Citizen's Police Advisory Council

Charleston Citizen Police Advisory Council March 7, 2019 A meeting of the Charleston Citizen Police Advisory Council was held this date beginning at 5:30 p.m., at the City of Charleston Police Department, 180 Lockwood Blvd, Training Room Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Thuane B. Fielding, Chair, Ryan Davis, J. Robert Haley, Doris Grant, Mary Alice Mack, Camden Norris Shields, Chris Bryant, and Barry Wright (arrived at 6:36 p.m.) Also Present: Reverend Kylon Middleton, Chief Reynolds, Captain Chito Walker, Deputy Chief Broughton, Lieutenant Murray, Lieutenant Bruder, Lieutenant Wojslawowicz, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary Welcome/Call to Order Ms. Fielding thanked everyone for being present. Reverend Middleton called the role. He said that some individuals had been asking whose term expired at the end of June. Michael Golden, Kevin Smith, Bob Haley, Savannah Wray, and Max Milliken’s terms would expire. If they wished to stay, they could make an appeal to do so. Mr. Davis asked how it was determined. Reverend Middleton said he was not sure. Council members nominated and he thought it was by the district. Ms. Fielding said that the next meeting would be in May, and new members would come in June. She asked if there should be some type of information shared at the May meeting if there would be a replacement. Reverend Middleton said he would talk with the Chief and they would talk with Council and start getting nominations. Hopefully, by May, the new members could be approved and they could have an informal welcome meeting. From that point, they could determine the July meeting. They would consult with the Chief, take it to Council, get additional appointments by May and have a welcome around June, and then set a meeting date for July. Ms. Field said that they weren’t fully aware of what people’s schedules would look like for May. Some people had said they might have conflicts with the May 2nd date. She asked if that day would work. The members said it worked for them. Ms. Fielding asked if they could schedule the July meeting. They could do July 11th. Deputy Chief Broughton said that was Chief Reynolds birthday. Ms. Fielding said they could do July 18th. Lieutenant Murray said that the 18th was the finale of Camp Hope. Ms. Whitaker asked if they could push it back to June, so that there wasn’t a two and a half month gap. Reverend Middleton said that the terms didn’t end until the end of June, but the new members could come and observe. Ms. Fielding said they would meet May 2nd and then June 20th. Approval of Minutes The minutes of the January 3, 2019 meeting were unanimously approved. Public Comment Period Jerome Harris asked what the process was for new members who might be interested in joining. Reverend Middleton said these were appointed positions. But, as for most committees and commissions sanctioned by the City, they would probably post something publically letting individuals know that the Citizen’s Police Advisory Council had positions opening up. If interested, they could fill out a short form. With other commissions, there was a public process of self-nomination. Mr. Harris said that they could make people aware that the Policing 101 and ride-alongs were pre-requisites. Ms. Fielding said that the current guidelines did say that members would be selected by the Mayor and City Council, so it may not be advertised and they may have to contact their councilperson to let them know they were interested. Reverend Middleton said there had to be a public way to do that. They had to find a way to let people have access. It needed to be democratic. Ms. Fielding asked if he would take that as an action item to talk with the Mayor and find out how they could publicize the information. Maria Parker stated she had come to the last meeting and was impressed at the agenda planning and execution skills. She had told some people about it. She noticed however, that both of the officers who came to her neighborhood meeting had no idea about the meeting or what it was. She was surprised about that. They talked about the jurisdictional issues. She didn’t live on James Island or John’s Island, but it struck her that there was a problem with the jurisdictions. She hoped they found a way to actually do something about it. She got the feeling that nothing could be done. There was probably nothing they could do about the lines, but she hoped they could find a way to do something about the cooperation and making it possible for the nearest person to respond without fear that it would be thrown out in court. Lastly, one of the reasons she came back was that she was haunted by the sign on the wall in that room. She couldn’t remember what it said and wanted to come back and take a look at it. Whatever it said, it spoke to her as ‘the badge first’. Perhaps the mission statement of the Police Department might want to be more of ‘citizens first’. Ms. Fielding said that they had a conversation about jurisdictional issues and the Police Department was working with the other jurisdictions. There was a meeting on James Island about it. The members from James Island were concerned about it. Reverend Middleton said he believed it had been bumped up to the State Legislation, as well. Reverend Middleton said he believed that the mission of the Charleston Police Department was to serve all people within the jurisdiction with respect, fairness, and compassion. He thought that the posters were decorative, but not definitive or declarative of the internal mission. Chief Reynolds said that was correct. The posters were just a reminder of integrity. Reverend Middleton said there was nothing about ‘blue’, ‘brotherhood’, or ‘badge’ in the mission statement. He also wanted to interject the importance of institutionalizing the Illumination Project’s initiatives and strategies into the Police Department itself. Ms. Fielding said that they were talking at the last meeting about how they could publicize or market the meetings better. Old Business  CPD Hate Crime Forum- After Event Update Reverend Middleton said that the Forum had gone very well. Deputy Chief Broughton said that all of the tickets were accounted for, but it was raining, so it wasn’t full capacity. However, it was still a good turnout and there had been good discussion. She thought everyone left with good conversation from all perspectives. The Panel was wonderful. It was orderly and everyone got a lot out of it. People were already asking for another forum at some point. Ms. Fielding asked if there was a plan to have another one. Chief Broughton said they would like to have another one, but they weren’t planning it currently. There was a need for it.  Citizens Academy 2019 Lieutenant Murray said that the applications were out and the Academy would be April 3rd-May 22nd. They already had 15 applications come in. They all knew that the purpose of the Academy was to educate and increase the public understanding of police policies. They would show some investigations, defensive tactics, and would go on a few field trips. They were excited about the next eight weeks. If anyone wanted to provide an application to someone, they should let her know and she could get them one. The deadline was usually the day of. Ms. Fielding asked if it was posted on the website. Lieutenant Murray said it was and it was also on Nextdoor, Facebook, and they had done a press release. Mr. Shields said he saw it on the Police Department’s Twitter account and asked if they had anyone enrolled yet. Lieutenant Murray said they had 15, and they would probably cap it at 30. They could also do ride alongs and job shadowing. Chief Reynolds said that Ms. Watkins had received the Employee of the Year Award. New Business  Illumination Project Kids and Cops Interactive Session-March 22,2019 Reverend Middleton said they were calling it Kids and Cops. It would be at Simmons-Pinckney Middle School. There would be two concurrent tracks, one for 5th graders from 9-11 and another for 8th graders from 11:30-1:30. The 5th graders were coming from Sanders Clyde Elementary, Charleston Development Academy, and Memminger. They had 15 5th graders and 15 8th graders. The 8th graders were coming from a combination of Simmons-Pinckney, Charleston Math and Science, Buist, Charleston Development Academy, and Phillips Simmons. The design for the day included a welcome and the Police Chief would talk about connecting kids and officers. They would talk about the Illumination Project itself and do a ‘walk in their shoes’ interactive experience with the police. They would have a police boat, bomb squad, dogs, command truck, and motorcycles. Students would have the opportunity to go to each station and learn about those particular aspects of policing. They would then come back and have table facilitated conversations with officers. They would also have some role play with the older students and would conclude the day with round-table conversations. The day worked out in their favor, because originally it was a teacher work day, but now it was an early release day with a work day. So, now the schools would bring them to the location and pick them up. The students would also have a chaperone. Ms. Fielding said she thought that would be a repeat request. The students would like it and talk to their classmates. Reverend Middleton said they were also going to have a high school component, but they would have that in June/July. It would be like Policing 101 for high school students. Commissioner Updates Ms. Grant stated that she met with the Ferguson Village Neighborhood Association. They were newly formed and they were planning a February meeting with Officer Bruder. They were concerned regarding more police presence in the community and concerns about the baseball field in the center of the community that attracted a lot of people from outside the community. They were concerned that it could be a situation where violence could escalate. It was good to hear they were forming. Mr. Bryant said he had been asked a question and didn’t know the answer to it. He had a lot of College of Charleston students around him and they were asking if they went to the College police or the City police. Lieutenant Bruder said it often came down to jurisdiction for who worked the case, but if they had an emergency, they should dial 911. They would figure out jurisdiction later. The College officers had state-wide jurisdiction, but it didn’t mean they would handle cases outside the campus. However, if they lived off campus, it was more than likely they were in the City. If they were in a dorm, it was most likely the College officers. Chief Reynolds said they worked closely with the College officers. For serious crimes, the City would probably handle it, but for livability issues, the College would handle it. For everything in between, they worked closely. They did have a livability division in the City that helped with things like loud parties and alcohol issues. Mr. Shields said that in District 10, he had been talking with people who lived around him. There was a four-way stop at Stinson Drive. It was an entrance to a large neighborhood and there was a large amount of traffic. There had been accidents happening before, so they had encourage the County and City to get out there. The people he talked to said they had noticed a huge difference of people stopping at the stop signs. He wanted to thank everyone for helping with that. People remembered the little things and when they saw a difference being made, that was when people would cooperate more. Charleston Police Department- Information and Updates  Traffic Update Lieutenant Wojslawowicz stated that he was the commander of the traffic unit. Traffic was the number one complaint in almost every single neighborhood. When Chief Reynolds started, one of the first things he had done was increase the size of the traffic unit and almost doubled it. Those officers started at the beginning of October. They had twenty officers assigned to traffic enforcement throughout the City. The two general things they did was enforcement based on complaints and looking at hot spot data such as collisions. If they saw an area with a lot of collisions, they would send officers to find out what the issue was. If it was an enforcement issue, they would take care of that. If it was an engineering or roadway design issue, they sent it to Traffic and Transportation. The ultimate goal was roadway safety. To get there was through enforcement action. They hoped that everyone would voluntarily comply, but not everyone did, so that was where their enforcement came in. Another initiative they had was field sobriety training testing for all of the officers. It used to be only traffic officers that were specially trained in impaired driving enforcement, but they were trying to have every single officer trained in field sobriety testing. That way, if they came across a drunk driver on the street, they didn’t have to rely on a traffic officer to be there. They could take care of the issue themselves. That rolled into a much larger issue of trying to equip all of the cars with in-car cameras and body cameras. The goal was to have better cameras and better equipped officers who could tackle the issues. They were working with bike and other-mode roadway users and sharing the roadway. Roadways were for everyone. This year, they had three traffic fatalities. One involved a pedestrian on Savannah Highway. It was a hit-and-run and they didn’t know who hit the individual. The other was 2-3 weeks ago with a bicyclist downtown. Through the course of the investigation, they determined that the bicyclist ran a red light, was impaired, and was struck by a young lady who had a green light on Cannon Street. They wanted to work with the other roadway users to help them and advocate for their safety, but also for them to follow the laws, as well. They were in constant communication with Katie Zimmerman, and they were all allies, because it was ultimately about roadway safety. They had a traffic safety work group they had started. That brought in all members of the community to deal with traffic. It wasn’t only a Police Department or City issue. They had the sheriff’s office come and had good communication with them. They did a lot of joint enforcement with the highway department and Mount Pleasant. They had Traffic and Transportation and Livability representatives. It was a broad picture and they were trying to work with everyone to solve the issue of traffic. They currently had two officers under a Speed Enforcement Grant and all of their equipment, cars, and salaries, were paid for by the State. They were trying to lower the public roadway collisions. That grant expired at the end of September. For next year, they were asking for four officers that would start on October 1st. Two would work on DUI enforcement and two would again work on speed enforcement. That would be four new cars and officers completely paid for through the State. Mr. Davis asked if the 20 officers they did have were spread evenly through the shifts or if they focused on certain hours. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said that there was one Lieutenant and one Admin Sergeant. They were in the office and fielded complaints and then directed the officers where to go. There were two squads of six officers each. They worked Monday-Friday. The first squad worked from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. The next squad worked from 2 p.m.-12 a.m. Those shifts were decided on using data from when the collisions were. They had two officers assigned to the grant and they were working during the day from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. They had two officers assigned to a DUI grant and they worked 7 nights per week from 6 p.m.-4 a.m. Then, they had two crash-cars who were there solely to assist the patrol units with responding to and working collisions. Mr. Shields referred to the traffic lights and stated there were several lights he passed through that he had tried to figure out for a long time how the timing worked out. He knew it was a hard thing to synchronize the lights. He asked if there was a way for people to report when they thought a light may be out of sync and if people were checking on the synchronization. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said they should be checked. That was an issue handled by Traffic and Transportation. There was one individual who was in charge of signals. Last year, they spent a lot of money trying to resynchronize all of the lights in West Ashley and downtown. Mr. Shields said that he noticed that some bikers were riding in between lanes and he didn’t think he had ever seen an officer pull over a bike. He asked if that happened. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said it did happen, but maybe not as often as it should. Bikes had the same obligations and rights as cars did. They would be ticketed if they ran a red light. That was something they needed to do more of. Enforcement was one thing, but he thought education was important. Ms. Fielding stated there was one light that she thought needed to be looked at and that was at Coming Street and the Crosstown. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said he knew exactly where that was and thought a lot of the timing there had to do with the pedestrian signals. He would check on it. Reverend Middleton asked if they tracked the number of collisions that required the individuals to be removed from the scene based on injuries. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said he didn’t have that information right then, but it was a standard statistic, so he could get it. Mr. Davis asked how they would identify a traffic officer. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said they were Team 7. Chief Reynolds stated that their ultimate goal was to save lives. They had too many fatalities and too many of those were impairment related and preventable. They had to look at the data and reduce the collisions. This wasn’t just a police issue. They talked about the three E’s: Education, Engineering, and Enforcement. Enforcement was not the answer, but a part of the solution and approach. Katie Zimmerman had suggested that instead of giving tickets to bicyclists who didn’t have lights, they could give them lights. It was pretty inexpensive, so they were following up on that. Another thing was, in the Legislature, they went to Columbia with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and spoke at a press conference to create some legislation that would create a law that if someone had a conviction for a D.W.I., they would have to blow in a device before driving. There was a lot of data that showed it saved lives. The day he went and did that press conference, they had an officer struck by a drunk driver. He was not injured, but it was like roulette and it happened all the time. The State of South Carolina was #49 out of 50 states in impairment related fatalities. That was a dismal number and not something they should be proud of. Charleston was actually twice the State’s average. They had a lot of work to do and it wouldn’t happen overnight. He had sat down with Selma’s parents. Selma was on vacation with her parents and was killed by a drunk driver who had prior convictions. There was a lot they could do within the legislature, with education, and the restaurant/hospitality industry. A lot more people were taking Uber’s now. The traffic team had done a lot of holiday enforcement and checkpoints on New Year’s. They found that most people were taking Uber and Lyft. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz stated that their DUI arrests were going up. In the third quarter of 2018, they had 54 arrests and when they increased their enforcement in the fourth quarter, they jumped up to 128. In first quarter of 2019, it was 105 to date and they would hit 143 if they stayed on the same pace. Arrests were going up and collisions, overall, had been going on. They peaked in 2016 with 6,800. In 2017, they had 6,700 and in 2018, they had 6,100. In 2019, their pace was at 5,900. The collisions were trending in the right direction. Last year, they had 15 fatalities and 10 were impaired driving. This year, they had 3 fatalities, and two were impaired driving. Mr. Haley asked what the conviction rate was on DUI’s. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said he would have to check with the Prosecutor’s Office. As far as the felony/fatal convictions, they did pretty well. They had a case from West Ashley a few years ago and the man had gotten 15 years as a result of that. For misdemeanors, they ran into a lot of issues with in-car cameras and the law was stacked against the Police Department. With Field Sobriety Testing, the defendant had to be on camera the entire length of the test. The audio/video all had to be synced up, so there were a lot of hoops to jump through. They were behind the eight-ball with legislation, which was why they were constantly in Columbia. Mr. Haley asked what the problem was with the cameras. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz said they didn’t have enough. Chief Reynolds said that their number one priority in the budget for the year was in-car cameras for all cars. Mr. Haley asked if SLED was providing them and asked if the law, as it was written, said that SLED would provide cameras. Chief Reynolds said it said that SLED must provide them, but didn’t give a time table as to when they would provide the funding. Mr. Ruemelin said that Department had made the request on a number of occasions to equip all of the cars. So, they would ask for 250 at a time, and SLED would provide 10-20 at a time. They weren’t giving them out to the full extent they were needed. Mr. Shields asked if the City had to pay for the storage once SLED gave them the cameras. Chief Reynolds said it was important to note that they weren’t being given anything. It was a combination of many things and it wasn’t inexpensive. His analogy in the budget process to the Council, was that, as much as everyone wanted more officers, they had to equip, train, and lead the officers they had. They weren’t doing that as much as they wanted to. So, the priority was to get more in car cameras and mobile data computers. The law was written in such a way that it almost required in car cameras and body cameras. So, they had to invest in equipping and leading their officers since they knew this was such an important issue. The budget did have a significant allocation this year that would allow them to get about 100 cameras. They were pointing in a good direction and had good support in the budget.  Community Outreach Updates Lieutenant Murray stated they had officers going to James Island Charter High School the following Wednesday for the Project LIT and they would talk with the students and have a lunch with them and talk about the book. She was excited about March 14th when they would be doing the Charleston Youth Summit with the Mayor’s Office. They would talk about the government and would have 15 officers there to have round table discussion. She was also excited because they had paired up with the Ronald McDonald House and the third Wednesday of every month, they would go and play bingo there. Citizen’s Academy was starting April 3rd. On April 4th, they were doing Cookie with a Cop at Mitchell Elementary. They would be cooking dinner at the Fisher House on April 13th and had about 15 officers attending that. Another thing that would happen was the Drug Takeback which was April 27th. They would be at the Citadel Mall and the Police Department. They were having a Tri-County Police Memorial on May 8th. On May 11th, they were having a luncheon with Beyond Basics. They did a torch run every year and that would be on May 9th. They had officers run up to Columbia. Officers would run 10-15 miles and would raise money for the Special Olympics. On May 16th, they would have the Illumination Prayer Service at 11 a.m. On May 22nd, they would have the graduation for Citizen’s Academy.  Racial Bias Audit Update Lieutenant Bruder stated that the firm had come into town on February 7th and 8th and they interviewed about a dozen of the command staff members. Their main focus was to get a feel for the department and see how it was organized and how they ran. They met with some community members and groups and held a kick-off press conference. They gave a little bit of feedback of some general observations they made and the Police Department was starting to work on those. They didn’t have any hard data yet to make conclusions. They sat down with the Department’s intel people and components to make the requests of what they wanted. They were starting to send the information to the firm so they could start doing their analysis. The information included things like use of force, complaints, collision data, ticket data, and field contacts. They hoped to have all the information to the firm by April 1st. Their next visit would be March 26th-30th. They had a community event planned for every night. They would also interview officers every evening from all areas of the department as well as follow-up interviews with different commanders. They would get the flyer of the dates and locations to the committee members. They wanted people showing up with complaints and with good things to say, as well. They wanted to know how everyone felt about the police. Chief Reynolds stated that body-cameras were one thing that they said to look at and the other was the internal investigative process/internal affairs. The Police Department had done its own audit and they recommended policy. So, this firm asked to look at that and review it. There were policies from around the country that would give them more structure and strengthen that. They were looking at the complaint process. They didn’t have a lot of complaints and the firm had said that an agency of this size should probably have more complaints. So, they were looking at why they didn’t and how they made the process more transparent and more accessible to the public, particularly the communities who didn’t have online presence or didn’t trust the police or thought they wouldn’t get a response back. There were basic things like that which would continue to come up in more detail. There would be a lot more that would happen when they visited the next times. Then, the firm would review the policy in greater detail. By the end, they would have suggestions, and if they did it right, the Department would have already made and implemented changes. The department would be different in each of the areas. As they got the feedback, they would begin looking at policies, and they would get help in structuring them better and actually make change. Ms. Mack asked if they had active neighborhood associations in these areas. She was thinking that would be one source of providing complaints. Chief Reynolds said he thought the answer was yes. He thought they would find that there were a lot of communities that just didn’t trust the police or the City, or didn’t know where they fell in the jurisdiction. Some neighborhoods were in such a pocket that the houses were in the City, but the roads were in the County. It was challenging. So, when they said they had associations and good contacts, they did, but when they dug down further, there were a lot of gaps to bridge and more to do to reach communities that didn’t know how to access the police or didn’t feel comfortable accessing them. They had work to do. They had great contacts and email lists. But, there were groups who didn’t participate in those communication methods. So, they needed to figure out what to do about that. Reverend Middleton said he remained concerned relative to the marketing and potentially, the turn- outs at some of the events. They had 34 listening sessions with the Illumination Project because they weren’t reaching the community and they were from Charleston. He asked if the media outlets were engaged and involved. Until Illumination got buy-in from all of the news stations and papers, that was when the word started to get out. They could post it on platforms, but people consumed news in different ways. Chief Reynolds said that it wasn’t uncommon to not have a lot of participation on the first visit. However, the one town hall they had, they only had about five people. That wouldn’t cut it. This was a big investment and opportunity. They wanted a broader representation and groups from all communities to be there. He challenged the board to take the dates and get it to people. They were mailing out letters, emailing people, making phone calls, and putting it on platforms. Reverend Middleton said he recognized that they asked CAJM and other groups and in that case, they would have a skewed data set. They would bring everyone who didn’t like the police. When they asked a group to bring their people, they had an agenda. So, they needed a broad community-based outreach to make certain, in a very neutral way that people were informed. If they wanted a true baseline of what was going on, they just needed people, not just one kind of group. Chief Reynolds said he said this in the beginning and still found it to be true. The data was what it was. It was important and would be instructive. But, even more important was the level of engagement. People needed to show up and they needed to hear from a broad audience. He would be on a radio show coming up. They were doing a lot, but they needed help. Mr. Haley asked about going through the local churches. Reverend Middleton asked if the flyers had been sent out to the churches. He hadn’t seen it. Ms. Fielding said there were officers at the churches and they could possibly bring the flyers. Lieutenant Bruder said that the entire department got the flyer and he put a call to action out to be talking about it and hand them out if they felt like it. They could ask people if they had heard about it. They talked about this with CNA before the first visit. If the Police Department was the one running this and pushing all the advertisement, he wondered if they would be seen as skewing it the other way. Ms. Fielding said she didn’t think so. Officers were dedicated and at the churches regularly. It was almost like the officer was then a part of the church family. In a situation like this, they probably did need to go back to the old school method of hand-outs. Reverend Middleton said that having a coordinated media advertising campaign was simply that. He would think that the Police Department should have a vested interest of its own. Chief Reynolds said they were in agreement. What Lieutenant Bruder was accurately saying though was that, when the actual meeting occurred, the Police Department wouldn’t be there. It was designed to make people feel comfortable. Mr. Haley said that they should want people to know and be there though. Mr. Shields said they could get the Chamber of Commerce to disseminate the information, as well. That was another avenue they could use. Chief Reynolds asked if someone on the board would volunteer to work with Lieutenant Murray to churn up some ideas. Mr. Shields and Ms. Fielding said they would be happy to. Ms. Fielding she was passionate about this, because when there was an audit, they needed to make sure they had done enough as they could to get the population there. Chief Reynolds said it warmed his heart to know they were so engaged. This community needed to have a stake in it. Ms. Grant said that the 27th date/location was at her church and that conflicted with a standing church function. So, she wasn’t sure if they had cleared that. Lieutenant Bruder said that he had been told that everything was confirmed. Chief Reynolds asked if the board had gotten the initial general observations. Lieutenant Bruder said he would send it to them. Chief Reynolds said that the board should be included in that. They wanted to be transparent and they needed to share ownership and input about everything. Ms. Fielding said that they wanted to be able to say that information was shared. Chief Reynolds said that if they did it right, the board members would hopefully get questions. He was sharing the concern with everyone that some people didn’t know. They were talking about it a lot, but they could do more. The Chief Speaks – Information and Updates Chief Reynolds stated that the Mayor wanted to be there to thank everyone for their participation on the Board. He was appreciative and recognized the importance of what they were doing. They had a murder at the Citadel Mall the previous week. It was domestic-violence related. There was a substantial vigil and many people were there. It was so senseless and preventable and the idea that people were carrying guns and there was no enhanced penalties furthered the fact that they needed to do a better job. There were officers right there when it happened and they could see on video that the man who killed the young lady drove right past a cruiser. They had a lot of work to do and this was reminder of that. Standing there with this woman’s family was devastating. It shouldn’t have happened but it did. They did make an arrest, which made the family feel a bit better. That was something that really impacted that community. They also had a shooting there during the holidays. He had just read a letter that evening from a visitor to Charleston. These people were visiting from another country and she lost her wedding ring. They couldn’t find it and gave up. They went back home and the gentleman wrote a letter that an officer found the ring, was able to track them down and get it back to her. The couple wanted to give him a reward, but the officer said no and that that was his job and what they did. He got letters like that on a fairly regular basis. It was compelling and powerful talking about how professional and selfless the officer was. Now, they couldn’t wait to come back to Charleston because of the way they were treated. That was a very positive thing. The Nathaniel Rhodes incident was still an ongoing investigation, but they had put a lot out in the media. He was trying to be as transparent and responsive as he could be. It was a painful event for him and the team. The family had done a one-hour press conference and if they hadn’t seen it, it was difficult to watch. On August 12th, 2018, Nathaniel Rhodes was involved in a collision. He was 58 and was a resident of the City. He ran a red light, hit another car, and was DUI. At some point, he was put into an ambulance. Some of this was under investigation and they had asked SLED to do the investigation. They didn’t know exactly what happened because they didn’t have the body-camera footage for some of what occurred. They should have it, and they were making adjustments already because of that. At some point, he was going to be transported to the hospital in the ambulance, but instead the police arrested him and took him to the station. He was given some field sobriety tests on the scene. He came to the station to get a breathalyzer and be charged with DUI. When he got to the station, he complained that he wasn’t feeling well and was laying on the ground. So, the Police Department called an ambulance but it took time for them to get there. In the meantime, they were giving the breath test. In hindsight, Nathaniel Rhodes died four days later at the hospital. What they learned was that, from the collision he was involved in, he had eight broken ribs, a lacerated liver, and other injuries. One would conclude that he should have gone to the hospital from the scene. He had a lot of questions, and they would get the answers. He had spoken with SLED that day. Several things happened in the case that they did know that they could correct. One actually came up in the audit. It was in the update they would see of what the body-camera policy was and how they had accountability. When there was a recording, it was categorized. The retention policy was 30 days, meaning that, if they miscategorized the video, which was what happened, it was automatically deleted after 30 days. So, when they needed the video, it wasn’t there. He had since changed the retention policy to 180 days. Now, even if it was miscategorized, and there was a complaint or follow-up investigation, they would have the video. That was something that the audit picked up on right away. This event was on national news. There was also a form produced by the attorney that brought this to the news and to their attention. There was a variety of things that should have been done, but they didn’t put it all together until it was brought to their attention. When someone didn’t want to get transported to the hospital, it was a refusal to transport. There were many reasons why someone may not want to get transported to the hospital, so there was a form to cover the ambulance crew. This form for Nathaniel Rhodes had a block for the patient and a block for witnesses. The only signature was in the patient’s block and was signed by the City’s officer. Needless to say, that didn’t look good. It said refusal to transport and the officers name. That was what kicked off him putting this into SLED’s hands, so there could be an independent and separate investigation, so that whatever came out wouldn’t be questioned any more than it already may be. Another change he made was that the Police Department no longer signed forms. He had never experienced that in other locations where they would put an officer in that position in the first place. It was an EMS decision, when they went to a scene of a collision like that, to decide whether and how to transport. Life safety was always the number one priority. So, they, as a command, immediately met, and that night there would be training. All of the officers would come in a 24-hour period, and they would be talking about body-cameras, policy, technology, how to do tagging, why they were going from 30 to 180 day retention, and the form they wouldn’t be signing anymore. There was a lot more to do to review the policies. There was a lot more that they knew they could do better. There would be civil litigation that would come out of this. He and the Mayor had talked with the family and he had shared his deepest condolences. This was a painful event. During the press conference, they would see his wife and his daughter in tears the entire time. In the video, that went frame-by-frame, they saw the EMS workers come in and were basically making fun of him. In his opinion, it was very unprofessional and didn’t look good. They had an opportunity to get better. They had taken ownership and had been transparent. They released all reports associated with this to the media. They released the body-camera footage. He did interviews right after this came out and took ownership for it and showed their transparency by releasing what they had and answering questions they could answer. He acknowledged that this was not what they expected from the City of Charleston Police Department. Even though some of this involved different entities, none of that really mattered. What they needed to focus on was that mistakes were made and there were things that could have been done differently and better. They weren’t waiting to figure that out. Technology wasn’t perfect and they knew when they started using body-cameras that there would be occasions that audio wouldn’t work or it wouldn’t get tagged properly, but they weren’t satisfied with that. If they had the video, they probably wouldn’t be having this situation. They had sat in the room for hours talking about it and there were a lot of people working on it to make sure it didn’t happen again. Reverend Middleton asked if this would have been captured in August in the statistics. Lieutenant Bruder said it was captured in August. It was recorded as a traffic fatality. It was investigated the four days later when Mr. Rhodes died. Mr. Shields asked if it would be changed or moved out of that category because it could have been preventable. Lieutenant Bruder said that unless the coroner changed the cause of the death, the cause was injuries sustained in a traffic collision. So, during the investigation they would look at whether the injuries could have been mitigated if he went to the hospital in the beginning. That was for SLED and the doctors to decide. But, the actual injuries he sustained were from a collision. So, as far as the coroner’s report, it was a traffic fatality. Reverend Middleton asked if they knew in August that the injuries he sustained from the collision led to his death. Lieutenant Bruder said yes. The traffic fatality was investigated from that standpoint. Reverend Middleton said, as it related to the family and the case, the board and the public were just learning about it, so to learn it happened in August, was shocking. When it was being reported, he thought it had just happened. He was trying to track, internally, what kind of mechanism reported up. Captain Walker said there were some things missed internally where notifications weren’t made to make it as publically known as it was now. So, some of the details weren’t readily available across the board. Reverend Middleton said from his standpoint, especially dealing with the Illumination Project and building trust, there was a lot of talk in the community about this. It wasn’t good talk. To bring individuals to a point of trust in the process and fill in the gaps, he didn’t have the answers in the case, because he was just learning about it, as well. Chief Reynolds said it was okay sometimes for them to say that they didn’t have all of the answers, but they would, and when they did they would share it. It was okay to say that mistakes were made and things occurred that they had to learn from. They needed to talk about all of the specifics. In any organization, what he had finally come to recognize was that they weren’t perfect and they made mistakes. When they did, they had to own it and be transparent and honest about it. He was glad the community was talking about it. They should be and it should be in a not so positive light. If they had seen the press conference, they wouldn’t be pleased with the Police Department or the County EMS. But, a little bit of feedback he had gotten was that they appreciated the honesty and transparency. People wanted to be angry and he thought that was expected. In his 30 years of policing, other than when an officer had been killed or injured, this was the most difficult moment in his career. It was a tough and challenging time for them. Reverend Middleton said that when they said mistakes had been made, at every level those needed to be observed and figure out where the mistakes occurred. He wanted to make sure they weren’t missing areas that may require closer scrutiny and examination. Every stone deserved to be turned. Mr. Haley said they had taken a course called Policing 101 because it was recognized that, as civilians, they didn’t have a clue as to what was faced. Some people who grew up during the Vietnam War had somewhat of a clue, and that was that the bad guys didn’t wear uniforms, so no one knew who they were dealing with. One of the problems was that created a culture in the military to look at everyone who wasn’t wearing a uniform as the enemy. For something like this to happen seven months ago, and them to just find out about it, was disgraceful. The Police Department should be commended for the response made when they found out about it. But, what it represented to him was that there was a culture in the community and within the police departments that was not new, that looked upon the people who weren’t in a uniform as the enemy. On his ride-along, they rode into what his friends would call ‘high-crime’ neighborhoods. They came upon two young African-American women, parked in the parking lot of a City park after dark. It didn’t strike him as particularly odd. They were surrounded by two or three police cars and three officers who were questioning them to what they were doing. They said they were smoking some weed. That resulted in their car being thoroughly searched. The optics of that, in terms of that particular community, sucked. Not everyone who smoked weed was going to kill an officer and not everyone who drove DUI was going to injure someone. He didn’t know the answer of how they could keep officers safe and yet understand that it wasn’t just Policing 101, it was also Poor Folk 101. That was key. Chief Reynolds said that this conversation was important. One of his biggest concerns was that one thing that had happened in the country and to some extent in Charleston, was that they had experienced de-policing. People heard the message and were afraid to do their job. That wasn’t where they wanted to be either. The balance was somewhere in the middle, where everyone was treated with respect and dignity. He didn’t think that Mr. Haley was minimizing DWI’s, but having gone to a family and notifying them that a family member was killed by a drunk driver, he had a problem with that. Mr. Haley said he had a problem with that too, but he also had a problem with a man who was arrested for DUI, after a collision. Chief Reynolds said that the fact that he was DWI and was in a collision was not relevant as to how he was treated from that point forward. Mr. Haley said he would disagree for one reason. That man was not so much of a citizen anymore. He was a ‘bad guy and didn’t deserve a lot of consideration’. Chief Reynolds said that Mr. Haley was entitled to that opinion. Mr. Haley said that wasn’t his opinion, but what he thought the officer’s opinion and EMS’s opinion was. Chief Reynolds said that was Mr. Haley’s opinion, because he wasn’t there. He hadn’t interviewed the officer yet, or the EMS workers. That was what SLED was doing. They would find out. He thought that was a jump. He didn’t want to tell anyone how to think, but they did complaints about people in parks smoking weed. Different people had different opinions about it. It would probably get legalized eventually, but when they looked at the homicides they had, the shootings, and the Marijuana drug trade, the Police had a tough job. The people in the communities where the shootings were happening wanted the police active and pro-active. They wanted the Police to be paying attention to the drug trade. Reverend Middleton said that there were white people in Wagner-Terrace smoking weed freely and he didn’t see Police encircling them with three or four cars to a person. He understood, to some extent, the perception of ‘profiling’. But, there were some communities where this was open and accepted in Charleston. Chief Reynolds said he found this all very valuable. They could make the same argument for traffic stops. The reality was that they couldn’t get everyone. If there was no one making a complaint in the neighborhood, if there hadn’t been a shooting or violence in the neighborhood, that may not be where they focused their time. This was where he got concerned about de-policing. There was plenty of work for the officers to focus on. He could care less about marijuana. However, when they looked at it through the lens of a police officer, and through the violence, there was a lot of research. When they looked at the States that had legalized marijuana, he had seen homicide rates go through the roof. Reverend Middleton said that all communities were talking about this. It wasn’t so much on T.V. until a report came out. So, once SLED reported their findings, it would ramp up again. He asked what additional plan of action there was and what happened next because the community trust was eroding. Chief Reynolds said he was open to suggestion, but they didn’t have the luxury of just hitting the pause button and stopping their jobs. He would say that the officers had to be out in the communities 24/7. They were doing all of the things that Lieutenant Murray had mentioned. He wanted his officers out there and making arrests. The last thing he wanted the officers doing was to stand back and be afraid of getting in trouble or upsetting anyone. For the number of contacts they made, they had almost zero use of force. He had a unit of eight people who had made 130 gun arrests last year and not one use of force incident. Those guns were being found on convicted felons and people who were in shootings. They had to continue to do their jobs. They could throw in race and perception and it was difficult. Public trust was easy to talk about but not so easy to establish and accomplish. They couldn’t just assume it would exist and was permanent. He was in Baltimore the night the riots kicked off. He was there when they tried to burn part of the City down and when they brought in the National Guard. That could happen in Charleston. There wasn’t an easy answer to the question. Mr. Shields said if they could rely on their policies and procedures, they would allow the Police the freedom and transparency that they were looking for. In this particular situation with Mr. Rhodes, the policies and procedures either weren’t there or weren’t followed. They started the Committee right after this happened, so for them to just now be talking about it, it brought up the question in his mind. To have the transparency, they had to have the policies and procedures there and they had to be followed to a fault. That was where the translation was lost. If they had good policies and procedures, they could fall back on that. Captain Walker said that SLED was investigating, but they were also performing an internal investigation to check all of the policies and procedures. There were answers they didn’t know yet. Ms. Fielding said that she thought the issue was that it happened in August, the Committee was started, and they were just now talking about it that day. Ms. Whitaker stated she was at the Public Safety meeting and remembered the Chief saying that they didn’t receive the form or didn’t know about the form being signed off on until recently. Chief Reynolds said just under two weeks ago, the City, via the Mayor’s officer received inquiries from the national media. That was the first they became aware that there was an issue. They began to look at it very closely then, and initiated an internal affairs investigation the next day. By that Friday, through a variety of sources and requests, they found the form. That was when he immediately called SLED and initiated a SLED investigation. That was less than two weeks previous. That was when they identified the video and quickly unveil everything that was discussed. Reverend Middleton asked if the national media didn’t inquire, or the family didn’t ‘lawyer’ up, this would have just been recorded as a traffic fatality. Chief Reynolds said that just as with any case where there was a fatality, it would have gone on as an investigation. But, the video where he was under arrest, instead of being at the hospital and the form would have been missed. There was a time frame where he was taken to the station, where he should have, arguably, been taken to the hospital. That was the difference. They dealt with collisions every day. People went to the hospital and sometimes they died. That wasn’t uncommon. The issue was that what happened with his case didn’t come up. Reverend Middleton asked if they had a record of how many people had been signed off by officers to not go to the hospital. Chief Reynolds said he didn’t think anyone was aware of this every happening before. Mr. Wright asked who had possession of the form once it was signed. Chief Reynolds said that Charleston County EMS had the form. Mr. Wright said EMS had it. Within the thirty-day period, they had all of the footage, but they were talking about it several months after. That was disturbing. The proper thing had been done with letting SLED handle the investigation. Reverend Middleton asked if the family had reached out to the Police Department before they went to the national media. Chief Reynolds said they didn’t make a complaint to the Police Department, which would have initiated an investigation. They did file some FOIA requests. The Police Department received thousands of FOIA requests, and that was another area they were looking at as to why that didn’t trigger something. Mr. Bryant said that if they were dealing with someone who had a problem with a public entity, the first thing they did was file a FOIA request. So, he would file 20-30 of them per week and maybe five of them would go somewhere. Ms. Fielding said she worked for the Federal Government and when a FOIA was filed, it did raise a red flag. They would start to look at and see where it would go. Mr. Bryant said it was slightly different with the police. He had a civil client who was related to someone shot in North Charleston. He was sending four separate FOIA requests for crime in four different neighborhoods. That wouldn’t raise any red flags because it happened all the time. He would ask for dash cams all of the time. It was a standard process. Chief Reynolds said that what they were beginning to grasp was that there were a variety of stages where this could have been caught earlier and a lot more could have been done. Each time they asked a question, they learned a little more, and frankly, it wasn’t good. Chief Reynolds said that the problem with this was that it started as a relatively minor collision. There wasn’t imminent death. Because it wasn’t of that categorization, the collision occurred, the normal patrol officer responded from Team 1. This was something the officers did every day. They went, did the DWI test, made an arrest, took him to the station, he went to the hospital and had no imminent death, but died four days later. In hindsight, it was easy to piece together and they could make judgements and assess. Nathaniel Rhodes needed medical attention, and he got it, but not on the scene from the ambulance. They could speculate all day long about whether that made a difference, but the reality was that what happened was not what should have happened on several levels. Mr. Bryant said they might want to consider expanding the definition of what was considered a major accident or what got investigated. Chief Reynolds stated that there were cases where the Major Accident Investigation Team was notified. That happened in this case. They went back and did an investigation and got the black box from the car. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz stated that once the coroner called them that Thursday night, they went out first thing on Friday morning and put a hold on the vehicles. They talked to the victim’s family the day after the victim passed away. He wasn’t sure if they had said that, but the Police interviewed them and let them know where the Police were with the investigation. They photographed the vehicles. Since they weren’t notified the night of the collision, they didn’t have scene photos, so they went and tried to piece it back together with what they could when they were notified. They made contact with the highway patrol who did the black boxes, so within a week they had the black box data for both vehicles. That told them how fast the vehicles were going at the time of impact. They interviewed the driver and his wife from the other car. They went back and interviewed several witnesses. It was fully investigated as a traffic fatality/collision. Their job as an accident investigation team was to investigate the actual dynamics of the collision. Reverend Middleton asked if the family expressed when they interviewed them that Friday their bewilderment as to why he wasn’t given medical care. Lieutenant Wojslawowicz stated he didn’t do the interviewing, but it was his understanding that that never came up. Mr. Bryant said he wanted to note something he noticed when the Chief and Mr. Haley were talking. It was a perception thing. He thought that it was true that no one knew what the officer or EMS was thinking. It was also true that Mr. Haley didn’t know what they thought. However, in that truth, there was perception and perception on top of perception. The somewhat forceful pushback on Mr. Haley’s articulation of that makes the initial perception worse from the community. As a plaintiff lawyer, the Chief on video with that reaction was money. That’s what it was and he wanted that to be recognized. They couldn’t know what people thought or were thinking, but the perception that many people had was that if Police had a reason to think that someone did something wrong, they were no longer being viewed as a citizen. Reverend Middleton said that when he was approached by CNA to talk about locations for the listening sessions, one of the locations that was suggested was the church of Nathaniel Rhodes, so they couldn’t go there. Now, there was the reality of a broken congregation and people who, in the past, would have opened the door, but it was no longer an option to go to. There were some realities that went with the perception. Mr. Bryant said it wasn’t fair for anyone involved. It was interesting to talk about the procedure and process of looking at it as a traffic investigation. It was probably a very good traffic investigation, but it expanded a little bit further than that, and no one looking at the situation was looking at it purely in terms of the objectives. It had a wider scope, and everyone needed to be cognizant of that. Mr. Shields said that what they were trying to say, was that the Police Department knew about the case at the time, and in order for the Board members to go out in the community and be a positive face forward, they needed to know about those kinds of investigations. Ms. Fielding said that because the next meeting wasn’t until May 2nd, if publicity got out in the way they wanted, they would hear more of it. The audit team would hear more of it, and the assessment would be very valuable to helping tighten up the policies and procedures. She thought the audit would pull out a number of things and it would probably come back to looking at traffic studies and the fatalities that had occurred and how those occurred. This was a hot-button issue, and the Chief’s update in May would be very important. She thanked the Chief for being open and honest with them as much as he could be. They would all have to work to make it better, and it was clear that there was a lot of work still to be done. Having no further business, the Citizen’s Police Advisory Council adjourned at 8:05 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary