Citizen's Police Advisory Council

Charleston Citizen Police Advisory Council June 30, 2020 A meeting of the Charleston Citizen Police Advisory Council was held this date beginning at 5:30 p.m., virtually over Zoom. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Thuane Fielding, Chair, Frank Walsh, Ryan Davis, Mary Alice Mack, Paul Tamburrino, George Palmer, Anne Janas, Melvin Ezell, Doris Grant, Jerome Harris, Joe Lysaght, Max Milliken, Camden Norris Shields, J. Robert Haley Also Present: Chief Reynolds, Steve Ruemelin, Lt. Kristy McFadden, Captain Chito Walker, Captain Dustin Thompson, Lieutenant Cretella, Wendy Stiver, Jennifer Cook Call to Order/ Welcome Ms. Fielding called the meeting to order. She stated that the minutes would be sent out by email to all members and they should read them before the next meeting so that they could be approved. Citizens Participation Period Ms. Fielding stated that a number of comments had been left online and one person who had requested to speak. Ms. Cook stated that the person who had signed up to speak was Emily Walter and unmuted her. Ms. Walter stated that on Sunday, May 31, there was a protest against police brutality that was met with police violence. What happened after the protest was an act that violated the rights of the Eastside community. Law enforcement agencies descended into a pre-dominantly Black neighborhood, blocked off streets with military vehicles, ordered citizens to go inside their homes despite the fact that the curfew was poorly advertised and hastily put in place and threw tear gas canisters into groups of people that included children and elderly. Despite call-outs from grass roots leaders, a press conference, and letters to local organizations, the response from the City had lacked integrity, urgency, and was disrespectful to the community members of the Eastside. The police violence witnessed was not an anomaly. Police had and continued to be harmful to marginalized communities in Charleston and across the country. They asked for a public apology with action steps that the Police Department would take to ensure this would never happen again. Ms. Fielding thanked Ms. Walter for her comments. She hoped Ms. Walter would continue to attend future meetings. Ms. Whitaker asked if they would like the full comments read or a summary. Members stated they had read them. Mr. Tamburrino stated that a summary would be appropriate. Ms. Fielding asked if Mr. Ruemelin would tell the major categories and then they could read from the summarization. Mr. Ruemelin stated that he went through all the comments and had a general breakdown. There were twelve comments specific to reallocation of public funds from the Police budget to other programs such as housing and education. There were ten comments regarding the response to the protest on May 30 and 31, similar to what Ms. Walter had stated. There were five comments regarding defunding the Police Department. There was one comment in favor of diverse recruiting practices. There was one 1 comment in favor of de-escalation training. There was one comment in favor of community policing. There was one comment regarding policing for profit. The gist of that was the perception that the City benefitted from the tickets written for minor offenses. One comment touched on the legalization of drugs and turning young people away from drug dealing and into other areas to make a living. One had to do with Black Lives Matter. One had dealt with access to the meeting. One was critical of the Mayor and stated that he argued against the audit when it was initially presented to Council. One comment had to deal with the treatment of a black victim in an investigation that occurred nine years ago. One comment related to Elijah Weatherspoon who was a gentleman that died in Mount Pleasant the previous week. There was an investigation going on. There was also a comment from an individual who offered to help fund body worn cameras and protection for officers. Chief Reynolds stated that the death of Elijah Weatherspoon was being investigated by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. A lot of people thought it was Mount Pleasant, but he wanted to clarify that DNR was investigating. Ms. Fielding asked if each member would review those public comments in their entirety and by the middle of the following week, they could send items they could have on the next meeting’s agenda to address those comments. She appreciated the community sending a number of comments they could discuss. It would be good to address the concerns. Introduction of Wendy Stiver and Michael Gillooly Chief Reynolds stated it had been a very busy month. It was great to see everyone and he thanked everyone who had helped get an almost full Council. He thanked Ms. Fielding for her leadership and civic commitment especially now. There was a lot of dialogue that they needed to lean into. He thought they needed to create work groups. Wendy Stiver was the Director of Research and Procedural Justice. She came to the City with a extensive experience. Ms. Stiver would be in charge of the audit and had already done a lot of work. Ms. Stiver stated that she was grateful to be there. She started on April 6th. It had been a challenge to learn the City and department through Zoom, but they had made a lot of progress. She retired from the Dayton Police Department in March. Her background was focused on evidence-based policing and research. Chief Reynolds stated she had 21 years in Dayton. She retired as a Major and had held almost every position in that department. She had done a lot with NIJ, and other police professional entities. She had overseen business districts and done a lot in the research and data analytic side of policing. She came to Charleston specifically for this position. Chief Reynolds stated that Mr. Gillooly also had a full career and excelled. He had been through the command ranks and had experience in internal affairs, policy, and operations. He was looking at policy, audit, compliance, etc. Mr. Gillooly stated he was honored to be there and help build upon the successes that were in place. He made the transition from Arizona to South Carolina. He was in Arizona for 33 years in law enforcement. It had been a whirlwind. He started on April 6th as well. He was excited about hitting the ground running. Ms. Fielding welcomed both to Charleston and stated they looked forward to what they had planned. Implementation of Racial Bias Audit recommendations 2 Ms. Stiver stated that Audit Final Report was published on November 7, 2019. After the audit report was published, CPD approved the two additional positions for herself and Mr. Gillooly. After the events in Ferguson, she became interested in diving further into some of the issues they were talking about now like race and policing and how to prevent tragic outcomes. She worked a lot with the NIJ. For the audit, they had 48 recommendations divided in to 72 specific tasks. There were five basic categories to look into. They were traffic stops and field contacts, use of force, complaints, community orientated policing practices, and recruitment/hiring/promotions. There were roughly the same number of tasks in each category. Right now, she had just finished a six-month update. They had completed 29 of those tasks which was 40% of the overall audit recommendation. She also looked at what they needed to continue making progress and found that fourteen of the tasks required an increase in capacity to do analysis. Seven percent of them required an increased capacity for community engagement. Thirteen percent of the tasks were impacted by the pandemic. The conditions they were living in made it more difficult to gather in groups and do the kinds of community policing they were accustomed to doing. They had made a lot of progress with the complaint section, they were at 91% and for community orientated policing, they were at 20%. A lot of that was because the audit recommended they needed to do more with community policing but that was a very difficult thing to measure. They weren’t going to declare anything done until they had a better system in place for the measurement which would take some creativity and work. On the analysis part, they had three key requirements for better analysis. The first was data infrastructure. They tended to have a lot of data that sat in different systems. Some of the systems were proprietary and the systems didn’t talk to each other very easily. So, what they had done, and were nearing completion on, was they had created a data lake, which was a centralized repository to store all of the data so that they could do the analysis easier. The second part was subject matter and analytical expertise. They were seeking to contract with independent researchers and institutions to do some of the high level analysis they needed in order to answer questions about disparity and bias. The third requirement was appropriate metrics to connect outcomes to policies, training, and effort. This was a big one. Some of the things they did were easy to measure. If they wanted to reduce the number of crashes that officers experienced, they could deliver a training class on driving and measure the outcome through reduction in crashes. But, other things were more difficult to measure such as cultural diversity and implicit bias. They could deliver the training, but it would be more challenging to figure out how to measure the outcome. They would make progress at different rates on some of the issues they faced depending on what they were trying to measure. For community engagement, policing in the last five years recognized that social distance was a problem. More distance between communities and police led to distrust. By that, she meant the inability to get out of cars and actually communicated with people in non-enforcement situations. They had worked hard in the last five years to close that social distance and create more opportunities for police to have positive interactions with the community. But, now they were living in a world where they had to social distance. They couldn’t get together in person and do things like ‘Coffee with a Cop’. So, the community outreach teams, under the leadership of Captain Thompson had been very creative in their efforts to overcome this. They were working on looking for better tools to interact with and get feedback from the community. Specifically, she was looking at tools used by companies. There were a lot of businesses that had been working for a long time to improve the trust and loyalty with their customers and to get better feedback to inspire innovation. So, hopefully they would have some things in place to give Captain Thompson some better tools to do that outreach. 3 For the pandemic impact on the audit progress, people in the community had been refocused on taking care of their families. Their calls and crimes had declined slightly since all of this had started. The Police Department had to make a lot of adjustments with staffing and training, and meeting the community’s needs. The Chief would tell you that they never stopped working and that was absolutely correct, but it had posed some challenges in making progress on the audit. They were working through it and it was definitely giving them opportunities to look at the way they did things and improve upon them. One of the things that concerned her, from a research and analytical perspective was that they didn’t know when some of the data sets would start returning to normal or pre-pandemic levels, or if they would. There may be some things that changed permanently. They may have to adjust the way they collected and looked at data, particularly when it came to calls for service. Part of this was to take the audit, which gave good specific recommendations, but they also wanted to create a road map for the next five years. They had worked with the College of Charleston to put together a strategic leadership plan. It was done collaboratively with every leader in every division of the department. Many of the recommendations and objectives from the audit and Illumination Project were rolled into the strategic plan. They were at a stage where they were pushing it out internally and being very careful and thoughtful with how they communicated the plan to officers and supervisors. They didn’t just want to send it out in an email and expect people to read it and believe in it. They had made some videos and created some infographics to communicate to the officers that they were all committed to the plan and they expected their commitment, as well. If they had any questions, she could answer them. Ms. Fielding thanks Ms. Stiver for the time she took to prepare the presentation. She said that Mr. Haley had sent a few questions. The first was whether there were any people of color that applied for the two new positions. Chief Reynolds stated there was some diversity in the selection of Ms. Stiver and Ms. Stiver was by far the most qualified candidate. Another gentleman stated that initially, they just looked at the resumes. They didn’t look at gender or anything like that. But, there were male and females that did apply, but didn’t know the races. Ms. Fielding said the real concern was with the comments they received and the discussions they had in previous meetings about the diversification of the Police Department to bring about a better understanding of people from various backgrounds. Another question was whether the pandemic was impacting in a negative way to the Police Department or the current trust situation they had. Ms. Stiver said that they had done so much work to do community outreach through interpersonal interactions. She thought that was important. It seemed like every time they had conversations with the community, one of the things they heard most commonly was that people wanted to see the police when there wasn’t a problem. That was a contributing factor to not only trust in the police but general resiliency in communities. With the pandemic, they were having a lot less contact with each other, and when they did have contact, their faces were covered. It was challenging and they had to work harder to figure out other ways to interact in digital spaces to continue to build those relationships. She liked what their community engagement team was doing and hopefully they could continue to give them tools to do what they were doing. Ms. Fielding asked if under updates they would be talking about some of the community things going on. Ms. Stiver said that Captain Thompson knew a lot more about the efforts in the community. Ms. Fielding said that they were trying to get to the crux of the matter which was the relationship between the police department and citizens. That concern had heightened because of the recent activities going on, as well as what had happened in prior times in Charleston. Ms. Grant stated that she knew that community engagement was a common phrase that the police department wanted to engage in. She was looking on the website about internships and she thought 4 that internships were a wonderful opportunity to bring diversity into the police department. They may have to look at it a little differently than how they had approached it before. They could reach out to the HCBU’s and invite students and youth to come in and be a part of an internship program. They could even offer a monetary incentive because many of those students couldn’t just volunteer their time to be an intern. They needed to be compensated for it. That would be an excellent opportunity to build an interest in the police department and for young people to get to know what went on and actually have a hands-on experience to share with their peers. Captain Thompson stated that they did reach out to those HBCU’s for recruiting purposes and internships and the recruiting team could speak later on the progress of that. That was an idea that had come up in the past. Mr. Milliken stated that he had read the audit and heard Ms. Stiver state that it was 40% of the way completed. He asked if she could elaborate on what tasks had been completed. Ms. Stiver said she could give a couple of examples. 2.1 recommended that CPD should establish a strategic plan for the traffic unit. That plan had been created under Captain Thompson’s leadership. Another example would be the recommendation in 13.2 and 14.1 which were the requirement that supervisors review body- worn camera footage for all use of force incidents and also the establishment of a formal compliance and auditing process to ensure that officers complied with the BWC policy. Both of those measures were included in a body-camera policy that was revised on April 17, 2020. There was a requirement in that policy for supervisors not only to review that video when they investigated use of force incidents, but they also had an auditing process. They were randomly selecting and viewing body camera video to make sure that the officers were in compliance with all of the policies. Another recommendation, item 17, suggested that the retention period for body-worn camera video was not long enough. The policy extended the retention period for body-worn camera video to 400 days which was more than twice the length of time that the ACLU recommended to keep video. That was so that if a citizen came and made a complaint about an incident that happened, there would be a greater likelihood that the video would still exist in the system for a longer period of time. That gave them greater accountability and transparency. That had been done. Those were just some of the examples she had. The spreadsheet with all of their progress had been updated and would be released on the website. Mr. Harris stated that he had a comment on community engagement and its interface with the strategic plan. From looking at the slide, it sounded like the plan was developed with conversations internally. He asked what community engagement was there in terms of reviewing and commenting on the strategic plan. A gentleman stated that they partnered with the College of Charleston and the idea was that they would help the department look at they were doing. Before they developed the plan, they wanted to bring the community together and hit different parts of the City, but because of the pandemic, they were unable to do that. They were in the crossroads of publishing the plan or waiting until the pandemic was over with. They thought it was best to move forward with the plan. If there were comments, they would be happy to add to it. It was a living document and would change. Mr. Harris said that they could have consulted with the Advisory Council in that process. He knew there was a number of organizations that could have looked at the document and make comment. He was concerned that the metric of community engagement was how many times they talked to people in a neighborhood. In other locations where people had been changing policies, they provided an opportunity for some people to be involved in review of the policies. He thought that the definition of the who might be a content expert needed to be examined and challenged to see if they were comfortable with it as they moved through. If he looked at what they said they wanted to do as far as community engagement, one of the major documents driving that was the strategic plan, and the 5 community hadn’t had a role in that. Chief Reynolds said he agreed with what Mr. Harris said and appreciated it. He thought that as they moved forward, he would describe the process as going from listening sessions to work sessions. They were listening and working now. They had to get that input to have a good product. They had to engage more. If they did the audit right, they would constantly be seeking input and seeking feedback. He didn’t think there was anything more important than community engagement and building trust and they had a lot of work to do. Just CPAC alone was a step in the right direction and he appreciated those comments. Mr. Harris said something they could consider was a Policy/Procedure review subcommittee of the CPAC body. Ms. Fielding said that the Chief had mentioned work groups several times. She asked if that could be a work group established immediately. Chief Reynolds said that it would be their committee, but he would embrace that. Ms. Fielding asked who the direct contact would be. Chief Reynolds said that Ms. Stiver would be the direct contact and having a work group would be a great start. Ms. Fielding asked the members to email her by the following Friday if they would be interested in serving on that sub-committee. Ms. Stiver stated that one of the audit recommendations was that CPAC serve in the role of providing community feedback to the department on policies. She put together a rough outline and she would send that. Ms. Fielding said she didn’t hear much in depth discussion about cultural diversity awareness and education with the police officers. She asked if that would be captured under another item they would talk about. Ms. Stiver said it would be. In addition, several of the audit items addressed training on implicit bias and cultural engagement and some other issues. She would be working with Captain Cretella to look at what’s out there in terms of those options to keep that in the forefront of their training plan every year. Ms. Fielding said she was wondering about short-term goals and capturing low hanging fruit so they could see if there were any assessments done of the officers to determine their position is the right fit. Ms. Stiver said that would be part of the training plan. There was some training schedule for the next month. She had been taking cultural diversity and implicit bias classes for many years and not all training was necessarily going to make a difference in how they did business. They had to make sure that their outcomes were delivering on their promises, so they were looking at training that may be able to demonstrate that. They wanted evidence that it would work to achieve the goals it was promising. They had some things coming. Department’s response to COVID 19 Ms. Fielding said she understood about Covid and the impact it had, but asked if they would look to see if there was an opportunity for them to socially distance and meet somewhere in the community in the future. Captain Thompson said that was something they talked about at the last meeting before Covid hit, that they would branch out to some other areas. He would look at that. Chief Reynolds stated he first wanted to acknowledge the comment that was made about internships. He was a big believer in that. He was actually hired as an intern. Internships were good tools to get more diversity and a variety of other things. For the response to Covid, everyone was aware of the tremendous impact it had on the City. It was crushing the business community. He would stick to the Police Department. They immediately did research and had been in contact with other agencies that were hit a lot worse than South Carolina. He was able to learn from those agencies about the seriousness of Covid and the steps that could be taken to protect their officers and stay in service. New 6 York City was crushed and they had a lot of deaths in their Police Department. They had huge numbers of people out because of it. Very early on, they developed the protocol within the department regarding sanitation, wearing masks, how to respond to calls for service, handling calls remotely. There were a lot of different ways that they staffed. They were able to tele-work for some positions and do AB shifts. They had three cases over several months. In the last week-ten days, they had an additional 11 positive cases. Most of those cases were sworn officers. They had a central point of contact who worked closely with MUSC and the HR department. If someone wasn’t sure, they could go to that person and have total confidentiality. Public safety had been given a priority in testing and they were able to get quick results. There was a lot of contact tracing when someone tested positive. He believed they had done well, but he did believe that because of different events and situations and young people becoming more relaxed, it was part of why they were having the spike. They were watching it very closely. The Police had never slowed down. Because schools and other entities had been closed during this period, it had given them additional resources which had helped them be able to do other things with the high tempo. It was an interesting time in that some officers had family members compromised with their heath. Some of their employees had compromised conditions, so they had done a lot to accommodate them and have alternative work assignments, so that they weren’t on the front lines or exposed. It had taken a lot of work. One of his philosophies was that ‘the opposite of fear was good communication and good knowledge.’ So, they constantly talked with families, had videos and updates. They had done a lot to get everyone the correct PPE. They did temperature checks and had since the beginning. It had been difficult doing so many meetings through Zoom. The long-term effect of this was not good for the economy, community relationships, and it was an added layer of challenge. Ms. Fielding stated that they did appreciate Captain Thompson, Steve Ruemelin, Ms. Whitaker, and Ms. Cook to get it arranged so that they could have this meeting my Zoom, as well as open up the opportunity for the community to participate. Hopefully, they would be able to get the community participation period improved if they were still in this environment. Captain Thompson stated that as a reminder, if citizens wanted to participate, they could leave a comment by 12 p.m. the day of and also give them an opportunity to speak if they signed up. Department’s response to death of George Floyd and protests Chief Reynolds stated that before the protests and the riots began, he made a very public, declarative statement about his disdain for what happened in Minneapolis. He felt like he was very clear that they would never tolerate such behavior here. Mr. Floyd was murdered, as far as he was concerned. It was a minor crime. He was handcuffed, facedown, wasn’t resisting. A white officer with a uniform not too different than his own put his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck and had it on his neck for almost nine minutes and ultimately, that caused his death. He cannot say he had ever seen anything that bad in his lifetime. He had seen a lot of bad things. Now, their entire nation, and entire world, had seen a young African American man killed by a white police officer, unnecessarily, violently, and inappropriately. It was deplorable and he couldn’t begin to describe how much he disagreed with that event and other events. 7 Even before the protests began, he stated that this would set them back in law enforcement and it had in a very profound way. What happened in Minneapolis would affect them for years to come. There was a very loud and clear voice that was stating they wanted to be heard. They wanted leadership to listen. What he had said to people that he respected in the BLM movement was that they had the attention and they were listening. He believed over the last two years, that they were focused on reform, justice, accountability, and transparency. He was passionate about that. If they listened, and he had been trying to, that’s what he thought this movement was all about. Anyone who didn’t raise their hand and stand up against things like this, there was something wrong with them. They had to be productive, and at some point he hoped they could unite and focus on the change that was needed and accomplish something meaningful out of all of this. One of the comments received talked about releasing the additional audio that existed that was FOIA’d. There were 911 tapes released and another audio of the actual operations of the police that night. That would be released in the next day or so. There was a Public Safety meeting the next day and some of this would be discussed at that meeting. Ms. Fielding asked if he would insert a statement regarding the reason why the tapes hadn’t been released yet. Chief Reynolds stated that the operational tempo of the police department right now was more than he had ever had between protests, riots, Covid, and other things. Every day, they were doing their best to secure the City and keep it safe. He said that in the context of the recordings, because when you released a recording it had to be reviewed to make sure you weren’t releasing information that was private. If there were confidential pieces of information, it had to be reviewed and it took a long time. In some cases, there had to be a redaction. They hadn’t had time to do all of that up to this point. There was nothing they had to hide, but it did take time to do the reviews. To the riot on that Saturday, May 30th, there was a very violent riot that occurred following what he would describe as a mostly peaceful protest. There was a protest that began that day at 2:00 p.m. at Marion Square and it grew in size. They hadn’t had any information or indication that they would have a crowd anywhere near the size that showed up. It had been described as many as a couple thousand people. They marched for several hours. Ultimately, that crowd dispersed right before a thunderstorm. Many of those individuals left and went home. There were others that arrived and joined another group after dark, and it was a very difficult night in Charleston. There were people injured. Police officers were assaulted and hit with bricks and bottles and a variety of other objects including skateboards. There were business owners that may never be able to open again because they were devastated and assaulted. Not only were their glass windows and shops broken, people were carrying guns in this crowd and they started fires. They burned police vehicles and did many other things that they didn’t have time to get into. That lasted until the early morning hours and they were able to thankfully put out all the fires. In the end, there were not serious injuries or deaths that occurred. The very next day, there were additional protests. They were not all peaceful and there were people in those protests that were throwing bottles and other objects. There were warnings and they did close Marion Square at one point. There were approximately 40 people that were arrested in that process. Nobody was brutalized. He thought that was one of the comments read tonight. He wasn’t aware of any of that and if someone was aware of it, he’d like to know about it and they would investigate any and all complaints to that effect. So, that was another long day, and he could tell them that it hadn’t ended. It 8 had been over a month and it was a very high pace tempo because each time there was a protest or an event, they had to staff. They had partnered with many other agencies in the area to help keep the City safe. They had a job to protect peaceful protestors. He was passionate about allowing people to voice their opinion and First Amendment right. But, he emphasized that it was important that people do that responsibly, peacefully, and in a way that was within the confines of the law. There were some people, and thankfully it was a much smaller number of people, who chose to be a criminal element. The last he checked, he believed they had 76 warrants issued for those people to include felony charges for inciting a riot, arson, destruction of property, assault, and others. As a follow-up to that, they had been working with FBI and ATF and had arrested 23 individuals. Several of those would probably be federally charged and go to prison for a significant amount of time. So, on one hand they had the responsibility to protect people’s right to speak and be heard. He agreed with most of the messaging. It was consistent with the work they were trying to accomplish. On the other hand, they had an obligation to protect the City from violence, assaults, and fires. They had to stand in that gap. Ms. Grant said that the Chief related the violence that happened to Black Lives Matter. She wasn’t sure that all of those persons who engaged in criminal activity represented that group. The correlation might not be a fair one. Chief Reynolds stated that if he made that analogy, he didn’t mean to and thanked her for the correction. He had great respect for people he had met who were part of the movement. He agreed with the majority of what they were trying to accomplish and their cry for justice, accountability, reform, and transparency. He agreed that there was a completely separate element and most that were at the protest and other protests since had been amazing. Most of those he visited on King Street were part of the actual protest because they support Black Lives Matter and they were shocked when, later in the night, a separate group began to break their windows and assault them. Ms. Fielding asked if chokeholds and knees to the neck had been banned in the Charleston Police Department as a result of what happened. Chief Reynolds stated it was banned a long time ago, way before any of this. There had been a lot of information circulating demanding different tenants. Among those were chokeholds and knees on the neck. They wanted to go way beyond that. They had already done the majority of those things and they weren’t interested in press releases or photo-ops. The audit went way beyond any of those basic things. Ms. Fielding stated that she knew the audit picked up on the fact that there might have been traffic stops. One comment submitted tonight addressed that and stated they had been stopped a number of times. She asked if anything had been done to reevaluate or reassess with officers, the reasons to stop people and not to aggravate or provoke. Chief Reynolds said he was looking at Mr. Harris because he thought each of these items could be a work group at some point. In the interest of time, he wanted Captain Thompson to talk about some things they had done. They weren’t anywhere near where they needed to be, but were in a much better place than they were before. Captain Thompson stated that one thing they did get every other week was a report from their analyst that showed the number of tickets written on each stop for each officer. One of the complaints was stacking tickets on traffic stops. That was being monitored. The second part of that was that the traffic commander now received a report from the analyst as well to not just write random tickets in different areas of the City. The traffic commander was getting a monthly report for hot spot collision mapping. One good idea that came out 9 at the end of last year was to perform a pilot project where they could actually assist the individual if pulled over for a light being out. That was part of community outreach, but it had slowed down because of Covid. Chief Reynolds stated that they had a new director of the traffic division, Kristy McFadden. Captain Thompson also brought a lot with community engagement. They also had a different footprint when it came to body-worn cameras. If someone complained, for example, they were being proactive in making sure that got investigated and they were doing what they needed to be. With the new leadership and new strategic plan, for the traffic division, it was more focused on reducing death and collisions, not so much on the numbers. Ms. Fielding said it sounded like they may need to have another sub-committee focused on traffic stops. Mr. Tamburrino stated that the Chief made a comment that they didn’t publicize changes in policy they had already made because they didn’t want to highlight it. Perception was reality. Right now, what the disconnect really was trust. Maybe they could have a communication process, such as a police blotter. He knew they couldn’t identify names, but they could have a periodic misconduct report so that the public would see, without it being forced, the results of the police departments own actions. That way, they were communicating about themselves rather than always a response to a demand for information. That would go a long way for the trust. Chief Reynolds stated that two things he touched on were transparency and accountability and contributed towards public trust. It was addressed in the audit and that was to post all of their policies and updates online and that they did post their disciplinary process. Mr. Tamburrino said it was important to know that everyone had policies, but that they could show the results of the actions compared to policies to show people they weren’t just checking boxes. They could show the enforcement and the results of the enforcement behind it. Captain Cretella stated that he was over the Professional Standards Division which included internal affairs and training. To touch on the complaints, the majority of disciplinary action came from internal rather than external because they were doing the proactive work and body camera reviews. They were finding problems before it became external. They had the 2019 end of year report that they would release within the next week or so. In that, it would talk about the use of force data, who was using forcing and what type of force. It also went into the administrative investigations and gave a snapshot of how many they had and what the outcome was of those. Mr. Tamburrino said that the public looked at how they were policing themselves. In the incident in Minneapolis, one of the biggest outcries was the inaction of everybody else around him and how they weren’t policing each other. They earned trust when they policed each other and said ‘that behavior is wrong’, rather than reinforce it with the ‘blue wall’. Chief Reynolds stated that EPIC training was Ethical Policing Is Courageous. They got that from New Orleans and started it about a year ago. They have a duty to intervene in their policies. EPIC training was something that required this. That was one of the things that got him in that situation because you looked around and asked why no one else was doing anything. He wouldn’t have been able to stand watching that for one second and they had four officers right there. They went over those scenarios. Those officers could have saved a life that day. They could have saved someone’s career and they could have saved the public trust. That was because no one else did anything. EPIC training was a four hour block and it was all scenarios and interactive. Lieutenant Cretella stated that during the protest, they had an incident where an officer was in a verbal exchange with a citizen. Another officer saw where it was going and she intervened. It wasn’t always the most critical situations. 10 Mr. Milliken stated that he had a question for the Chief regarding the protest on May 31st in Marion Square. He mentioned that he wanted to get into a conversation with citizens and protect them and allow them to be heard. There had been an arrest made that day that had received some national attention of Gee Jordan. He was 23 years old and detained and arrested in Marion Square. He wanted some kind of explanation as far as what the charges were and why he was arrested that day. Chief Reynolds stated that there was more to that situation that what people saw on social media. He had lunch with Mr. Jordan and reached out to him. He was an extremely bright young man and he hoped they could work together. Mr. Jordan was a part of the Black Lives Matter movement and extremely committed to meaningful change and had great questions about what they were doing and wanted to help create a better City and more equity. In terms of the actual incident and what people saw, they didn’t see there were individuals throwing bottles and other things that were happening right around that same time frame. They didn’t see that they had warned people that they had to leave the park. They learned from the experiences on Saturday night and were a little more assertive and tried to get ahead of some things before they got as bad as they had on Saturday. At the end of the day, they had a job to do. They issued warnings. They didn’t brutalize anyone, but they did make some arrests. Mr. Milliken asked what the charges were. Chief Reynolds stated that different people had different charges. He could get that to him. Mr. Harris stated that he wanted to make a comment on the virus and its impact on morale and wear and tear on the department. He asked what might need to be done to support the officers and department in that. Chief Reynolds thanked him for that question. It had never been a more difficult time in policing. He had talked with officers who were completely emotionally broken and with great leaders who were no longer officers, chiefs, or sheriffs who had never seen a situation like this. He knew their communities needed them, but it was still good to hear that. It was very hard. What happened in Minneapolis, rightfully so, had an effect on the rest of the nation. People were angry and people had been impacted in many different situations. They had a lot of room for improvement in policing and areas they needed to be addressed. Officers were struggling and some were leaving. There were little things they were doing like making sure they were hydrating and feeding and giving their officers rest. There were some officers who went two weeks with no days off. He asked them to imagine doing that and having people villainize you. He had never worked with such good people as the men and women in this organization. Somewhere in the middle would unite them. They could get united around meaningful change and embracing the audit. He thought they needed to have thick skin and to listen more and talk less. But, he would be remiss to not acknowledge how hard it had been on their officers. Ms. Fielding stated that the members of Council recognized that these were challenging times and a lot of times they couldn’t address the problem until it was right in front of them. They wanted to ensure that they could work through these issues and show improvements in different areas. Screening process for new hires Deferred for next meeting. Cultural Diversity Training for officers 11 Lieutenant Cretella stated that for this, they had three big topics to cover. It wasn’t fair to just talk about it, but they were looking to find a platform to do one of these classes remotely. That way, they could see what they were talking about and training. They wanted to get everyone involved. The first one was started back in 2012 and everyone had gone through that training. That class focused on implicit bias, hoping that if they had any internal bias, they could hopefully change those and see those changes. The second was the civil rights presentation. Currently, every officer in the department cut loose for independent duty had gone through that training. There were only two police core classes that hadn’t gone through that training and that was due to Covid restrictions. Once the presenters felt comfortable, they would do that. That training talked about Charleston, the civil rights movement impact on the City and the Police Department. It was also designed to talk about how it impacted policing in this area and how they got to where they were. It gave great historical data because many officers weren’t from Charleston. The last one was a new training they started in partnership with the FBI. It was multi- culturism for law enforcement and talked about all the different cultures they had in America and the different perceptions. They had also done training with the LGBTQ community and they realized they had some issues in that community with trust because of how they were treated in the past. Once Covid restrictions were lifted, they would encourage feedback and attendance at some of those trainings. They might be able to learn something and the officers could learn from them as well. Officer development and promotion process. Deferred for next meeting. Scheduling Next Meeting and Topics for Next Agenda. Ms. Fielding thanked everyone for their time and commitment. Ms. Stiver said that there had been a discussion about meeting every other month. But, she thought they needed to meet more frequently. Within the next month would be ideal. Mr. Milliken said he agreed. Ms. Fielding thanked community members who had joined in and listened. They could feel free to send an email to their representative or directly to Ms. Whitaker, so they could be sure they were inclusive of all comments. Having no further business, the meeting adjourned at 7:33 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary 12