Public Safety Committee Meeting Transcript – 06/18/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 6/18/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/18/2020 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [1:06:20 PM] >> Flannigan: On the virtual dais we have committee members mayor pro tem Garza, vice-chair councilmember Casar and councilmember harper-madison. On the call as well as almost every member of the city council and possibly all of the members as technology let's folks into the meeting. And I will continue to monitor that. So this is an important meeting and it is actually the first meeting I have chaired with this number of councilmembers present. So I want to thank everybody for coming to this meeting. A little bit of housekeeping. I will mute you if you forget to mute yourself. Please don't take it personally, but I do have the buttons to do that, but I promise not to could that if you're speaking, but if you're speaking and I hear stuff I will mute you. I can see everybody on my screen. If there are slides I will still be able to see everybody on my screen because you just have the [1:07:21 PM] right set of settings and I can figure that out. If you feel you have to turn your video off but you want to let me know you have a question or want to speak, if you open the participants' panel, which is a button along the bottom of your screen, in the corner there's a raised hand button and I will also keep my hand out for the raised hand button if you want to kind of let me know that you want to be called on to speak. As is our common practice in committee meetings, we will defer questions and commentary to the committee members, but of course every councilmember has the right to participate and I will manage that by the order energy which I call on folks during this meeting. We have a packed agenda. Hopefully everybody read the message board and saw the staff that is present, hopefully you got your questions in that you, so that as we go through this we will be able to hopefully get our answers and limit [1:08:21 PM] our commentary to the stuff that got left out. The intent of our meeting for the public: The council meeting on Thursday we heard loud and clear from the community, we took hours upon hours upon hours of public testimony and then the council voted unanimously and co-sponsored unanimously the set of reforms we're going to dig into today. This meeting is a different meeting. This is where we get to work. We are not taking public testimony today. We are as a council coming to the staff to ask the harder questions about how this stuff is actually going to get done. This is not the type for sweeping oratory and not a congressional hearing. So you might see other government bodies do these meetings in different ways. This is not that type of meeting. It also might be frustrating for the public because it's only been a week since we adopted those items and so I don't fully expect staff to [1:09:22 PM] have every single answer ready to go, but we are initiating the difficult process of implementation, which frankly is much harder than adopting the direction we wish to take. That being said, this will not -- there will be times in the future form of more public testimony, we are exploring those options because it is always important to engage the public as we do this work. I think I have covered all of my introductory moments. Do any of the committee members wish to have a brief statement before we go to staff? Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: I just wanted to lay it plain that I'm really looking forward to the evolution of this newly formed body, and under you're leadership, councilmember Flannigan, chair, I'm looking forward to us getting work done. So I really appreciate that you said the words. This is where we act, this is where we do work, this is [1:10:23 PM] where we make it tangible. So I can't express my excitement enough about us really getting work done here. So thank you for your leadership. Appreciate you. >> Flannigan: Thank you, councilmember. Any other committee members wish to speak right now? All right. I see councilmember Renteria has joined us. Councilmember, would you like to test your audio? >> Renteria: Sure. Can you hear me now? >> Flannigan: Can hear you loud and clear. Thank you. All right. Very good. So the order in which we are going to take up these items, we are going to -- I'm going to mute Pio. I told you I was going to do it. We'll take up the items in a non-sequential order. We'll take up items 3 and 4 combined first. City manager cronk has asked to take up the items where he is speaking earlier so that he can get back to all of the complicated duties that he has. I would prefer that we let the staff go through all of their commentary since [1:11:23 PM] hopefully we have all asked our questions in advance and maybe many of them are answered. Then we'll take questions at the end. Then hopefully we will wrap up within an hour. We'll then go to executive session and talk to the city manager there for another 25, 30 minutes. We'll come back out of executive session and take up the items 1 and 2 with staff, but without the presence of the city manager, so that we can keep moving forward. And then any remaining items that we want to discuss in the future we'll leave a few moments at the end. My hope is that we can get this thing wrapped up according to schedule and that we will be done by 4:00. So as we said, let's get to work. So starting with item number 3, city manager, would you like to again. >> Thank you, chair, councilmembers and members of the community who are listening. It is an honor to be in front of this newly formed committee and as I echo councilmember harper-madison's point, this is where we really want to get to work and the voices from the community and the actions that the council led [1:12:24 PM] with last Thursday are very loud and we want to make sure that we are taking immediate and direct action to implement those resolution yesterday I sent a memo talking about the changes we will be seeing in city management. And I will highlight a few of those, but per this item on the agenda I want to focus on the budget impacts of fiscal year 2021. But I'll start off with just saying that as a community, as a country, as a world is really re-examining what public safety means for us and as a society. I am proud of the city of Austin for leaning into that. Just as we heard the demands and cries of our community, we are doing our best to ensure that we are organizing ourselves to be responsive and approach this in a way that is reflective of what that community needs are. So I have outlined in the [1:13:25 PM] memo I sent yesterday that I am looking at a core leadership team in the city manager's office that will consist of our assistant city manager [indiscernible], Chris shorter and ray Arrellano. They will are working collaborative active with the office of police oversight, the equity team, police department, legal, so many of the folks that need to be at the table to really reimagine and then redefine how we think about public safety in the future. And not only hearing direction from council, but hearing from the community. How do we want to look at what the future of public safety looks like? As you know, a core function of city government is to keep our community safe. But that means so many different things and we have to think differently, boldly and strongly about how to ensure that we are looking creatively of what that safety is for each [1:14:26 PM] individual in our community. We are all committed to leaning into this in a very proactive way. We will have based on the resolutions that were passed last Thursday impacts on how we are presenting the city manager's budget in July next month. Some of those were outlined in the proposal of the memo that I sent and I want to go through a few of those. Clearly the need for thinking differently about what public safety is will require an imagination that is different than what we've seen in the past. We need to pick apart the different pieces that have traditionally been asked of our public safety officers and make sure that we are specializing those for the unique set of circumstances that each one is equipped to handle. We want to make sure that we have more emphasis on mental health services, more [1:15:26 PM] emphasis on ensuring that as we get a call that the right person is going out to receive the feedback and the information to respond to that call. These are very important conversations to have, but frankly they won't be done in the next week before we are finalizing our budget in passage. So what I've done as I've outlined in the memo is really take some of those areas and I will appreciate your feedback and additional guidance on what are those pieces of the budgets within the department of police that can be thought of differently? All options need to be on the table and we need to have a collective discussion around them. There will be legal and contractual challenges and opportunities as a result of that, but I am confident that we'll work through those in a productive and collaborative way with many of our key stakeholders. It will take all of us collectively to move forward to realize these changes and get them implemented, which [1:16:27 PM] is exactly what this committee wants to do. Some of those I highlighted like the forensic unit, our called dispatch system, victim service counselors, all those are things that need to be discussed over the course of the coming months. And I am committed to ensuring that we have the right establisheds and the leadership -- stakeholders and the leadership of not only this council, but the public safety committee to think differently about what those services might look like in the future. Austin will lead on this. We will be innovators in the country about how we think on public safety in a new and reimagined way and I'm excited about that prospect. I also mentioned per the council direction that the elimination of about 100 positions would also be in this proposed budget. These are positions that were either forecasted to be in the budget like 30 officers that we had in a resolution that was passed by council in 2018 on a staffing plan, these are no [1:17:27 PM] longer in this proposed budget per the direction that we received last Thursday. In addition, the direction from last Thursday talked about unfilled vacancies that will not be filled with W 'this year and we have a little over 60, 65ish, that we will now be eliminating, and thinking about how those positions and that funding could be seen in other areas. The council is very direct in looking at some of those areas and so through this committee and in the course of the coming weeks and months, we will be talking about where those funds could be diverted. Many of the great options that were provided by the council are certainly top of mind, but there might be others as we continue to hear from community members on what that future resourcing might look like. And then finally, we're talking about the cadet academy. And I really think that some of the work that is on how [1:18:29 PM] we train and recruit future officers is a critical component of this. I'm going to ask acm Arrellano to walk through the progress we've made on the resolution, what's called resolution 66 from last December, and I know that we will continue to make that progress, but I have mentioned in that memo that we are delaying the start of that class until we can make sure that that curriculum is up to the standards that we all expect for our officers in the future. So with that I'm going to ask acm Arrellano to highlight a little bit more about the cadet class and the progress that we're making on the training academy itself. Acm Arrellano? >> University of Texas. Thank you.I want to be sure I can be heard, mayor, councilmembers, committee [1:19:29 PM] members, I'm pleased to be here in talking about how we plan to redesign public safety. And we want to talk about the resolution from December having to do with the training academy. You may recall there are four main elements for this resolution. One is to conduct an investigation into the allegations of racist remarks, conduct an investigation and evaluation into institutional racism and conduct APD training audit with the other direction is to delay the cadet classes. So I will focus now on the APD training audit and then cover the rest of the other portions of 066 after your executive session when we talk more broadly in resolution number 4. Or item number 4. So in terms of the training audit, again, there are actually four segments or elements within that particular scope of work. Review the course material, review of the community engagement programming, identifying areas for [1:20:30 PM] improvement and additional resources for the training academy, and a review of the videos shown at the academy. In terms of the review of course material, the staff has gone -- gotten together to outline the revisions and corrections to course material and is anticipated to be completed this week. So once those are completed, we'll begin the process of incorporating those recommendations so that it can be ready for the start of the next academy. In regards to the programming, this was completed in the spring earlier this year and the recommendations have been incorporated. Revisions to the programming include broadening the list of community organizations and groups to more appropriately reflect the community and placing more structure around the program and make it more meaningful. One of the -- the third item is to identify areas for improvement and additional resources for APD training [1:21:31 PM] academy. Some of those have already been incorporated or will be incorporated and certainly once the consulting comes on board to do the larger scope of work, there may be other additional resources that will become available to be incorporated into the academy. A couple of examples here, inclusion of the history of police and race in America. Back in March the office of police oversight, the director, sent a memo to chief Manley to recommend that this be incorporated and so that is going to be done. You may know that with the equity office we've started the process of using the equity assessment tool and so we are in the process of incorporating some of those elements too. Recognizing that the police department organization is very large in terms of the divisions within there. And so they are going through a process of looking through and using the equity assessment tool in a [1:22:32 PM] structured way. You may know that the APD's training academy leadership team has completed the beyond diversity training offered by leadership Austin and so APD staff is continuing to engage the group, a group to strategically implement key components of the training crumb into the training academy -- training curriculum into the training academy for officers at APD. Let me touch now on the last piece of the training audit and that has to do with the video reviews. The last segment is to look at those reviews or videos with a lens for racial disparities and use of force and severity of force. Y2k discretion in searches and increasing deescalation. We have to be frank about this, this has been one of the most challenging pieces of the work before us. By way of background, the equity office helped with assembling a video review [1:23:33 PM] panel comprised of 11 members. Six are from the community, a representative from the office of police oversight, a representative from the equity office, an academic professional with expertise in racial justice and equity, a police lieutenant who oversees cadet training and an APD training instructor. And so the panel was charged with selecting videos for accuracy, relevance, effectiveness and cultural sensitivities and then make recommendations. So the panel began meeting on may 15th. However it became apparent that the timeline of the process was too quick for -- particularly in the feedback that we were receiving from the community members. And the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic really introduced an element that we hadn't anticipated as we tried to put this together. This all boiled down into whether or not from the community perspective we could make -- conduct a significant review and make [1:24:35 PM] meaningful changes and recommendations. And then finally, certainly the tragic death of Mr. George Floyd of Minneapolis as well as our own officer involved shooting death of Mike Ramos had us to take a new approach. We have signed on with a facilitator with a sense of community engagement and a background of historic justice and racial justice will bring new structure to will bring new structure to process and we are lucky to be able to say that the facilitator will begin their work next week. That concludes my update for the training academy. I'd be happy to answer -- pass it back to the chair for comments. >> Flannigan: If I might, we have two members of the community advisory team that have been reviewing. I'm going to bring both of you in to the meeting as a panelist and give you all an opportunity to add any additional brief comments [1:25:35 PM] that you feel would be helpful at this time. I know it takes a second once I bring you in for the technology to catch up. Angelica and Nikia, I think your audio is on so you can speak. >> Thank you for inviting us to share our experience with you on the panel. So the number of videos that were supposed to be watching is a lot. I think that we were supposed to be watching about 30 by now and I believe that we've watched maybe eight. There's a lot of conversation to have around these videos. And a lot of context that I feel like we're missing a lot. So for instance, the one on Monday we watched three videos, they were very short, about three minutes apiece, and the first one had -- it began at a conflict, two people grappling. One was an officer, one was a black man. The officer is a young white [1:26:37 PM] woman. There was a gun, it was hers. She brought out the gun, she shot him twice. He took it and started shooting at her. And you see that it ends with her being fine, she didn't get hit, and him being in an ambulance. And that's the video. Like that's the entire video. And so there's not a lot of like talking about what is the context that we're putting this in, what is the conversation that we're having around this? Is the conversation something along the lines of see, these people are really dangerous and you have to be on your guard all the time? Or is it hey, this is one of the things that can happen when you don't deescalate early enough? Like we don't know what the conversation is around this piece of material to be able to evaluate it particularly well. And so I think that we need a lot more context, and honestly I think that we need a lot more time to be able to view some of the videos. The other two videos that we saw on Monday, both had -- both ended with the civilian [1:27:40 PM] being shot. The first one, this man was shot in mid body 10 times. The second one the man was shot in mid body twice and the camera ended with him like on the ground bleeding and not moving. And we don't know what happened at the end of that. So these aren't like light, fun, happy videos. Like some of them are really traumatic. So it's going to take us a longer time to be able to process them and to provide critique and feedback. I think that there's some patterns that we've seen with some of the videos that are a little -- that are a lot concerning. There's one, and I'm so sorry I don't have the specific details of which supreme court case it was, but it was supposed to be a role play for a supreme court case and the video had become racialized so I think initially in the supreme court case it was two white men and somebody -- like he [1:28:42 PM] got pulled over for a traffic stop. He had a gun in the car and was ordered to come out of the car and was going to be arrested. And in the video that they provided it was a black man that they were stopping, it was a white woman was who was stopping him and the reason that they ordered him out of the car and to be detained was because she was afraid for her life because it was dark and it was scary and he had a weapon. From what I understand that's not even legal now. Like this video was made so long ago that the laws in Texas have changed around like concealed carry and like you can't just order somebody out of the car because it's dark at night and they have a gun, right? So like even the things that -- like the way it's being taught and being racialized is a problem, but also the things that are being taught in the video are outdated and frankly incorrect. And that's very, very concerning if this is a training video for Austin police department. A couple of other things that I know, like y'all have [indiscernible] That you wanted it to be quick. I very much think that we [1:29:42 PM] need a longer timeline and we need to see more of the videos. So the videos that we saw on Monday had this kind of preface that was saying that these aren't the deescalation videos. This is what happens when somebody has taken your weapon. But we don't know if we're going to see the deescalation videos that they're referring to saying, oh, these other videos are going to be able to provide you with that particular context. We have planned to see some, but we don't have plans to see all of them. So I think it would be really helpful if we could get kind of a list of what are the videos that are out there so that we can also be able to influence which ones we get to see and which ones we decide that we don't need to. I think that we're getting a really incomplete picture. So I think that's most of it. Oh, the other thing was in some of the videos where on they're talking about legalese they seem to be focusing a lot on the rights of the police officer and not at all the rights of the citizenry or the civilians. So it's kind of positioned [1:30:45 PM] in this way to figure out how you can get over or how you can cover your butt once you get to court, but not like hey, these people have this right so you're not able to do that and your job is to protect those rights a regarding on -- regardless of who is infringing on them. So there's a lot of things that are really a lot more complicated. I think that then the original plan of look at this video, see if it's okay, because I know that the original -- like why we came on here is because there was a video that I saw in the training where there was a woman who psv being talked down by an officer and for 12 minutes out of this 15 minute video, which was in general a really good example of what to do, this woman was topless and there were no -- there were no Little Rock tank else, blurring out. This was just a topless woman having the worst day of her life in her house. And there was a very clear like this thing was [1:31:46 PM] incorrect, put some rectangles over that. Let's go, move on to the next video. And I think that these videos are a lot more complex and need to have more discussion about them. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Angelica, would you like to add anything to that? Let me unmute you. Go ahead. >> Can you hear me just fine. >> Flannigan: Great. >> Excellent. Thank you for the opportunity to allowing me to speak. I'm a part of the community review board as well with Nikia and agree with all that she has said northward thus far with our experience in this process. I would like the mayor and council to give us more time to look at this audit. Right now we were supposed to watch 112 videos as a whole for all the content and then 30 videos by this time. And so far we've only watched like eight videos. So it really shows that we need to have dialogue that goes beyond just surveys and minimal conversation. I'd also like to request that we expand the time to submit the survey. [1:32:47 PM] Currently right now we have 24 hours to submit our feedback based off the surveys -- based off the videos. We would like to see if we can expand that time to allow for maybe one week due to the fact that it takes people a little bit more time to digest the information or maybe they want to think through. I'd also like to request for all the videos to be submitted to a drive. Currently right now we get access to the videos maybe one week before our meeting. Let's say we'll get access to it on a Friday and then for the following Monday we're watching the videos during the trainings. We would like to see all the videos ahead of time, having it in a file that we're able to go back to and identify repetitive patterns as opposed to just one-offs. I would also like the opportunity to suggest new content. Not just what's wrong with the video, but what could the video be replaced with and allowing a place for that to be processed and received as on opposed to just the knowledge. Currently we're looking at the videos, a lot of the information is outdated. It's also concerning that the information might actually be incorrect legally. So just allowing our group [1:33:48 PM] to say maybe this could be replaced with xyz and having that be processed and received, not just acknowledged that it's a great idea, but let's see if there's a way to actually implement this. I would like to encourage a focus group of former cadets that left to receive feedback through their exist interviews, to review information to identify if there's patterns. Whether that be through our group or through an external group, I think it's important to interview those cadets that left through their exit reviews because when they leave, they have them write down a document about why they decided to leave the academy. I think it's important for those documents to be reviewed from the exit review to identify if there's repetitive patterns. And I think it's crucially important to see if there's a pattern here mostly around physical -- if the say they weren't physically fit, seeing if there were opportunities for hazing while people were in the training academy or if there was mistreatment for gender inequality, which we've heard of. And then also identify if there's a lot of -- we've [1:34:48 PM] identified that there's a lot of racialized content from the narratives that we speak to. So what knee key I can't was saying we're seeing a lot of the racialized content where specifically African-Americans are being portrayed in a negative light. And we would like to see the [indiscernible] Through the videos. Currently what's happening is we receive the video, we receive some briefing. Sometimes we receive the curriculum or. No and what we're seeing that's happening in the classes, we're asking questions for a little bit more justification and they're saying we don't have the correct trainer to be able to explain what's happening during this curriculum. Or we need to bring in the right people. You know, we'll talk about it later down the line. It really is difficult for us to provide critical feedback if we don't have all the information to be able to provide this feedback from the video. So seeing the curriculum, a brief summary whether it be through a PDF or through a short presentation, that way we're able to provide better information. I'd also like to request for a criminal attorney to also join these video classes [1:35:48 PM] because I'm completely concerned that some of the legal jargon that's being utilized is outdated and incorrect. And the way that they're providing and justifying it to the cadets is we'll explain it later, all right? [Indiscernible]. Really does not know what that looks like. So having a criminal attorney to also look at the videos to make sure that that information is correct [indiscernible] Really looking for patterns, racial injustice, it would be good to have a criminal attorney to look more on to the legal side of things. And like Nikia said, it's not just focused on serving people like we're seeing in this video, it's not really [indiscernible] Training the cadets. It's more about how to criminalize them and throw a book at them in case there are traffic stops. So there needs to be more content around serving the community, not just how to [indiscernible] The excessive use of force. I'd also like to request for council to consider a community report. So a report from the reviewers. There's a report that will [1:36:50 PM] be developed by [indiscernible] And APD. We would like for the mayor to say we would like to mandate a community report as well so we can develop our [indiscernible] We're requesting. So that's a lot right there. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Flannigan: Thank you. That was a good list. Your audio was braining up at the end, so you might have been having some issues. I want to thank you for coming to the the meeting today. This is not only only opportunity for you to tell us what you need. There will be plenty of time. Please continue to work with my office and the committee members and the mayor and council. It's a lot of list of really good stuff. I want to give ray or Spencer a brief opportunity to community and then we'll take questions from the committee members first. >> Sure, I'll start and then pass it over to acm Arrellano. I want to thank both of you for your service on this work because it is not lost on me both the time commitment and your willingness to take this [1:37:53 PM] challenge on. We know that we have a lot of work to do and that was one reason I delayed the original June class and then now made that decision to further delay because not only of the reasons that acm Arrellano mentioned, but I had also heard this feedback from the community as well. I look forward to working with you and working with the new consultant that will be brought on board to address each of the concerns you raised. Acm Arrellano? >> Again, I would echo my appreciation and certainly personal recognition of some of the comments that you made. It is clear to me that we are going to want to take this feedback that you have and working with the facilitator be able to structure a more comprehensive look at the training academy materials and the course materials generally. So we stand ready to meet with the panel again. We'll also take into consideration some of your recommendations with regard to additional members that might be included in the panel and see how we move forward with a timeline that [1:38:54 PM] will make better sense. >> Flannigan: Thank you. We're making good time. I hope we can continue to make good time. Do any of the committee members have questions or comments at this time? Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Again, I'll echo the sentiment of the chair and some of the other folks on the line in recognition of both Nikia and Angelica. Thank you for your time. I don't think we don't often enough take the opportunity to say these are volunteer roles, and we really appreciate you taking the time and the effort and putting forward -- making space to do this work. So thank you again. There were a couple of things that were said throughout the course of your presentation. Something about the timeline. I just wonder if either of you have anything to contribute to the body about timeline suggestions. Just in your mind's eye, if you have to look at 130 [1:39:55 PM] videos and thus far you've had an opportunity the view eight, has the body taken the opportunity to sort of think through what would be a more reasonable timeline? >> Nikia, feel free to jump in. Right now it's hard to dictate a timeline due to the fact that whenever we're reviewing these videos, some videos allow for larger discussions and some, you know, it's just 30 minutes to an hour. But that's been the difficult thing here is putting a time to the videos, specifically because there's people on our call that have diverse perspectives. So for us there's no way to dictate a time and we would like the flexibility of saying due to the fact of all the content that we're reviewing, potentially extending the the timeline in a way that makes more sense and is feasible for us, but we're not able to dictate specifically how long each video could take. Nikia? >> I would like to second [1:40:56 PM] what you said and also some of the videos vary considerably in length. Some of them are three minutes, some are 25 minutes. And the conversation that we have also varies on those videos. We've had longer conversations on the three-minute videos and so I think that it would be very difficult to dictate a timeline especially since I think that it's appropriate for us to be able to figure out what are the other videos that are missing and include those in our work? So until we're able to see what are the videos that we can be looking at it going to be very difficult to access that. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I appreciate that very much. Moving forward we just want to get to a place where we're coming up with solutions. And so in my mind's eye if we could ask you all again -- we keep asking clearly. If we could ask you again for one more thing. If you could give us a better idea of what an [1:41:58 PM] appropriate timeline would be to go to the test that we put before you. We recognize the difficulty of and it recognize that we're asking a lot. Thank you for stepping up, but on our end both by way of the manager and this body, what we're going to have to do is be thinking through next step. In theory there's supposed to be a class in October. So if we are going to have a July class and you guys have watched eight of over 100 videos in June, does it look like we also need to be having conversations about what happens with the October class? And I'd like very much to start having that conversation now and not surprise people and not put anybody in a position to where they just don't feel like they had enough in the way of runway? Just if as a body you could start thinking through timeline. Like what does that look like? And I don't know that I'm asking necessarily for you to have really succinct data that per video it takes us [1:42:58 PM] this amount of time to process the information, etcetera, etcetera, but if in the coming days and week we could just get a better idea of what it is we're asking you for and what are the direct implications for what the next cadet class would look like? I think that's important conversation for us to start having sooner than later. I'm sorry to ask, but that's one more to ask, if y'all could give us a better idea of what next steps look like there. There was another thing that occurred to me as y'all were having the conversation. It got me thinking about capacity. This volunteer body that we're asking to do so much, from a capacity perspective do you have enough? Are we supporting you enough? Do you have enough people? Do you -- what more could we be doing to support the efforts that, you know, were brought forward by way of the resolution that called [1:43:58 PM] for the creation of this body to do this audit and review? Do you have enough and are we supporting you enough? And if not, what more do you need? >> Angelica, you're on mute. >> Flannigan: I want to remind folks, real brief and feel free to take questions as rhetorical and get them answered later. >> Excellent. So thank you, councilmember harper-madison. Our group will get together and identify a potential timeline as well as discuss if there's anything in addition that we need. There's four additional team members that will compile some information and then provide information to the group. So Nikia is there anything that you would like to add? >> Yeah, I'd like to mention that we're not technically volunteers. We are actually getting paid for some amount of this service and I feel like that's really important. And thank you for arrange that. So I would say that once we [1:44:59 PM] have a better idea of what exactly our curriculum can be looking at the contacts and looking at the number of videos that we have to be able to watch, I think it will be a lot easier to be able to submit a timeline. So as soon as we have that information we'll be able to start working on what a realistic timeline looks like. >> Harper-madison: Thank you both for that feedback. And thank you, chair, for the time frame reminder. And thank you for the clarity because I think that's the most important. My apologies for messing that up. And again, thank you both for your time today. And just in again. -- And just again in general. >> I want to make sure we have sufficient time for the budget conversation, which is our -- do the committee members or any councilmembers want to jump in quickly? Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you very much for the community. I want to add my thanks to the pantists for that -- for the panelists for that really useful feedback. Your long work and hard work. I want to assistant city [1:46:02 PM] manager Arrellano, I think this would be directed to you, the panelists requested more contextual information with regard to the curriculum and the manner in which it's presented. Is that something that you can accomplish pretty quickly? Because it seems like having those professional staff available to the committee, to the community advisory board as well as those additional materials are really going to facilitate their work. >> So what I would say is the work that our facilitator is going to start with the panel is to get all of this information, which it sounds like you've been going down and really preach how we do the video reviews. The information that the panelists have provided is certainly important and we want this to be a meaningful, comprehensive way so that the community can feel comfortable and by extension certainly councilmembers can feel comfortable that we're doing a good job making sure that the training materials that [1:47:06 PM] we provide tosh new cadets matches this information. >> So is that something that you believe can be accomplished immediately? >> We start that process of the discussion and see how it might be structured as early as next week in this next meeting. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Flannigan: Councilmember Casar, did your hand go up? >> Casar: I had two questions. One was to primarily councilmember tovo's question. I would really like clarity or a report back on which parts of the curriculum, if any, there isn't community input on because it sounds to me like the curriculum wraps around these videos in which we should be an open book and all of this should be available to the group so that they are getting input on some stuff over here without the context of the rest. So if a decision is anything other than were an open book and any of the curriculum is open for community input, my preference and I think the panelists here and is what I'm taking from them and if the decision is anything [1:48:07 PM] other than that it would be good to hear. And then separately to the point about reports from the community panel, I think that that would be useful and interesting for y'all to put together. The resolution we passed last week for the council to say let's start the cadet class back up. So I think to report on what the community members think before we take that vote would be really useful. So I don't think that's even a new charge we have to give you. It makes good sense that if we're going to take that vote we would want y'all to have written something up for us and to hear your thoughts. >> Flannigan: Councilmember alter, did your hand go up? >> Alter: Yes. I'll be really quick. I had a question about the new materials and particularly the class that's been developed by race and the history of [1:49:08 PM] policing, which I understand is a very powerful curriculum. So two questions here. One is will we be able to deliver that course with a faculty member that's sort of not part of the academy so that it can be taught at the level it needs to be taught, and secondly, can we think about engaging other members of the police department with that course once it's developed and been delivered to an academy? >> So I'm seeing here yes the history of racism course will be taught by an outside person. And to your second question, I wasn't quite clear on what that question was. >> Alter: So the cadet class is one element of training, but that is a course that by virtue of it not having been part of the academy is a course that other officers might benefit [1:50:09 PM] from. And so this is true perhaps with a lot of the things that are in the cadet academy that has we change them and we find that particular pieces may be powerful, finding ways to engage existing officers with that training, and I was particularly in this course on the history of policing and race. >> So I'm getting the signal here that yes, this course will also be rolled into training for active officers. >> Alter: Thank you. And one last thing for the panel. When you do provide the sense of the timeline, if you can give a fuller picture if there's any way to roll out the class, like let them begin and finish some of the work after they started or if it's all in one piece and integrated that that's not possible. I'm just curious if there's any flexibility in that. And you have a better sense of the review process. [1:51:09 PM] >> Flannigan: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just quickly, and this can be handled offline. I just wanted to flag the potential to over time to work with ACC on revamping their training. Or not training, their course work that they do there that many people participate in before they come into training. So the recommendations that are coming out of this I think will be -- I can already hear that they will be very useful, very informative and very transformative and would like to suggest that at some point in the process there be some collaboration or work done with ACC to improve the curriculum that they have. >> We can certainly establish that point of contact and provide information back to ACC. >> Kitchen: Okay. I've had some conversation with one of the ACC board members and I'll share that [1:52:11 PM] connection. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. >> Flannigan: Thanks. Let's move on to the next item. I'll say I'm also interested in looking at capcog's training academy to see if there's maybe parts or parcels that we might find cost savings or more efficiencies by doing work through the capcog process is always a good option to look at. Thank you, Angelica and Nikia for your participation in our community meeting today. City manager, will you take us into the budget item, please? >> Sure, chair. As we -- as I briefly mentioned in the beginning and then as part of the memo, there was clear direction in the resolution that was passed last Thursday about how to think about not only this year's budget, but future budgets regarding not only the police department, but also other public safety and public safety functions that may be thought of in a different way, including investments in our mental [1:53:11 PM] health services, in our office of police oversight, in our performance review metrics and how we can hold ourselves accountable to those. So we have then quickly worked with our budget staff and part of those I highlighted in the memo, but I really look forward to the conversation here on really understanding that as the budget is presented next month, what I'm seeing is areas in which we can think differently with functions functions that had been allocated within the police department in a new way. So we had a robust discussion internally and there was a long list. And some of those might be easier to reimagine than others. But I think that everything should be on the table and how we think differently about these functions. And I'm excited to have both partners within the city enterprise, with you and [1:54:11 PM] this public safety committee and importantly many other stakeholders, not only community members, but our police association, or advocates, our legal counsel and our legislators, because some of these will require legislative changes. So as we put the advisory groups together and working with this committee, we look forward to seeing how we might reimagine this new public safety function in the future. So what that means for the budget itself is that there will be delineations of these functions that could be thought of differently and those are the ones that will be kind of ripe for those immediate discussions to take place in a new and unique way. Those discussions may be able to be had before budget adoption, but they are not, unfortunately, because we're almost publishing the budget in realtime in a way I feel [1:55:13 PM] comfortable with before we get together and get the community buy-in and consensus around what those future functions might look like going forward. But here I really want to get the feedback on the initial reaction to how we're instructing the budget and if there's additional direction that the council wants to give at this point in time. >> Flannigan: Does Ed have something to say? Ed, are you still with us? All right. Committee members, do you have any questions right now? No? Councilmember pool? >> Pool: Yeah, thanks, chair. And to the city manager, it sounds like what you are saying is a lot of what we were talking about at our meeting on June 11, which is getting our policing back to its core mission, providing the services that are at its core mission. And then looking at additional responsibilities [1:56:17 PM] that have been created to the police department over the years and analyzing them to see who in fact would be the more appropriate entity to handle those responsibilities. Is that accurate? >> Thank you, councilmember. Absolutely. And I really do believe that over the years we have asked a lot of our officers -- and now the question not only becomes what do we want our police officers to be doing, but then how might these other functions effectively support the needs of our community in a different way than they have before? So I think it's an exciting discussion, I think it's a needed discussion, but it really needs to turn into action because people need to feel safe in a way that they haven't been in the past. But you characterized that exactly how I'm thinking, councilmember. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem? [1:57:19 PM] >> Garza: Is this item 2 or item 3. >> Flannigan: 3. >> Garza: I'm sorry if I missed this. The 100 positions that -- could you explain that a little bit more? And do you know what that dollar amount -- what that amounts to in dollars? >> Yes. So I'm going to start out, but then ask our budget director, our budget officer Ed van eenoo to also include. In items 96 from last much Thursday under the be it resolved, the first two bullets that were including no additional sworn police staff positions, and so when we put the five-year staffing plan together that was voted by the council in December of 2018 did included 30 new officers per year for the next five years. So we had included those positions in our planning, [1:58:20 PM] but we eliminated those positions for the purposes of this next year's budget. And then the second bullet was around eliminating the sworn positions that cannot be reasonably filled in this year and we worked with the department to determine what that number realistically would be. And it was in the mid '60s. So just for purposes we did say about 100 of those both with the vacancies and then the positions that were not -- that would not be part of that five-year staffing plan anymore would be that. I don't think we have an exact number for what that savings would be, but I think it's clear that any savings that would come from those would be for the purposes outlined in that resolution and so we've started that work now, but look forward to continuing that discussion because ultimately the council needs to approve how we think about those positions differently. [1:59:21 PM] >> Ed van eenoo, did you want to say anything? >> One thing I would add is that a new police officer, salary, wages, benefits, retirement, medical costs, comes out to about $100,000 per officer. So as the city manager mentioned, we're working with the department to assess the vacancies they currently have that can't reasonably be filled next year. We think that's going to be around 65. It depends upon attrition rates and things, so we're still trying to dial that number in. But a reduction of mid 60s, maybe six, six and a half million dollars is what the cost of that would be. And 30 positions would be three million dollars. But we don't typically budget brand new positions. We're adding to the department for the full year because we know they can't be filled initially. But certainly the ones that we have in the budget that [2:00:21 PM] won't be able to be filled by removing those, it will be in the range of six to six and a half million dollars. >> Garza: Okay. And then this isn't so much a question, but a -- it's a really important discussion that we're having here, and we -- there seems to be this constant reference back to the matrix report and to community policing. And I don't know if -- I'll defer to the chair on -- I feel at this point there may need to be some further council action because I feel like we were stuck in this loop of, you know, we kept asking for more accountability and transparency and the response we would get was, well, that's community policing. And then it moved from there to community policing means we need more police officers because if we're using this certain ratio to determine [2:01:23 PM] time, commitments and being able to respond and being able to community police, we are in this loop of okay, you want reform, you need community policing? You want community policing, you had knee more police officers. And I think we can all agree that we have moved -- the moment is demanding us moving from that narrative. The narrative of that that is the way to address this issue. And so I want us to move from referring to the matrix report and saying the matrix report told us this and this, because it is an entirely different conversation. So I think that's work that needs to be done on this committee or however we all believe it's best to address that, but we have moved from this idea that adding staff is going to fix anything because it's not. And so I just want to add thoscomments and happy to hear people's thoughts on how we move from that. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem, I will acknowledge [2:02:24 PM] exactly what you're saying. This conversation today is not the conclusion of our budget conversation, as you know, but for the public who is watching intently, this is the beginning of that conversation and -- I'm not going anywhere on vacation. I don't know how many of you are not going anywhere on vacation. I'm going to be around and I think Mr. Van eenoo and the city manager are going to be tired of hearing from me and maybe from the rest of you too about how we can continue to innovate. Also the other item on this agenda item too which speaks to your resolution will matrix is going to be an important part of that. Councilmember Casar, did you have -- >> Casar: I really appreciate this as a first step. And of course we'll work on the budget once you put it forward, but I appreciate the reduction -- essentially just following what was unanimously approved. And we all recognize that many of us want to do even [2:03:25 PM] more and it will be our task to see how much more it is we can do. As far as what we move the funds over to, I know that there is a list in the resolution, but in my own reflection in the last week, I really do want to emphasize that we are trying to invest in more forms of community safety. So I've been working off sort of a list of seven things and probably want to continue to add more, but family violence, shelter and prevention, given that that's the biggest chunk of our violent crime, often times doesn't just get fixed with more patrols. Two, mental health response, which I know we've all been talking about and there's been a lot of leadership from the city in the last year on, but really ramping that up. Three, addiction treatment. We so often respond to addiction with policing. That doesn't address the addiction. Addressing homelessness with housing as number four. [2:04:26 PM] Something that increased -- continues to be a real issue in my district and I know other parts is support for sex workers. So often again we try to address that with policing, but it doesn't actually help folks that often times really need our support. Gun violence intervention and prevention. I appreciate the leadership of councilmembers here who set up that task force. I would be really interested in their non- policing ideas for -- on this. And then I've been seeing in other parts of the country hospital intervention programs where we get to people at the hospital that -- when there's been violent crime and sort on out issues, make sure that issues don't escalate further because sometimes when somebody winds up in the hospital for violence it breeds more violence and having intervention there. That's a short list of seven ideas, but I think half of our task is how to realthough indicate dollars from policing to these other solutions. And the other half of the [2:05:27 PM] task is to actually invest in those solutions that will be more -- that will be more effective and I think that that's really hard work we need to do and I want to be talking about on this committee, so I want to be just floating that kind of list out there for folks. And one other thing would be I know there's a lot of community members trying to look at our budget and the traditional ways we have the budget binders sometimes makes it hard or somewhat opaque to get into some of the detail, but line item budgeting is also so complicated. So if we could have a level of police budget that was at a midpoint level I would be interested if other council offices are interested in something like that that would make it easier for people to see what it is we're working on. Manager, I appreciate what you've done. I think many of us will push to go further on many of those issues, but I appreciate what you've done so far. >> Flannigan: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. I'd echo what all of my colleagues have said. [2:06:28 PM] And city manager, at the right time I'd like to understand -- this is probably offline. I'd like to understand the groups that you're creating. I forget how you characterized them in the memo, but what subject areas they're going to cover and what your timeline is if setting those up? I think that would be helpful. I also think that it could be useful at some point to look at the matrix report. I agree with what mayor pro tem is saying. I think that a lot of the -- I think to some extent the recommendations in the matrix report got overshadowed by the conversation that she highlighted. And we don't want to be in that conversation anymore. There are some other types of recommendations in the matrix report that I don't believe we really carried out and I'd like for us to perhaps at some point revisit. And then finally I would suggest at some point in the future, councilmember Casar, [2:07:29 PM] I appreciate the areas that you've laid out and I would agree with those. I think there is a -- an intersection here with public health and I think that at the right time we need to have those conversations, our public health will need to be front and center as part of these conversations. And at some point I think that the health and human services committee can help add to the conversation we're having here and the public health safety, and there might be occasion for some joint meetings there.so finally I would just say city manager I don't want -- I don't want us to go backwards in terms -- I don't think that you are suggesting that we go backwards in any way. I don't mean that. We have at least one program that councilmember pool and I highlighted in our amendment, the mental health diversion initiative, I [2:08:29 PM] don't think we need to wait to decide to bring that to full funding. And what we put in the resolution was that one be brought to full funding. I appreciate that it will take some time with all of these areas to -- to have conversations and flesh out the appropriate places. But at least it was not the intent of the amendment that that particular program wait in terms of it being fully funded. So we can have more conversations about that. But I just wanted to say that. >> Councilmember Renteria? >> Renteria: Yes. And I agree with my colleague, Ann. We need a lot of mental health diversion right now. I think that's the biggest problem that we are facing here in Austin. A lot of these programs, I've been reading about how they're doing it in Europe [2:09:30 PM] and other places in the world and they've got very good programs, you know, with -- without having the police officers involved and especially when it comes to mental health. And patrol -- the people that are members of this group, that are hired out to go out to do that, one of the things that keeps popping out at me, that there are -- they really do work and they are very successful where people can implement that. But it's also very expensive. And it costs a lot to do, implement these kind of programs. So I am really -- really want to look really down into and take advantage of as much as we can, knowing we're going into a fiscal year with -- with a lot of unknowns when it comes to, you know, what we're going to be able to generate in revenue and we are losing a lot of our sales revenue that we're not going to have [2:10:34 PM] available. So, you know, it's -- city manager, I think that your recommendation is right. We need to break up these departments so that we can, you know, pick it out -- so we can have these problems to help our citizens and lead us the right way. I know it's going to be expensive. But I hope that you can go out there and find the resources and we should really just start looking at what kind of resources we're going to have so we can implement these kind of programs. Thank you. >> Councilmember alter? >> Thank you. I wanted to ask the city manager to -- to speak a little bit to -- to how we might incorporate a sort of a combination of zero based and outcome based budgets as was in '96 moving forward with the budget, whether it's in fiscal year '21, mid [2:11:35 PM] year arrangement or fiscal year '22. Unless we kind of go down to the very bottom and really try to understand how every expenditure is meeting goals that we have and outcomes that we want, I'm not sure how we transform things. And I know that it's short order from last week to essentially this weekend to incorporate that into your budget proposal. But I think we need a path that helps us to see how we're going to do that investigation and how we're going to unpack the budget. Because if I'm understanding correctly, you know, you've butt forward about 100 or so position savings, there may be a few things to move around, but there's still a lot of work to be done and obviously between Thursday and today that is [2:12:36 PM] understandable, but not quite getting us to where we need to do. Can you speak to how we would incorporate the zero based and outcome based approaches into the timeline and the trajectory and, also, if you could speak to how some of the work that you initiated in the last budget about cost efficiencies, et cetera, might be deployed to help us in looking at the police department in particular. >> Well, thank you for that opening councilmember. I do think that's going to be an important part of the coming year. As you pointed out, there just wasn't enough time to think more holistically about a zero based approach for this next or at least the proposal that I would be putting forward in July as we do have to tighten those screws before the essentially by tomorrow or this weekend as we're in the final stages of this. But the groundwork has been laid, you know. I really think that not only the conversations that we're having, by delineating the different areas that we might be thinking [2:13:37 PM] differently about, as I will be doing in the proposed budget and some of the additional direction that was given in that resolution of looking at all of the grants that we have received. How do we make sure that these are appropriate resources that would be going to the departments. But there is a sequencing with that. Because we need to define what public safety needs to be for our community and then build the budget based on what those expectations are for the community. But I do think over time, through this committee, through the audio and finance committee, we will be able to have a more robust conversation on how to essentially as you pointed out have a zero based budgeting exercise for not only the police department, but other departments throughout the city. I think we also have an opportunity to build off of the work that we did do on efficiency that is ongoing. Some of that is looking at our support services. So we also know that the police department has [2:14:37 PM] resources from hr to it to finance that could be done in a more effective way across the enterprise. And that is the work essentially that -- that part of -- part of our efficiency study is moving forward with. So we look forward to more updates to not only this committee but the audit and finance committee and the entire council as we have more recommendations and implement those recommendations going forward. I'm going to turn it over to Ed to see if he has any additional comments just as the budget structure, because there are some time constraints that we have throughout the year that are also important to note. >> I just would add to what the city manager said that I for one was actually very happy that that was a fame late but good add to the resolution from last week. Absolutely, if we are going to reimagine the -- part of that is the police department budget. We will be submitting that [2:15:37 PM] to you on July 13th. Which for all intents and purposes means in the next few days we need to get the numbers buttoned down to prepare the documentation. We are not going to be able to implement a fully, rethought, outcome based, zero based budget in time for fiscal year '21. But I am extremely excited about doing that as part of the fiscal year '22 budget. As mentioned we could come back with a mid year change to the budget if the timelines that we are on allow for that to -- to occur. But as the city manager said, we really do need to do the work first of figuring out what is going to be the reimagined approach to policing and providing public safety in the city, what are the roles and responsibilities of the different entities going to be. Importantly, what are the expectations for the outcomes that we are trying to achieve. Then do the zero based budgeting. If we start from zero with our current goals, objectives, policing, I can [2:16:40 PM] pretty much guarantee you it will look pretty much like it does now. We have to have a broader conversation about what the reimagined framework for public safety will look like. The other thing that wasn't mentioned, the initiative that we launched last year, sb 23 in aligning all of our department work programs to sb 23. That work is ongoing but already starting to bear fruit in the sense that the catalog of work programs from our departments is helping us quickly hone in on those different programs within the Austin police department that perhaps could be better performed by other city departments, new city departments or perhaps even other agencies. But that work that was led by the office of performance management starting with the adoption of the fiscal year '20 budget is already starting to advance the work of item no. 96 from last week's agenda. [2:17:40 PM] >> Flannigan: Councilmember alter? >> Alter: Thank you. Appreciate that. When you have a chance Ed or the city manager, if you could please let me know when we are going to be hearing back some of those specific recommendations from the efficiency study and how they fit into the budget. Then I wanted to echo one of the elements that I think councilmember Casar mentioned, highlighting gun violence, steps we can take, may or may not involved A.P.D., that our task force will be getting back with us shortly that may have a really big impact on safety that we should be looking into those. Then as we're thinking about ways to reimagine public safety and our contributions, I also want to -- to put out there that there's some opportunities in the parks and recreation department for -- for youth training, youth leadership, counselor in training kinds [2:18:41 PM] of things, the aquatics programs for life guards as well as public safety lighting in our parks and funding for some of our rec centers, like the millennium youth center that all may contribute to a safer environment particularly for our youth. Out there. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Just as a time check, we can do a little bit more. I want to get us into executive session. I will say for my part I'm interested in an analysis of 911 calls and the nature of those calls, sometime spent, the ride along that I did was very eye opening that there's work officers are doing that probably doesn't have to be an officer or the officer can be doing the first 30 minutes but not the four hour parts that I saw the officer that I rode along with, how we might be able to transfer some of their duties to other departments as we manage the work they have to do. Mayor pro tem, I saw your hand up. >> Tovo: Yeah, I know that -- [2:19:42 PM] >> Garza: I know that it's stuff to hear. We can't do this budget, but, you know, we'll do this budget and then we'll -- I totally understand, Ed, and I know this is hard work and we all wish we were in January or February right now. But I just can't, you know, we keep talking about this moment and the need for change and we know that once a budget is approved, it's -- it's incredibly hard to move stuff around. So if I misunderstood, I apologize. But I feel like -- I'm even more incredibly grateful that we are having this discussion now because the next time we meet will be when we're getting a presentation of what the budget is. I guess my thoughts to the city manager is -- is we have got to be presented with something that provides a significant move towards [2:20:42 PM] diverting funds from the way we used to do public safety and the way we used to respond in our police capacity. Because without that -- I guess my hope is that we all made some very clear statements about wanting change. And without that, I don't -- I'm curious to know if we don't do that work now, are we going to have six votes to pass the budget? What happens when we're, you know, on the last day of our budget readings and we -- because we haven't been able to do the work because we've told ourselves that's too hard to do right now, we'll make sure that we do it next time. I want to not be in a position where we can't pass the budget. I know there are concessions made in budgets. I've never -- none of us have ever been 100% happy with every budget. But we voted yes because -- not all of us but we vote it yes because understand, you know, that at the end of the day we still need to operate [2:21:43 PM] as a city and have that budget. But I can't see myself, unless there is a significant move, from -- from moving funds, I can't see myself voting yes on a budget. I would hate for my last budget to be a no vote. I just wanted to provide that. >> Flannigan: Thank you, mayor pro tem. I think that was pointed in my direction and I wear it with honor. So I think it's time to go into executive session. Is there any objection? >> Casar: [Indiscernible] No objection. Just sounds to me like there are some things that we have all asked for, short like in short order, that 911 calls break down that you mentioned, I would really like just some heads nodding some level of that would be helpful. And some better way to look at that budget than just the big budget binder so that we can do the work that the mayor pro tem mentioned. And then finally, the sums that it's about 60 -- the [2:22:44 PM] assumption that it's about 60 positions that [indiscernible] Filled next year, really be nice to know what assumptions go into that, especially what we just heard about delaying the cadet class. So those three things in an email would be really helpful. There may have been other documents mentioned by members, but those three things would be very helpful to me. >> Flannigan: Councilmember harper- madison. >> Harper-madison: Chair, could you give me some clarity? Are we coming back out here after executive session. >> Flannigan: Yes, we will come back out and take up the other two items. We will review the protests and review the general orders and the -- the item from the mayor pro tem. >> Harper-madison: Okay. In which case one of the things that I will keep to myself for now. Something that I would like to add to the list of the points of consideration, this is a conversation that we had before we took Dr. Escott and slung him right into Austin public health territory. But we were having some [2:23:44 PM] conversations last year about dispatch. That's one of the things, in addition to some of these other points of consideration, that's one of the things that I would really like for us as a body to really start having some conversations about is efficacy of dispatch. Like what tools are we deploying and under what circumstances, et cetera. I know there's some nationwide push for folks to just really talk about how to really as a nation, you know, have sort of this unilateral retooling of dispatch systems. And I think that's one of the things that we really could dive into. Making sure that we are deploying the appropriate tool for the appropriate call and no matter what circumstances. If we as a body can start having that conversation as well, I know there's several things we called for. That's one that I would really like to -- to take a deeper dive into. >> Flannigan: Councilmember Ellis? Councilmember Ellis I will be very brief. But what councilmember harper-madison said made we also want to ask about shift changes. There's been a couple of incidents in the past year where something happened during a shift change and there was a delay in [2:24:45 PM] response. So I want to know kind of more about how to make sure we don't have gaps in service during shift changes. >> Flannigan: That's a good conversation because it depends upon what kind of response you're talking about. Councilmember tovo did you have your hand up? >> Tovo: I did. I have a quick question for the city manager. City manager, thank you for the memo of yesterday. I had a quick question for you regarding something you mentioned on page 2 of 3 about launching, creating a civil rights division, the first of its kind in Austin. Is that anticipated to be within the police oversight, the office of police oversight or is this in some way related to our -- >> It's the latter. It would be whether it's called an office or division, it would be independent of both hr and other departments, particularly not within opo or within the police department. But we're working out some of those details. There will be a report that's forthcoming. [2:25:45 PM] It's kind of in the final draft stages that will be presented to council and the community. But I -- after not only hearing from some of the community expectations but talking to staff, I wanted to accelerate that work and make sure that we are not slowing down to establish that -- that entity going forward. I think deputy city manager might be on the line, if I missed anything, she might be able to chime in, but I hope to answer that question. >> Tovo: Just to clarify, this is the civil rights office that was contemplated and had come forward. I guess I don't think we have time today, but it would be interesting to know sort of how you are reconceptualizing it based on -- on some of the current imper tissues and resolutions. I definitely would like an opportunity to check more [2:26:46 PM] with staff about how that's -- how that's -- sort of -- developing. >> Great. In the interest of time, we will follow up with a memory to all mayor and council about that status. >> Tovo: That sounds great, thank you. >> I did promote the deputy city manager into the meeting if she has anything to add to that. While her tech catches up to the meeting, councilmember pool? >> Pool: Thanks. Also, I would like to have a conversation about how we see the public safety commission. Interweaving with our new processes. In the past they were part of the [indiscernible] Review and oversight and that dropped out in our last iteration of the contract and some changes that we made. I would like to go back and see if we can't weave those [indiscernible] Volunteers back into these processes more fully. Thanks. >> Flannigan: Thank you, councilmember pool for mentioned that. We are already planning to engage with the chair of the public safety commission. They have already reached out to all of us with those [2:27:47 PM] same thoughts and concerns and so we're going to start engaging in that conversation. I wanted to get through today first. [Indiscernible] Did you want to add anything? >> In the interest of time, I just wanted to confirm the expectation exactly as the city manager had said, although the group had always thought about broadening this work and so we have thought about certainly what that looks like for employment discrimination and some of the workplace issue that's are currently there. But there was also a nod in the future to expand to a variety of broader issues as well. So we will keep you informed and we can look back. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Any other objections to moving into executive session? Okay. I will see you all on the other side while I read the script for the public who doesn't normally watch council meeting, this is the legalese that we have to read before we go into executive session. The committee will now go into closed session to take up one item. Pursuant to section 551.074 of the Texas government code, the committee will [2:28:47 PM] consider item 6, discuss the employment and duties of the city manager. Hearing no objection, the committee will now go into executive session. [Executive session]. [2:42:01 PM] Imperative, imperatives,. >>> [3:08:01 PM] [Music]. [3:09:39 PM] >> Flannigan: Well, let's get started and I'll work on that while we get going. So I will read the script. So hopefully the public is able to see, so this is the legal stuff I have to read when we finish our executive session. We are now out of closed session. In closed session we considered personnel matters related to item 6. So now we can proceed with our meeting. We are going to take up items 1 and 2. Acm Arrellano, before we do that, city manager, would you like to just make your statement and then you are dismissed for us to finish this meeting. >> Sure. Thank you, councilmember and committee and council members. I really appreciated the opportunity to get your feedback and the commitment to ensuring that we were moving forward with the transformational changes that we are making for the city and how you will be holding me accountable. So I will in turn hold my entire leadership team accountable, including our [3:10:39 PM] leadership. That includes our chief and I've had many pointed conversations with him over the past several weeks. I assure you that both chief Manley and the entire public safety team are committed to this transformational change and as we move forward we up hold everything that we need to do to move forward in that manner. So with that I turn it back to you, chair. >> Flannigan: Thank you, city manager. And again for the public, a lot of conversations yet to come. None of this is moving as fast as I think any of us on the council want it to move. But I also want to make sure -- we're down to 50 minutes to go, so let us jump back into the last two items on this agenda and let's start with a review of the protests and what's been going on with that. Assistant city manager Arrellano are you going to lead on this discussion? >> Chair Flannigan let me make some opening remarks. Again, certainly the events of the may protests set in motion kind of the opportunity we have [3:11:41 PM] currently to make significant meaningful changes in the way we do business. Clearly it takes time to do some of these things. What I think we'll see is for the June protests, again, a recognition of how we might be able to and must be able to make those changes. What we'll do here is I'll ask chief Manley to provide his brief comments with regard to thehanges that he saw for the June protest to this point and I'd ask chief Rodriguez to provide some context in terms of injuries that they may have transport understand that time frame and then also with the director of police oversight with information with regard to complaints that may have occurred during this time. So with that let me ask chief Manley to provide his briefing. >> Certainly. Good afternoon, chair, mayor, councilmembers. I'll make just a brief comment regarding the manager's comment a moment [3:12:41 PM] ago. Chief of staff gay and I actually had the opportunity to engage in a meeting with the city manager and his leadership core team earlier this week where we really did talk about reimagining the police department and we talked about things that potentially could happen. Obviously some of them easier than others, but looked at those functions that don't necessarily have to lie within a police agency, but either do because they always have or because we don't have somewhere else for them. I will join probably everyone else on this call and on this committee in saying that often times we have our police officers responding to incidents that we are neither the best trained nor equipped for, we are just simply the only resource out there. So as we move forward in these discussions and this city builds additional resources to handle some of those things that do not require an armed police officer, we stand ready and look forward to those discussions as we reimagine these things going forward. And I want to assure you that as we see reports [3:13:42 PM] across the country of police officers walking away from their jobs, we're not seeing that here in Austin. The women and men that serve our community are committed, they are showing up everyday. They are giving it their all under some very difficult circumstances. So this is a department to be proud of, but like any police department, we are not perfect and we look forward to making improvements in those areas where we can, and especially as we talk about re-engineering what we would look like in the future. And to that, I'd lead into changes that we made based on the first weekend of protest activities. I've already briefed on that and I know our time is short so I'll focus on what we've seen since that time. And we did make some immediate policy changes subsequent to that first weekend. One of the first things we did once we realized the injuries being sustained by a less lethal tool, a shotgun we have been in our department for many, many years and not seen that type of an injury pattern, we [3:14:44 PM] immediately ceased the use of that in crowd situations, changed that policy immediately. We also immediately ceased the ability to use tear gas on those that have gathered, mass gatherings, during the peaceful protests. We put a stop to that as well. And then although it was never used for this, hearing the concerns raised last week over our long range acoustical device that we have, the lrad, we are writing that into policy what has already been our practice, that the functionality of that as a sound weapon, for lack of a better term, is prohibited and it is to only be used as a public announcement system as we have. On top of policy changes, though, we made additional changes that I think given what we saw as a change in the protests themselves, the fact that they had returned to what we typically see in Austin, a city that is home to many demonstrations, that [3:15:46 PM] we have successfully interacted with over the years, and even participated in some, we saw that return after that first weekend. And we saw quite a different sense in these protests. We made changes. We had community engagement teams, teams of officers that actually go out into the demonstrators and open themselves up for conversation, trying to engage the demonstrators in conversation. Since these demonstrations are so much about policing and police issues, a national issue that obviously we saw happen that lead to all of these demonstrations, but our own local officer involved incident as well. So they are engaging the community, building upon that trust, answering questions, and I think that this has been very helpful. We also saw an opportunity to avoid what was the confrontation line at times when we have officers standing there either with [3:16:46 PM] their bikes or right at a barricade. It allows for such close proximity that sometimes that can escalate things. So we brought in water barricades so that our officers could have a much greater stand off. We could still provide the security around the event, but our officers didn't have to be directly out there. We also saw some dangerous activity with vehicles that were either driving towards or directly at those that were out protesting and demonstrating in the streets. Made a couple of arrests for d.w.I.'s in those instances, so we recognize that as you would expect any time people are out on a roadway that's traveled there is inherent danger there even when we put up the barricades. So we created a water barricade area on eighth street as a safe zone for those that were coming out wanting to demonstrate and wanting to feel safe from the potential dangers of vehicles that were traveling on the road. So we added that to our approach as well. [3:17:47 PM] And then we also when appropriate are wearing less of the tactical gear and really only trying to have that in use at those times where it may be necessary. So that's a lot of work that we've been doing in that area to try and handle the protests that are going on right now. And let me stop there because I know time is short and I don't want to go off topic if there are things I have here that you're not interested in. >> Flannigan: Thank you, chief. I want to make sure that we give a chance for chief Rodriguez to talk about folks who were injured, obviously under hipaa guidelines and other guidelines we have to be careful about what we talk about, but I want to hear from chief Rodriguez and also want to hear from our office of police oversight on the complaints. Chief Rodriguez. >> Thank you, committee, committee members, and councilmember Flannigan for hosting this meeting today. Are you able to hear me okay? [3:18:50 PM] Chief Manley, everything you've done, all these changes that you've been talking about, seem to have a great impact. I have no report of any injuries to report on since the changes that you've made and I think that's tremendous. So it seems like some of the greater injuries that we saw briefly are not continuing to occur. And we've had -- we've had very, few instances that police have may to respond to. Changes seem to be working and that's great. At the last report that I gave, councilmember kitchen asked to see if there was any other data available from hospitals regarding the injuries. Working with the aph team that does the epidemiological work, we were able to get a report together and we'll be sending that report or maybe already have in background information for you. Just to summarize, they identified about 27 injuries with an average age of about [3:19:50 PM] 25 years old with about 88 to 89% involving the non-lethal munitions. And most of them occurred between two P.M. To 1:00 A.M., so they were late afternoon to early morning type injuries. Really I was also asked to see if there was any updates on the conditions of some of the individuals that we talked about last time and unfortunately because of approximate privacy laws I'm not able to get information. Hospitals are not able to release information to me unless the patient wants that and we haven't been able to get any releases or anything in the time that we've had recently. So I don't have anything new to report on injuries or updates on the patients. I do want to say that emergency medical services kind of -- we live in a very unique intersection and it's an intersection between health care, community health and public safety. [3:20:52 PM] And we -- our clinicians practice right inside of that domain. So it's where several key things meet that are important to our community. We're excited to help in any way that we can to be supportive. And to exercise and leverage our capabilities going forward. That's all I have today. So thank you. >> Flannigan: Thank you, chief. Just to preview a question I did not email you, but would like outdress after our office of police oversight, the number of ems folks who have reached out to me about their hesitation to call on APD in certain cases unrelated to the protests, but I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Ms. Muscadin, why don't you [indiscernible]. >> Good afternoon, chair. Farah, muscadin, office of police oversight. Just to quick you a quick update with formal complaints we've submitted to internal affairs for [3:21:52 PM] investigation. So our consultant number up until last night is 255 complaints that we've submitted for investigation. We've had over 900 contacts in our office from January 1st to yesterday and those vary from phone calls, emails and the online complaint form. And just to go over generally some buckets that we're seeing is the three incidents that you are aware of that have received a lot of media attention. And then specifically use of the beanbags and rubber bullets and pepper spray sprayed directly into faces. Officers engaged with the public at the protests. We have about half a dozen specifically named officers that have a group of complaints. In general use of force as it relates to pushing and shoving individuals. I am here to hear about the [3:22:53 PM] lrad, I wasn't aware of that, because we do have a bucket of complaints about the deployment of that sound device and it's impact on individual's hearing. So I do think that I'm glad to know that now. That is a huge improvement. But generally they represent significant concerns the community had about the tactics that were used. That's clearly the general theme of most of the complaints. The 255 is pretty significant, but we're moving forward, we're working with -- I know internal affairs is developing a bucket list and we will get that list in terms of how to divide the incidents. We will get that list on Tuesday and hopefully come to an agreement about the complaints that should be investigated. But that's currently the stage that we're at. They're still coming in. We've been -- just this week we've submitted eight each day. And so we -- they're slowing [3:23:56 PM] down, but they're still coming. I'm happy to answer any other questions, but to date we are at 255 notices of formal complaint that we've submitted to internal affairs. >> Flannigan: So the last thing I want y'all to -- [echo on the line]. The last thing I want y'all to address before we take questions is the more recent videos that we've seen, and I appreciate chief Rodriguez remarking about the injuries they've seen, but we're also being sent videos by members of the public. So chief, I don't know if that's something you can address, but I feel it needs to be addressed. >> Certainly. And I had that in my notes. I wasn't sure if we were going to go there. There was one I know that is getting some particular attention of an arrest of an individual that was taken down to the ground and in the process of being handcuffed, there are two officers attempting to put him into cuffs and then a third one joins in on the handcuff and there are videos on social media that are indicating that he was kneeling on the individual's neck. That case is under review. [3:24:57 PM] There is body worn camera. That individual, the suspect that was arrested in that incident, from the time the initial officer made contact and took him to the ground to the time he was stood back up and walked away to arrest was just over 30 seconds. So everything that happened there happened very quick and it is all under review right now. I can't hear you. >> Flannigan: I've been so good at that. Committee members, questions? Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair. I am having a tough time just with the sheer numbers that director muscadin just presented. I'm having a tough time imagining that they have the community to process this. And I just want to know, you know, as a body how quickly can we inform council's ability and the manager's ability to help to fortify that office? [3:25:59 PM] It doesn't sound even humanly possible to process that much in the way of -- maybe I'm speaking out of turn, director muscadin, but do y'all need immediate help is what I'm trying to say? Like it sounds to me like you probably need some immediate assistance in order to effectively process all those additional complaints? >> Well, I'm fortunate and proud to have an amazing team. We are small but mighty. And I mean, we've been -- I've been able to pull in my community engagement team to help process some of these complaints and also handle the phones because Europeans have been extremely busy. But I'm fraud -- because our phones have been extremely busy. I'm proud that we've gone through the 255 and the support of the city manager and deputy city manager to hire additional resources to help us not only investigate these complaints, but as they go into investigation that will need additional assistance. So we have one person that [3:26:59 PM] we've brought on and we have another in the pipeline. So that will be extremely helpful, particularly as we get into the monitoring of the investigation stage because that will be pretty significant given this number. But I'm pretty confident that we will get the support that we need. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, I appreciate that. I'm sorry, I had one other question as a result of that. I'm sorry, I'm hearing feedback from somebody's line. The other thing I would ask is it would stand to reason for me that as we're moving into this process of reimagining, retooling, right sizing our resources, should it come out that some of those half dozen or so officers who have received complaints throughout the course of of this process, should it come out that they had any previous complaints and/or misconduct? [3:28:00 PM] On their record? What would be the next step generally speaking just from a procedural perspective? >> So the system at the Austin police department is it's both written within policy and we have a discipline matrix and it's Progressive. So that's how we look at things is if an officer has committed a policy violation and they have prior policy violations, with Progressive discipline you would see a different discipline than an officer who would not have had a prior similar discipline. So it's outlined in our policy. We have a discipline matrix and it is Progressive in nature so that subsequent similar violations are handled at a more serious level. >> Harper-madison: Thank you for that response, chief. Is that available for the public to review? Where can they find that? >> If you just go to the Austin police department's website and you pull up our policy manual, it is actually within our policy [3:29:01 PM] manual if you just word search it for matrix it resides within the policy. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chief, thank you, chair, thank you, director muscadin. >> Flannigan: Other committee members, questions? Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: So chief, thanks for acknowledging that obviously there's a national element to the demonstrations as well as a local element, and so there were so many folks concerned and all of us here concerned with the killing of Mike Ramos. So a lot of the questions that we received during testimony, including from Mr. Ramos' mother during live testimony was when the administrative and of the investigation and when a decision would come out on that case, it's obviously not the city council's, within our authority to determine that. That lies within the police department's authority. [3:30:01 PM] I do remember that in the polling of David Joseph that the decision came out of the police department after five weeks. I we're after that now. Each case is different. I want that to be thorough and complete. It has been quite some time. So I want to know what the time line is on our end to be able to at least give some level of expectation to the community and that's a big part of what this was about, I think. >> Certainly, councilmember. So as you know there are concurrent investigations that are underway right now into that incident. One being the criminal investigation being conducted by the Austin police department special investigations unit along with assistance from the Texas rangers and the Travis county district attorney's office and then the internal process is the internal affairs investigation conducted by the internal [3:31:01 PM] affairs division along with the office of police oversight. So those are the two investigations that are taking place concurrently. We do not handle the administrative portion of the case until the criminal portion has been addressed. And so in this instance the district attorney has stated that she's going to take this case to the grand jury and I confirmed with her today that this still has not changed as far as potential dates and it does look like given the covid issues and the lack of a special grand jury at this time the earliest time that she would have a special grand jury seated to be able to review this case would be August. That would be the earliest. So while we will continue to conduct our investigation, we will wait for the grand jury to make a determination and then after they make their determination is when we would handle the administrative portion of that case. >> So why was it different, for example, with the case of officer Freeman? Wasn't that completed and determined well before the [3:32:02 PM] grand jury saw that case? >> I'd have to go back and look at the timelines and the outcomes. I obviously remember the incident. But I would have to go back and look at the specifics. >> Casar: It was months before the grand jury decided that case. So is it a matter of policy? And why does the policy apply differently for different cases? >> Again, I would want to go back to the specifics of of that case. The practice has always been that we let the district attorney review that case first before we handle the administrative portion, but I would have to go back and look at the specifics of that incident to determine why why it was handled in that way. >> Casar: And it's not by law, it's just practice. >> Correct. >> Has the district attorney weighed in on this case? >> I have not asked her if she wait on this case. That has just been the established protocol. [3:33:03 PM] >> Casar: I think it would be good for us to have this conversation again because I think that you and I were both there, many of us were on council at the time, and there was -- because of the amount of concern and this is probably our highest prix file case since then, I know that everybody in leadership at the time said it's important to wrap that up quickly and this grand jury thing was not an issue then. And so I would want to understand why we'd be making a different decision in this case. I would not want to mess up any criminal investigation, but of course I would want to understand how we would be interfering in any way or that the district attorney thought we would be interfering in any way because the only other case that I think has reached this level of public attention since we've been on council, I think it was just about over five weeks, several weeks before a grand jury was impaneled. So it would be helpful to know. [3:34:03 PM] I'm not trying to rush anything, but people are asking that question I think really legitimately. If we got something done in just over a month on the one hand, why wait several more months on the other. One more question for clarity. Is it until after a grand jury is -- makes a decision that we would wait or would it be if there is an indictment which I know we experienced, for example, in the Larry Jackson case, if there's an indictment do we continue to wait until the criminal process is done through -- all the way through? >> Correct. The grand jury then makes the decision point. If it is a no-bill then I most likely would only have 30 days to handle that because most likely the 180 has expired and I would have to seek out an ag extension. So on a no-bill I would have 30 days. If the case was true billed then we would wait for the trial as you just explained. >> Understood. I think that makes it even more important, chief, given that there is the potential and we can't know what a [3:35:03 PM] grand jury would decide, there is the potential that it could extend even many more months after that. So I think we would really want to be able to level the expectation field and explain to people why in one high profile case that we all remember and then differently in this one? The last comment I would want to make is I would want to hear from you and the manager apart from the immediate policy changes just a set of lessons learned because I think given the number of complaints I think it's more than just individual policy choices. It's something much bigger about how it is that we can avoid these situations in the future but we can leave that for another time. I appreciate it. >> Flannigan: Thank you, councilmember Casar. I know there are a few more questions. I want to time check. We've 25 minutes to four and I had instructed staff that we would try to wrap this up by 4:00. A few of us are probably able to stay a little later. I don't want to promise that after four will have the full complement of staff, [3:36:04 PM] but we can go a little longer if we can make that work. Before we do any more questions because of the time check, I know assistant city manager Arrellano you had sent me two slides for the next item. So I want to give you a chance to review those for the public and then we will come back and take questions on both of the remaining items. >> Okay. Thank you, chair. This is really in support of the final item with regard to taking a look at the different resolutions, the three June resolutions and how we're going to proceed on that. Certainly we have done just as soon as council approved those resolutions on Thursday to really start to work at that time how might we address the resolutions. There were two paths of work. One was to start to identify what the work is and how might we best track it. And so right now you're [3:37:05 PM] seeing before you a quick -- I won't say quick. It took some time to put together at least initially a way to track all of the different provisions within each of the resolutions that were approved in June, as well as we are going to track the December 0 # 6 resolution where the investigation into institutional racism within APD. So here I'll just briefly show that down the left side is a column to say what the resolution is. There is a short title of what each of the be it resolved provisions within each resolution. And then a description. We started to try to categorize each of these and just generally the categories are general orders if they respond to that or are related to that. A budget component if there's a management component and so forth. And then we started to -- I started to insert due dates so that again the intent being we will make this [3:38:05 PM] information publicly available on a dedicated website that was described in the manager's memo so that we can be transparent to the community as well as for you the council in terms of the progress that we're making on all of these initiatives. Corrie, if I could ask you to go to the next page. A different view of what you will be able to see in the different activities and initiatives, a Gantt chart if you will to show the progress we're making. In this particular view you will see that again I have up here at the top the investigation into APD institutional racism, which is the December resolution. The very top part you will see is the investigation so the Tatum report was issued. So that shows kind of the darker color. Then of course you see in the second row the independent consultant that we're inging on board which we hope to have by September and then again the end date on that one is driven by right now direction in the resolution [3:39:07 PM] for a report out in December of '22. And so forth. And again just a preview of the information that will hopefully be able to put on this website in addition to any of the communications, any of the documentation, again, a place for the community to see the work that we're doing and the community members that we will have involved in these different advisory working groups. So I'll pause there. Again, this was just meant to be a preview of the work that we've already done and the work that we have in front of us. >> Flannigan: And is it okay, assistant city manager, if my staff posts that to the message board? >> Certainly, it is okay. And again, at some point we will have the full-blown spreadsheet and Gantt chart available once I've had an opportunity to let the people I'm tagging that have lead responsibilities can deliver. >> Thank you. So we will -- I'll have my [3:40:08 PM] staff post that to the message board that this meeting is about. It's first meeting of the public safety. We will post it there so both the council and the public can access because I know it was hard to read. Questions. Further questions either on protests or this item? Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I have a question for chief Manley. I understood when we were briefed on June 5th that the command structure during the protest situation was such that there was about eight to 10 officers under one commander. Is that roughly the structure? In large crowd situations? >> So it does depend on the situation that is what we talked about on a typical deployment you would have between eight to 10 officers on a squad with a sergeant. [3:41:10 PM] In large crowd control it may be that you've got supervisors just grabbing additional officers based on the circumstances that are present in front of them, but in the way it is structured it should be teams of eight to 10 to a supervisor. >> Alter: Thank you. Can you help me understand if it's the individual officer who makes the decision to fire on individuals in the crowd? Does that order have to come from a commander first? >> No, these -- any time an officer is going to use force and deploy a weapon, they have to know that it is reasonable and appropriate. And so these officers are making the decision based on the circumstances that are presenting themselves in front of them. What you may have in the circumstance, especially at headquarters, the supervisors that are behind them, they may see individuals that are in the group that are the ones that are throwing the rocks or the bottles or the other items. [3:42:10 PM] They may specifically identify that person to the officer, but it will be the officer that makes that decision as the way these things play out. In a more organized crowd control if you're trying to move a large group of officers, you may have a line of officers that are taking commands from the leadership team behind them, sergeants and lieutenants, of when to move forward, when to try and push a crowd left or right when we're trying to clear areas. So in those areas there may be direction given from the leadership cadre, the sergeants, lieutenants, the command structure, but any time an officer is going to utilize force they have to make that decision themselves. >> Alter: So when force was utilized the last weekend in may, do we have a better understanding of whether it was coming on the command of another officer or strictly by the officer? >> That is all part of the [3:43:11 PM] ongoing review right now. >> Alter: So I'm like councilmember Casar frustrated that we can't see video from June 5th and I think you covered that pretty well today. What are the officers that are known to be in that shooting doing now? Are they still -- >> For those instances that were level one uses of force, which are the ones that resulted in serious bodily injury, for those instances where we've been able to identify the individual officer who was involved in that instance, those officers are on an administrative duty right now in those instances. >> Alter: And how many of those instances do we have from the protests? >> We are -- we were tracking -- we were tracking I think it was 11 right now [3:44:11 PM] that we're looking at that resulted in the serious bodily injury. That's the last count that I have. >> Alter: And of those 11, how many of those have been been able to identify the officer who shot? >> I would have to respond back to your office with that. I have an estimate, but I want to get you the exact number. >> Okay, thank you. >> Other questions. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think this question may be for ray Arrellano. I appreciate the transparency that will be very helpful in terms of tracking progress. One of the things I thought of before and I think would also be helpful from a transparency perspective for people to understand is the -- is a document, perhaps a flow chart, traps it's something else like [3:45:12 PM] that, but it really lays out what the investigation process is. There's a lot of steps along the way for people. And we talk about it and we hear it and there's a varying level of understanding of what those are. And I know some of it is dependent on different situations, but I think that would be very helpful for people. And I understand that you're putting together a website that would have information on it. So having that kind of information would be helpful. If it exists and I just don't know it, just let me know. But I think that would be helpful for people to understand. >> Certainly, councilmember. If memory serves me I believe there was a document produced. It isn't visual. But certainly I'll go back and find that document and provide it to all of the members here. And see if there's a way to visually reflect that possibly as quickly as possible on the police [3:46:15 PM] oversight website. But certainly when we get to creating the more substantial website that would be the repository for all of this effort and make sure it gets there too. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I think visual would be helpful. I understand there's some complexities, but it would be helpful. >> Certainly. >> Flannigan: Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Cleave, I just looked up the stories and in 2016, 20158th was the day that David Joseph of was killed. Just shy of six weeks later a disciplinary decision was made in that case, the officer was fired. And September 22nd, over seven months since the incident, was the grand jury no bill. So in that case a decision was made the next month although there was several months before the grand jury decision. So what would be really helpful to me would be to [3:47:20 PM] know whether the decision is, a, the da asking for a delay in our work so that for her purposes on the grand jury. Or two, if it's an APD decision. And three, why? Just so that we can explain it because people I think have rightly asked the question why one way on one case and a different way on another case. And I would really like to have that information between here and Tuesday, which would be the two- month mark, I think of the Michael Ramos shooting. Just whether it's the da asking for it, us asking for it and the reasoning behind that. And I think it's a fair question we're being asked by the community. >> Understood. >> Flannigan: Other questions? Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Have there been any changes to the way the [3:48:21 PM] department communicates with street medics? I know that was one of the topics of concern that came up, whether it was with APD or with dps to try to make sure that people who were participating as street medics were somehow brought more in the loop. I know that APD and ems and fire have their communications pretty smoothly worked out, but I was just wondering what was being extended to street medics in these situations? >> I will have to check on that. I will say the crowds have been so much smaller that we're not dealing with what we were dealing with that first weekend where it was at times I'm sure hard for the officers to tell who was who. But I will check on the specifics. I know one of the improvements we will make was the addition of ems into the doc so that there was better communication between ems and APD as we talked about. In our last time we spoke about this we were unaware [3:49:23 PM] in that first weekend about the injuries that had taken place. So the we shored up that communication channel and I'd have to get back to you on the street medic portion. >> I'd appreciate that. I think that conversation is going to be important moving forward as there may be other peaceful protests, it would be good for people who are street medics to understand what are the the communication standards and expectations of police and ems, but also to know where that may differ with dps since that's a state department trying to make sure that everybody has the information necessary on all sides of this to stay safe. It seems like some of the street medics got caught in the middle trying to help people and maybe thinking they were following the instruction of one officer and another officer wasn't sure that that instruction was given. So I think that's just something moving forward long-term that needs to be looked at and could help make sure people are protected through these peaceful protests. >> Okay. [3:50:26 PM] >> Flannigan: Councilmember alter, did you have your hand up? >> Alter: Yes, I wanted to ask for further collaboration on the lrad? I understood that we had changed the policy and said it could only be used for announcements. But wasn't used as a weapon -- but was it used as a weapon they're weekend? >> No, and it never has been. That device has only been used as a public announcement system. We went back and got with our tactical units to make sure of that. And all of the information is that it is only always been used as a public address system. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate that clarification. >> Flannigan: We're down to the last 10 minutes before 4:00. We'll definitely take a few more questions. I don't feel the need for us to make a lot of statements at the end. As I said at the beginning of the meeting, this is how we do the work and hopefully the public is seeing a difference between this meeting and the council meeting where we do testimony and statements and [3:51:27 PM] take positions and this is where we start holding our staff accountable to the decisions that the body makes. I'll make one closing statement just as a process matter once we're finished with our questions. Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison:ty for recognizing me, chair. I will certainly try to brief it brief, but the timing of today's discussion is especially symbolic since as we all know, tomorrow is juneteenth. It's date that African-Americans in Texas -- it's the day that African-Americans in Texas, literally almost two years, after everyone else found out by the way of the emancipation proclamation, found that they were no longer slaves to white master's. It is such an important celebration and one that I think deserves a higher recognition. One of those resolutions that I'm going to be bringing forward in the next couple of weeks is we will seek to make juneteenth a permanent official city of [3:52:27 PM] Austin holiday. Not only will it help our African-American employees, truly honor a day that is fundamental to our history. It will provide an opportunity for everyone, and that means everyone, to reflect how far our city, our state and our nation have come and how much further still we have to go. And so I wanted to make sure to take this opportunity to share those words. And I certainly hope that when we bring the item forward that I'll have the support of my colleagues. Thank you, chair, for recognizing me. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: I had a question about an item, but I will say I absolutely support that. We're also waiting for the Texas vote holiday. We often -- it is our black and brown communities that have a hard time getting to the polls sometimes. So maybe sometimes it takes [3:53:28 PM] a couple of resolutions to maybe we get both. But absolutely support councilmember harper-madison's desire to commemorate this very important holiday. I think -- was there a future items discussion? Yes. And it kind of is combined because I know we're out of time and wanting to respect everybody's time. I see the chart about the racial disparities resolution. I'm sorry if I missed the steps of how we were going to work on the arrests and shootings, and I think it's also to mention the report that came out yesterday that showed a great majority of officer involved shootings in district 2, significantly higher than the rest of the city and all Latinos significantly overrepresented in those numbers. So I don't know if that's -- [3:54:33 PM] I want want us to have be able to have that discussion about that report, but what we are doing to get to the goal of zero racial disparities. I would like that in a future public safety meeting since we have -- unfortunately we're out of time and technically we really couldn't talk about that report because it just came out yesterday and we hadn't posted about it either. >> Flannigan: Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Thank you, councilmember harper-madison, for recognizing and talking about can juneteenth and I would support that work. Thank you for raising that. And acm Arrellano, the chart that I'm looking at, I don't see the place for where we might be inventorying some of the mill tear grade equipment. There is both the section about labeling that for us when there was a vote, but also a section about providing us that level of inventory. So I would appreciate that being incorporated just so it doesn't fall through the cracks. Thank you. [3:55:39 PM] >> Flannigan: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think we're on future items? Is that appropriate? >> Flannigan: I think this is the appropriate time to wrap up our thoughts. >> Kitchen: Okay. I would suggest and I haven't had a chance to talk to either of you as chairs, chair Flannigan or chair harper-madison, but I would like to suggest at some point in the future a joint meeting with the health and human services committee to focus on public health. And it would be -- and that's a big area. But to be more specific I would like to really have a conversation about our public health department infrastructure and the importance as we move forward. We're talking about various programs that we'll need to be working on and solidifying in doing more work on in the public health arena, but we need to also understand what we have in terms of staffing infrastructure and in our public health department. So that is something that I would suggest at the [3:56:39 PM] appropriate -- at the appropriate meeting to consider. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thanks. Real quick, chief Manley, acm Arrellano and city manager cronk, when you are bringing back the information on the different cases that we're looking at, I know that councilmember Casar was talking about the previous case that Joseph [indiscernible], for example. I want to make sure in order to not confuse the public that we also tell the story of what was going on at the time. For example, we are in the midst of a pandemic and that is delaying grand jury-- grand juries meeting. And I know that the district attorney is trying mighty to figure out how to manage that. So we have a pandemic in this instance and so it's hard to assemble the grand juries. And then what footage we may have had at the time versus what footage we have now. And to see also how we have progressed. I'm hoping that the [3:57:43 PM] information that we are getting from the body cameras are improved from our situations before. But each instance is a unique story and we need to be able to tell those stories properly, accurately and adequately to the community so they understand why things -- why we are reaching certain decisions. Does that make sense to you all? >> Yes, that does. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Flannigan: Assistant city manager, did you want to make a closing statement? >> Thank you for that offer, sir. What I would like to say is again on behalf of the city manager, as well as my core leadership team, deputy city manager [indiscernible] And city manager Chris shorter, we are here to do the work and we've been doing a lot of planning just to get to this point and there's more to be done that starts as soon as Tuesday next week [3:58:43 PM] when we're gathering to figure out what are these advisory working groups going to look like and start that process. And very quickly as well to reach out to your offices because we believe in order for us to be successful, the input from your offices as well as that might be coming from the community is going to be critical to us understanding kind of what is going to be needed to shepherd through this entire process. So you can be sure that we will be routinely reaching out to you as we go through this process. And certainly as the example in the spreadsheet and so forth creating a website where we can be transparent about the work that we're doing. And thank you again for this opportunity to present what is going to be a very long, thoughtful and hopefully as quickly as we can process to getting to where the council wants us to be. >> Flannigan: Thank you, ray. Thanks to all my colleagues, [3:59:44 PM] Emmy committee members, but it's very atypical for the whole council to show up for a committee member in which they are not all members of of that committee. And I think it is an important sign to the public that we are taking this seriously. I am excited to think about councilmember alter in your role as chair of audit and finance with the mayor and his role as the mayor how we are incorporating this in the larger budget confessions and I think there may be parallel work to this committee and that committee where you can help figure out where we can parcel that part out for a deeper conversation. I serve on that committee with councilmember alter and so we can have some good crossover there. Something that you said, rey, about working groups. It is not lost on any of those on our council is the go-to move of elected bodies when they don't want to solve a problem is to appoint a blue ribbon committee. That is in no way what this council is going to do. I hope it has been clear that this committee is not like what you normally see [4:00:45 PM] on TV. This is not intended to be interesting division or a reality show. Sometimes council meetings can be that way, but not this. This is the work that the council approved and we are going to make sure we get it across the finish line. I have also had folks in the community send me stuff that is happening in other cities and they demand to know why we're going so slow, but when you start to scratch the surface you see the cities are proposing ideas or they have councilmembers that took a vow to do something. Government doesn't work fast and it is frustrating because this is an emergency. We are going to go as quickly as we can. There is no caveat to that. No amount of time we spend on this is going to make me happy, but we are going to push as hard as we can. And speaking for myself and I am sure speaking for every one of my colleagues that as long as we all sit in the seats we are in now we will not take our eyes off the ball on this work. [4:01:46 PM] Any remaining comments from the committee members? Thank you. >> Harper-madison:. >> Harper- madison: Chair, Flannigan, I wanted to say you run a tight ship, but I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> I run a lean meeting. Thanks, everybody, staff for all of your attention, three hour committee meetings are not supposed to happen. This was a -- please stay engaged, keep emailing us, all of your words are being read even if we want get to the 15,000 emails and reply to them individually. At 4:02 P.M. I adjourn the first meeting of the public safety committee. [Adjourned]. >>>