are just like, I don't feel like writing that out, Who might fill it in if there were check boxes and you know and another category as there is if you do the online form. But given that there are far more written complaints than online complaints, there might be some pattern there in terms of are the written complaint are the online complaints more likely to have the race and gender information I I would bet that they are because then there's a drop down menu. So maybe just adding check boxes and a line for other for those categories might up our numbers there. And also making it much more clear that you're you're centering the online option which is going to be most people's preference, and then having a button that says, if you'd rather do it written, then you can do that as well. Now, I can certainly see why people might want some assistance filling it out, but this doesn't offer any assistance. It doesn't say, you know, let's fill this out on paper so we can help you. It says, print it out and mail it in. So, yeah, so that's a few suggestions. I would also suggest that, you know, if there are folks who don't want to fill it out online or who might find that that is challenging or they're not sure what to include to the point of the conversation we've been having up here, it would be great to have an option to, for example, direct people to their local regional services office to fill it out with somebody there. You know, you can see consistency or, you know, if there's other suggestions, we could put that also, but the regional services seems like kind of a natural way to go. We could add in county council members. What, obviously we just want more points of contact, and we're all gonna get them to the same place, but right now it just says print and mail. So to me, I'm really focused on how we can get these numbers up in terms of the reporting of just overall numbers, how many are being reported, and also the race and gender information, because I think that's really key to us being able to identify some of the biggest issues that we want to be ironing out. And so I think that has got to be solved. We really have to prioritize that. Now that's going to increase the number of cases, which increases the need for a case management system, and potentially more more staff But I think that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit here for addressing some of these issues Thank you for pointing out the complain form You know one of it says place a birth. I just looked at it too as she was discussing this I listen to every every word you have to say, by the way. But it says place of birth and then it, it says United States or US born or an immigrant. And then it says region of origin. And candidly, I didn't know that meant. And it's the United States, Canada, Latin America. It's the region where someone was born, I guess, rather than where this happened, where this complaint would have taken place, the region for that. So I think it's, though it's a big thing, it's a little thing to correct. I think it makes a big difference. Thanks. Thank you. And I think also important to note relevant to that, that for place of birth, that is an option to say, prefer not to say. So especially now, really important that folks know that we as a county are not going to ask for their immigration status. And we are working to make sure that in all of our county services is open and safe for everyone. So I'm just going for the record you can choose prefer not to say. Okay. Wondering also shifting gears. What information exactly does the PAB receive on each complaint to the members at any point along the process get to read the police department's internal investigation report? Do they get the body worn cameras? Is that something that would come by default or that could be requested? Is it ever requested if you could talk a little bit about the process and what's received that'd be great. Yes, so at the beginning of each new quarter, the members of the police accountability board are given access to the original complaint and the written decision from the ACC. They are not given access to the investigative files that does not appear to be something that they could legally have access to under the current formulation. That is our understanding and speaking with the Office of the County Attorney as well. However, the full original written complaint, whether that was filed through the police accountability boards online portal or directly with the department by email or their written form. Is given to the board members as well as the full written opinion of the committee. Okay, see I'm wondering then what you're supposed to do with that really because if the question is, you know, if the part of the task here is to be oversight over the internal investigation that was done, but you don't have the same materials or even remotely close to it that they're working with you just have their conclusion, then there is no way to analyze their process, which is kind of the point. There is information in there that could be gotten through a public request for information. So, like body-worn camera, if somebody requests that, we provide that generally speaking. So I would think that anything that could be requested by the public should be able certainly legally at least to be provided to this body, even if maybe that's not everything, obviously when they do an MPA request, some stuff gets redacted and so on. But wouldn't it make sense to just have as a natural part of the process, redact whatever those things are, and provide you those materials by default? At least in our review, in the staff review, and in speaking with special counsel for the administrative charging committee, it won't not appear so. There's nothing about the police account, the ability board, as currently constructed, that implies a direct oversight over the their processes. The administrative charging committee generates its own procedures and independently reviews complaints. But their ability to procure information from police and the police's in-turn response obligation to provide requested material that's relevant to the information operates a little bit differently than a normal public information request. The committee is bound by strict confidentiality outing provisions. So at least the interpretation is there is not a way for the committee to convey the content of the investigation to the board. They're only able to convey the outcome. I'm still not understanding why if there's material that could be MPIA by the public, why? You know, if I could request that, if my neighbor could request that and get it, I still am not clear on why the PAP could not get it. And I would note that, you know, we're looking for trends, but I would say one of the trend areas that we would benefit from the PAP looking at is a pattern between what the type of complaint is and what their findings are in terms of their internal invest. That's like one of the patterns that we I think should be looking at and you know and even if that's not made crystal clear I would think that here in Montgomery County we would be looking for ways to do the utmost right. I can clarify the the board does receive the effect of that of not just they receive the the complaint, which has the civilian's original allegations. The written opinions of the administrative charging committee review the allegations as provided to them by the police. So a person may describe a situation involving use of that that's for for example, that's going to tend to fall under a department or rule for courtesy under most circumstances. And so a description of what happened, of what the allegation is to have occurred is included in the written decision, as well as generally the committee's reasoning for either finding that yes, this complaint is founded and an administrative charge will issue. The officer was exonerated because they followed policy or variably the complaint is unfounded because there's just not enough information that could be obtained to determine the erasity or it's unfounded because the policy that is supposed to have been violated may not be inclusive or descriptive of the scenario that the committee was asked to review. Sure, but in doing that internal investigation, they are looking at materials besides just the complaint, right? They might be looking at body or other materials. So that's those are the materials that I'm asking about. Thank you. I'm walking in line between the ACC and the PAB of course. I am a committee member of the ACC. So I want to speak to that side. I'll allow for us to continue to speak to that. But on the PAB side, that necessarily answer to your question, but just information, I think, in reference to the board's view on this very topic. We are currently discussing how we could obtain these type of pieces of information like BWCs. If it's something that's in the purview of the pad, if it is how and we are in the middle of discussing that we really think it is, but how and would it make us custodians of those type of records and then open to an NPA from the public, which we don't want to get into answering those and being held in that frame of having these records now in our position, which now of course, of course, remember public can request it from the past. So we're currently discussing that we're really working on it with against special counsel to prepare to see how and what, but it is something that we've been looking at. It is something that we really think would be helpful in our mandate and in researching and finding trends to be able to recommend, you know, different policy recommendations to help improve on what we're doing. So, and not really an answer, but just to kind of give you an idea that point out as a pad. Yeah. Well, it's great to hear that you have a position and that the position is that this would be useful. And I would strongly agree with that. And I will say that I've gotten a lot of comments over the last couple of years from the public that indicate that it's important to them as well. And so I don't want to spend too much time on any one topic, but this one is very important. And this has been a focus of our questions over the past a couple of years or whatever we're at now. And so that's why I want to make sure we get to a point of answer. So if you all can get back to us as soon as possible with clarity around if you're not able to get these things, why exactly? And it sounds like you're looking at kind of two different levels of their, you know, there's, could you receive and look at the body one camera footage that is unredacted and, you know, that could be, you know, the public would not receive if they didn't have a rate request. So it would be obviously useful for you, but there could be legal issues there. But there's also what would be provided to the public if there was an MPI request. And I have yet to hear a reason that makes sense to me about why that could not be just provided to you all upfront. You could do an MPA for it yourself. And so why waste, which we're not doing. And so say, let's do that. If you're not doing that at this point or I would be, I would hope that MCBD would work in partnership with you all and just provide that so if we could get clarity on legally why that's why that could not happen given that you agree that it would be useful that would be great. And again we look forward to getting back with you but with that time frame with me but we definitely afford to get back to you with a major discussion. I appreciate it. Just try and help out with the things that Councilmember Mink was asking about. And of course, these are a public record. The question is, what of it is then otherwise able to be obtained by the public? And it may be different because for your purposes, it is being used for a specific thing. You have statutory duties and what have you, but then you are in fact receiving them, those records and they are public records, being the first point in the analysis. What I have seen happen in other situations where different agencies have different things that then go to another entity, another public body for work. And dealing with the MPIA is creation of bylaws or some other process rule where they refer the requester back to the original custodian of records for processing. So to the extent that you're having a concern about the ACC or the PAV having to be become in the middle of PIA requests that would otherwise could go directly to MCPD or one of the other departments, that has happened at the state, because it was one of my clients that I advised this for. So that where you refer it back to the original custodian of records for handling. And then they can do whatever redactions may be necessary because again, it's going to depend on who the requester is because if they are a person in interest, meaning in the footage, they have a different set of rights than those who are not. So let them handle that and then that takes that out of the purview of the PA be in the ACC. Yeah and I was just I was just going to be very clear about the redacted video. Obviously when body mourned cameras came into existence, everybody was glad that they did that, but it also they have to be extremely careful on what we're seeing. If someone, if there's a child, and we need to make certain that that child is not a part of that video that they're protected. If someone is followed into the bathroom, you have to make sure, if someone, there's all of these issues that we didn't think about in the beginning, we wanted body-worn cameras. We need body-worn cameras. We're very glad we have body-worn cameras, but we need to make certain that the redactions are what they are so that the public is protected as well. Interrupted you, Miss. It knows that, you, Councilor Mr. President. I just wanted to confirm that the Councilwoman Lincoln was sorry, Luke he was saying, forgive me please. You can talk me on. Okay, don't. That it's a standard operating procedure that another entity that is receiving a NPI A can refer the request or back to the original agency. I said that yes, I said that via bylaws for one agency and its body because it's for the state's longitudinal data system center, which by its very nature collects data and has data transferred to it from a host of other state agencies. So if someone seeking particular information that comes from one of those agencies, like, let's say, the State Department of Education, then the process was you'd fill out the request, but unless it crossed sectors or it involved what the data system had done with the data, it would go back to the originating agency, which Body War and Camera would fit into that bucket because it is from the original custodian part of the law enforcement agencies records. You said that's part of your biologues, that was written that. Yes. Something that the pad can have so we can share with the national public. I'll give them to you. I'll forward it over to you. Yep. It's solving problems. Did we get clarity on the reason for the case backlogs, like where that is, where that's backing up and why from your perspective? Could you clarify on backlog? So just to clarify, the ACC is up to date on the receipt of complaints and issuing decisions on complaints within its statutory requirements. Ms. Farug, I was trying to attempt to figure out whether or not there was a backlog and whether it could be expedited. Some police officers might be waiting months to hear back on an administrative recommendation. As far as discipline, some officers, if it's really egregious, may not be working. They may be the of 17 days, I believe if information in average is if they do ask for ad law enforcement agency, w have a year and a day to just wanted to know as they start getting additional cases because MCPD became under their purview July, July 1st, 2023, are those cases building up? You know, is there going to be a continued backlog, a bigger back, and I shouldn't say backlog, but just the timeline process. I would like to be able to recommend getting ahead of something like that before it happens if it is a cause for concern. Got it. All right. You want to speak to that? Do you thoughts on that as it stands or is it just something to keep an eye on and come back to? I think it is something for us to keep an eye on come back to this point. Sounds good. All right. I yield. Remember I couldn't have money. So Ms. Frog, is there anything else that we should be discussing from this packet? The one thing that kind of bothers me a little bit is the fact that there are annual reports due by December 31st. So it means that they can't do calendar year to calendar year comparisons. That is required by state law. I don't know if it requires a state law change or whether or not the county can just determine it's okay to report out the information through December 31st in a more timely basis after the first of the year. And the other option there, which is not my favorite, is going by fiscal year because I don't think the community really likes to think in fiscal years. That's my point. So first my question would be what start and end dates are all the other jurisdictions using right because it if it's due by December 31st some some places do it where they end their data capture and what they put in November 30th, which is really weird, right? Because that definitely is not, if we think the July 1st to June 30th is the public definitely doesn't think about it in terms of that. So again, it would be good to go back and say, you know, that's fine if you want it by December 31st of every year. They usually, that's a common deadline in state statutes. So, but the question is keeping it consistent across all 24 jurisdictions so that they have the same stark and end time. So you're comparing apples to apples and it's not confusing for the public. I know other reports where they do it purely on the public. I know, you know, other reports where they do it purely on the fiscal year. So even though the fiscal year has ended, the report comes out six months later. There's that lag time. But that is often the way they they handle on. So once we find out what others are doing. And I guess while we're doing that, we need to figure out if others are doing December 31st, that's fine. But if not, then we need to figure out whether we can do it, whether we need state law change or whether we need, that we can do it strictly through the county. I see when I'm looking at other jurisdictions, I've seen end dates at the end of November, and I've seen them at the end of October. So there doesn't seem to be any uniformity. They're ending as close to the end of the calendar year as they can, but still allowing time to prepare their annual report. The State Administrative Charging Committee waited till March to file their 2023. They just, you know, so theirs is by calendar year, I've not yet seen their 2024 annual report. So if you could find out, or if there's going to be a change, how would we go about that change? Go ahead. Sorry, one more question. Is there a reason and this might be a larger conversation too that we could come back to, but I'll just put it out there, that the PAB couldn't report out anonymized, obviously, and with proper redactions as needed and so on. But more details of each complaint right now, everything is summarized. And that is useful in of its own right for seeing patterns, especially once we increase our reporting of the demographic data. But there could be value as well in more details of the complaints being made public. Obviously, we would want to take care to be protecting people's privacy and all of those things. But there could be some benefits there as well. So is that something that you all have thought about? Do we know what other jurisdictions do in our regard? At least in my review of other jurisdiction, if it does very tremendously as to what they will report out about a complaint that has been adjudicated by the ACC. It's certainly a question that we can put to the special counsel of the administrative charging committee. And likewise that we are scheduled to review with the office of the county attorney to the extent that it involves other departments like Tebs and procedures for protecting and reporting data. Great. Appreciate that. Yeah, I'd be really interested to know what is the most that's provided by any jurisdiction currently. We just need to say that we couldn't be the most, but it would provide a helpful comparison. And then if there's a reason for us to not at least meet that. Thanks. Anything else, Ms. Burns? Anything else from either of the gentleman at the panel. Well again thank you very very much for all that you do and and we sincerely you know we and in your line of work and it can't at least sometimes an airline of work you don't always get enough thanks but we sincerely do it, and you're certainly doing a service for the community. And with that, we're going to adjourn. Thank you.