Citizen's Police Advisory Council

Charleston Citizen Police Advisory Council May 9, 2019 A meeting of the Charleston Citizen Police Advisory Council was held this date beginning at 5:38 p.m., at the City of Charleston Police Department, 180 Lockwood Blvd, Conference Room Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Rhett Outten, Vice-Chair, Max Milliken, Ryan Davis (by phone) Camden Norris Shields, Barry Wright, Doris Grant (by phone at 6:10 p.m.), and Chris Bryant (arrived at 6:10 p.m.) Also Present: Denise Rodriguez (by phone), Steve Rickman(by phone), Zoë Thorkildsen (by phone), Rodney Monroe (by phone), Harold Medlock (by phone), Carrie Richardson (by phone), Captain Thompson, Deputy Chief Broughton, Lieutenant Murray, Chief Reynolds (by phone), Rick Jerue, Steve Ruemelin, Lieutenant Bruder, Captain Walker, Jerry Harris (public), Councilmember Griffin (arrived at 6:30 p.m.) and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary Welcome/Call to Order The meeting was called to order. Lieutenant Bruder listed who was in attendance. CNA Racial Bias Audit Update Rick Jerue stated that one of the things that Mayor Tecklenburg had talked about while campaigning was to do a performance review/audit of all City departments. In 2016, they put out an RFP for a City- wide performance audit and awarded the contractor group out of Cincinnati, called Novak Consulting. As part of that review, they were going to do a review of the Police Department. Around that time, CAJM had made a police audit one of its top priorities in the coming year for all jurisdictions. They met many times with CAJM and felt that including that in the overall City audit with Novak Consulting would meet the request on CAJM’s part. It didn’t though, so in late 2017 City Council decided to do a separate and independent Police audit. The Mayor had appointed a Committee including a number of City Council members and City staff to draft an RFP to do a singular Police audit. That RFP went out and they got a number of responses to it. The Committee that put together the RFP narrowed the selection down to three or four groups who came and made presentations to the RFP Review Committee. The public was involved and allowed to listen to the discussion, and also meet with members of the review committee to talk about things they thought needed to be included in the audit. They met in the summer of 2018 and decided to select CNA to do the audit. That was how they got to where they were. Lieutenant Bruder asked Ms. Rodriguez to talk about the scope of the RFP and contract and how they would meet that. Chief Reynolds stated that after the selection was made, Council and the Mayor unanimously supported the audit, in the amount of $158,000. That was important to know. The funding kicked in during this calendar year’s budget, which was January 1. That was when they could start scheduling the audit itself. Ms. Rodriguez said they would do introductions of the team. She stated she was Senior Research Scientist at CNA and had been with them for just over ten years. She had conducted, led, and supported a number of similar police assessments and audits for agencies across the county such as in Las Vegas, Spokane, and Fayetteville. She currently worked on a number of other related policing projects, specifically on body-worn cameras, as well as officer safety issues. Mr. Monroe stated that he served as a consultant with CNA. He was a former Chief of Police. He was the chief for eight years in Charlotte, NC. He was also the Chief in Richmond, VA, and Macon, GA and spent 22 years with the D.C. Police Department. He had been working with CNA on a number of projects around the country and currently served as the Deputy Monitor for the Chicago Police Department Consent Decree. He looked forward to continuing the engagement with Charleston. Mr. Medlock stated that he was a consultant with CNA and had served 25 years with Charlotte/Mecklenburg Police. He went to Fayetteville to serve as Police Chief there for four years and took his department through the collaborative reform initiative which asked the Department of Justice to help, just short of a consent decree. CNA had served as the contractor for that. He had also been involved with several projects since his retirement, including body-worn cameras and strategic policing iniatives with departments around the county. He served as an Associate Monitor with the team for the Chicago Police Department Consent Decree. Mr. Rickman stated he had a long-standing history of addressing police/community relation issues and building police/community partnerships. His history reached back to Charleston. He had worked with Mayor Riley and Chief Greenberg in the 90’s. Since that time, he had been involved in a number of projects. He was the technical advisor to President Obama’s Task Force and was currently an Associate Monitor for both Albuquerque and Chicago, and was working on other projects around the country helping to build and improve community relations. Ms. Thorkildsen stated that she worked with Ms. Rodriguez at CNA as a Research Scientist. Her background was in statistical methodology and research design. So, she would be supporting the project through some of the analyses and report writing. Ms. Rodriguez stated that CNA had gotten its start about 75 years ago when a small group of MIT analysts deployed with the Navy during WWII. They still used the same approach in a number of areas. They did that through the Department of Justice and working with local agencies. Over the last 15-20 years, they had built up their Law Enforcement portfolio. The methodology had been pioneered when it came to studying things like racial bias. They were a national leader when it came to delivering technical assistance, specifically on things like body-worn cameras. Specific to the audit in Charleston, they were focusing on four areas to review on five different topics. They were focusing on use of force, traffic stops (including field interviews), recruitment/hiring, and community engagement. Their methodology specifically revolved around conducting interviews with department personnel and community members. They would review documents and policies that related to the topic areas they were reviewing. They were looking at the data that included information on use of force, complaints, traffic stops, and field contacts. She wanted to note that the interviews they did with officers and community members were to help build context and the story behind what the data would show them and validate what they were actually reviewing and seeing in the policies and data. Ms. Thorkildsen stated that they would be pulling data analyses on a number of different topics through the project. The use of force data would mainly be descriptive statistics due to the fact that the reports were fairly rare and there wasn’t any statistical analysis that would be appropriate for those approaches, but they would also be looking at field contacts, traffic/pedestrian stops, and outcomes from those. Since those were a more robust set of data, they would do some quantitative analysis that was aimed at uncovering any disproportionality that might exist in the practice of those activities. They would be relying on both bi-variant and multi-variant techniques starting with the most robust quasi- experimental approaches as the ideal methodology and then based on the data, determining if those could be appropriately applied, falling back to multi-variant analysis if necessary. CNA did have a preference towards internal benchmarking techniques because they were more robust and didn’t fall prey to some of the problems with external benchmarking. They had also been asked to look at recruitment and hiring, so they would be using a process-based statistical analysis for that which would look at each stage of the application process and the likelihood of an applicant moving into the next stage, taking into consideration the race of that applicant. They would be using a similar process for complaints. They knew that the length of time for complaints to be resolved was a very important topic for procedural justice, so they would be looking at that. They would also be doing qualitative analysis on the complaint process. The overarching takeaway was that they were using multiple techniques on multiple different data sets to address any questions about disproportionality and outcomes, and they were using robustness checks throughout the analysis. By doing that, they could increase the confidence and reliability of their findings to make sure that they were providing information that was well- grounded in the data and the researcher’s literature. Ms. Rodriguez stated that the team and the community also needed to keep in mind the potential limitations when they started looking at the data because the data wasn’t always captured in the way they would like. It might be a little messy. There were a lot of limitations and caveats they would work through as they started to put together findings and recommendations. Over the last few months, they had conducted four community meetings. They had met with just under 70 CPD personnel and attended a number of community meetings and meetings with specific individuals and groups in the community. They had neared almost the end of the data collection piece of the audit. The next part was to take back what they had learned and would pull the information together, and work on a draft report. They would have that draft report sometime in early September. The intention was to come back with the draft report, meet with people in the City and the CPD and the community and make sure they had gotten all the input and feedback, and that the recommendations and findings were reflective of what they had heard and what the data had shown. Then, they hoped to finalize it and deliver a final report at the end of September. Ms. Outten said she had two questions. She referred to the community meetings and asked what the number was that they were shooting for participation at those meetings. Ms. Rodriguez said that the turn-out at the community meetings was great. She had worked in a number of police assessments where the turn-out was not very great. There wasn’t a specific number they were looking for. The purpose of the community meetings and interviews was to help build the story and context behind their review of the policies and procedures. The one exception was the very first meeting and the turn-out for that wasn’t great. Only a few people attended, but the discussion was very beneficial helpful. Ms. Outten said that there were some people on the Advisory Council that felt that the attendance wasn’t as large as a number as hoped for. She wondered if they had any numbers to compare to cities that were around Charleston’s size and whether the numbers were true elsewhere, and if the number was large enough to determine if they had enough input. The meeting she went to was very well done, but most of the people who showed up were people with complaints. She was curious as to how they walked away feeling like they had enough input and enough diversity. They felt like 250 was a small number compared to something like the Illumination Project, which had over 800 responses. It was hard to get people to show up. Ms. Rodriguez said that it varied depending on the community and city. They had some cities where they would only get 30-50 community member’s input. But, again, because they weren’t looking at them from a quantitative standpoint, they grasped a good understanding of the community’s perspectives and viewpoints. They began to hear central common themes and trends across the multiple community meetings such as the complaint process, traffic stop issues, engagement of police officers within the community. Those were constant things brought up over and over again. She felt that if they held five or ten more community meetings, they would see similar trends in the discussion. All of that validated what they were seeing when they looked at the policies and compared them against best practices. Ms. Thorkildsen said that they had explained it well in basic language, but she would explain it in statistical language. The qualitative research process they were relying on was the idea of thematic saturation which meant they didn’t really have a number in mind because with qualitative research, they couldn’t really have a specific number. But, as qualitative researchers, they were listening for the same themes and when they felt they had heard a good depth and breadth of opinions and input about the themes they were looking at. It was less about a specific number they were aiming for, and more about whether they felt they had gathered the information they would need to inform the rest of the process. Mr. Rickman stated that relative to other cities he had worked, he thought the representation, with the exception of the first meeting, was great. He thought it gave them a good cross-section of people. He recalled in Chicago, which was a much bigger city, they had a community meeting and only had 30-40 people show up. Mr. Shields thanked Ms. Rodriguez for the explanation. Their main concern was the number. He listened to how they explained it and it made sense to him, as someone who didn’t know statistics. However, he had always figured they had to have some kind of a goal, even if they didn’t have it written down. He asked how they would determine if they had gotten the proper cross-section and had reached the different communities in Charleston if they weren’t quite sure how many people they needed to reach in order to do that. He was taking a little bit of a macro look and wanted to hear a little more about why they weren’t concerned about the numbers and why they thought they could rely on what they had, even though they couldn’t prove if they had accurately captured the community. Ms. Rodriguez said if they looked back to the scope of the audit and the primary focus being looking at the data as it related to use of force, complaints, traffic stops, and field contacts, they were looking at the data specifically, and using the interviews and community meetings to build that context. They weren’t looking for a specific number or to interview with as much community as possible. Ideally, they wanted as much engagement as they could, but it was incredibly difficult to get the buy-in and interest in the community. They were doing as much as they could, as far as meeting with the community, putting out numerous flyers. At the same time, when they came out with the draft report, meeting with the community would be very important to ensure they didn’t miss anything. It was difficult to get interest in the community when it came to issues like this. Mr. Monroe said that to have some balance, they conducted community meetings in different sections of the City to try to draw upon populations from different segments. A similar process was used internally within the Police Department where they interviewed officers in different districts, as well as different special assignment units, and different ranks, so that they could get sampling from different areas and perspectives. Mr. Rickman said there was one demographic they didn’t see much of at the community meetings and that was young people. There was a session set up a couple days previous to talk to young people. Mr. Shields said there were nine young people who showed up to that meeting and he didn’t think that was a very good number. He asked where they were lacking or what they could do to try to bring the numbers up. He wanted to ask them about reaching out with the school districts. He wasn’t sure if that was something that would need to be approved or how that would work, but he was interested in hearing their take on going into the schools and trying to solicit some information that way, rather than just asking for volunteers. Ms. Rodriguez said she agreed that the turn-out wasn’t very great for the youth meeting. They relied on the City helping to reach out to the youth partners, as well as the Police Department. That proved to be a little tricky. At the end of the youth meeting, she was reminded that they were running up against the end of the school year, so a number of students were more concerned about prepping for tests and ending the school year than attending a community meeting. It was suggested that when they came back in September, they could do another youth meeting. They would need to spread the word. It got tricky when they wanted to reach out directly to school districts, so they were looking to leverage the relationships that the Police Department and City leaders had with the community groups. Mr. Shields asked if CNA had been aware that the Advisory Council existed ever since they had jumped on board. Ms. Rodriguez said yes and they had set up and ‘office hours’ interview time the last time they were in Charleston. She didn’t think they had anyone come in. They had a couple of the members attend the community meetings. Mr. Shields said he had heard the feedback from that, but wondered why they hadn’t had the opportunity to speak with CNA. If the Advisory Council had a duty to try and encourage as much public involvement as they could, he felt like they needed a bit more of a collaborative effort to begin with. Mr. Bryant said that he had gone to the meetings at St. Julian Devine and Burke High School. He thought the numbers issue was an interesting question, in part because it wasn’t a lab-type of experiment where they could pull from demographics representing everyone and force people to participate. They had a built-in issue where, people for whom this resonated, this would be on their radar and those would be the people who would show up. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, to the extent that gathering information was the goal. There were people he had spoken with about this who had no interest in it. The numbers in and of themselves didn’t bother him, because the conversations he heard at the meetings seemed to be the fulsome conversations that got at the issues that it seemed like CNA was trying to understand. The youth issue did concern him, as far as the numbers went. So, if they could do something in the fall or next time, that would be worthwhile. At the Burke High School event, there was a wide-range of ages. There were people who were college-aged, up to people that were his grandmother’s age. Something was generally better than nothing. He was excited to see what all came out of it. Mr. Rickman said that he thought they were all a little disappointed in the youth numbers, but with the nine that showed up, they spent almost two hours and he was very impressed with the range of conversations they engaged in. They talked about topics like what their fears might be of the police, how they could develop better relationships with the police, and they came up with several recommendations as it related to improving trust. They talked about several police/youth programs that they would like to see happen. It wasn’t a large number, but there was a lot of conversation. They also had a few people who represented youth groups that were in attendance at that meeting and some school representatives that spoke to a lot of the issues involving youth. They had probably picked up 15 or more recommendations from those nine youth. He didn’t think that any of the youth were of age to drive, but they saw traffic stops and observed those. They were able to report on those concerns because of that. Ms. Outten said that Charleston was full of students. She wondered if there was an opportunity to include students in their outreach to youth when they came back with the draft report. Mr. Shields said that was something that would never change. Charleston would always be full of students. Ms. Outten said one of the discussions at the meeting she went to was how students were treated differently than citizens. She said there should be one more outreach to the community when CNA came back in an effort to get more participation. Mr. Wright said that the numbers did concern him, but from the standpoint of being a community member. With the numbers of people in Charleston, they should have been able to reach more than 250 concerned citizens and more than nine youth. That wasn’t CNA’s issue. That was a local issue. If they didn’t get out as a community and push the issue past what they had done, they wouldn’t get adequate participation. The youth participation was an issue of concern because of the numbers. He thought when they met at the St. James site, they noted that that same week there was a large contingency of youth in the area because there was a conference going on at the coliseum. If they had better planning, and more people involved in the planning process, they may have been able to get CNA in so that they had more of an audience. He liked where they were going and what was being done, but as a community, they had to step up and push a little more. They had to invite people and let them know the importance of what was going on. The issues didn’t affect just one segment of the community. They had to tell people to stop complaining after the fact, when they had the chance to have some input. Lieutenant Bruder said that what Mr. Wright had said was what had been the eye-opener part of this, that they sent it out to their contacts and partners, but they might not have the relationship to take it to the next level. He thought that was what CNA had seen. A lot of the feedback was that the relationships they did have weren’t quite having the impact they wanted them to. It put it into perspective that they needed to do better. Ms. Outten said the Advisory Council could probably do better. She asked what their responsibility was in this. They came and listened, but they weren’t given action steps. Lieutenant Bruder said that the Advisory Council was still fairly new, and so the direction they wanted to go was still up for debate. Mr. Shields said he wanted to understand how the Advisory Council could help CNA do the job that the City had hired them for. They couldn’t come up with a plan of action unless they knew what was going on. He was looking at the goals in the scope and the last one said ‘to engage the community to understand both experiences and expectations of interactions with the Charleston Police Department’. He thought that was an excellent goal, but he didn’t think that they had fulfilled that goal. That stemmed the main concern, which was that they saw they weren’t reaching enough people and they saw that as a huge part of the overall effort. Ms. Rodriguez said that the attendance at the community meetings was telling about the quality of engagement that the Police Department had with the community. That would become part of their recommendations and how they built out the report. They were looking to come back with the draft report/findings, not with the intention of ‘this is what we found and what you will see’, but how they could tailor/refine it so it met the expectations of the community. They would be looking to the Advisory Council, and other leading community members and organizations to gather input from their community members and the people in their reach to get feedback. Ms. Outten said that someone needed to coordinate. The communication was great, but she wondered how they could get it to the right people and who would talk to who in the interim. Mr. Bryant said that there were many groups and one thing that stuck him at the community meetings was that the people there were the ones who were probably the most plugged in. Even those people were unaware of the Advisory Council. They had people on the Advisory Council who could all be helpful in bridging the gap. They needed to articulate that their meetings were public. Lieutenant Bruder said that he thought they were working on getting the Advisory Council members information posted and synced up with the department team leads and areas. Mr. Shields said he was just concerned how they would meet the goals, if they were identifying the issues now. Ms. Rodriguez said that it was important to look at the site visit memos thus far. That was a lot of what they had heard from the community and CPD personnel. If they felt something was missing, they could let CNA know. They could pass off CNA’s email addresses to people they thought had stories to tell or people who wanted to provide input. Mr. Rickman said that if they had to do it over again, he was sure they could have worked more effectively with the Advisory Council to get a stronger turn out at the meetings. Having been through the process in many places, he thought they were pretty comfortable with feeling like they had the general insights and community opinions. The real opportunity was when they reported out their findings, they could get it right and set up a series of briefings and interactions with the community so that they could really flesh out and discuss the findings. Councilmember Griffin said that he had been following along all year. Mr. Shields was one of the representatives that he had helped appoint. He wanted to thank all of them for their diligence and hard work and taking time to do this. He thought this was probably one of the most important Boards and Commissions that the City had. That was why they might want to think about changing the name to a commission or a board, so it didn’t confuse people. He thought that as the year progressed, they should try to find some more public places to hold the meetings. They wanted to give people easy access to get there. They had laid the ground work for something that he hoped stuck around forever. Their names would always be engrained as the founding members, but they needed to have continuity and people stick around to usher in some new people coming on. They needed to find a better way to have a liaison between Council, Public Safety Committee and that Board to give reports on what they were discussing. They could have someone report to Public Safety or submit a report, because the Public Safety Committee was where their voices would really be heard. If they came up with an idea, that could maybe become an ordinance, or a changing of policy, they would want to get an endorsement from Public Safety to bring it to Council. He wanted them to have that opportunity, to improve public safety measures. He hoped that would be a focus as they moved forward. Jerry Harris stated he was a member of the public. One of the opportunities that would happen when CNA came back, they would be presenting data that the community had not seen before. What the data said and what people thought they knew could be very different. So, they should think about how to roll that data out and people should have an open mind to what the data would say and what the recommendations would be. He would also suggest that, in terms of that body figuring out its work, he was sure that some of the recommendations that would come forward would need additional advocacy and education. It depended on how much ownership they wanted to take and how much leadership they wanted to demonstrate in bringing the recommendations forward. Mr. Shields said that he didn’t quite understand, and talking with other people on the Advisory Council, was that they would have more access to use the information in a more productive way. That made him feel better, that they would have a chance, before the process was concluded, that they could start to use some of the information, and figure out how to do better where the Advisory Council was concerned. He appreciated them explaining that the concern about the numbers wasn’t quite as great as what they thought. Mr. Milliken said that he had been concerned about the sample size and the nine youth that showed up. He was pleased to hear that there was a possibility of another meeting in the future to get more youth input. He would like to see that happen. He thanked CNA for their time. Chief Reynolds said that he had wanted to listen to everyone. He thanked everyone for their time and commitment and desire to be engaged. Mr. Wright had said a lot of things that resonated, in terms of taking ownership. He thought what they had concluded was that they had some area for better communication. They accomplished some of that that night. He didn’t want to commit CNA to anything. He knew they had done the initial site visits, but he knew when they talked on Tuesday night, that they did acknowledge that the youth visit was inadequate. They still don’t know how or why that happened. If they, as a Board, could get another visit arranged, it would be incumbent upon the Board and the PD, that CNA would come. They might not even have to wait until September, and they may not be able to do as comprehensive of interviews and they may not have as much staff on site. If they could get a date, location, and audience, they could correct course, at least in the areas that were insufficient. He asked if that was an accurate statement. Ms. Rodriguez said she talked to Mr. Monroe about this. She would have to look at the budget to see if it allowed for an extra site visit. That was why she was thinking that when they came back in September, they could weave in additional community meetings and another youth meeting, since they would be here anyway. That way, they were still providing people with the opportunity to have input. The report would be in draft form, so everything would not be said and done, and there would still be the chance to change/modify it if they needed to. Chief Reynolds said that challenge then, was to begin working towards that. They could set a date, get a location/locations. He wasn’t sure if they could actually go to the schools, but he was convinced that if they had enough time and the will, they could pack some venues. He was interested in focusing on solutions. He didn’t want to keep talking about where they might have mis-stepped, but where they could correct course. Mr. Jerue asked when an opportune time would be to get as many students as possible. Mr. Milliken said that he could be confident that the reason he was not at the meeting on Tuesday, was because the next morning he had an AP exam. That whole week was exam time nation-wide. This time of year was not optimal for trying to set a date with students. However, summer would be good. End of summer, moving into the beginning of the semester would be good. Mr. Jerue said that late August/beginning of September would probably be great then. Mr. Wright said that if they were looking at coming back in the Fall, they could look at the time frame of when that would be, and that should give them ample time to start talking at the district level and address the issue there. That would be the best way to address the most number of youth in a youth environment. Ms. Rodriguez said that another thought she had was that they had talked about developing/putting out the changes that the PD had made based off the initial observations. That would be a good opportunity to engage the community. Someone had mentioned the data matching the narrative of what they were hearing, and if they looked at the memos, there were certain things already being seen and matched with the community’s comments. Mr. Rickman said that in addition to the youth meetings they began to talk about for the fall, this was where they could come together and help CNA have an effective debriefing strategy, so that they could set up a series of meetings, including youth. If they started planning now, they should have it well set up by September. Chief Reynolds stated that he thought they had adequately addressed the site visit deficiency and a course correction to make sure they had good attendance in September and better representation of the broader community. From his perspective, as the Chief, he was the ‘recipient’ of the audit. It was for everyone though. They needed to change and there were a lot of areas that they had already begun changing in and would continue to make changes in such as policies, training, leadership, public engagement, problem-solving, racial disparities, and perceptions. He could go on and on. This audit was far from done and it would transform their organization. There had been iterative, ongoing changes, in the last few months directly tied to the audit. One of the things that he and Lieutenant Bruder would do a better job of was to command that narrative and be clearer about specifics and talk about it more openly with the Advisory Council and the community. It wasn’t unhealthy to have these debates and discussions. He was thankful that they were challenging and pushing in on the audit team and the PD. As an agency, and he as a Chief, needed to do a lot more listening and a lot less talking. So, it was awkward, because they weren’t supposed to be at the meetings or drive who was going to be there. They weren’t part of the process, and they needed to step way back. They had done that. That somewhat went for the City, as well. So, the more the Advisory Council got engaged and could get people at the table, the bigger of a difference it would make. It had been a very worthwhile discussion. If, at the end, the community felt like they didn’t have input or they didn’t feel listened to, they had failed and missed a phenomenal opportunity. This audit was a great opportunity, and he remained and continued to be very excited about it. He was very concerned, after the meeting last week, and after some of the issues had been raised, because it was clear that they weren’t communicating as well as they could or should be. One of the areas that had been touched on and was coming soon was the data assessments and the data would show that there were areas of concern. They didn’t to de-police or have officers afraid to do their jobs and they did that by looking at the policies and strategies. Ms. Outten thanked the Chief for his passion for the audit. It was important to get this right and she thought every member of the group wanted to serve to help get it right. She thought they were all sitting there waiting for an assignment. She appreciated CNA showing up on short notice and being respectful of their time and giving information. She thought it was a good conversation and one that would continue. Having no further business, the Citizen’s Police Advisory Council adjourned at 6:57 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary