Citizens’ Engagement Advisory and Review Commission (CEARC)

City of Hampton, VA Meeting Minutes Citizens’ Engagement Advisory Commission Members: Sanket Acharya, Steve Bond (ACM), Chris Bowman (Co-Chair), Steve Brown (Chair), Celeste Carter (LOA), Larry Enscore, Leroy Foster, Kimberly Humphrey, Sallie Marchello, Henry Mills, Will Moffett (Councilman), Ahmed Noor, Shawn O’Keefe Staff: Shelly Thomas Cappe – Program Coordinator, CUC Attendance: Sanket Acharya, Steve Bond, Chris Bowman (Co-Chair), Steve Brown (Chair), Leroy Foster, Sallie Marchello, Ahmed Noor, Shawn O’Keefe Absent: Celeste Carter (LOA), Kim Humphrey, Will Moffett, Larry Enscore, Henry Mills __________________________________________________________________ Date: January 19, 2016 Time: 6:30pm Venue: Veterans Conference Room; Rupert Sargent Building - Hampton __________________________________________________________________ Call to Order: Chair – Steve Brown at 6:30pm Agenda: See Attached **All presentation materials (i.e. PowerPoint, Charts, Graphs, Handouts, etcetera…) will be attached or distributed Action Item: Approval of Meeting Minutes (November 17, 2015) Approval of November 17th, 2015 minutes with 2 corrections noted (absence of Dr. Noor and Steve Bond) Motion for approval of minutes with stated corrections - Passed Item 1: Reports and Updates Process of removing Non-Active Members: Steve Bond: CEAC has discussed this and passed the by-laws and I can tell you that City Council is trying to complete all major appointments in the March timeframe. Mr. Foster of the membership committee gave a presentation upon the last meeting. I spoke to Robin McCormick and she is moving CEAC to the Boards and Commissions webpage so it will have a stand-alone page. CEAC will be using the same process as the other boards and commissions along with an interview process. As far as removing members, what normally happens is the Chair sends a letter on behalf of the commission. Once that’s done, the Clerk of Council, Katherine Glass, sends a final letter that states – if we don’t hear back from you by a set date, council will remove you from the commission. And at the March meeting, whomever the commission is considering will be place in that persons’ place. Now, the question for this group is, do you want to remove these members before we have recommendations. This process can be conducted separately or at the same time. I will draft the letter and you can “tweak” it as you see fit. Steve Brown: My thought is to remove those members before the next meeting. Here’s the reason, they don’t come anyway. It doesn’t hurt the composition of the group in terms of meeting and what we do here. We can remove them and then identify who else needs to be around the table. Reading excerpt from November 17, 2015 meeting minutes – page 3 Sally Marchello: 2-3 months ago we were asked to bring names of individuals we would recommend to join this board. I don’t think we ever collected those names. Again, thinking about what might be missing from this group demographically, I can suggest some people. At some point we may need to do some targeted recruitment. Shawn O’Keefe: Possibly for the next meeting we can look at the demographics of this group and the demographics of the city and determine where some of our main gaps are and come up with some strategies. Steve Brown: I think this is where we are now; looking at our gaps and thinking strategically. Thinking on what we need to do demographically – who needs to be around this table to balance out [this commission]; age, racial mix, young people or experience. Hopefully, in the occasion of an incident, the people around the table discussing the incident will look like the people who may have been involved community wise. Shawn O’Keefe: Drawing upon my experience as the chair of CUC, our letters were sent out in July, and by August, those folks were gone. As far as recruitment, we need to get that data if we can – the demographics of Hampton and of the board; signaling what the major gaps are. Leroy Foster: That is what you asked Henry, Will and me to do. The demographics are on the webpage. http://hampton.gov/index.aspx?nid=90 Dr. Noor: What is the maximum number of members? Leroy Foster: The by-law says 13. Steve Bond: I think the by-law says there will be 13 ideally and there was no maximum. Steve Brown: I was thinking 15 – 13 members and two representatives from City Council who are non- voting. Sallie Marchello: Counting the member names listed on the agenda. Kathy Johnson, Pat Uribes, and Thurman Clark Steve Brown: Please send to Leroy Foster a current roster for CEAC. 13 voting members; 1 representative from City Council and 1 from City Manager’s offices; totaling 15 – 2 are non-voting. Sallie Marchello: Celeste is on a leave of absence, do we bring someone in temporarily or no? Steve Brown: If she factors into the number, from my experience, that position remains open because even though she is on leave she is available for other work. We can leave that “as is” unless there is opposition against it. Steve Bond: Considering recruiting strategy, if we are going to use the city’s board bank applications, whomever you encourage to apply should go ahead and fill-in the application. The board bank is being improved and the list is being refreshed, so now is a good time to go online. Leroy Foster: I recall conversation about how we would go about targeting individuals which included an interview process. Steve Brown: Yes, that was one of the strategies. Then it was suggested that we specifically target Hampton University. Steve Bond: If, as a group or as individuals we see that there are individuals whom we want to apply and want to be part of the group, at that point, it’s incumbent upon us to encourage those from Hampton University to apply to the board bank and get routed through and become part of the board bank for this committee to consider. Chris Bowman: I believe that Dr. Hammond is going to step-down from her current position. The rumor is that she will be returning to this area. We may want to encourage her to return. Steve Bond: She would have to be a legal resident of Hampton to be considered. Steve Brown: Similar to CSB there are individuals in a “board bank” or “pool” to choose from. If and when she returns and becomes a resident here again, if any member resigns – depending on the selection process, she would be seriously considered. And she would be in the “pool”. Sometimes, when you have individuals in the “pool” you can involve them in the work of the group. They may not be voting members, but would be up to date, showing continued interest, in the event of vacancy. Steve Bond: As part of the board bank application process, individuals can select what boards and commissions they are interested in. For example, the mayor’s committee is looking to fill some slots. They just requested from our office a list from the board bank and we gave them probably that are still in the board bank who identified [the mayor’s committee] as a place to serve. Shawn O’Keefe: Are we thinking of a Hampton University student? Steve Brown: Yes, because the youth voice is very important. We must be very strategic on who that young person will be. There are times when youth and adults don’t work well together. We need someone who is mature as a young person. Shawn O’Keefe: Just for clarification, the HU student would have to be a resident, correct? Sallie Marchello: The issue of residency is important. University students tend to be transient. We need participants who are long-term in the community. I can think of a number of young people who were active in the city and who are still here. They would be excellent candidates for this position. They are not HU students, but are students somewhere. The nice thing about that, to your point is, that they have shown that they can work within some of these structures and reach their peers. Communications and Community Engagement Steve Brown: Larry Enscore is not here to speak for Communications and Community Engagement. We all agreed that the talking points were great. We changed the wording surrounding “law enforcement”. It seemed that we specifically targeted law enforcement and that our work will be centered around law enforcement. We all know that it is likely that any incident would occur around law enforcement. No one is oblivious to that. We need to be more rounded than that so that we can deal with any issue in the city that is divisive, or any adjective that describes citizens’ at odds with one another. The next steps will be how to communicate to the community. Now, it’s imperative that we get out into the community. Many people who would never have thought of a citizens’ review or police review board are begging for them now. If we are going to be effective in our work, we have to at least let citizens know that we exist and why we exist. I am asking now, how do we get the message out? Are we now ready to do Round Robin or put communications out on the websites? When the NAACP and other community groups begin to ask what this group does, I don’t want us to be some secret order. I want us to be proud of the work that we do and not ashamed to say that although we don’t have all the answers, we can calm this community until the right answers are given, reports are accurate and people can make their own judgements. Now to the ACM, are we now ready to do more media and communicating to constituents? Chris Bowman: I think that was Larry’s next charge. We’re hoping that he will bring those recommendations back to us. Steve Bond: The only thing I see on the talking points is second from the bottom. “Why is CEAC necessary? FROM THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT Why is CEAC necessary? The great thing about CEAC and our ability to advise The Council is that we are an independent appointed commission. Meaning we can say what we feel would be the absolute best for the city and its citizens, without any political repercussions. We can talk straight with the people of Hampton, City Council, the local government, and law enforcement, trying to attain the best possible outcome. REVISED Why is CEAC necessary? The great thing about CEAC and our ability to advise The Council is that we are an impartial appointed commission. Meaning we can convey what we feel would be the absolute best for the city and its citizens, without any political repercussions. We can talk straight with the people of Hampton, City Council, and the local government trying to attain the best possible outcome. Steve Bond: Pointing out that as council appoints every member, they can also be removed. Chris Bowman: That would be a “political repercussion”. Steve Bond: I don’t anticipate that that would happen, but that is the fact of the matter. Steve Brown: That line needs to be changed? Steve Bond: Probably. Sallie Marchello: The intended concept is probably okay, but you’re right about the wording. Shawn O’Keefe: Sanket and I were work on the verbiage. In order to counter the narrative that CEAC is a “puppet for City Council”, we were looking for verbiage that is says this is clearly not true. We may have been appointed by council, but we certainly are not spokespersons for council. Steve Bond: Council put you here because they want your honest opinion and your honest advice and advising them. Sallie Marchello: That means we can speak candidly, openly and we can make observations that we see and we believe are in the best interest of the community. Maybe we can just leave off that last prepositional phrase and expound on the first section. Steve Bond: This is why council has appointed you. They expect nothing less than [candid observations] that from leaders of the community. Steve Brown: Do you have a recommendation? Steve Bond: I recommend exactly what Sallie just said. [Take out the ending prepositional phrase “without any political repercussions”. Leaving, “Meaning we can say what we feel would be the absolute best for the city and its citizens”]. Sallie Marchello: I added “report our observations candidly” adding to “say what we feel would be the absolute best for the city and its citizens” and just delete “without any political repercussions”. Steve Brown: Once this is done, then Larry and Robin will get back together and give us a plan on how we can mass communicate with the community. Brown: Noor: Coming back to the subject of the meetings. I see that the meetings can be either, as you mentioned, informing the people and the city about our presence and our role and what we can do to help them, but it can also be helping neighborhoods that have problems. Certain neighborhoods have more problems than others. We can essentially suggest for example; meeting in neighborhoods with proper organizations within the city that helps in alleviating problems – high crime being one of the problems. Is that what you mean in addition to having the website convey more clearly what the role of this committee is? Steve Brown: Yes, once the community knows what we do, people will know how to tap us. The clearer we can be in what we do and not muddy the water, then folks that may want to contact CEAC will actually know why they are contacting us. We can’t be all things to all people. Our work specifically is to keep our community together, deal with racially divisive types of issues, dispel rumors and present as much fact as we can – giving people an opportunity to make their own decisions, based upon as much information we can get as accurately as possible. They can make their own choices and decisions. I think when they see what we are designed to do here. People will defer contacting us if you want someone to come pick up your trash tote. But they may call if they see a high crime in your area and there are issues with police and mistrust. They may want to tap CEAC and have us look at that. And we can make salient recommendations to city council, the police chief or whomever. And then it’s their purview to deal with it. We can’t enforce, we can’t make laws, but we can suggest - saying, you may want to look through a different lens on this one, because this is what we hear from the constituents. I think that is what we are designed to do. Ahmed Noor: Yes, we are taking the first steps to build on these Steve Brown: I think we are designed to start conversations and get folks talking. Ahmed Noor: Do we have information on neighborhoods that need special attention? Steve Brown: I don’t have it. I only have it if I need it. Steve Bond: This is where we return to focusing on the role of CEAC. There is a Safe and Clean, which is a city-wide policy group that deals with making sure all neighborhoods are safe and their clean. It deals with all of the departments in the city that deals with those particular issues. The way that it was originally structured is that, CUC was the arm that grabs neighborhoods, talks about issues of diversity and does most of the up-front work, the proactive work of getting them together and get these conversations started. The CEAC was really the group that is separate and apart from that. If there is something that happens CEAC reacts to that. The way it was originally envisioned is that the work of CEAC is you, and whatever you did to be identified as a community leader to make sure that you continue to do that and be engaged so that if something happens, you are still a trusted member of that community in order to respond to that. It wasn’t envisioned normally as the proactive arm. It is separate from the CUC. Sallie Marchello: I don’t see us going out to try to save the neighborhoods. One of the reasons that we wanted to have talking points is to be able to speak to them [community members]. I agree, I don’t see us scheduling visits per se. Steve Brown: Once we put our information out to the media, we’ll have opportunities to share with groups. NAACP, for example, asked us what we did, how do we exist, who chose us and who says you speak for me, etcetera? We were obliged to go talk to them. Directed to Steve Bond: Is it possible to have someone from safe and clean come here, are you “up on that”? I hear much about safe and clean and don’t know much about it. Maybe you can give us an overview and talk about some of the issues that they are dealing with. Steve Bond: About 4-5 months ago I gave a presentation to council. I will give the abbreviated version of that presentation. Update from Sanket Acherya Steve Brown: Some time ago, Sanket came to the board meeting about an issue in the community. Was that resolved? Some of your colleagues in business were concerned about robbery. Sanket Acharya: The last meeting on November 17, 2015, Will Moffett and police chief, Terry Sult came to speak with me after the conclusion of the meeting. After that conversation, we set a meeting between all of the 7-11 franchisees in Hampton and Newport News. All the franchise owners came in. We had over 100 people together in that meeting. Since that meeting, in Hampton, there have been no robberies. Hampton police officers visit 7-11 stores twice a night. They are looking at the empty cars. It’s been better and better. All the 7-11 people are very happy with the results. Not even one single robbery since that meeting. Steve Brown: The reason I ask him to share that is because that could have been something we would have been involved in. Because, when people don’t feel like they are being treated fairly; there was some miscommunication by saying [hypothetically] that the police department took 15-20 minutes to get to a robbery. When the records were drawn, it proved that it was not that long. But just think, that if that had just been ignored, people would say that the police don’t care about these various communities. If that narrative had gotten out it would have been very bad. When we hear as a group, that the police department is not responding to the local robberies at the 7-11, we can say “no”. That rumor is dispelled, that information is inaccurate and tells what really happened. We’re not legislating things; we’re just trying to make sure that the story is told correctly. Sanket Acharya: The commission would like to send a letter to the police chief. Chris Bowman: How do we get good publicity out of that? Can we or should we? Steve Bond: It is important that this group stay up on things like that because; robberies in this general region have been up. In Hampton it’s been up by 39%. A lot of that happened after Ferguson and after other incidents getting national attention. There is going to be a time, and the time is probably sooner as opposed to later, where there will be interventions by police officers. Those interventions in this environment and in the national environment may touch off some issues. There may be allegations of racism. There may be allegations of lots of different things. So, it is important that this group be mindful. I can tell you that part of what the City of Hampton is doing is purchasing body cameras for our officers. They’re not all in yet. They’re not all equipped yet, but that’s going to happen. As I was talking to Chris about this in our planning session, the body camera serves really 2 functions. 1. Suspects, when they know they are on camera, tend to act differently, and 2. Officers, if they know they are on camera tend to act differently. So, it is a passive means of de-escalation on both sides. If we were discussing this 18 months ago, most police officers would have been against having body cameras. Now, we have has incidents where officers have tried to go out and buy their own body cameras for their own protection. That, to me is mainly positive. It allows us to identify people who are not doing what they are supposed to do and get them out of there. It also allows us to protect officers who are doing their jobs from unreasonable allegations or false allegations. I say all that to say that, sooner as opposed to later, there will be increased enforcement, and with that there may be something that the CEAC needs to react to. Steve Brown: There’s an underlying frustration after Ferguson about police officers being apprehensive because they are afraid of being sued or accused of doing something wrong, and yet they’re doing their job. We talked about that with the chief at the last Hampton United meeting – the reticence of some police officers. At one time, they [police officers] would do field interviews with a young person, particularly an African American males; in most cases. Now they stop to ask themselves, do I really want to risk my career, do I really want to make the front page of the paper, and do I really need the headache today? Nah, and walk away. Steve Bond: As we try to do more community oriented policing, the Chief has mandated positive contacts for each officer daily. While they [police officers] are doing that, they are not patrolling where they would normally be patrolling. So, there is a give and take in each and everything that we do as far as resource manning and all the rest of it. That may give answer to why those types of crimes have been on the rise. As a city we are working diligently to balance those efforts. Building the trust is still critically essential, but we also have to find the resources and the manning to make sure we don’t allow the trends to get out of control. For every ill that we have, if you put up a map of the city and first plot poverty in the city and then put whatever ill that you want, you’ll find it disproportionally connected with those areas. The increase in robberies lately for individuals and for businesses, there is a split between those two. Sallie Marchello: I think that the best part of the story is that the officers are visiting the stores twice in the night. I think that is an example of positive interactions. They are in the right places. Our city is full of strip malls and they do seem like targets. I hope that the officers are getting to know the citizens even some who desperation has pushed into crime. Steve Brown: If you noticed, Newport News has disbanded on of its special units. They have taken the officers who were in this special unit and put them back on the street – encouraging the officers to go out into the community and get to know the people that they are serving. They had many special units. Simulation Exercise Steve Bond: Draft of simulation exercise is complete and will be forwarded to Steve Brown An important negotiating factor has been scheduling with the many different city departments for maximum realism and efficacy Steve Brown: This simulation exercise will help us. With the exception of Sallie and Chris, no one around this table has had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a police shooting. I think if we have a collective simulation with similar intensity of moving parts and pieces it will give us the experience that we need. Steve Bond: I feel confident that this simulation exercise will do that for you. We didn’t use a case that is familiar because the outcome is known. Ahmed Noor: Can the core of people be distributed? Steve Bond: They can be distributed because in any realistic event we’ll not all be co-located. Steve Brown: Is there a time-frame for the start of the exercise? Steve Bond: We will use this simulation in the spring. The director of Emergency Management, Hui-Shan Walker, is in charge of coordinating all of the moving parts and getting everyone to the table. She has been working with the Health Department, Police Department, and Commonwealth Attorney etcetera to coordinate the date. Steve Brown: Are there any other questions or comments in regards to what is on the pulse of our community? Are you aware of anything that we need to know? Are there any events coming up that we should be a part of? Announcement: Steve Bond: The City of Hampton will be hosting a symposium on Black Male Achievement and Youth Violence. This will be a regional effort supported by the Casey Foundation. Hampton United is providing technical assistance and support. The morning exercise is invitation only however, the evening exercise will start at 5:30 and be over by 8. It is open to the public and of course, CEAC is invited. You will have representatives at the morning exercise, but the entire group is invited to the evening activities. Thursday, February 11, 2016 at the Hampton Roads Convention Center Shawn O’Keefe: As many of us are, I am on other committees. One of the boards that I am on is the National Black Child Development Institute – Hampton Roads Interest Group. This group has been around for a long time and they use to be affiliated with Hampton. Most of the people associated with this board are aging out of their ability to participate. A new affiliation is starting to include all of Hampton Roads. The board is looking for new members. If you have an interest in joining this group please go to the website: http://www. nbcdi.org. The next affiliate meeting is on January 28th, 2016 at Northampton Community Center from 6 - 7:30 p.m. The main focus of this group is on child literacy especially in communities of color and trying to eliminate gaps. We have targeted one school in Hampton and one in Newport News to focus on for this year. They are the schools with the lowest SOL scores. We try to volunteer and help those schools in the areas of tutoring and reading. Many of the board members are retired educators. We ask teachers what resources they need, would it be helpful for us to come in and work with a group of students while you’re teaching the other in the class. This group is not an affiliate yet and that makes our name really really long. Once we become a charter in April, we’ll be NBCDI Hampton Roads. Steve Brown: Are there any other announcements, observation or recommendations? Update on Executive Director Steve Bond: City manager wanted more diverse pool to select from. There are candidates that we are interested in, and the City Manager is composing a panel to interview. There will certainly be a representative from this group. Normally, that would be the chair, but it’s up to the commission to decide who they want as their representative. The CUC will have a representative. They’ll be an Assistant City Manager at the table and maybe someone else from the City – that’s up to the City Manager to decide who she wants on the panel. We’re hoping to get interviews going now that we’re back from the holidays. We want someone in here relatively quickly. I will have to connect with HR to ask how exactly we are scheduling these interviews. One of the people we were interested in is from Washington. I don’t know how the process is going to tailor right now. But we are excited about the interviews and bringing someone on shortly. Steve Brown: Next meeting is scheduled for the 3rd Tuesday in February (16th), 2016. Thanks to all of you for the work you performed last year. I think we have a great 2016 coming. I trust that all of you will stay with the process; I think we’re making progress now. And ‘thank you’ to your families for your time also. You are greatly appreciated.  Citizens’ Engagement Advisory Commission Meeting Agenda Tuesday, January 19, 2016 – 6:30pm Conference Room A – Rupert Sargent Building; 1 Franklin Street, Hampton Members: Sanket Acharya, Steve Bond (ACM), Chris Bowman (Co-Chair), Steve Brown (Chair), Celeste Carter (LOA), Larry Enscore, Leroy Foster, Kimberly Humphrey, Sallie Marchello, Henry Mills, Will Moffett (Councilman), Ahmed Noor, Shawn O’Keefe Staff: Shelly Thomas Cappe – Program Coordinator, CUC Call to Order – Commissioner Steve Brown, Chair Action Item: Approval of Meeting Minutes Item 1: Reports and Updates Membership – Process of removing non-active members (Steve Bond) Communications and Community Engagement (Larry Enscore) Simulation Exercise (Steve Bond) Item 2: Community Observations Adjourn