Springfield City Council — November 2, 2020

0:05 okay uh thank you merrily for getting ready to pinch hit for me but i got home in time so good i would like to call this work session to order with roll call please counselors van gorden here mo here more here woodrow here missionary here and thank you um the first topic is going to be the use of force policy and the eight can't wait campaign um taking away chief louis please all right thank you counselor for doing this i think there's a this is a big topic and i'll try to go through it in a little bit of a systematic way uh provide you some information kind of

0:52 about what use of force is and what it isn't kind of hit some of those highlights and uh first and then we'll get into the specifics of the can't wait go through each one of them individually i think what we'll do is if it's okay with you is as we go through i'll just stop at the end of each one and then if you have specific questions regarding that particular policy we can do this then please at any time uh interject and let me you know wave your hand a lot so i can see it because everybody's kind of small on the screen here if you have a question or something i'll try to pay attention to what's going on so i'm going to talk about use of force tonight and so one of the questions comes up a lot of times where do officers get their use of horse training and so just a couple of highlights on that is when they're initially hired the

1:37 very first week we have them we put them to roughly about 12 hours of use of horse training just even that first week uh they get some hands-on training uh with some of the tasers and actually uh how the law works and just giving kind of that general idea of what they're doing and then obviously they go to the police academy where they receive extensive training about use of force and while at the cat academy they go through a lot of scenario situations uh training by legal experts and they have a lot of the just almost ongoing training regarding use of force while at the academy and i don't remember the number of hours off the top of my head and then when they come back and they're going through the field officer training program they also receive additional use of horse training from each of their field training

2:23 officers we have department training uh regarding use of force dpsst requires a minimum eight hours of some type of use of force training each year for officers to maintain their certification so that's uh done and the other place we we get training our officers get trained is on recent court decisions those court decisions are shared to us by a variety of sources a lot of times the district attorney's office or whoever when there's changes in the law or changes uh by court rulings uh they pass those on to us so what what is police use of force and you know there's a lot of definitions regarding this everybody there's no national definition of what the police use of force is so i looked at a lot of them some are really short some are longer and found this particular one seems to cover most of it and what it

3:10 says is the means of com police use of force is the means of compelling compliance or overcoming resistance to an officer's command in order to protect life or property or to take a person into custody and so that's kind of what kind of one definition of use force counselor i have a question what is springfield's definition of use of force well that pretty much would meet it there's a lot of some are just a simple one sentence uh definition then and that's the reason i picked that one that's that's what i would pick and so what kind of force can be used and what are we talking about when we talk about use of force and force can be as simple as verbal i give someone a command to stop that that can be considered a use of

3:55 force it can be physical and physical can be anywhere from a simple escort hold where i grab someone as they try to twist away and i have to move them a little bit but their resistance is is no more than that uh to the all the point where we're actually in a fight situation or a wrestling match or something like that it can be chemical which is typically a chemical use of force as your oc spray that the officers have are pepper spray as they call it [Music] impact impact munitions or weapons that police use or like a beanbag shotgun these are used uh you know if someone's armed with a knife from a distance and it's an alternative uh to use before i have to go to deadly force and if they're not foolproof they all

4:42 don't work as magically as everybody would like them they can be throttled by a num a variety of reasons that they don't aren't effective the same thing with a taser so that's another use of forge is electronic would be a taser and then finally the firearm is your typical types of force that can be used so why do officers use force you know you're trying to establish control of the situation you're trying to protect yourself or others from some particular incident or you're trying to make an arrest or simply preventing an escape and so that's it in a real short little nutshell about the use of force so what is the standard that use of force is and the reason i'm getting into all this because this the

5:28 next thing i'm going to talk about comes up in some of the policies and some of the the uh new laws that you see out there and some of that would be so what is the standard that officers are judged by whether it's the court or the juries the instructions that juries receive from the judges whether a particular use of force by a police officer was justified or not and that the standard was is uh called it's a supreme court decision called graham versus connor granby connor and i think it occurred about 30 years ago was 1989 i believe in that particular case and really you're going to hear the words uh either reasonableness or reasonable objectively reasonable or objective reasonableness a lot of times when you're talking about use of force and so so what does that

6:15 standard mean so from the court this is something we spend a long time instructing our officers on i'm going to try to do it here in about three or four minutes so um the grant the court recognized that officers make extremely difficult decisions in a very short period of time a lot of times and so when you judge that decision you make a determination where the use of force was uh justified or not you have to do that from an objectively reasonable standard or another way to put that is what would an officer with similar training like experience do in that particular situation so if i'd use a particular if i do a use of force the court's going to look at this and says

7:00 okay what other officers with the same experience i have with the same training i have would they use the same level of force i did in that particular situation the other thing they take into account is that the use of force is not judged by the bright light of hindsight in other words to give an example is i'm involved in a situation and i in an individual has a gun they point the gun at me i end up fire and i i shoot the individual and then the gun turns out to be only a pellet gun or you know a fake gun the courts don't say well your use of deadly physical force is not justified because the individual really didn't have a weapon to actually cause you harm it's what's in the officer's

7:45 mind the time that force is deployed and uh the other factors the court looks at is the severity of the crime you know why why is the officer trying to take this individual into custody the does the suspect pose an immediate threat to the officer someone else is the suspect actively resisting or attempting to flee the availability of other options objective facts of the incident and some of those can be you know if you think about different use of force situations officers can find themselves and different officers and see if i can explain this it makes any sense at all if i'm driving down the street in my patrol car and i'm a five foot six 140 pound officer and there's a

8:31 5 foot 10 180 pound individual standing in the middle of street who looks intoxicated and i get out and i approach him and they put their hands up in a fighting stance so what force option do i have in that particular situation the law doesn't require the officer has to match the force with the same amount of force in other words if he puts his hands up in a boxing stance i don't necessarily have to go put my hands up my box stands with that i can use the amount of force that is reasonably objectively reasonable to overcome their resistance i can't use any more than that but i can use force and so if i'm five foot six and 140 pounds uh taser is probably the appropriate weapon and appropriate the response in that particular given situation i'm just kind

9:17 of hitting the highlights i realize there's de-escalation used ahead of time all this i'm just try to give you an example uh and so in that particular but if now the same set of circumstances if i'm driving down the street the same you know six foot 180 pound individual stand there with his hands up in the air and i'm six foot four and i'm 250 pounds and i'm in very good condition and young officer the taser might not be the appropriate use in that particular situation so the court looks at all the circumstances uh when an officer uses force and takes that into account the account of how many officers are present and uh all the factors that the officer knows at that time and only at that time not what we find out later on you know you think about this and i apologize to

10:03 the i'm gonna have to get up every 10 minutes and just move enough to turn my light back on sorry this could be a reoccurring theme here uh anyway um and so that's what the court that's how the courts look at that and and to decide you know what is an officer's use of force whether it's reasonable or justified in doing that and so i kind of talked about all that just to kind of get to the the eight can't wait campaign and kind of go through these individually does anybody have any questions so far regarding just kind of that highlight thing i just spent a few minutes on tell some more

10:48 your microphone sherry yeah it's different every time i can't find where it is um so my question then it sounds to me is as if music force is sort of a situational thing it really is based on what's going on at the moment so is there a written use of force policy for the springfield police department yes and so is that available because that wasn't a part of our packet i don't believe yeah it was yeah i believe it was but i i hope it was part of your fault yeah it was there it is oh okay so where was that was that on down at the bottom of the packet i'm just okay i found the house bills and things but i missed that

11:38 it wasn't in my packet okay so it is written and but it is situational so it's application could be based on whatever's going on at the moment based on all these different factors is that correct that's correct and and that's how the courts judge them uh and that's how we also when we look at them as administrators that's how we look at them the facts of a particular case you know and in the same set of circumstances the same example i gave uh all those circumstances change if there's more than one officer there you know i mean what's justifiable what's not uh so you just look at all the all the aspects none of them are easy uh use of four situations happening extremely rapid i think that's one thing people have a hard time understanding i can be having a conversation and the conversation can be fine with the

12:25 individual i'm dealing with and they can rapidly turn uh really ugly whether the individual attacks the officer or turns to try to flee and then all of a sudden you've got really a dynamic situation and we're asking our officers to make pretty difficult decisions in microseconds sometimes and counselor pictionary do you is it okay that i call upon the people with the counselors with their hands up or would you rather do that it's probably the best way to do that that's fine i i don't i'm not provincial okay so at this point if i'll just kind of jump into the the eight can't wait campaign and i'm assuming most of you know this is kind of a national campaign that's been out there that's uh trying to have police departments throughout the country adopt these policies and i'll

13:10 just say before i get too far into these most of these policies we do in some manner maybe not quite to the extent and the specificity of the particular thing and i'll go through each one of those and talk about it so the first one there is that i have in my memo there's ban chokeholds and strangleholds during a rest and as you know that the there's house bills that passed this year one was initially the one i sent you guys was 4203 and i apologize there was an another bill regarding that came out as 4301 that added a couple things to that one of the things they added was when the original bill came out it just said police officers and they left corrections officers out of it and then they added some other language regarding use of force all that information that's

13:56 in those particular house bills will be incorporated into our policy our written use of force policy uh and and basically uh when they talk about ban chokeholds or strangleholds in the past we i'll talk about prior to this law we allowed our officers to use a carotid vascular neck restraint is what they call it was never a chokehold we've never taken their air away but you were shutting off the blood uh to their head and in a situation uh that you're in kind of a pretty a very involved fight that you would use this and uh counselor ben gordon do you have a question oh i'm sorry and uh and so we we don't

14:41 do this anymore uh except we're still allowed to do it uh if even by law if they're if the situation would warrant deadly physical force so if i'm on the ground struggling and someone produces a knife you know or something like that then i could use this restraint if i couldn't do some some other option at that point so in this particular uh request for yes could that also let's say for example if the officer has lost their weapon or had weapon taken away from him they would resort to that correct yeah that'd be a good example of when you would actually use that so anyway again our use of force policy will be modified to change this there was a directive as soon as the law

15:27 passed i sent out a directive to the officers this is back in july uh i think or maybe this one's june 20th if i remember correct and uh the directive that they could no longer do this so except in that given situation so the officers are very aware of this so in this particular uh practice we do meet the standard i know that they the band says the ban on all chokeholds and it doesn't provide any exemptions but we do provide that one exemption counselor van gorden so as i read this that the ban actually came from a state house bill and then you updated you know through updated the sort of force through uh through a general order and it's going to be put into the uh it's going to be put into the policy

16:12 so we have some police officers that i would assume have been trained to come up with when this would work was still legal or i guess still an approved use of force if you will um how how does that how does that get trained for an officer so i would imagine policing is a lot about muscle memory so i would imagine is there more that's done than just say hey stop doing this guys that's a really good point and we've had this situation happen uh before when you have some change like this and when the officers have been here you know a number of years 15 20 years and this is a particular move that they have utilized very successfully without any without any issues to any of the people they've applied it to it can be kind of a in a fight situation it can be a reflex action to go to so we're gonna have to deal with that when we

16:57 have our use of force training when we're actually uh applying these things the the problem is they say you can't train for it but they uh they say you cannot train to you put that hold on but you're allowed to use it in a deadly force situation and the concern i have with that in particular is if you're gonna allow somebody to use it they need to know how to apply it correctly uh again so it's not a choke hold it work correctly but to your point well taken that's we're gonna have to deal with that with actual live training and talking besides just talking the officers they don't do this and so when they get into you know we we have uh force on force practice occasionally we'll have to you just remind people this is you can't go to this move unless there's a deadly force situation

17:42 and you started by saying there's eight hours of sort of continuing training per year um given the amount of changes in the law enforcement industry is that enough i know it sounded like it was at the state standard the state standard is eight hours it's probably not enough because that eight hours incorporates the use of a firearm so our all our quarterly firearms stuff and so we try to incorporate it all in there so we're just got to be active uh whether we do it through a department training or through briefing trainings there's another way to do that also through i think i've talked to the council before about police one which is an area we're able to use through the video thing so the officers during their downtime can get training through watching a particular situation uh on

18:29 the computer this is email oh sorry i was saying thank you i that was my only two questions is there any other questions about the the ban on the chokehold before i move on to the other one okay i'm gonna go to the required de-escalation during incidents and and detainment so our current use of force policy doesn't it's going to have de-escalation specifically uh spelled out in it and that's for a couple of reasons one there was some litigation that requires us to do that and two i think it's a good idea to put that in there de-escalation has not been in our policy but it has been our practice for

19:15 a number of years and i guess i go back being old enough to talk about this has been taught to law enforcement for since i started here we didn't use the word de-escalation we use the word of calming the situation down or buying time is typically how we refer to them back in but the principles are the same uh you know you're trying to slow the situation down to whether get more resources there you know get the guy calm down give him time to think uh without rushing in too much and so uh to give you an idea of what the definition of de-escalation and what our definition of de-escalation is is going to be is taking action or communicating verbally or non-verbally during a potential force encounter in an attempt to stabilize the situation and reduce

20:01 the immediacy of the threat so that more time options resources can be called upon to resolve the situation without use of force or without or with a reduction in the force necessary so we'll be we are we will be and we are in alignment with this particular strategy any questions on that one counselor yes thanks chief lewis um the uh i i know that all the officers are trained in de-escalation techniques when this new policy is adopted are they going to be required to use the de-escalation techniques when appropriate oh yeah that's correct yes my expectation is just based on training they should be trying to do this

20:46 even ahead of time yes to follow policy that'll be required thank you all right i'm going to move on to require warnings before officers shoot their firearms can i ask a quest quick quick question yes sometimes we get in these documents i don't know where in the document you are and i am i've got my screen here but under use of force definitions i had one here that i wanted to bring up firearm displayed is one thing firearm deployed means they use the gun god damn that sounds pretty pretty calm to me deployed but uh i think it's i think it's a more serious thing to just use soft words like that that's that's my comment

21:36 uh you're i think yeah i think that was uh language we use uh for the com keeping stats in the computer i think if you're looking at is talk about that i'm actually looking at exhibit a page two of two and and uh like i said i start flipping through pages here and i'm not sure on the same page as you are but i just want to bring that up because i want to say something about it okay and right now i'm just going through my memo no you go fine you're fine i just i just saw that i thought man uh firearm deployed seems like it's more serious than that when you actually use it okay that's all okay uh so require warning before deputies or officers shoot their firearms and uh

22:21 the house bill 4301 which is one i talked about here earlier it talks about about that giving a warning if possible we do allow in in our policy that if the circumstances allow then you definitely have to give a warning if for some reason there isn't time to give someone a warning and you think you can think of a number of applications but that might happen you have an active shooter in a mall who is actively shooting people as you approach then that there's no time to give warnings if you do that uh innocent people are gonna continue to be harmed and so the policy won't be mandated that you absolutely have to do that but if the circumstances allow then you shall do that and again that's that'll be uh

23:07 so we're in alignment with the standard except for the you know the exceptions aren't delaying delineated in this particular standard that there are possibilities you may not have time to do that counselor more yeah i don't think you're a microphone there she is so um i didn't when i was reading through this i didn't see any place where i talked about you know shooting when you shoot the firearm when you use the firearm is there a place where it would say you know like shoot them in the leg rather than shooting or in the arm or shooting them in the foot or something that rather than you know shooting to

23:52 kill or shooting to you know so where is that where does that come up so that's in the training and as a national level police officers are taught to shoot to stop the threat and people do ask the question why don't you shoot him in the leg or someplace else first of all that is almost impossible to do and then if you have that standard of that policy and i shoot and i hit you in the leg you still have the chance of dying because if i hit your your artery or something in there you have the same opportunity and if i if i shoot and i miss your leg and i end up killing you then you have some you know you're there'll be recourse there the only time you should be shooting someone was when your life or the life of a third person

24:37 is in danger and it's a very volatile situation uh and if you don't and the other thing that people don't realize and we watch tv and stuff and i i don't mean to say that to to be disrespectful of anybody out there that has these feelings but when you shoot somebody you'd be surprised how little effect it has on them initially sometimes i do know of an individual that was shot and during a police involved shooting the first thing he said you shot me and he just standing there the individual is still a threat if they had a gun or something like that people do not get blown backwards or blown down as you see on tv or the movies or anything like that so the

25:22 training at a national level is to shoot to stop the threat okay so then specifically i'm i'm thinking about the situation where there was an officer in the car the car was still speeding along and he shot the gun and killed the driver and the car wrecked so i'm not sure where he shot the gun you know what part of the body he was aiming for but you know i'm just asking if there is anything in our policy that says you would attempt to stop the individual without deadly force of shooting them to kill you know what i'm saying so in that situation and if they'd shot him in the leg or shot him in you know some other

26:09 maybe it wouldn't have killed the individual you see what i'm saying as you see what they're saying i just think that we're asking our officers to make an extremely difficult decision and i'm not talking about your particular case i'm just in any case to make that determination is you're shooting to stop the threat and to provide yourself safety of the third person some kind type of safety and these are very dynamic situations just to give you a right example we have about one shooting on average in springfield roughly every year and a half so which really doesn't happen that that often uh and so and nationwide it really doesn't happen nearly as often as people think as portrayed you know in the news or on in in different areas

26:56 and uh so these these are very traumatic events for our officers uh the idea when you actually have to change someone it's very difficult i you know i will tell you i myself was involved in shooting when i was a young officer and uh you it's just stunning how quickly things change and how fast things come up sometimes and i'm sorry again i would assume the adrenaline is flowing very quickly you know so it's um you know difficult to even react in a you know reasonable way sometimes but there's nothing in our policy that says that they wouldn't shoot to kill you know i saw that was just what i was

27:42 asking about is there you know or does that take place during the training or is there anything that or is it just a matter of you shoot to stop whatever is happening so wherever you shoot whatever part of the body you're aiming for doesn't really have it that's not a part of our policy yeah well you're you are as part of the training and you are taught to shoot what we call center mass which is the torso of the individual okay that's my question counselor van gorden then followed by counselor mo now we got to uh a lot more uh really interesting question so in a hypothetical situation and i think i've read this before if if a suspect has a knife right like

28:29 how far can that person actually travel before an officer couldn't could draw their weapon and discharge it like we're talking about long distances right yeah and if i could give you that that example's been around a long time and people talk about what they call the 21 foot rule and that 21 foot rule says even if i have my gun out and pointed uh that a suspect could possibly close that distance even with your gun out pointed before you have the reactionary time to fire a weapon and what that means basically if you think about you know you see a movement and you react to it there's roughly about a three-quarter second lag time to realize okay what's happening and now i've got to make a decision of what to do and so they do

29:14 talk about this knife being the 21 foot rule the thing it gives us a little bit more tools to deal with that now than probably when i first started is you have the bean bag which i talked about the impact weapon so you can use that at a greater distance or the taser for that matter also would help in that particular situation but the even with the officer having their weapon out and pointed there's that lag time that you can get yourself into serious trouble quickly so um and then you you brought up you brought up before that you had um that we might have one shooting every 18 months or maybe one every year to two years and he said that that was a relatively

29:59 low number when i looked at the when i looked at the pie chart that had actual use of force instant incense instances on them is how how do i know where we rank right like is do we use you know when we when we do policing we use a lot of force on the community a little bit and i'm assuming that it's going to be changed a little bit based on our community size and things like that but what's you know what's kind of the average for a community our size you know that that's really you know i'm glad you brought that up and uh that's part of the problem there is no national use of force reporting except the fbi recently started it on deadly force situations but there is no national use of force that says everybody needs to report

30:44 these this way so you know take use of tasers all this and so that it's hard to judge us against another lease age now each agency keeps their own data like we do and we can look at that now how they classify certain things you got to kind of get down the weeds and make sure that you're comparing apples to apples but the only way we would typically do it now is call similar size agencies uh and we'd ask for their use of force reporting take a look at it and see if they keep stats like we do uh then we'll be able to compare is are we you know below or above the average or where are we at so so as a policy maker it's equally likely that we that we're above the average is below the average would be a way to

31:29 think about it like we just don't know yes it's what we talked about use force and uh shooting yeah correct i mean that we'll get that radiant right because you know you have everything from k9 you know to just physical holds in there so i'm not just specifically talking about shootings yeah correct so from a policymaker perspective do and i think this is it sounds like you know situationally right like were relying on officer training you know officer sort of instinct and experience right because you're talking about seconds or even microseconds to successfully um change the trajectory of the incident so really as a policymaker we can sort of plan

32:15 plan on training we can plan on you know um you know hiring practices like work our ability to influence the actual events relatively small so much it is to impact the situation around the event does that make sense i'm not quite sure i'm voting sorry so like if our ability as a policy maker would be you know if we if we to reduce usage our gains use of force occurrences if you will could be around you know supporting cahoots or additional training for officers or you know other techniques and partnerships in the community right that you know sort of impact us leading up to a use of force event right like when you describe the event it sounds like at that point we're really relying

33:00 on an officer in his training and his experience to successfully navigate that event yeah i think i understand what you're saying so how do we how do we mitigate that or how do we give the officers more tools to deal with that and part of the way is obviously training as you mentioned the other part of the way is the way we respond to calls for service uh you know sometimes the biggest problems are when the officer is there by themselves we don't have additional officers one of the luxuries we do have in being you know in the municipality we have backup for our officers for the most part we're not liking maybe a lane county sheriff's where you may be out there by yourself and have to deal with the situation by yourself and back up 15-20 minutes away and so we can help help ourselves use less force when there's additional officers there and you know and the policies and the practices we make

33:45 through training uh you know is to give officers other tools to do that and some of the things have come up in the tools that has been the taser has made a difference over the years just even the threat of taser when you see that pie chart it says taser displayed the idea that we pull the taser out and say look you know you're going to get tased if you don't comply you'd be surprised how many people quickly comply because they don't want to deal with a taser which is which is a good thing and i was i just went stopped to have one other thing i was going to bring about regarding that future um oh it's going to come back to me i guess in a minute somebody else have a question because counselor mo was that was next gee

34:30 gee you you alluded to the fact of of somebody who gets shot and how they react to it uh and we often see in the news where somebody was shot many times before uh they died or whatever happened what a lot of people don't realize is there's so much adrenaline going in that person they're coming at you and you don't know if you've even hit them or not so you just keep firing so actually i think probably will often take several rounds to bring them down it's not making an excuse but that is what happens likely and then sometimes if you have multiple officers who are firing because they get the adrenaline's flowing as you mentioned and you're correct with that and they get that tunnel vision that happens uh in that situation that you don't realize other options fire but one thing i have done regarding that

35:16 especially when we get it on swap call ups or places like that is you know we try to make sure that you know we don't we don't need only certain individuals need to be fired in particular situations as we try to think about that as something we talk about in our training is you know you don't you do not fire a weapon because your partner is firing your weapon you have to have independent recognition in yourself so let me give you an example of that myself and my partner come up on on something and my partner starts shooting but i don't know why my partner's shooting i don't see the gun or i don't see whatever the threat is i don't instinctively i should not be instinctively just shooting because my partner is and that's something we do work on training it's called sympathetic fires is the term that they use for that

36:03 thank you anyone all right okay we're good there chief okay so then i'm going to remove down to the next one which requires officers to exhaust all alternatives before shooting uh and this is a the a can't wait campaign uh before you deploy deadly force you have to go through all the options uh that puts our officers in an unattainable situation uh you know you again you can use the example of come up coming upon a situation where someone is actively shooting people or something and officers have to resort right to to a weapon at that point rather than go through this use of force by you know verbal taser you know impact weapon or

36:48 whatever so it's just it's just worded a little bit odd is all i think i get what they're trying to do here uh that you know if you have time and the circumstances allow you to do something then that's that's the way it should be that's great but if you come upon a situation that requires immediate response announcers have to be able to do that um councillor steer has a question chief yes yes chief lewis um i i wanted to suggest a little bit of wordsmithing here that we might that might make it acceptable to add to the policies i um i'd like to suggest um that obviously deadly force is last resort for an officer um maybe it would be something along the lines of deadly force will be

37:33 used only when lesser uses of force are not readily available and i think that would probably cover the circumstances that you're pointing out in your examples there yeah i think the new policy that we are putting together has similar language than that and i will uh i'll take a look at that and your language is fine in there but i think they'll have something similar to what you just said okay thanks uh the next one is chief i said a question on uh counselor steers comments too is it um if they if if other options weren't readily available then what if they have you know of

38:18 course they have a bunch of weapons on their utility belt those would be considered available but maybe not practical but so that would be would that be a violation of that policy yeah i think it depends on the circumstances of the case i mean it's you're not gonna you know realistically you're not obviously bringing the taser to someone who's armed with the weight like that right it's gonna be again we go back to this objective regional standard yeah policy does talk about that and again that's what is what is reasonable for that particular situation it's kind of like the knife thing that counselor ben gordon pointed out if i have somebody armed with a knife and they're you know 50 yards away from me it's it's really not reasonable for me to shoot that individual obviously guys that makes sense

39:03 thanks the next one is required to uh requires officers to intervene or stop or report excessive force used by other officers house bill 4203 talks about this we put that into practice that will be put into our code of conduct policy which is 26.1.1 and so we will follow the state law there which it gives a number of issues that officers are required to report if they see another officer use excessive force i think this is this is a fine situation this would be our expectation before we just never had it spelled out specifically in policy any questions on that particular one

39:50 so i'll move to ban on shooting at moving vehicles [Music] we are training has been you do you don't shoot at moving vehicles unless there are excellent circumstances our policy basically says that you're allowed to do that but again it's got to be a specific situation and you know shooting moving vehicles has all kinds of problems with it one is uh you know your accuracy is really limited uh you know when you're shooting a moving vehicle the second is you don't know what you're gonna cause if you do shooting the vehicle may continue to move even if you are successful at your target and the other thing is it's hard to see inside a vehicle of other innocent people who may be in the vehicle it's just really a dire situation the only times i can

40:36 think of that we would want our officers to do that shooting moving vehicles and i understand it because we had a particular case here in town and i don't know if you remember but we had a an individual who was in his 30s and i'm going to kind of hit the highlights of this case i may not have it exactly accurate but he ended up attacking his mother and father with a baseball bat and seriously injured the mother and then killed the father took off in their vehicle and then he purposely ran over an individual at uh was the value village at the time and then proceeded on over to eugene and again ran over a couple who were crossing the street and if officers come into that situation and it could be done safely about you know involving innocent people in a particular area then the ex then

41:21 the policy our policy would allow the officers to shoot at a moving vehicle in that particular situation uh councilor van gorden so chief when you describe the stories you sort of describe the tale of probability right like you know when force is clearly sort of utilized or would be appropriate right like somebody in a movie vehicle using that as a weapon right like that's an actual case you can refer to when i read the and i may have missed it when i read the policies is there how do we judge well let me think about my question here can an officer unduly accelerate the situation to a point that force is required and then

42:07 all right is that is that portion if where they're sort of if they're unduly accelerating it and then have to use force even though it meets the standard for force at that moment how does the first part get discussed yeah i think that's a training issue and i know exactly what you're talking about i'll give you an example as i walk up i see a car park someplace you know and i get a you know suspicious subject call and there's a car parked there with its engine running and i walk right towards the vehicle and i walk in the vehicle's path and the individual panics because they have i'm just giving you a scenario here the individual panics because they have a warrant and they put it in drive and drive away their intent isn't necessarily to harm the officer their intent is to escape the apprehension

42:52 uh or the officer purposely as what you're talking about steps in front of the vehicle you know maybe from a car stop it looks like the guy's getting ready to go the officer steps in front of the vehicle that's creating a situation that we don't we don't want to put our officers in if that's a training issue that we talk about during training is do not put yourself in that situation where now you are you know in theory yes maybe you are justified in using force but you're kind of creating the situation a little bit by doing that you gotta be really careful about doing that uh it's just one besides not being a good idea it's really dangerous for the officer the chances of you getting run over are significant and the chances of your whether your rounds impact your target as i mentioned or not it doesn't mean the car is going to immediately stop so it puts our officers in a dangerous situation so our training is not to put

43:39 yourself in that particular spot so is that front portion treated at the same level as the back portion right from a policy perspective so you talked about training you talked about from an officer safety perspective a public safety perspective um but is it like we went through all the policies would we find somebody's you know a specific policy hey you know you can't we don't want you to put yourself in a really dangerous situation when it's not appropriate yeah i've answered questions not delineated specifically in policy right now we have it in the past some of the things that we do you know we try to keep the training we try not to make the policy manual policy is a general guideline uh the specifics we try to spell out in our trainings

44:24 okay thank you any question counselor thanks um this is going to seem like splitting hairs but i i guess the question i have about this one is whether it's appropriate to shoot at a moving vehicle when the vehicle itself is a threat or when the occupants themselves are threats and i'll give you a for instance um how about some kids joyriding would it be necessary to see into the vehicle and see who's the in the vehicle before shooting into the vehicle um and finding out later that it was kids that were on a joyride yeah again the officer you know does need to be careful where they put themselves in that path of that vehicle uh i think it's different if i'm an

45:10 officer and i'm out here simply directing traffic and a vehicle barreling towards me i mean the reality again is that you know we teach our officers get out of the way because just because you shoot in the vehicle it doesn't mean to be able to be stopped and it is difficult to identify people in vehicles if you think about when you walk around that out there whether it's daytime or nighttime and the glare from the window whether it's sunshine or nighttime it's really difficult to see inside vehicles who is where and when you you shoot in a vehicle even if you're justified in shooting at a particular person in a vehicle you may have innocent people and the last thing you want to do is harm somebody some innocent whether it's a child or anybody else inside the video so shooting moving vehicles is something we really discourage and we keep that exception only for extreme

45:56 cases thanks all right so um so uh councilmember has a question chief well just to say that so we can accept this ban shooting at moving vehicles if we just added something about exceptional circumstances is that correct yeah we'll we'll add a little bit in there regarding this okay thank you the next one is establish a forced continuum that restricts and creates policy regarding the most severe type of force to the most extreme situations and so this is a this will be a little bit harder to explain this is going back

46:42 here probably to the 80s they used to have a use of force continuum that they taught and it was taught at the academy a lot of police agents had in their policies really kind of a step-by-step process probably the best way to describe it the officer kind of was taught that you to get to whether you deadly force you kind of almost had to go through these other steps that's no longer taught at the academy it's been changed for a number of years the dps st or the police academy uh went away from this years ago and so what you'll see from almost all agencies is they they don't follow this forced continuum anymore to give you an example of the police chiefs i saw a recent question about that was posted on a website there about you know how many

47:28 agencies utilize you know this forced continuum and about 15 different agencies throughout the state uh replied to this particular question and none of them use the force continuum so that's not our practice or policy it's not what the police academy teaches we want to kind of stay involved counselor thanks my understanding of the use of force continuum was that when they were in effect um that the use of force continuum allowed an officer to escalate the use of force under certain circumstances the citizen did thus and such and then the officer was allowed to pull his baton it it wasn't mandatory for the officer

48:15 to pull the baton but you could at that point and so my my observation is that if the if the department abandons the use of force continuum the net effect is to allow the officer to escalate the use of force faster because he already had the ability to escalate slower if he wanted to is that fair well i think i understand what just talked about i think the reason the rationale from all the agencies and the dpscs went away from this is they didn't want officers to be too to be too slow in their thinking process of what i'm going to react to the idea is to react to the force with

49:02 what is reasonable again and what so i come on a situation and i don't have to in my mind on the force continuum i'm not as an officer i'm not going through each step well am i here or here am i here or what and now you're slowing down the officer's response they're trying to teach the officers to respond with the amount of force necessary to overcome someone's resistance and then the officer makes a determination what particular tool that might be in a given situation my um my understanding is that there are um city police departments that are going back to the use of force continuum just to protect the officer and uh and shield them from liability in certain circumstances so i i hope we'll consider it going forward all right yeah and thanks councilman i just at

49:48 this point i think what we want to do is try to keep in line with what they're teaching at the dps student police academy and hopefully they're up to date on the latest things and if they decide to change that then we'll definitely take a look at it and i'm happy to take a look at it i just wanna i wanna do what's best for for our officers and our citizens uh regarding this and we'll definitely take a look the next one is require how are we doing for time okay uh require comprehensive reporting biosis for every instance of force or threats of force utilized this has been a part of our policy for years and so how it works if i go out there and i use some level of force this more than an escort hold or

50:33 something like that uh there's a policy delineates specifically what those uses of force are but to give you an idea if i end up probably you know using focus blows or anything more than that those have to be reported immediately to the supervisor the supervisor takes a look at that that report the initial supervisor and decides whether there's issues that need to be further further examined and then they can send that on to the chief of police or the professional standard sergeant every use of force regardless of what the first supervisor determined is also reviewed by our professional standard sergeant and if they see something that's a particular problem or something that they that doesn't make sense then they'll ask for additional

51:19 investigation on that i think with the body cameras i think that's going to make a probably a much easier situation every use of force the professional standard sergeant will have access to the body camera to kind of watch the particular circumstances and then make a determination counselor van gorden yeah okay so it sounds like there's a delineation between like an escort hold that are you having to is an officer having a report every time he uses an escort hold yeah that's part of the physical force i mean i'm not talking about you just because you're just guiding some of the car i'm sorry the guy tries the individual tries to run away i grab his arm and put him in an arm bar then they they relinquish their escape attempt so you would you definitely need to report something like that so how

52:05 if the if the actual sergeant and the professional standard sergeant are looking at it if we use the actual force on people how many times you know what percentage of time is does that turn into actual coaching and training on how to get better i couldn't give you a specific number based on the number of use if i couldn't say that it happens you know five percent of the time or ten percent of time i that would be a wild guess on my part but it did but it does happen like across the whole year it does happen some percentage of the time where we look at it we come back and say hey here's a better way to do it absolutely yes that does happen yeah we do it through training or if it's necessary and it needs to be disciplined then there's discipline well i'm not worried about discipline at this point i'm just kind of going okay

52:51 if you have a process that is like a professional standard sergeant looks at it you right you really want them to come back and provide some coaching otherwise nobody's going to get better in the cold areas everybody gets better at this at this thing called policing yeah and the other way we do it also is which is really it's more of an informal way is you have a major event or situation we do a debriefing uh whether it's a swat call out or for a patrol shift you have a major event and so the sergeant will have a debrief the next day and talk about what went right what was wrong and what we could do better or different the next time that we do this and like in any situation you can always go back and look you know in a pretty dynamic situation you can always go back and find things that we could have done this a little bit better or a little bit different sometimes

53:36 yeah and that's and i think that's and i think that's my point right these right like officers have a really tough job right we want to support a constant learning environment so that they continue to get better the only other question that i had is if you successfully de-escalate you don't cat like just based on your pie chart you sort of don't categorize that is an event right like so we don't know how many times we successfully we're accelerating and then we managed to decelerate it yeah that's a really good point and you know i'm trying to figure out a way to capture that because our officers do go out there routinely i can think of two or three cases i was just at here in the last month or so the individual armed with a knife had actually sliced himself several times the officers were able to show up and de-escalate the situation get them to

54:21 respond but there's there's no credit for that when those successful things happen the individuals are simply taking into custody and there's there's really no way to codify that and we probably ought to take a look at the way we do reporting and maybe that's something we really need to start keeping track of counselor mo one question there what percent of the time do supervisors deem the officer's use of force to be appropriate and what do they do with use of forced data so that the data is given is we keep that data in and just our uh it's kind of that's what that pie chart that i created for you guys have that's where that that goes and i and i get that on a monthly basis and take a look at that to answer your first question uh i don't that's one thing we haven't

55:07 really kept track of as far as percentage goes thank you good question chief i'm sorry i've got counselor steer and then i have a question as well okay i really just wanted to find out if these records that are being kept um and uh the monthly report that's provided to you chief would be available to the public after they've been filed yes they are i use these to present to the police land task force and then i think this is a good reminder council stare you guys will be getting as one of the results of uh the kinney lawsuit is you'll be getting an annual report from me where we'll use a similar chart but probably more detail than this once a year and so i anticipate that'll probably be and then we're required to

55:52 uh post that particular report on our website so that will be made available to people to take a look at that thank you chief when you were talking about oh i'm sorry sherry go ahead well go ahead joe and i'll i'll chime in afterwards so uh what councilman gordon was talking about the you know the reviews the abuse of force etc reviewed in that review process um what you'll say you have a use of force an incident it's reported it goes to the standard sergeant but you have you have a situation that involved use of force and so the people that are training the officers are your use of force

56:37 instructors you may call them defensive tactics instructors or special weapons instructors whatever on those reports are those currently being reviewed by the instructors so the instructors themselves can look to see if their curriculum is appropriately being used or if it was appropriately taught or inappropriately and potentially modify the current curriculum that they're training based on actual incidences to improve the uh responses by the officers so these support structures are brought in if there's a question in a particular case if the sergeant looks at this says i'm not sure about this they'll get in touch with the use of force instructors and say uh you know what do you think of this particular thing and then they say

57:23 can use that at a later time in training uh i think what you're asking asking of me is is kind of like what we do for pursuits we do do that what you're suggesting for pursuits and for our emergency vehicle operations instructors we take a look at all the different pursuits and we make sure that they get a chance to see those i don't think we've done what you're talking about for our use of force but uh that would be easy enough to do the way we do the reporting of this it it just seems that that it's an opportunity here to improve what's happening and also to make sure that the instruction is appropriate because it could be that there is some instruction that may not be appropriate or has has diversed from standard practice and all of a sudden

58:08 it's like oh it's a it's a good way to catch that and to go back and and bring it up to date uh cancer mortar so um am i on yes my question has to do with um you're saying you're doing an annual report and it seems to me that it might be beneficial to do it a little more often than that because you know a year down the road if we're seeing that there's some real issues that's a long time to wait to do some corrections or for you know for the for the council to be informed about what's going on so that was just a thought a suggestion that maybe

58:53 you know would it be possible to do it a little more frequently than it annually and then my other question just has to or my thought was we could have the best policy in the world but what it comes down to really is our officers situational situation you know how they handled the situation they're in and so i appreciate the fact that we're looking at policy and reviewing the policy but as i said we could have the best policy in the world that's not going to stop things from happening if we don't have training as as nelson prisoner pointed out and as we've talked about and if we just don't

59:38 and hiring practices that we make sure that we're getting officers who are i don't know but i guess that's my point that i wanted to make you hit it right on the head it really the policy is just a guide but it's really the individuals you hire how you train them is really what the driving force is behind people acting appropriately and doing the right thing so in the in the interest of staying on agenda schedule because we have a public meeting that starts right after this if maybe chief you can kind of summarize or give an executive summary where you're at this looks like the last topic and then if there's interest from the council to please bring that forward to council leadership and maybe we can add some specific items so the chief can

1:00:24 respond back to those questions yeah yeah thank you for for uh indulging me tonight and talking about this i realize it's a difficult subject and there's a lot to cover here and so i don't really have any more closing comments we did make it through most of them and the only thing we didn't really talk about was the pie chart that i gave that was a year's worth of data uh from october 20th 2019 to october 20 2020 and i hopefully that there's the key on the back kind of gave you an idea of what those numbers mean and what those are one comment in regards to keeping up to date with with uh what's going on and sherry mentioned the annual report i think it would be helpful if the counselors received the minutes from the

1:01:10 advisory task force meeting we haven't had that in the past where we've received the minutes of the meetings and i thought it might be helpful for counselors to receive that information um the other thing is chief the the pie chart like i would love to come back to this topic when we like after we get the annual report but the pie chart is not a good representation of you know um the use of force it's just you the year is not on there there's a lot of questions there's no trends on there as far as where we are from any any you know the previous year i'm assuming it was in 20 the 2020 or the

1:01:55 2019 number i would just encourage you not to use a pie chart but instead look for something that at least shows us some sort of trends okay and i just wanted to throw this in and just give people an idea of how much force is used based on the number of arrests and i appreciate it i think it's a good first cut cut at it to you know kind of get us educated because i think we all have a ton of questions but i think as you kind of get to the annual report it's maybe turning the dial a little bit about how you represent the data would help everybody in the community okay and shawna that's actually i'm glad you brought that up had i made a note right here um he asked chief he asked a question about where we sit with other agencies that i think is i think that

1:02:40 that is a very good tell as to where we are and it can point out goods and bads but i think that it would be worth the effort to reach out and i know a lot of agencies are probably a little tight-lipped about their force situations or you know their force uh records but it may be worth reaching out and seeing if we can get some comparators so we at least you know are we applying force way too much or not as much as others or whatever i'm not you know what i'm saying yeah i think that i think that can be done and the only ones that will be a little bit iffy probably is the physical force part of it everybody's gonna probably do that a little bit different but the number of tasers deploy or and the tasers uh utilize now that that sort of thing we'll be able to get that down i think yes we'll make that part of that report

1:03:25 i think people would would like to see that okay um folks is i'm sure there's tons of questions still but but this is a great great start and i consider it a start and i think that um and i think everybody else considers it a start in that the uh we're looking forward to an update on this down the road we'll get it back on the agenda sound good everybody yes okay appreciate it chief i think we'll move into the regular meeting here real quick call that to order pretty soon here aj are you ready for uh me to call the regular session or um if you would like to during the work session and call the regular session to order that would be great okay uh we're adjourning the work session and

1:04:11 now bringing to order the regular council session uh with roll call announcer van gorden here anslermo here councillor moore here counselor here councillor woodrow here and constipationary here thank you neil so i will go ahead and go with the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation one under god indivisible with liberty

1:04:56 and justice for all justice bro that's very hard to do at a virtual meeting it is thank you uh moving on so let's go with the springfield upbeat i have a proclamation tonight i'll start it off as whereas springfield oregon is a community which acknowledges that a special vibrancy exists within the entire community when its individual citizens collectively go the extra mile in personal effort volunteerism and service and whereas springfield oregon acknowledges the mission of extra mile america to create 550 extra mile cities in america and is proud to support extra mile day on november first

1:05:43 two thousand twenty now therefore i joe missionary council president of the springfield oregon city council do hereby proclaim november 1st 2020 to be extra mild day i urge each individual in the community to take time not only on this day but every day to go the extra mile in his or her own life but to also acknowledge all those who are inspirational in their efforts and commitment to make their organizations families community country or world a better place next item and so the next item is the consent calendar

1:06:30 i have a motion i moved did we approve the consent calendar a second it's been moved and seconded all those in favor by roll call vote counselor ben gordon can answer this question first oh sure is the purchase of the police cars on the consent calendar yes yes okay i do have a question on that so you'd hold that for me okay let's pull those out and uh would the emotions still carry they're still ready i'll probably go ahead and do a new new motion i i remember that we approved the consent calendar withdrawing the conversation about the police vehicle purchase

1:07:15 a second okay it's been uh moved and seconded with uh roll call please or with a vote call answer van gorden yes councillor mo yes counselor moore yes counselor stare yes counselor woodrow yes and counselor efficiency yes so with that item pulled for discussion um counselor mo what would you like to discuss on that item i it's it's my agenda in the future to try and make springfield a little softer city law enforcement wise and what i would like to see not maybe

1:08:00 not this time but i'm looking for that on the uh items on this car they're all black and i think we should start looking at getting to a different color than black in our police cars and the police uniforms eventually i think people it's uh it's pretty overwhelming all all black all the time and as as i think we should par part of our program should be sort of soften that image so that was that was the only comment i had on that other than that i'm fine with it so would you like to make a motion to approve that item i would make a motion to prove it i think i got sean in there next so it's been uh moved and seconded on on

1:08:47 the uh on that item uh roll call vote please counselor van gorden yes counselor mo yes councillor moore yes councillor stare yes councillor woodrow yes and cancer pictionary yes thank you next item please uh next time we have no public hearings this evening which would make business from the audience our next item and um just looking through our attendees we have no one here at city hall and 56 attendees online and just looking to see if we have anyone either raising their hand or putting in a question so if we could just get a

1:09:32 moment we'll pull those together okay in the meantime counselor pictionary would you like to read the instructions well perfect time i guess i will as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us by phone or online to please keep themselves on mute until you are called to provide public testimony there is one time designated for public testimony this evening and it will be listed as business from the audience if you are joining us online with a tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak at those of any of those times please use the chat window it looks like a speech balloon on

1:10:17 the upper right corner please send a comment to the organizer with your name ward or general location and the subject you would like to speak about you can select the organizer at the bottom of the chat window i will call on you when it is your turn to speak for people calling in by phone only you are in listen only mode and cannot be called upon in order for public testimony in the order of public ask money will be as follows is anyone in person at the council chambers anyone who has submitted a submitted a chat and anyone who has submitted email in advance if there's remaining time uh mr ladotti will read emails into the record thank you aj also we currently have six uh members of the audience who would like to speak

1:11:03 this evening and i can start um okay let me i'll go with the business from the audience instructions real quick it's uh business from the audience is limited to 20 minutes please limit comments to three minutes um and your request to speak cards not applicable and now we can go okay our first speaker today is holly shaper i'm just looking for [Music] her holly if you're ready you can unmute your microphone

1:11:48 hello okay um good evening my name is holly shaper and i live in ward 2. i wanted to thank you for discussing the eight can't wait principles in a council work session what an opportunity to begin an important discussion about where the city would like to go with its policing policies from my perspective we have an ongoing crisis the lack of police accountability there are two distinct causes of this crisis first spd policies promote a warrior mentality given the extensive changes mandated by the kenny settlement and second council has historically chosen not to provide any oversight of spd this lack of oversight has allowed a culture which perpetuates an us versus them mentality to thrive within spd you

1:12:33 can see evidence of this warrior culture with the canine logo including the thin blue line flag the spd values statement prioritizing physical strength over moral fortitude and finally the sheer cost to springfield taxpayers when i look at all of this i see a fork in the road will you continue to allow this culture to thrive or are you ready to make a different choice are you counselors ready to hold police accountable for the challenges their behavior is bringing to the city budget by ensuring monetary settlements are withdrawn from their funds are you prepared to cut some of their excess instead of cutting valuable services that help springfield residents thrive for instance are you ready to consider removing swat and instead partnering with other agencies to provide this

1:13:18 resource when it is needed currently swat cost the city 129 950 per year plus any equipment upgrades that would cover approximately 52 percent of one per claim deductible additionally you could cut the canine program which cost taxpayers 21 649 per use in an undisclosed 12-month period the removal of both of these services would be able to cover approximately 2.2 police deductibles per year and would likely help preserve other city services are you prepared to shift the responsibility for writing police policy from the police themselves over to council on the city manager perhaps that would lead to a different state differently stated values about officers having moral courage to put

1:14:03 service in the interests of those they are charged with protecting over self currently we have a police force that does not work for all residents of springfield in the same way you as council as city leadership have the ability to choose to remain on the current path with all its associated costs or you can choose a new path you can choose to change the culture within spd from the top all the way down to one that serves and protects everyone in springfield you can choose to have leadership within spd that helps a guardian culture thrive you can choose to help institute policy that is focused on protecting are you ready to make those choices for the sake of this city i hope the answer to that question is yes thank you

1:14:48 thank you holly neil your next speaker please that's our next speaker is elizabeth betterback i'm just not seeing her in the list right now hold on one moment okay i do see her here sorry about that elizabeth you can unmute your microphone got it it's probably because my last name starts at the end of the alphabet anyways this is lizzie utterback i live in ward 3. i was going to begin my comment by uh thanking you for updating the packet to include the use of force

1:15:33 policy but that gratitude fell short when i witnessed ugh flight counselor moore during the work session she asked if the use of policy was included in the packet and was told it was counselor moore you were correct the policy was not included i requested it on friday and was told to do a public records request by aj and nancy the policy was finally provided via a link that was added to the website today in the future i would hope that spd policies would be available online but more importantly i expect you to treat your colleagues professionally in reviewing chief lewis's eight can't wait memo it looks to me as if you did the bare minimum this was a missed opportunity because the whole point of comparing the strategies is to review std policy using a lens of safety and

1:16:18 care for the community and officers when he spoke earlier he consistently referred to community members as threats am i a threat when i say black lives matter am i a threat if my hand is in my pocket am i up front if i'm holding my phone and you think it's a gun to sean's point at how we compare the eugene weekly reports that spd killed 16 people in the same time frame that eugene officers killed 12. chief lewis has an outdated four-year mentality when we need to be moving towards the guardian mindset council needs to ask for more i wanted to talk more about this but i have to mention yesterday as you know there was a rally and cruz a splash which resulted in reports of voter intimidation this event was organized by two people who were previously arrested

1:17:04 for assaulting black lives matter protesters this alone should constitute intimidation i went to splash to bear witness and now i'm wondering did that make me a threat on my drive over i was boxed in um on 58th street by two large trucks with trump flags i made it to splash i saw a completely full parking lot with trump flags everywhere crowley goers were being directed to park on the graph i parked on the street and walked in there were people with guns and no masks one car had the word deplorable written on the side of it some of the rally goers were circling the parking area on foot evidently doing their own security this militia type behavior made me feel

1:17:50 very unsafe i watched the ballot box and i saw trump cars parking there i saw a voter ask well amelie because there was a parking lot the exit route was not obvious the event was originally planned to happen a bob keefer i want to know why willamelain staff had been changed to a venue with a ballot box it's the final weekend before polls closed and prior to the event when concerns over voter intimidation were reported to the city why wasn't the events

1:18:39 so she was within about 15 seconds of her allotted time so if she comes back on neil and wants to finish a sentence that would be okay as far as i'm concerned elizabeth we have you self-muted is that something that you've done oh yeah i uh i finished my statement i didn't know it cut out um i was just saying that uh you know why did willamelein have them changed to a venue with a ballot box and when concerns were brought to the city why wasn't the event moved to another location okay elizabeth thank you we just want to make sure we you got out what you needed to get out appreciate it thank you okay neil write the next one okay the next speaker

1:19:38 can you hear me yes i missed the name i'm not sure if anybody else got the name can we get your name please yeah absolutely my name is lauren williams and i live in ward 2. thank you so much yeah thank you um i wanted to thank you all for your time and undivided attention and i would specifically like to address counselor mo who's my board representative and counselor pictionary um counselor pictionary i don't i'm not sure if you remember commenters i see that you wrote down my name and i'm not sure if you remember my past comments but um a while back i expressed disappointment that the spec that's back isn't overseeing the police department i'm not sure if you can

1:20:23 acknowledge if you yeah you do remember that um yeah you responded to me which i really genuinely appreciate that it's not the job of spec to oversee the police department um and so i'd just like to have some clear communication about who answers to who as i understand it chief lewis answers to nancy newton the city manager and nancy is hired annually reviewed and fired by council she answers to you and you were elected by the public is that correct so far yeah i think you're right because you were elected by the by us by the public you also answered to us

1:21:08 i think that's probably correct yeah um i've attended every single work sessions back meeting and city council meeting since early february and i don't think that you're meaningfully hearing them specifically counselor mo i don't think that you're meaningfully hearing me and i don't think that you're fighting hard enough for the comments coming out of word two respectfully i want to say that we really need someone to step in and create and enforce change cultural and policy change in the police department nancy seemingly can't go rogue because if you don't like that you can fire her we've repeatedly asked someone to step

1:21:55 in chief lewis is not going to both be the problem and the solution seemingly and so i'm asking city councils we really need you to enforce policy and cultural changes so that we have a safe community to live in please fight harder thank you thank you very much we appreciate your comments and we we hear you thank you the next speaker is shea gallagher star and shea you should be able to unmute your microphone there you go all right i'm here thank you so much uh check out the star and that was a lot of static am i can you hear me

1:22:41 we can still hear you but we also heard a lot of static yeah that's very weird um okay hang on just a second i'm going to see if i can setting scare okay can you hear me better now yes and aj could you restart the timer please all right thank you so much shea gallagher starr i live in ward six and ward six is the award in which both the black unity march of july 29th and yesterday's trump rally around the ballot box at splash occurred and i'd like to give you kind of a comparison to give you an example of

1:23:28 what the public is seeing when we talk about the culture of the springfield police department so thank you for allowing me to speak thank you for your discussion of the eight can't wait agenda during your work session um so as i said the the trump rally yesterday as lizzie has already pointed out was held around a ballot box it was clearly an attempt to intimidate voters and especially voters of color none of whom that i know personally were comfortable walking into that environment to deliver their balance chief lewis was actually asked at a recent advisory committee meeting

1:24:13 how the springfield police department was planning to protect ballot boxes and prevent voter intimidation and he blew off the question we didn't get an answer to that on july 29th spd put up barricades to prevent black unity demonstrators from going out onto main street on november 1st spd provided the trump rally with an escort down main street and by the way we also witnessed the rally participants delaying a lit up ambulance that was heading westbound despite their escort in july chief lewis justified spd actions including violence against

1:24:59 participants because black unity demonstrators were said to be disruptive in my neighborhood yesterday in the same neighborhood i heard clarence horns yelling and cursing from inside my home while trump demonstrators were not only unhindered but actually being assisted by the springfield police department the message that that is very clear is that springfield police department is extremely selective about who they please versus who they protect they're not choosing to protect all residents of springfield equally and in doing so they violate the trust of our community over and over again lawsuits are going to continue to rob

1:25:44 the city's coffers without affecting the spd budget or behavior until the city council takes responsibility for the lack of equitable policing commits the eight pen weight agenda and chooses to pass the financial consequences of poor policing choices back to the spd tonight was a beginning please continue on this path for the benefit of all of us here in springfield thank you for giving me some time you're welcome shay thank you for commenting next one neil the next speaker's microphone is not uh working but she has sent in a question i'll read to the council if that's all right this is from rosemary

1:26:29 uh bobol she would like to know what the city's response will be to ensure we do not have voter intimidation and partisan forces at ballot drop locations like experience this weekend and then our next speaker would be jen smith and let me make sure your microphone is unmuted hello can you hear me yes we can jennifer good evening go ahead good evening um thank you i was watching the work session as well i also wanted to thank you for looking at the eight can't wait agenda and i just wanted to thank um everyone

1:27:15 on the council for just always being very open in springfield to public comment and respectful it's clear that you're listening so we do really appreciate that i really want to encourage everyone on the council to ask the right questions um as i listen to these use of force policies so many of them are based on what i would call the judgment of a reasonable officer or the judgment of an officer and their own snap snap second judgments and decisions i would venture that the judgment of all the officers that participated on july 29th including chief lewis himself and anyone involved in prior use of force instances is seriously in question right now we're asking our officers to stop shooting citizens and saying once is too

1:28:02 many times and and just the cavalier way that it was presented was really chilling to me i think spd has a pretty horrific record on this the per incident insurance required and legal troubles alone are a pretty clear indicator of that um you know if de-escalation is being taught to law enforcement it's standard policy why wasn't it applied july 29th why isn't it applied when someone's you know leaving an area in a car what if the public doesn't agree with what another officer says is reasonable i mean given our current complaints about the toxic warrior culture and policing so i mean for example i think most people would say don't shoot someone in the back or who's fleeing but spd officers and use of force

1:28:48 policies and and history seems like think that this is fine um and i mean sbd has lost settlements lawsuits this policy is fine in the investigation of its fair you know how many of the spd use of force policies were violated and then springfield police association defended the officer who violated them why does officer stone wear a body camera why was it called a pilot program seriously when actually it was a result of an excessive use of force complaint from what i understand why was inspector mckee pushed out of spd why is the focus on how an officer may be at risk instead of if the public may be at risk how much training does spd do when not to shoot

1:29:33 scenarios where you should not use the gun of those eight hours per year saying that tunnel vision is happening because we're not teaching officers to be empathetic how to value others lives over their own how to be civil servants there are good officers out there there are officers who are like that and there are officers who weren't i would say it's never reasonable to shoot a civilian it should be only the most extreme scenarios school shootings hostage situations slow thinking process is necessary the force continuum that person could be innocent and even if they're not the police are not the judge jury and executioner

1:30:21 so thank you thank you jen appreciate your comments neil the next speaker is thomas kephart thank you hi can you hear me yes we can go ahead thomas all right good evening council members uh so i'm i'm thomas kephart ward 6 and i want to talk a little bit about what happened yesterday in our community so yesterday afternoon as many people have noted already springfield police escorted a parade of white supremacists and other so-called patriot groups around our community those who are sworn to protect and serve the entire community of springfield escorted this parade as they blew through traffic signals shouted obscenities at observers revved their motors

1:31:06 burned out at occasional stop and go points incessant honking and brandishing their weapons at various stopping points within the city the starting point of the parade happened to be at a ballot drop-off point where observers saw men standing around drinking and with assault rifles at the ready all of this was also in plain sight of police i don't think it is a stretch to say that many people see this as police collaborating with a group determined to frighten and intimidate members of our community especially those who have already been marginalized some people might argue that these are just good-natured folks who want to express their first amendment rights to protest and show support for their president however some of the organizers and many of the participants of this parade

1:31:52 are well-known white supremacists having spent time behind bars for hate crimes and other atrocious attacks it would be one thing if the police were honestly making sure to provide logistical support for legitimate parade but i questioned legitimacy when various participants were visibly breaking multiple laws this is obviously not the first time that springfield pd is given preferential treatment to far-right protesters in our city in fact my neighborhood of thurston during a black live matters protest a few months ago police openly supported and encouraged bad actors while talking well while taking an aggressive and escalatory approach toward the young people marching for social justice an act for which the springfield police department is currently under investigation all of this comes at a critical time in our nation and our state militia watch and

1:32:38 other state and federal agencies have deemed oregon a top five high-risk state likely to experience electoral violence in the coming days these groups have been specifically targeting suburban and mid-sized communities and springfield is no exception our city has been a hotbed for far-right recruiting and other activity for many years and an increase in militias and militia activity has been steadily rising especially since the murder of george floyd and the outpouring support for black lives matter granted it is a tough time to be a good cop and in many of the ranks welcome the support of blue lives matter flags leaving behind trucks but the people who champ black lives matter are deep on the police are residents of this community also worth equal protection it is the sworn duty of these officers to protect the peace and promote law and order but how can they when they clearly show sympathy and support for one side at

1:33:24 this point the council needs to make clear that they will put pressure on the springfield police department to remember that to be peace officers be nonpartisan and their interest is for all law-abiding residents of this city i guess you have to ask yourselves what kind of community do you want to be are we a city that endorses hate and violence the one that greatly stands up to the callous nature of our times both safe and a welcoming city i hope it's the latter thank you

1:34:13 i was going to ask the council if if we there's apparently four more in cube and we could potentially allow them two minutes each instead of the full three to so we can get them all in is that okay with the council okay okay let's let's go with that neil two each with a maximum of four speakers okay the next speaker is zia wang okay hear me yes we can thank you hi my name is cecilia i i wanna actually share my experience while i was uh from the beginning of the trump alley at the splash yesterday from 11 45 to the around 3 30 after the left for the

1:34:58 cruise so i have two concerns around this rally the first concern is as a person of color when i walk into the splat a splash parking lot i definitely feel my heart beating faster when i see the you know almost over 100 trucks was full of the you know white supremacy the flags and the trump uh flags around the parking lot they not only occupied the parking lot in the frontal back they also occupied the grass and the parking public space another thing i noticed that you know over 300 people there have kids elders nobody wear masks i think they violated the restriction of outdoor gathering for the cover concern another thing i'm really construct

1:35:43 concerned about around two o'clock they start to line up for cruise and there's the police officer a standard the right the side of the the the car cruising and the block of the traffic for people to drive into the the parking to the park splash park to drop in the ballots and at the same time there's the truck from the truck trump rally side uh it's a block the way for people driving so i don't know that the person is i don't think that coming from spd but the police officer cross wait didn't say anything block to stop the behavior so the host actually about at least 45 minutes to block the traffic for people driving to drop the ballots

1:36:28 so i only have two minutes so i only can briefly express what my experience would i win this and what are my concern around mr trump rally as a person of color thank you thank you very much next speaker neil also the next speaker is angela cellon angela you should be able to unmute your microphone good evening council members can you hear me i can yes we can my name is angela sellen and i'm a resident in springfield and i have an idea i was hoping might

1:37:13 might help this situation um i was thinking if springfield public schools and springfield police department will be if they could consider fostering a partnership a positive partnership and maybe dedicate one day and half an hour an hour maybe to show videos of how they feel and maybe um kind of go back and forth and have a bond that might might help kids um understand what what police officers are what their intentions are and um just kind of have that safety bond maybe

1:38:00 so that's all i had to say thank you very much angela appreciate your comments the next speaker we have is thomas prince and thomas you should be able to unmute your microphone now thank you thomas lawrence ward one i would like to start by talking about splash because it's a perfect segue into what i was prepared to say which was actually a compliment for the two weeks ago meeting that we had so my question is how is there allowed to be a political rally had held in the same area as a ballot box and i'm not talking about william wayne's perspective because it's their property i mean from the cities per the event creator's own statement on the facebook page they had a permit from

1:38:46 the city as well as police escort for the crews that followed directly afterwards there's no plausible deniability that police were not aware of the entire event at best this is a lack of a policy that keeps that from happening at worst this is the same double standard that we continue to bring up every single time about the response for certain people protesting to that end i want to thank the council for the response after the audience speaking last time because i feel like there was a very obvious change of your ability to respond back to us i heard something different and so i do thank you for that now i also spoke last time at the very beginning and i would like to clarify what i had said about

1:39:32 wanting more accountability wanting to see things get done i understand that we have a bureaucracy and i don't want to renegade wild west any more than anybody else does but what i am asking for each of you individually is i want to hear you use your voice elsewhere where is your voice on facebook social media at the protests and rallies that are happening all around you all have a voice that we don't have we are doing our best but you are city councilors you have people who know your name people who have known you for a long time and what you stand on we need you to take individual action not just as the council here but everywhere else because we're not going to get anywhere if this is the only place we ever have work done it needs to happen on the streets and finally for the work session we talked about the police brutality and i would

1:40:17 love to hear an answer on the use of force during the thirst in protest because there was a barricade there were police there were protesters and police broke through the barricade before the barricade was ever taken down or disrupted that seems like an escalation of force not a response to proper force due to naughty words thank you thank you for your comments thomas and neil should be one more i believe our last speaker is chris mcallister and chris should be able to unmute your microphone chris there you go good afternoon council my name is chris mcallister i live on 12th street in ward 3. um i'm not going to make most of my comments about stuff you've just heard about but that said black lives matter

1:41:03 latin x rights matter homeless needs matter with that in mind i wanted to recognize the leadership that the city of springfield did over the last cold spell for the very first time in a long time we felt heard when our most fragile needed a place and there was nobody here to help them um neil ledotti um nancy from the city and the leadership team have made things happen in a way that have never happened before and we hope to see more action like this springfield's voice has been not heard both on the local level and on the community level when it comes to the needs of its individual folks and i wanted to commend all of you for having leadership and helping make these items happen whether it's for displaced fire

1:41:49 victims or from those who are struggling with addiction and health issues you guys are being heard when you guys choose to speak so please let us know you hear us respond give remonstrance and let us know that the communication and dialogue is happening our people are rising they care about them everybody here just like you care about everybody here and while our police issues are very important and we need to not lose sight of those we also need to look at where we are growing and where we are doing things differently so thank you winter is here the rains are coming covet is here the flu is here we can do better but we are doing more than we ever have before and it's thanks to your guys's leadership have a good night thank you chris we appreciate your

1:42:34 comments that should uh um wrap up our comments from the audience and i would if it now is a council response but i'd like to if i could just ask one thing as part of a council response is chief are you still here oh yes i am can you hear me yes i would like to if you would please um respond back to what the springfield police plans are in regards to the security election security police so we will have additional resources on duty uh specifically tomorrow a number of additional officers will be out there the focus will be particular on the

1:43:20 particular ballot boxes make sure that there's our routine patrols out there we've been in contact with our local law enforcement partners and lane county elections office to make sure that we can respond to anything that may happen out there i've given clear instructions as of the latest time as uh tonight before this last meeting uh to our callers or staff if people who call in reporting maybe some suspicious activity or possible interference or intimidation regarding any areas around these boxes that we'll need to respond and take a look at that so again we'll have different resources we have additional resources on standby for tomorrow also is that what you need council for sure yes thank you i think many folks that were that are signed on here listening

1:44:05 to that would would like to heard that and i have uh counselor steer followed by accounts for more thanks counselor pictionary i would just like to address all of the commenters tonight thank you for your comments and i can promise you that to a person everyone here on the council shares your concerns about the future of the police department and also the future of free elections here in springfield my understanding is that in addition to the police department there will be independent and nonpartisan monitors at the ballot boxes and that there will be oversight that will be allowing people to vote without any kind of fear um i

1:44:52 also wanted to direct a comment to miss lauren miller from councillor mo's district i can promise you i've had multiple discussions with counselor mo about your concerns and counselor most heart is in the right place he's uh he's definitely on your side on this thanks thank you uh councilman staircaster more yes i just um mike's i had the same question about what the police were preparing to do so thank you for that uh from the chief and then i had another question you mentioned that there were 56 people online and so i was wondering neil if that do you have a list of those people who they sign in

1:45:39 is there some way i mean that surprised me that there were that many and so i was just wondering and when we're sitting in the council chambers we look out and see the people but um is there a way in which we could just be notified of who is listening in uh councillor moore um we have a list of those that have signed in and then those that want to speak we keep a separate list but much like uh in-person meetings we typically don't take the names of everyone who is here for a meeting they're free to come and go but if you just let you know just letting us know how many that was really helpful to me thank you

1:46:25 i would be happy to do that and we and i think too uh counselor more there's on the right side of your screen it may not be applicable to the ipad but there's a red arrow that you can expand and you can see on that list on the right side how many people are in attendance um let's see there was was there someone else that had to call me yeah that's right sorry sean your turn go ahead i hope the chief didn't go too far away because i had more questions about uh about ballot boxes today um so chief if if i'm a citizen and i can't get to a ballot box tomorrow or i feel intimidated what should i do well if you can't get to a particular ballot box there there are first call us

1:47:10 obviously if you're somebody blocking your access because that's illegal uh if you feel intimidated don't want to go to a particular ballot box and there's obviously two locations in springfield there's multiple locations in eugene you can find those on the lane county elections website or call the lane county elections uh officer over there and they can give you directions on what to do with that so there i think there's roughly and i'm probably not exactly right here roughly 16 drop boxes in the eugene springfield area springfield only having two up over here obviously but it's again but it is against oregon law to intimidate somebody at a ballot box right yeah it is but it's not it's not against working a lot to people to be to be standing in the vicinity of a

1:47:55 ballot box even if they're waving a flag for either side i just want to be clear of that that's not considered a crime we've got the lane county elections did a good job and provided law enforcement with a frequently asked question sheet that told us you know what was allowed what was not allowed and so we've given that information to our officers but we're going to respond if you got a call for service or someone's concerned about it [Music] so okay so if if you're if if you're springfield pd working tomorrow your position is like to be we're we're monitoring ballot boxes right we're following up on everything in anybody that's potentially breaking the law and basically we are protecting

1:48:40 people's right to vote is that fair absolutely and this is very you know this is a very serious uh election there's a lot of energy behind it and people are very you know concerned about things and so we'll make sure that we have a quick response and that's part of the reason we're hiring additional officers to be out there so that we can have a quick response to any allegations and the position of the pd is they are nonpartisan in this whole thing they want people to vote they want them to do it safely absolutely yeah we just we we are there to make sure that everybody is safe and we do not take any particular stance on any political situation so um in some of the in some of the uh responses um this i'm sorry some of the public comment people were describing

1:49:26 having pd observing um observing people blocking access to the uh to the part that's the first time i've heard that and all the emails that have sort of been going around um is that do we know if that's true is that something that you're looking at that's the first time i've heard that particular allegation of blocking that access we have been in contact with uh with lana lane and their officials and they did an excellent job out there of having their own officials make sure they were all around that ballot box uh monitoring and making sure that it was there was no issues with that right but i would assume that if that you were would be following up with the police if people were blocking access to the park that would be something you would expect them to

1:50:12 intervene right absolutely that was part of the the from the get-go lama lane and rs concern is that when they had this particular rally up there it was not going to block access to the ballot box and so there's a specific lane of travel left open for that ballot box right but the reason i want you to follow up is it's clear from you know there's sort of government communications today saying hey what happened and then you saw citizen communications today saying that literally we were watching it happen and we didn't do anything and that's a lot more concerning for me yeah and i'll be happy to follow up with our officers that were out there yeah i'd appreciate it all right thank you okay thank you chief um moving on to the next item i i i have some comments to make but i'm

1:50:58 gonna wait till uh business from the from the council so those that did the public comments please stick around because it's also be answering some of the questions thank you okay next item neil okay the next item is an ordinance a request for a metro plan diagram amendment for 36.57 acres of property removal of nodal designation for 81.37 acres of property and zone change for 45.63 acres of property located at the northwest corner of marcola road street ordinance number one an ordinance amending the eugene springfield metropolitan area general plan or the

1:51:44 metro plan diagram by redesignating approximately 36.5 the plan from commercial c to medium density density residential mdr concurrently amending the metro plan diagram by removing the nodal designation from 81.3 acres of land and currently amending the springfield zoning map by reasoning approximately 36.57 acres of land from mixed-use commercial muc to 20.74 acres of mdr and 15.83 acres of public lands and open space tlo concurrently amending the springfield zoning map by rezoning approximately 9.06 acres of land from muc to community commercial cc

1:52:29 adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date andy limburn is here for the staff report yes thank you the only counselors hope you can hear me fine yes we can great um i just wanted to supplement staff's presentation at the public hearing last meeting um with just a advice that the planning commission draft minutes from september 22nd have been added to your packet uh they are not the adopted minutes but they do provide a very thorough um representation of the discussion that occurred at that meeting and further to that um staff summary my summary of the planning commission

1:53:15 discussion i don't want to give short shrift to their discussions and deliberations because there was um some contemplation of the impacts of the nodal development area being removed changes to the zoning and how that may affect the overall tax base for the community and that sort of thing so that is outlined in the minutes and also in the staff report here so i just wanted to make counselors aware of that there's some additional um information about the planning commission's deliberations on this matter so if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer thank you andy does uh anyone on council have questions for mr limberg um excuse me counselor questionary if

1:54:00 you could uh do the expert a context now before that you get into deliberations in question oh we're supposed to do i thought we had questions first and then deliberation okay so uh each each counselor needs to declare whether or not they've had any ex parte contact since the last meeting or conflicts of interest uh go ahead counselor mo no okay oh okay counselor woodrow no no export no conflict of interest thank you count for steer

1:54:48 no conflict of interest no ex parte contact thank you councilman gordon uh no exported contact no conflict of interest thank you counselor more none thank you no expert contacts or conflicts okay perfect so with that uh we can start some deliberations in regards to uh if there's any discussion required by any of the counselors before we make a motion okay uh counselor mo i am so glad to see something going forward on that property it's been vacant for so many years it's so prime i don't know why somebody hasn't taken it up before now but this is springfield moving ahead and i'm really really glad

1:55:34 to see it happening yes that's awesome to see the roadblocks removed so uh mary bridget or christina are we good to go i just want um it's mary bridget a counselor missionary i just wanted to confirm i think i caught everyone's declaration except for yours oh i apologize my golly i have no ex parte contact and no conflict of interest how was that okay that's great thank you good good catch i'm sorry i'm so interested in making this meeting go smooth trying to okay so uh now we're good to go correct that's right you're good to move forward thank you thank you ma'am so i would entertain a motion

1:56:19 i move that we adopt ordinance number one i second it's been moved and seconded and we take a roll call vote mr ladati please answer ben gordon yes councilor moe yes councillor moore yes steer yes counselor woodrow yes and constipationary absolutely yes next item is business from the city council and i think we have a placeholder for counselor mo

1:57:05 yes you ready for me yes sir okay uh the person that spoke uh from from the public comments that i have been doing my job is right i have not been doing my job and i apologize when uh when the incident happened in july i've lived in springfield my whole life i did not expect anything like that to happen i just i just i just just don't know what to do but we reacted in the city we didn't support it we were we were stunned we didn't know what to do uh we finally decided to do a hire somebody to do a study at that particular event and i think we're sort of waiting for those results thinking that's going to lead us to a solution that's not it that's just

1:57:50 going to tell us what happened in that event the whole picture we need to be addressing the mayor was going to address a blue ribbon council and she resigned and that has that's not happened that's dropped i want us now not january to start working on a program that we can do security equality respect for everybody look in the police police situation try and make it softer for the people and get the people to trust us they deserve it and that's what i'm going to do everything i can to do that so i hope the rest of the counselors will work with me on that and and uh city manager everybody and i don't want to wait till january i want to get moving now so thank you

1:58:39 thank you counselor mode so uh next item neil i got a couple of things oh go ahead i'm sorry i didn't see your hand um no i i thought there was somebody else ahead of me when uh when it uh when a counselor moe finished i just wanted to draw uh attention to a couple of other items i know um we talked about it a couple of weeks ago and i you know appreciate the cmo's office uh working out how to get um city uh council meetings and planning commission meetings put on youtube a post discovered on an internal website i had heard back from people that it was just a ton easier i know that there's only a handful of them up so far but thank you for making it a little bit easier to access information about what's going on

1:59:24 um the other thing is i had a home a home consortium board meeting last week one of the big approval items that we had is we approved some of the federal uh home dollars as an emergency grant to st vinnies for their uh girls house for homeless uh youth with uh homeless girls that is in that church that is in south eugene so i actually thought it was a good use um st vinnie's has historically funded that program through fundraising in their store and hit that program particularly hard so we were able to find dollars uh under a federal rule to essentially help bridge um bridge the financing there

2:00:11 and um i want to at least thank the chief um for for the work session i know we kind of ran right up to time i thought it was really productive and i learned a ton from it i know that we're gonna probably have more work sessions coming up shortly to get into the meet of um of policing but i i found the information very informative and i would just continue to encourage the police uh chief you're a good teacher for what's actually going on find different ways to talk to the community about it and answer questions there's a lot of there's a lot of questions people have and explaining what's going on and why from your perspective is really important thank you thank you council van gorden and we have councillor woodrow yes

2:00:56 uh just a couple things um one again i do want to thank the chief um i do think that we have opportunities that we haven't taken advantage of yet um to i look back i can go back many years when the an officer in a community was well known to entire families um and i think we can get back to that and get back to a sense of of um community where where the officers and the families have the sense of community with each other and i don't think it's going to be that hard to get there we just have to make it a priority to do that um and open up the communication lines and the and the um uh the the feeling of reassurance on both sides that we're both out there for the same purposes um

2:01:42 to to have a safe and and welcoming community um and i i think um it's not that hard as long as everybody is keeps her keeps their eyes on on where we want to be and and works towards it together um in communication i also want to thank chris mcallister um that's one of the first times i've had i've heard chris come up and thank us for something we've done and i i know a lot of work went into it um it was you know that freeze was a quick freeze unexpected early in the year i mean normally we've been in the past we've been thinking november 15th we moved it up to november first a lot of times in order to be able to to handle it but when it happened in the middle of october it was quite a surprise so

2:02:28 um i too appreciate the work that the staff put into being able to accommodate that and i thank chris for recognizing how much the staff how much work the staff put into it um to get it done and so um thanks chris and and hopefully we can continue to work on this i've heard good comments from the community regarding the the rvs regarding the adus um different opportunities to try to help out the displaced fire people are the displaced unhoused and so we're getting there chris and uh and and keep keep letting us know so thank you thank you councillor woodrow look counselor just a quick comment um hearing people tonight speak about what

2:03:14 happened out at thurston um at splash that was the first time i heard a lot of this information and i just wondered if anyone had any videos since we tend to have all these you know we have our phones and we take video um because i'm hearing two different stories and so if anyone has you know and then i'm hearing that some people are still feeling intimidated at that particular drop box so um i just would appreciate having some kind of video evidence going you know going forward if anyone has any thank you as far as i know there's no video evidence of that i've seen like i know

2:04:00 that you've had that question before where um actually now that um that whether or not there'd been like a live feed or something like that towards the event i don't know of anything like that i mean one of the emails i think there may be a link to like uh um like a promo video and that was would be the only thing i've seen but it was in our email today they look like a drone yeah okay okay moving on to the next item next item is business from the city manager yes thank you i counsel i'd just like to share uh one positive thing that happened today to wrap up our meeting today we had a dia de los muertos

2:04:48 celebration day of the dead that was put on by our library staff and they did an excellent job putting that together we had um some wonderful live music at um on the square by city hall and um followed by some some comments from myself and um our library director um excuse me our latino coordinator in the library and then there was a processional that went through the city looking at different businesses that had displays celebrating the holidays so it was a great cultural experience i was uh people were wearing masks and um being socially distant so it was very responsible and a positive event

2:05:34 let you know great sounds good nancy thank you next item any business from the city attorney no business thank you with that said uh this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone have a good safety thank you