I'm turning everyone. I'd like to go ahead and start our public safety and security meeting for April 8th. And before we get started, I'd like to make an announcement first. The first is that Chairman McKay will not be at today's meeting as he is testifying at the General Assembly's emergency meeting on the government cuts. So just want to make sure everyone's aware of that. And then second, I wanted to see if we could just take a moment of silence to acknowledge the life and contributions of Claudia Arco, who passed away recently. She served as our Legislative Director and most recently in the General Assembly. Her leadership and her commitment were demonstrating each and every day in the way that she approached to work and the work that she did. I know what her family, her friends and her coworkers to know that we are thinking about them at this time and thinking about her and that she will be truly, truly missed. So if you will, join me in a moment of silence please. Thank you very much. So today's meeting, we have two items that we will be discussing. This is our annual meeting where we bring both the independent police auditor to provide his annual report and we'll do the same with the civilian review panel. They'll be providing their annual report and we will start with the independent police auditor. So with that, let me turn the program over to Richard Schott, who will be making today's presentation. Thank you, supervisor Lusk. Good morning, supervisors. Again, my name is Richard Schott. I am the independent police auditor for the county. And today I will be presenting my office's annual report for 2024. The Office of the Independent Police Auditor, our OIPA, opened 29 new cases during 2024. Those new cases included one officer involved shooting, one death or serious injury case, and 27 use of force complaints. In total, my office had 100 active cases throughout the calendar year of 2024. This slide depicts the types of cases that were active at any point during the calendar year. 12 of the investigations being monitored included seven officer involved shootings, one officer involved shooting of a domesticated animal, two deaths of individuals while in the custody of the Fairfax County Police Department, our FCPD, and two serious injury cases. The caseload last year also included a total of 88 FCPD investigations into complaints regarding force. 81 of which were submitted to the FCPD and seven complaints which were submitted directly to the auditor's office. This high number of complaints in our caseload reflects what I have referred to as a backlog or retroactive reviews of complaints that were transferred from the FCPD to the auditor in May of 2023. The type of allegations in these complaint cases varied with the most common types of force used are at least alleged having been takedowns, assaults, being forced to cuff, being grabbed or held, and being struck. Fifteen individuals alleged excessive force or injury, but did not provide any specific details about the type of force allegedly used on them. Since the office of the Independent Police Auditor became operational in 2017, there have been a total of 16 Fairfax County Police Department officer involved shootings. To date, I have conducted and completed my review of 12 of those officer-involved shootings. Actually, that number, as of yesterday, should be 13 with the report that was published to my webpage last night. Three of the officer-involved shooting reviews, however, were completed during 2024, and those are reflected on this slide. In those three officer-in-wall shootings, I agreed with the FCPD's internal investigative findings that the use of deadly force was objectively reasonable and complied with both Virginia law and departmental policy. In all three cases, the officers reacted to an immediate threat of death or serious injury. I also completed reviews of two in custody in the custody of the Fairfax County Police Department, deaths last year. All five of these reviews, I found that the FCPD's internal investigations met the standards of having been complete, thorough, objective, impartial, and accurate. However, I did make recommendations in two officer- involved shooting cases, which I will return to later in this presentation. Going forward into 2025, I have continued and will continue to monitor and review the investigations of the two remaining officer-involved shootings that occurred in 2023 and the one that occurred in 2024. And as of today, I do not currently have any active in custody death investigations to review. In addition to the five reports I just outlined during 2024, my office published reports or memos on my reviews of FCPD investigations into 18 complaints of force that were submitted to either the FCPD or to our office. In seven of those 18 reviews, I applied the typical standards to the FCPD investigations and found them to have been complete, thorough, accurate, objective and impartial. In nine of the 18, I did not issue a finding based on those standards, but I found that the FCPD had adequately addressed the concerns presented by the complainant and that the force used or the pointing of any firearm was objectively reasonable. In one review of an excessive force complaint, I agreed with the FCPD's determination after only a very limited investigation that the officer was, quote unquote, exonerated by technology. After viewing the body-worn camera footage recorded during the event, I agreed with the conclusion that no force had been used during the individual's arrest and that the exoneration by technology was appropriate. In one review of an incident that had occurred in September of 2019, and this is one of those retroactive investigative reviews, I found that the pointing of a fire arm had not been objectively reasonable under the circumstances. And speaking of pointed firearms, it is worth noting that in April of 2022, the FCPD revised its General Order 540 to define the pointing of a firearm as a display of force as opposed to what had been considered only a reportable action. As such, this level of force, the pointing of a firearm, will continue to be documented and investigated by the FCPD similar to any other use of force. And likewise, I will continue to conduct reviews of FCPD investigations into pointed firearms whenever they are the subject of a public complaint. During 2024, I made five recommendations to the FCPD. To briefly summarize their status as of today, one recommendation has been implemented. One is the subject of ongoing discussion between the FCPD the Fairfax County Sheriff's Department. Two are in pending status while being reviewed or researched, and one is not being implemented at least not at this time. After reviewing the investigation into the July 7, 2022 officer involved involved shooting, which involved the person suffering from a mental health crisis, I made two recommendations to the FCPD. The first was that the FCPD continually stress to all officers the importance of utilizing time to their advantage, particularly when responding to calls for service involving people in crisis. The FCPD has implemented recurrent training in addition to previous changes to language in its General 540, General Order 540, and I believe that those steps do satisfy the recommendation I had made. Another recommendation I made is under review by the FCPD. In that recommendation, I recommended that the FCPD include criminal factors, including the well-known Graham factors, but also add non-criminal factors using explicit language from the estate of Cory Hill versus Miracle case in its general order 540 for it to consider when determining whether force was objectively reasonable during a non-criminal situation or in a situation where an individual was experiencing a medical or mental health crisis but also engaged in criminal activity. I have made this recommendation that is to add these new non-criminal factors in two previous and criminal activity. I have made this recommendation that is to add these new non-criminal factors in two previous reports. The FCPD has updated its training and made some language changes to the general order. But to date, it has not added the factors I laid out, that were laid out, excuse me, explicitly in the miracle case. While I agree that their new general order language has been improved, I remain convinced that enumerating specific non-criminal factors would be a better option. I also recommended directly to the Board of Supervisors that the Fairfax County co-responder program be fully implemented as quickly as possible to potentially avoid another tragic incident like the officer involved shooting that occurred in July 2022. Following the incident, but prior to being making this recommendation, county officials had already announced its plan to expand the co-responder program to four teams operating seven days a week. I made my recommendation in this officer-in-wall shooting report merely to reiterate my support for this board's and the county's multi-departmental efforts to address this most pressing public safety issue, and to do so as quickly and robustly as possible. However, at this point, I am wavering on my full-throated support of the co-responder model. A growing trend in the law enforcement community, which includes the DOJ under the previous administration, is to promote purely civilian response to as many behavioral health crisis calls as can be done safely. And there is a growing number of non-police response programs with documented outcomes that support the efficacy of expanding the use of purely civilian response. I will continue to monitor this topic and will share what I learn in a future report. The last recommendation on this slide, which is not being implemented at least not at this time, was for the FCPD to consider the possibility of lobbying the General Assembly to add fleeing from police as a legal basis for law enforcement to pursue forfeiture of those vehicles in which the people had fled. While the FCPD is not seeking legislation on this particular issue at this time, it is worth noting that the county, as a whole, supported a bill during this past general assembly session that includes vehicle seizure and forfeiture language for anyone convicted of racing a vehicle and also includes impoundment language for vehicles used by people arrested for exhibition driving. I offer that bringing a bill to the General Assembly, allowing for the forfeiture of vehicles in which people flee from police, is a logical extension to this legislative process. Finally, I would like to highlight some of the other activities my office engaged in during 2024. I was invited by FCPD Chief Kevin Davis in 2023 to participate in all future meetings of the FCPD's performance review board or their PRB. The PRB reviews all designated department critical incidents and any other incident as directed by Chief Davis. The purpose of the PRB is to assess whether improvements can be made to departmental training, policy, or equipment. There was only one critical incident in 2024 and therefore I participated in the loan PRB meeting which was convened to examine the September 16th, 2024 fatal officer involved shooting. Next, while the OIPA has always partnered with the Office of the Police Civilian Review Panel, as we are the two offices focused on police oversight here in Fairfax County, my office was even more closely involved with the work of the panel at times during 2024 for different reasons. Early in the year, we provided the brunt of administrative support to the OPCRP because there was a vacancy in its departmental head position until that position was filled. After that position was filled with the newly created OPCRP liaison, the agency had, Mr. Craig Miles had joined the office. My staff continued to provide guidance on the panel's bylaws and its past practices, and we were consulted by Mr. Miles during a procedure revision that he had undertaken and an initiative to develop new procedures by the New Liaison. Also, during 2024, I participated in several community meetings and FCPD functions to inform the community about civilian oversight here in the county. This included me addressing both sessions of the FCPD's Community Police Academy, as well as my addressing several other local and regional audiences interested in policing in general and oversight in particular. Finally, at the end of last year, I was asked to and gladly agreed to join the one Fairfax community roundtable foot pursuituit Equity Action Team as a non-voting member. Since December of 2024, I participated in all of the EAT meetings and provided input on its draft policy recommendations, which were then provided to the FCPD as the PD developed its first ever foot pursuit policy which as you know was publicly released by the department last Friday and which actually takes effect at midnight tonight or tomorrow morning. This concludes my presentation and I am now happy to answer any questions that any of you may have. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Schott, for that comprehensive presentation. And I'll just start by saying I very much appreciate reports that you provide and the analysis that you include in those. Your legal references are helpful and then I'll also date for me personally the recommendations that you've added have been extremely helpful for us to determine ways that we can make changes in policies, general orders, and those recommendations are ones that we should thoroughly consider. So let me maybe step back and look at the number of cases that you are trying to review. I see that there's a lot. So can you help me understand kind of what's the current status with the number of cases that you have to review? And if you can give me a sense of what you anticipate might be the timeline for you to complete those reviews with your current staffing. Yes, thank you. I'll address the current staffing first. I'm the first to recognize there is a bit of a backlog at the current time. And of course, it's only been myself and a management analyst in my office for the past seven years, eight years actually. And throughout that time, to sometimes to a greater extent than others, we've also been charged with providing all of the administrative support to the civilian review panel. With that burden for lack of a better term waning at this point, I do expect my review of actual investigations to pick up speed going forward. I also think that because I've put a pretty big dent in the reviews of the more time consuming investigations, namely the officer involved shootings and in custody deaths, I'll be able to eliminate more of the backlog at a quicker pace than I have been able to in the past. And finally, I have explored the possibility, and I think I anticipate that in the immediate future, I may be able to enlist a temporary employee to greatly assist me in reviewing mainly the backlog that we identified in 2023 and eliminate a big group of those retroactive reviews. So a long way of saying I do hope that in the remaining nine months of 2025, I can greatly reduce the number of active reviews that are on my books at this time. No, I appreciate you saying that and I'll acknowledge here that I personally support of you having assistance to do this. I recognize that that is a pretty high number of cases that you're trying to tackle and get completed, so you do need some support in order for that to happen. And also, if I can interrupt the, I know it looks intimidating or imposing at least to me showing 100 active reviews, those were throughout the course of 2024. I did report out on 24 of those. So the number at the end of the year was not quite that dramatically high. And I do anticipate reporting out on more than new case, new reviews that are open this year. So again, the number at the end of the year should be less than it was at the end of last year. No, no, thank you for that as well. I'd like to maybe harken back to a couple points that you made, because they're resonating with me. The first is you talked about the need to have full coverage for the co-responder model. And that's something that we have to get to. At some point here in Fairfax County, I know we have as our objective, but we're not quite there. And that's something that we have to continue doing everything we can to ensure happens here in the county. And then second, I really appreciate the point that you made about not requiring a police officer to be on each of those co-response calls. And this is a point that I have been expressing with the Deputy County Executive. We've had several conversations about this and how do we figure out a different sort of process. And I'm really looking forward to seeing any reports to additional information that you can provide on your recommendations there because I think this is a vital and important next step for the co-response model and I'll give a little credit to Supervisor Alcorn. When we first talked about this, we always envision that there would be a model that might not require the police. And I think we need to be evolving to that. And the thoughts that you have suggested here today are helpful in helping us get to that place. So I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you. And I can share the literature that I referred to with the supervisors immediately. No, that's perfect. And then I heard you also on the point about time and distance and cover. I think you're referring to how we can reduce use of force. And I know that we've trained all of our police officers with ICAT, and I think you mentioned that we're doing additional trainings of that. But I think this is really, really important that we have a process by which we continue to ensure that people understand what the latest and greatest is as it relates to time, distance, cover, patience, and communication. Because all these things are vital to ensuring that we have less uses of force in our in our county. And I just appreciate that the original recommendation came out as a part of the use of force study analysis that the University of Texas at San Antonio did with us a little more than four years ago and I know we're continuing to implement a number of those recommendations but that was a critical and important recommendation and again that one is making a difference here in Fifthitt County and appreciate your points and continuing and your recommendations to remind us of that need. So just wanted to state that as well. So let me give my colleagues a chance here. I could probably spend some more time. So let me look around the days here. So I'll start with Supervisor Alcorn. I'll work my way down the road. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to go back to the co-responder model, I also appreciate your comments on that and looking at that. And it would be helpful to share the literature that you've seen with the rest of the board. And I'd also just point out, you know, this isn't just other places around the country that have done this. Our community services board has had the mobile crisis unit for many years. Now we have two, but that still has been another effort to address mental health crises. And I guess as you look at this issue, I would be particularly interested in how police departments interact with such units that are outside of the police department in terms of the timing, in terms of the coordination. And I would also be interested in any examples of how fire and rescue departments have some responsibility in terms of a co-responder type response. So thank you for looking into that. Thank you. Well, thank you, Supervisor Alcorn. And just on the point that you just made, there is a model in Denver. There's a star model there, different than the model we have here. So there are other places that are doing unique and different things around their co-resp response. Thank you. Supervisor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This year we had, in 2024, there were 88 complaints of excessive force, including allegations. My record is that there were 27 and 2023. Can you maybe speak to that? And yes, yes, sir, Supervisor Sturck. Actually, the 88 complaints were accumulative. Some of those complaints stayed back to incidents. Those are ones that were referring to 2018. As part of the retroactive. I don't have the number on the top of my head. I think there were 27 complaints made in 2024. So very similar to 2023. Yes. In terms of not including the ones from the past that you were. Exactly. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Stork, Supervisor Walkenchoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You Chairman. Just on the civilian response piece, I think it's a very valuable thing to explore. I will say I approach it with a degree of caution. We do have civilian response every day to mental health and behavioral health crisis. Chrissies around the county, the co-responder model addresses 9-1-1 calls. And I know we went to great lengths to ensure that we had the right processes and protocols in place to ensure the safety of everybody involved in that response and on those calls. And having been on some of them, there are times when the call comes in and it seems relatively calm and that there isn't a significant safety risk. And then our team show up and a situation can escalate. So very interested to learn how other communities are addressing that and getting to it. But I would be in favor of moving slowly and cautiously in that direction, because it only takes one tragedy and a program like that is over. So it's really important to get it right, and I appreciate you thinking about it. On the legislative suggestion in terms of vehicle forfeiture for fleeing the police. I also think that's a good thing to explore. It does seem to me the distinction between that and the exhibition driving legislation is that one of the challenges with the exhibition driving or street takeover issue is it was It's difficult to get felony charges for folks who are engaged in those activities. So the vehicle losing loss of the vehicle was a big potential is a big potential stick to discourage people from participating. I presume when we're talking about fleeing the police and forfeiture of a vehicle, you'd be talking about felony, with those misdemeanor and felony charges for fleeing the police depending on the circumstances and situation, the felony charges pretty serious. So I guess the question would be, is a vehicle forfeiture an additional stick if you have a felony charge for fleeing the police and you're looking at one to five years in prison and loss of your license for a long period of time. Yes sir, supervisor, walking trouble. My thought would be to make it an additional penalty with the motivation being to discourage people from fleeing in the first place. So my hope would be that even a person knowing they're facing even a felony might agree not to flee if they know that the criminal justice process will take its course, but at least they're not going to lose their vehicle. So an added detriment to the fleeing itself. Okay. And then on the non-criminal factors for the mental and behavioral health use of force. I guess I'm just, I'm curious I read through you know the revised general the streamlined general order for use of force and the three factors that you suggested based on the legal ruling and I'm just kind of trying to figure out what it would add, because the current language obviously addresses the need to immediately protect an officer or another, so that would apply to someone who's in a mental behavioral health crisis and use of force was necessary to protect that individual or some other member of the community. That's one of the three outline. There's kind of a proportionality element, which probably the police department would suggest is already contained in the language. So what do you see is gained by, because there's something lost every time we add more language to the general orders, because you're asking a police officer to remember another set of requirements in the midst of an incident, adding an element to training. So what would we get by adding those three factors that's not already included either explicitly or implicitly in the general order as written? I think what you would get is one, an understanding by officers that it may be in certain circumstances justified for me to use force on a person who at least at the outset and maybe even beyond the outset of the call for service, for example, was not even engaged in any criminal activity. and you're exactly right, One of the three gram factors, which did involve a criminal activity. Well, actually the gram case itself did not involve criminal activity, but the criminal factors came out of the case. One of those was the any immediacy of a threat. The other two were very much related to the criminal activity. What was the level of the crime? The factors that were outlined in the case I referred to literally had no criminal aspect to them at all. And if you'll indulge me, the first one is, was the first in experiencing a medical emergency that rendered him or her incapable of making a rational decision under circumstances that posed an immediate threat of serious harm to himself or others. So that one is fairly similar to the danger. Number two is was some degree of force reasonably necessary to ameliorate that immediate threat. And then number three is language I think we're all familiar with. Was the force used more than reasonably necessary under the circumstances? So two and three really, in my opinion, deviate from Graham and say there may be situations where force, hopefully a minimal amount of force, may be necessary to provide the help that this person needs, although they're not involved in any criminal behavior. Okay. And that recommendation is noted as under review or pending review. I mean, can anyone you or Mr. Arnold give us the status of that review? Do you want to say that? Okay, go ahead. Tom Arnold, Deputy County Executive, from my understanding and Richard Krippman from Rome, the police department are utilizing the Pinehurst case under the fourth circuit and disagree with the idea of using the miracle case out of the sixth circuit. So I think it comes down more so from the police perspective that their thought is the Pinehurst case within the fourth circuit is more restrictive than what the miracle case is out of the six. And so in any case that utilizing the Pinehurst to drive our current policy is more restrictive and would cover us. So I think it's more of a disagreement discussion over the impact of the fourth verse 6. What's that? Yeah, that's accurate. And of course, my come back to that has been, even though it's a different circuit, which is not binding upon us in the 4th circuit, geographical territory, we can still use those factors as guidance to include in policy. And I understand the hesitation to include specific language from a different circuit. But I'm arguing that it could be used as guidance for policy. OK, thank you. OK, thank you very much. Supervisor Walkinsha, Palchak. Thank you very brief. I'm just falling up Understand and agree that training is very important and as you mentioned the calls right in the calls But that are being taken in I guess I'm wondering and maybe that's a top-marinal question. Where are we in? In addition to trying to enhance our co-responder and enhancing our training of the call center and the co-responding at the intake of the calls? Sure. And I think a supervisor walking shop bought up a good point as far as the overarching goal of looking at the safety of what we're dispatching. So with the Marcus alerts, we obviously were able to implement Marcus alerts and the behavior health liaison. So there's a supervisor, a behavior health liaison at the 911 center that's triaging the calls that come into the center and a prioritize them as category one through four with one and two being those types of incidents that we would send mobile crisis on and three and four being what we would send co-responder on. And so for clarification, we have the four teams of the co-responder, which is phase one of the full implementation. So I think I wanted to make sure the board is aware. We have implemented that fully up to the point of the direction that was most recently provided. And so we've also got the community response team, CRT, with that's the combination of a firefighter and a mental health provider from CSB. They're not dispatched on incidents. Their incidents are brought forth through not the 911 center, but through calls for service and patients through the CSB that they would then go out on and 80% of the calls that they go on are also mental health related. So our thought is really that with the behavior health liaison, and one of the challenges when we look at the data is the calls for service are increasing. And so you really have to look at while we are diverting calls, we are receiving more calls. And then it's with until we get the crisis receiving center up, where are we taking these, where are we taking these utilizers to? So our thought is right now things actually work fairly well because with the four co-responder teams, to everyone's credit, we don't want to send police officers on all of those incidents either. And so they are going on the more higher priority incidents. Certainly can take longer because you only have four teams out there, but that's the deployment model that works right now. What we look at the calls that they're already diverting that aren't even making an end to the 911 system, as well as the calls that are being handled through mobile crisis or CRT. Right now we're doing fairly well, but there's just an influx in the utilization. And so I think it would be appropriate for us to come back to the board to update you on all of these components and continue that. One of the challenges what you you mentioned supervisor, Palchak, there's been a, it's been hard to keep the behavior health liaison position filled on a consistency, consistent basis at the 911 center. And so with that comes challenges at there, whether the primary point in contact that are determining what priority of these calls go out. But the 911 center director, Bromand, are actively engaged in that and routinely work with CSB to ensure that we continue building that out, the familiarity, and that the call takers are aware of that process. So I think we're tracking in the right direction, but there's certainly more demand than what there is to apply. Thank you. And maybe to the point you just made Mr. Arnold is that we probably should come back to the Safety and Security Committee and give an update on where we are on the co-response and then maybe even if we've got some inputs from Richard Shaw, we can bring those forward as well so we can have a conversation around all of that. And then, I mean now move to Jimmy Bierman,visor Björmin. Yeah, just quick question about the co-responder teams. You mentioned four teams. How many so I know we've had trouble in the past keeping those slots filled. How many are we at full staffing now? And excuse me and if we are at full staffing, how much more staffing opportunities do we have? Now we are at full staffing. Yes, and where they'll utilize officers, the primary means to fill in when there is a vacancy because somebody's off for co-responder is pulling personnel from the mayor, MCRC. And they're obviously the ones are getting the most experience on a day-to-day basis. Then we would backfill those with officers that are qualified from patrol or anywhere else in the police department to go to the MCRC work. So right now we're in a pretty good spot. Okay, thank you. And Mr. Aron, just so I'm clear to the point is on the 24-hour coverage in terms of where are we with that? We don't have 24-hour coverage because but I mean that's we've got the coverage that I believe it's 12 hours. I have to get the exact time but it's not 24 hours. So the point I was trying to make earlier is that we're talking about 24 hour coverage. So just so we're clear in this conversation that you're talking about 12, we're talking about 24. Well, I mean, I think the data has to show that it's needed as well. So that's something that we would wanna report back on, that identify that there's an issue that we need to identify before I would jump the conclusion that we have to have 24 hours But I don't have the data with me. So certainly we want to provide that for the board to consider We're happy to have that come back to this committee to have that conversation Supervisor Alkwam. Yeah, I look forward to that coming back I frankly there's nothing more popular with rank and file police officers than the co-responder program and And I think the data, I'm pretty sure the data will show that we do need 24-7 coverage. So I do look forward to basically how we could get there. Countywide 24-7, I think that would be huge improvement. I realized their challenges potentially with that in other areas. But look forward to that discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Alcorn. And with that, we will conclude this presentation. Thank you very much, Mr. Schott. And we will move to our second presentation, which will be provided by Sherry Bulkowitz, who is the outgoing chair of the Police Civilian Review Panel. She will update us on their annual report. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Sherry Belkowitz. As a supervisor, Lux said, I am the past chair of the police civilian review panel. I was the chair for March 2024 until February 28th of 2025. It's been an honor and a privilege to serve in this role. I've been on the panel since 2021. And I've told many people that it's a heavy responsibility, and it involves a lot of time and energy. I wanted to include a photograph of the panel, and because it is such a heavy responsibility and time consuming, I really felt like it was important to introduce the members of the panel. So from the left we have Dirk Hargraves, left back row. Dirk Hargraves, Todd Cranford, Michael Lau, Fazia Dean, David Adams, and then we have of course our steam supervisor, Lusk, then I'd like to introduce Craig Miles, who is the panel's, uh, full-time liaison. Uh, of course, Richard Schott. Uh, going down to the first row, we have Brian Garner, who is now the current chair. So he will be sitting here next year myself. Then Ken Bynum and Madison Gibbs, are our council and Rachelle Ramirez from Richard Schott's office who I want to thank both Richard and Rachelle for helping during the transition when we hired our new liaison. They really stepped it up when we did not have our liaison. And I also would like to introduce our newest employee, Shakyish Ferguson, who is our panel analyst. And I want to acknowledge James Yang, who is missing from the photo. So if you count, you will see that there are eight of us, and we have nine spots available. So I'm hoping that the Board of Supervisors is working on filling that nine spot. We do have at least nine cases in the queue and the cases, the review can be anywhere from two hours to I think I've done eight or ten hours of review of cases. So it is really helpful if we have an off nine members. The panel's purpose, structure and means. I added this to the agenda for every meeting. So as a reminder to our members and to the public that we're here to enhance legitimacy and trust between the police department and the community. You know I don't want anyone to think that we're overseeing or looking for problems. We just we actually have a very collaborative relationship with the police department and our purpose is really just to increase the trust. So we review the investigations by the Internal Affairs Bureau, IAB, and I got tired of trying to remember the five adjectives, so I created Actio. So accurate, we look at the investigations of the IAB to see if there... I don't even have to look at my notes because it's Actio. Accurate, complete, thorough, impartial, and objective. We do not have investigative authority. And so we are relying on the investigations provided to us by the IAB. We do make recommendations regarding policies and practices. And I'll discuss a couple of recommendations later in the presentation. As I mentioned, Brian Gardner is, it's very interesting, the panel elects a vice chair, and then the vice chair automatically becomes the chair the following year. So Brian Gardner was my vice chair, and so he will assume the position, he already assume the position of chair. We did have two panel members who resigned this year, as well as our management analyst, but we do have a new management analyst. I'm looking up there. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And we do have two new members, David Adams, and he's fulfilling the position of the individual with police background. And we were required to have one person who has police background and James Yang. And like I said, we're still looking for that ninth member. Thank you. My assistant is talking. I was here last year when Todd Cranford gave the report and I recall the Board of Supervisors recommended additional training which I thought was brilliant and well appreciated although it is more time for the panel members and I've gone to several you know morning trainings. And I've also attended the three day, three or half day, four day training at Naples, the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. So it is a very time consuming proposition to increase training. And actually the liaison and I were just chatting about maybe creating some kind of a library so that new members can access trainings without present members having to repeat trainings. Although I will say that I did attend all three of the use of force trainings. I know Supervisor Lusk has attended that as well and I am Supervisor Bearmann. And if anybody has an opportunity, if they're doing it again this year, I highly recommend attending the use of force training. It's very valuable. Our new liaison has a lot of knowledge about his heavy police background. So he has done some trainings for us, including trainings at our monthly meetings, which is really nice. Each of us got this book, the new world of police accountability, And Mr. Miles has been doing some trainings surrounding this book. Let's see, I think I covered. Oh, and this year it's actually the Community Police Academy. We are very fortunate that we are able to make arrangements to go to individual classes. We can't attend the entire program because our meetings are Thursday nights, and that's when the community police academy is. So rather than taking up spots, the police academy has graciously offered us the opportunity to have, I guess, like drop-ins. So we can choose if we want to attend a session, which has been really helpful. We're also encouraged to do ride-alongs, which I've done, which is really helpful. And as Supervisor Alcorn walked out, but I will say that in my ride- ride along, we did try to reach out to CR2, the mobile crisis unit, but they were closed. So as a special education attorney, I have a lot of children who have mental health challenges. And it seems like a lot of these challenges happen at at night, you know, more than what we're doing during the day. So just, you know, when I've discussed that with Supervisor Lesk before, I do feel like we need more mental health community services. So the annual NAICL conference in Tucson that I attended is the second NAICL conference I attended. It was really invaluable. I did learn that many other review panels have remote access to the files, which I know has been a longstanding issue. But the current process is that a panel member needs to contact the liaison at least 48 hours in advance and make arrangements to review the file at a local police station or at the public safety building. And it's very difficult because sometimes you have to take copious notes on the file because you can't refer back to it again. It's your one chance to review the file. So I know this has been discussed previously. And I also learned that many other panels do have investigative authority. We do not have investigative authority. And I'm not recommending necessarily that we have investigative authority. I actually think that that would involve more of like paid position because we are already putting in a lot of man hours. So my key takeaways, as I mentioned, we have at least nine cases in the queue for subcommittees. three panel members serve on each subcommittee. I believe that our increased numbers are not because of police misconduct, but because we have done a better job of increasing community engagement. You can see that we have attended the Colmore Day, which is where I met Supervisor Jimenez, the mobile consulate of Honduras, the Gumbs Springs Day in Mount Vernon, our panel liaison attended many other events. You can read from the screen. And so I think that's been really helpful to get the word out about the panel. The annual report by the numbers this slide and the following slide are pretty self-explanatory, although I was to be honest, I was a little confused because I do know that we had a racial bias case this year. It says that we had zero, but this report is based on when the case was filed. And so, you know, I did review a racial bias case this year, even though it's not indicated on the report by the numbers. I will tell you just briefly, over the years, we've had several cases involving the procedure of the citizens going to the magistrate's office. And so we submitted recommendations to the police department which they adopted most of the recommendations. There was quite a lot of confusion. I did speak to the chief magistrate Paul Koshatar from the 19th judicial district to get to the bottom of what the processes. And right now, as of June 2024, the police department amended their orders so that police officer must accompany an individual to the magistrate's office in order to get a subpoena or a warrant. And seems like there was a lot of confusion about that before and so its individual citizens were going to the magistrate's office and they were unable to get the warrant because they did not have the personally identifiable information of the individual involved in the incident and the chief magistrate told me that something like the name and address of the other person, if it's a car accident or an assault or what have you, is something that needs to be used warrant testimony. So as it stands now, the police officer will accompany the individual to the magistrate's office and if they're unable to do so at that at the time of the incident they will make arrangements to accompany them later. And the magistrate also wanted me to express that there's confusion about the business card that is given by the police officer to the individuals because the business cards give the case number. And the magistrate said that the case number means absolutely nothing in court because it's a police case number. And it's not a number that the court can access. And so just for information, I don't know if there's a way to improve that system, but I think there's misrepresentation that individuals have the case number and they go to the magistrate's office and the number is meaningless to the magistrate. We also had a couple cases, one is actually in Mr. Gardner's year, about treatment of children when their parents are arrested. And I reviewed an article by the Association of International Cheese of Police. And I also spoke with several other police departments and review panels about how to handle situations, dynamic situations when a parent is being arrested in front of a minor child, especially a younger child. And, you know, again, given my profession, that's something that concerns me because it can have a lifetime impact on the child. It's considered an ACE, an adverse childhood experience. It can cause lifetime resentment to the police department. It can also cause PTSD. Um, so I don't know if we can find some training on how to handle a situation. And again, I've been to a lot of trainings I've done right along. And I know the police are doing a great job and there's 15 different things at least that they're trying to look at at one time and making sure that everybody's safe. And so having a minor child there is just one more thing to consider. But I do think that it has a lasting impact on children to witness their parents being arrested. I also wanted to talk about our upcoming trainings. Thank you, Richard. So again, the Community Police Academy, we can choose if we'd like to go to some of those events on Thursday nights. Hopefully there will be a fourth annual use of forced training. We already had a county provided implicit bias training for the panel and we are going to have a training that gives us an overview of the implicit bias training that the police department receives. Because I do think that's really important and it came up in one of our cases this year. The panel discussed the way that internal affairs bureau questions the police officers and we are hoping that they can come up with better ways of asking if the police officer had was racially motivated. I don't I don't think any police officer will readily admit that the decision to arrest somebody was racially motivated. So there needs to be a better way other than asking directly, are you racially motivated? And the next Nicole conference is in Minneapolis. Let me see. I also, my personal thought is I'd like to see use of restorative justice. I do, I spent the year really trying hard to make the citizens feel like they were being heard. I think that's really important and I I think even in the cases where we didn't find that there was a problem with the IABs investigation, many of our panel members walked away satisfied because they felt like they had an opportunity to be heard. And I think that's really important. So I think restorative justice would be a really good way to sort of complete the circle. So, you know, even for cases where there isn't any problem with the IAB's report, I think it would be helpful if there was an opportunity for the complainant to sit down with someone from the police department and sort of work out their differences. So I want people to have positive relationships with the police. Another issue that came up in one of our cases is the need to offer same-sex officers to conduct body searches. So it's my understanding that the policy right now is that if an individual asks, do you have a same-sex officer, then if one is available, one will be provided. And a lot of individuals aren't in the mindset at that moment or know that they can ask. So we were hoping that the police department would be willing to ask if there's one available, would you like to have a same sex officer to conduct search. And I think that is, oh, my last comment is the, the bylaws for the PR, the PCRP indicate that we can have up to six public comment meetings. I'm not sure what the rationale was for that, but I personally would support public comment at every meeting. And at the beginning of the meeting, you can limit it. The school board has done that. Limit the number of people. Right now, we do not have a mad rush of people making public comments, but maybe someday we would. And I think it would be really nice if we can make every meeting have a public comment component. So I think that concludes my report. Did I miss anything? And I'm happy to entertain any questions on special education law. But if you do have questions about the PCRPL, do my best. Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation and I'll maybe connect to a couple things you said. On the request for the six additional meetings that was approved by the Board of Supervisors a couple years ago to give you an expanded opportunity to have those additional public meetings because before that you couldn't have those meetings at all. So just so we're clear you weren't able to, then you got six. I will say that we can certainly look at this and determine if there's a need to go a little bit higher and I think we want to be flexible as the panel might need that flexibility. I'll also make the point I attended the meeting at Highly Valley and I noted that the folks there were very interested and engaged. So in terms of what I witnessed at the meeting that I attended, you did have a lot of interested individuals asking questions and trying to really understand the role of the panel. So I acknowledge that. What are you doing over the course of this year as it relates to a community engagement? You kind of gave us the profile for last year. What are you doing over the course of this year as it relates to community engagement? You kind of gave us the profile for last year. What are you proposing for this year? I can defer to Mr. Miles on that. I think we should do as many as possible, but again, it's one of those things where we are asking already tax volunteers to dedicate more time on the weekends. So we're currently working on this panel liaison miles. We're currently working on having our June meeting at Gumspring. We have nine cases in the queue. So I've talked to Ramona Carroll about reaching out to the county employees who deal with community engagement on looking at some community engagement further out. But with the number of cases we have pending, we're trying to balance not having citizens or community members waiting for their complaints to be adjudicated and the panel members time. So we're trying to have a balance there. So we may look at trying to combine and maybe having a few more of our monthly meetings in public spaces, which gives us the outreach and lets community members know what we do. But we've been working on that and we'll work on some more community outreach events. And they're last minute we missed an event at the Providence District this past Saturday. But that's a, for me, in hell, and I have an analyst, that's a point that we will work on, get out the community more. Okay, now I appreciate that comment and certainly support the outreach into the community. So get that. You also asked about investigatory authority. We've talked about this here previously at this committee. And I think the board's position is probably the same as it was even a year ago. And that is we are supportive of having the panel move to some degree of investigatory authority. However, we see as you are continuing to bring on new panel members, we also see as you're trying to get those panel members trained and knowledgeable about their work, there's some time that's going to be needed for that to happen. So I think theory and practice, definitely we see it in theory, but we've got to get to the practice of it. So I think let us continue working with you as you're getting the members trained, getting the full complement, and then determining what will be the next steps as it relates to that investigatory authority. It, right. I agree. It does require a lot of training, and we have like a rolling enrollment. And so we might do a really great training, and then a month later, a new person joins. So that's why we need to create this library of trainings. And it would investigate authority would take a lot of time. And our volunteers are already, I've said this is volunteering on steroids and I've had a lot of leadership positions in the county. And this is really a lot of time if you're going to do it right. Yeah, and it should be the goal. So I think we get that. Let me ask, is there a sort of curriculum for trainings that we are expecting all the panel members to have? We developing sort of a process for that. That's right. That's what I mentioned earlier that we're working on having this library of training. So when I first joined it was during COVID and so I was able to access recorded trainings that had occurred prior to COVID and I was able to listen to those trainings. So we're hoping to create I guess a curriculum a curriculum that people can listen to, but there's nothing better than doing it in person. Okay, if I may, the current vice chair and I are talking to Nicole, the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, they're their primary trainer or they're the person in charge of training in Liz and Richmond. Yes. So they're close. So the panel now has a training day penciled in a calendar the Saturday after the annual the monthly panel meeting. Yes. And so we will start once the Community Police Academy ends. June 7th will be our first weekend training where we'll have an overview of the implicit bias training, the police officers receive and we're in communication with the trainer from Richmond to come up monthly through the rest of the calendar year and into next year to provide starting with basic NAICOAL training and then more complex training. Okay. No, I think that sounds great. I mean, it's going to really help the panel members be able to do their jobs more effectively. So fully supportive. And then my last question is when I looked at the annual report by Numbers, slide seven, I was looking at the last category, a number of initial complaints in progress. And you've got NA, NA for years 20, 21 and 22, then you have 23 with nine, and then you have 24 with four, but all years it says nine. So I was wondering if that should be 13. I just couldn't reconcile that when I looked at it myself. So just wanted to maybe get clarification in terms of what that number nine for all years represents. So. Yeah, that's that's that's a title and the NA is because that I don't think that was track before we got here. Yep. Yep, just making sure I understand what happened. Thank you. Okay. So with that, I will conclude. I will start on the other end of the line, which I did before. Okay. Just try and be fair. I appreciate that supervisor Lesk. I want to be totally clear that I do not believe that the panels should have investigative powers. We heard the former chair of the panel talk about how much time it takes. We are in a situation where we are looking at how we serve the public with our local government. We are reducing positions. We have a police department that can do investigations. We have our auditor that I appreciate all the work he does. I think we have to be very careful when we expand work and look at what we're expecting where our volunteers. So I am firmly against investigative powers for the panel. Thank you. So I can appreciate that. We redid our subcommittee review report and I requested that we add a section called missing information. Is there any indication that there may be missing information from the investigative file if so please describe it here? Because I was troubled that we are at the mercy of what the IAB chooses to give us. So if I'm not saying this has happened, but if there was a smoking gun and they chose not to give it to us, we would not know. And so at least this gives us an idea of, well, we might be missing, why wasn't the School Bus Driver question. Where's the body-worn camera of this officer? Where was he during the investigation? I agree with you. That's why I said earlier, I think it would have to be a paid position, because it really would take up a lot of time. Have I driven by scenes of incidents? Of course, I have. Is that investigated? I mean, minor, I guess, but I mean, it's very helpful to go and see exactly where the incident occurred. But all these things do take a lot of time, but you are at the mercy of what the the IEP chooses to put in the file. Okay, thank you. I would like a staff response back about that comment because one of the things that I know our police have to do is be truthful. Like that's top of the list and so I would like a response. Yes ma'am, I can cover that. I think that as we know the police department have greatly expanded the roles of IAB and the compliance division and several personnel into that section. So today, I believe there's been one report that the panel did not agree with that it was accurate, thorough or complete in the history of the panel. And even during with that finding, there wasn't any recommendations on what should be different. As we look at the bylaws and recommendations that we've been reviewing with Supervisor Lusk through the panel that they submitted for consideration one of those aspects is to be able to provide follow-up information asking for clarification. And I know specifically there was a case involved at the ADC where the panel felt that there should have been other personnel interviewed from the Sheriff's Office. They provided that information and that occurred. And so I think that to supervisor Smith's point, the internal affairs bureau has the utmost respect trust and they realize that the public trust that they behold is number one, there's nothing more important than that and we have no indication that that's ever occurred. And so that will always be the case. And so I think that utilizing and citing the fact that there could be a lack of trust and information that's provided in the report is never occurred and factually untrue and will never occur. I will clarify that I did say that I don't believe that it's occurring, but it's possible. And I did complement the police department or the IAB that we did have a case where the panel had many questions that were unanswered and the IAB independently went ahead and did additional investigations and that the panel reviewed. Okay, I'll just make the point where now I'm making a decision today. This is something that will be decided at some future point and that's where I made my statement earlier around. At this point, Supervisor Beerman. Thank you. To clarify, there were two cases in the history of the panel where the panel ended up disagreeing with the conclusions of the IAB. Not one. Sorry. Small thing. One of those two cases was this past year and as can be seen by the reports given by the panel, there were actually two reports and the first report, the panel without any real explanation said that they didn't believe that the investigation was complete. Then there was a second report that highlighted why some of the issues that they had with the panel in terms of things they felt were missing in the file, but ultimately the panel didn't disagree with the conclusion. I use Survon the Police Civilian Review Panel. I've worked with the IAB for many, many years. I think that for a lack of a better way of putting it, everybody has said things that are right here. Deputy County Executive Arnold is absolutely right. The IAB is ship shop shape in many, many ways. There's a lot of trust and a lot of positive interactions that the panel has with the Internal Affairs Bureau. More Moreover, quite often what the panel does or has done in the past is spot something that maybe someone else wouldn't have seen or wouldn't have thought of and gone back to the internal affairs bureau to say, could you look into that further and they have and that's offered more information to the panel. In fact, a part of the Actio, the C is complete. So obviously the panel is always considering whether or not what they are receiving is complete and to the point, again, WKAN Executive Honil made in all but two cases, the panel has said that it was in the panels in estimation complete. Now many years ago it really is kind of many years ago now at this point I made the panel I sat on made a recommendation that it be considered that in certain very limited circumstances and only with a super majority of the panel voting to do so, the panel could essentially conduct up to three interviews that were panel-driven rather than driven by the IAB. So that was the very limited investigative authority that was proposed i believe in two thousand one or two thousand two the years all blend together i'm getting older uh... but that has has obviously not gone anywhere and and there i agree again with uh... with what uh... supervisor smith said and what that became executive are all said in which he said that there there's really sorry uh... Miss Belkowitz, has said, Chair Belkowitz, former Chair Belkowitz, has said, which is that, you know, there's no way to be engaged in that level of investigation or investigate authority without more staff. And potentially significantly more staff, though Mr. Miles is a huge addition here, and the existence of the panel liaison did not exist when that proposal was even made. So I think that kind of brings a number of the threads together here. I did want to ask a question though, about one of your, I want to ask two questions. The first was about one of your panel findings in which you write the F's and you touched on this briefly. The FCPD should review its investigative questioning of its officers to better discern if racial bias occurred during the interaction. Now only asking if the officer used racial slurs or acted in racially biased manner is not likely to capture racial bias. Now in past years the panel proposed and I think actually the IAB has largely implemented to potentially prophylactic measures to try and figure out whether racial bias might be at play. And those measures which are highly imperfect were a social media search of the officers who were accused of racial bias. And also a look at the officer's arrest statistics, just to determine if there was anything clearly disparate. But here you suggest that there may be investigative questioning that could be different. Could you summarize the discussion from that meeting and let us know if there are any specific questions that you should be that you think should be asked differently? Well, I'm older than you and so I don't exactly remember the discussion at that meeting, but I will tell you that I did contact other police departments and review panels to ask for suggestions of questions. And I believe we discussed it with the IAB as well. And nobody really, when I recall, nobody had a way of asking, essentially, are you a racist? I mean, it's not, it's very difficult to ask. So I do know that they review social media. We do get statistics of the arrest records of the officer in question, but it's the interview that seemed to be lacking a little bit. Maybe Mr. Miles has something else. If I can't we I've had discussions with the liaison with Deputy Chief Lee and I.B. And they are reviewing the questions they ask and they'll be further conversation between the liaison and the panel and augmenting their questions. I think the discussion was they asked maybe two questions about bias of the officers. So there's an ongoing conversation about augmenting those questions between the liaison representing the panel and IB and we will come together and come to some understanding and have input from panel members. They're receptive to input on more questioning or more detailed questioning. I will add that when I was at the NAICL conference, I learned that other departments transcribe the body-waring camera footage. And the last file that I reviewed in Fairfax did have transcription. And so that would be an easier way to search for words, certain words if it's transcribed. So I don't know if that was a one-off or if that's the plan from this point forward. But the last file I reviewed had the Body One Camera's transcribed. So then you can search for terms easily. And we have been using technology, the transcribes body-worn cameras. My follow-up question is what's the status of the recommendations matrix that we use to utilize to demonstrate an interaction between the police department and the panel. I know this year the big recommendation was over the magistrate and it sounds like there were some changes implemented. But have we updated the recommendations matrix and is there a plan to do so? So to be honest, we didn't have a lot of recommendations this year. I think we had maybe one, was it two official recommendations? A lot of the comments I gave today were, as I said, my personal belief. I do have a copy of the last matrix that was given to us by Deputy Chief Leib. And there's five. It's been updated. So the one I have, all the actions for under review, but I'm just being told that it's, it has been updated. Terrific. If it's been updated, great. We can, and that's that documents public. So we should be able to see it with the updated and I just thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Pyraman, Supervisor Palchette. Oh, they're very briefly. I don't know if they've been involved, but I would recommend as this is being reviewed and we have different groups and agencies that the chief equity officers group be involved as well to help us. We are not, I don't feel that I'm an expert in ensuring that the policy we're trying to improve in the processes we're trying to improve our following best practices. So that's just my one recommendation and request. Thank you. No problem. Supervisor Sturk. Thank you Mr. Chairman. My question's on a little bit different subject but something that Ms. Balquitz brought up that I've gotten a number of questions and concerns over the years and you're mentioning it today was kind of reminded to me that maybe we should do something more with it. So this only may be something that Chair wants to think about for future meeting but that magistrates are a lot of misunderstandings about what magistrates do, how they work, who points them, what the role is, what you need to have when you have an issue that you think should go to the magistrate and I just I guess think maybe we can do something around that and particularly something for community education but I know for myself I would appreciate maybe a little bit more education about that process as well and and or just to consider it so thank you Mr. Chairman. We can certainly look at that I'll talk to Tom Arnold and we can see if we can get it scheduled sometime this year or early next year. Any other questions? Okay. That concludes our meeting items for today. So I'll thank Ms. Belkowitz for her presentation and comments and points. And I'll say our next meeting is scheduled for May 20th, 2025, at 1.30 p.m. Thank you very much for attending. Sojourn. Thank you.