Springfield City Council — April 19, 2021

0:25 aj we ready to do this thing [Music] we are ready um then i am going to call the uh work session for the springfield city council to order with a roll call mayor van gorden here councillors pitts here moe rodley here woodrow here and pissionary here all right uh it looks like we have two items tonight the first item is the fiscal year 2022 draft community development block grant one year action plan with aaron fyfield so aaron do you want to take us away here thank you good evening mayor council

1:13 so i think we have 20 minutes for this item there's a lot in your packet so i'm gonna sort of give you a high level um and then to allow questions so if i skip over anything um please ask but just wanted to give you the time so in sum i'm here because each year the city of springfield receives an allocation of federal community development block grant funds to address affordable housing and community development needs primarily for low-income households in springfield as part of the federal process to receive these funds the city must develop a one-year action plan the draft you have before you through a public process identifying programs and projects to address community needs in fiscal

1:59 year 2022 we estimate the city is going to have about 740 thousand dollars to put toward these kind of programs so i came to council in january asking direction for a draft plan at the time you supported the city's home home repair program for low-income households as well as continued support for nonprofit services through the human services commission and then the cost to administer the program uh you directed staff to put the remaining four hundred thousand dollars open to uh local nonprofits um through a request for proposals so that's what did we release the rfp the request for proposals um and received nine applications totaling over a million dollars

2:45 in requests um and so as part of the public process those nine applications went before the community development advisory committee the city council advisory committee and they evaluated those applications based on the evaluation criteria set set um set in the application um and also had a q a with applicants um during their public meeting um in order to sort of get at any additional questions they had you'll see in your packet a summary of those nine applications as well as a sort of summary of what those evaluation scores were by the by the committee as a whole so

3:30 as part of this public process the committee also held two different public hearings on two different nights and you'll also see a summary of those public comments in the pack as well so on april 7th the committee met given all of this information to discuss how they wanted to make a recommendation to sit to city council on how to allocate these funds 740 thousand dollars toward affordable housing and community development projects so that's what you see in your packet the committee went ahead and decided to make two recommendations a plan a and a plan b as they are calling it you'll see that in two different columns i believe on the last page of the packet um i would say the the thing to keep in mind for both of those um recommendations is that they fully

4:16 support um i would say two different projects in particular one square one villages sort of an innovative model to support home ownership um through a cooperative housing model as well as catholic community services of lane county their project is to create a permanent home for oasis their effort to support homeless families with children in springfield and so the committee went ahead and wanted to support both of those projects you'll see plan b was saying rather than spread the peanut butter and only partially fund a few different projects um sort of creating risk on how those projects might be fully funded the committee said knowing council support for oasis let's go ahead and

5:01 fully fund oasis as a recommendation um just to give council some options on you know want to sort of allocate the funds so i think i'll stop there um and let you all answer you know ask me any questions i will say what i'm looking for you from tonight is a recommendation not a recommendation sorry a sort of direction on how you would like to allocate these funds and i will bring that back to you on may 3rd during regular session for a motion we need to submit the plan to hud by may 15th so that is the discussion tonight um with direction um for approval on may 3rd so merely um just a couple questions one um

5:46 do we have a list or how the how the points were applied uh yeah with the breakdown of the evaluation um is that yeah we got the scores we gave us the scores but what what kind of points were applied to create those scores sure so um there were five different i should have included that sorry about that um there were five different categories we're talking project description project as a whole the population that the project is serving the project readiness is it ready to proceed does it have its funding does it know how you know who's going to be executing the project the financing plan is there risk in terms of are you still fundraising do you know

6:31 what your financing plan is and then the project team how experienced is the sort of proposed applicant in carrying out this kind of project so each of those five categories had five points maximum and so 25 points was the total um okay that the um because i i'm i'm very appreciative of the uh recommendation for oasis um just having heard of uh presentation earlier today of oasis being handled all over the place people having their offices up the block and everything like that it would be wonderful to be able to get them in one location and have the the services that they're providing in a unified way so that would be that would be awesome um and so i really

7:17 appreciate the group's recommendation there um the only thing i would like to maybe reconsider or look at is the possibility of the um the paint for emerald art center i realize it's not a homeless situation or an unhoused situation but it is downtown um building and it does need to be kept up or we're not going to have that we're not going to have that building so and it's not that much money so i i just tossed that into the into the conversation as a possibility of maybe looking at figuring out how we might be able to to apply money towards that leonard hey um so um

8:02 thanks for the presentation aaron um the the recommended um funding that i'm reading on the uh on the attachment here is are we gonna have to winnow this down at all is there any um are there any items that we're gonna need to take away in order to make the budget work so in the maybe um i'm wondering if aj could pull it up i don't know if she's got the packet handy um but looking at the two columns plan a and plan b you'll see that plan a and plan b each um sort of keep keep the recommendation within the funding line of 740 000 but you'll see they don't recommend funding

8:47 everything that came in so there were nine applications that came in one ended up rescinding their after we actually have eight applications to work with um and you'll see neither column a nor column b have a recommendation um for those three projects um but each of those plan a and plan b both sort of you don't have to winnow that down it just is you know in this case like to speak to counselor woodrow's point like the emerald arts center wasn't recommended by oh i see so if you wanted to include something else we need to we need to play around with it um so maybe um yeah maybe we could just talk about what which of these projects you would like to find and then we could see how the math adds up and i have an excel spreadsheet that it might be well if we get to it we can use it to

9:33 make it easier to calculate but um yeah so it's kind of which projects would you like to fund sure um okay well i'm i'm looking at the um council's choice for plan b i would like to see some money go to springfield eugene tennis association they're a new group and they're a group that's sort of finding its footing right now i i would like to see some money go to them and so i guess um if i'm given a choice i would rather go with plan b and uh councillor woodrow is uh making a good point about emerald center too corey thank you um so first of all

10:20 i wanted to say i totally snuck in to the meeting to the last deliberation meeting um for the the the committee which i really appreciated because it gave me a chance to listen to the deliberation and i wanted to extend thanks to that committee because they were very thorough and they hashed out of a lot of you know ideas and differences and i apprec i just i really appreciated it and being a new counselor it gave me a chance to see how that fits in with the home consortium and other things so i really appreciated that i think that i um i also i really appreciate plan a because i do not think that we need to fully fund the oasis project

11:07 because i think that that is a a project an organization that has access to different funding and i believe that when we were talking about it at that meeting or they were other folks were talking and i was eavesdropping um they did say in the proposal that they had other opportunities for funding to put with the funding so i feel comfortable with not funding the catholic community services at the full level um and i want to echo what um leonard said that i also would like to see because i think that you the springfield eugene tenant association is doing some really important work and we'll continue to as we come out of covid around that so if there's a little bit of wiggle room um not that i'm against art an art center but i don't have a strong feelings around that one but i

11:53 do around the tenant association so um so mine is sort of a combination of a and b i guess in that i'm totally fine with just not funding fully catholic community services but looking is there a way to sneak a little extra thank you steve i i it's not so practical but the art center is important because it's a downtown image that we will get away from us so we need i think we need to pay some attention to that if we can because it's a visual thing but it doesn't doesn't get people homes i know that but it's downtown or it's springfield so that's all so and i think i've got just kind of two observations for like i

12:39 i agree on the emerald arts center right like that is a that is a building we need to really take care of to make sure that it you know maintains its role in in downtown um the other piece i guess question that i had aaron is how much like the county is coming into a ton of funding related to human services as part of uh relief legislation how much of this is would qualify for a supplemental sort of application in in that process great question um i would say the public services springfield eugene tennant association the oregon law center and daisy chain would all qualify um for sort of

13:25 when i posed the question like does your project is your project a response to or the connection to coronavirus in terms of either supporting people who have been impacted by it um they had answered yes so they all would be potential if you wanted to fund them um they could come back through a different funding source emerald arts center would not be available in because they did not have a direct connection so my so here's my preference here like there's a lot of good programs and i saw the youth era one down there which has been what you know a center that we've needed for a long time um i would like to fund catholic community services at the full level and then squeezing the emerald arts center and like c street like that project has been a pretty innovative thing that's been out there the last couple of years i'd love to get it

14:10 across the finish line um my my agreement with uh and i would say given like cdbg funds are you know sort of really hard to sort of come by i think that the tenants association has got a good ask um and i would and i would propose what we do is we send a letter of recommendation that they get funded through the uh the county process which is going to have a lot more service expansions to it and we submit a letter of support for them and um probably the youth era to say hey these are good good projects please take a hard look at them and as a council take the opportunity to lobby for them when we talk about county human services

15:04 um damian hi yes uh quick question i'm just curious so for number five in the oregon law center and springfield eugene tennis association to me they seem like they coincide in some way uh meaning that you know if we support ceta uh i mean and just based on what i've seen and you know who i've talked to uh since i've been on council there have been a lot of situations where people need some type of legal counsel especially you know bypoc individuals and so to me it seems like those kind of coincide in some way and even if there isn't funding for one of them how can the other potentially piggyback or you know establish more of a stronger partnership because to me it seems like if they work

15:50 together there could have been a greater chance for funding uh because those two overlapped so much uh so yeah i mean i just kind of want to to say that uh because i think the civil uh rights piece is very very you know crucial when it comes to any type of housing and you know it's a privilege that some of us have never had to utilize a lawyer you know or had a situation where we haven't you know we've been treated unfairly uh at least not yet uh so yeah i mean i think five and six together personally if we're gonna focus on ceda in any type of form we need to figure out how to throw the oregon law center and if not them then what type of legal representation

16:35 would some of these tenants potentially have john joe i'm not trying to interrupt uh damien i didn't know if you're done yet but i'm having some video stuff going on so i'm still here i just can't see any or i can see everybody but you can't see me so um are you ready to make some comments joe i could if i if they're if i'm in the right spot okay go ahead so um i agree sean with what you've been saying i think there's other sources that we should give some recommendation memos or letters of recommendation for funding for those for that tenant or renter assistance legal assistance program that they have started up

17:20 i think we should fully fund the catholic community services and um basically how you line that out sean is i'm i'm in agreement with that that's the route i'd like to take i'm done all right thank you i know we're kind of all over the place area so um it's weird that it has a it has a you know council recommendation plan a and plan b and really council can do a cl a plan c if we wish you know and so yes sorry yeah so you know it's not like we're locked in i mean it's it's funny how we're kind of negotiating back and forth have some sort of plan it's like well

18:05 no wait a second they're just recognizing some programs and they think that they should throw money this direction for each one of these programs and it really is up to us to come up with whatever plan we want and so but but obviously taking into consideration their their conversations and and and going through that whole process which i i don't want to minimize but but i still don't feel like we you know we shouldn't be feeling stuck with a particular recommendation but i like uh sean's it's definitely a hybrid of those and and i fully support that for that recommendation merrily i think you had your hand up next yes um in human services this morning steve outlined um there's going to be 61.5 million dollars coming to lane county for rent

18:51 assistance related to coven so i think that's we're good that's going to be our key for everything for the uh ceta for the law uh issues that damian mentioned if there's something they're not covered if there's something in the law issues that aren't covered we can we can revisit um and see if there's some way we can supplement um from the city but i think um we've got that 61 million dollars there's a heck a lot of money coming into the county for for rental assistance um from a to z 25 of it which is going to be able to be available all the way through to the end of 2024. so i think it would be worthwhile my

19:36 where i'm coming from right now is it would be worthwhile to um support that and like you said advocate for that that money coming going towards um ceta and going towards the law and then um putting this other money towards the immediate um oasis um i just i think oasis is our core here in springfield and i really think we need to fund it steve go ahead hey yeah i thought you had your hand up i did i did uh the numbers i've seen in the past in the home repair program it's a great program but as i remember people aren't using it very much why is that oh people are very much using the home repair program

20:21 um it's the shop program the down payment assistance um under the traditional single-family home ownership model um we haven't been able to use that program which is where yeah i've just got my numbers mixed up yeah yeah the home repair program has certainly been used um and that there isn't a recommendation for funding the shop program okay all right damian yeah so councilwood you said something about that money being related to uh covet and i'm curious is is all that money i mean does it does it have to be related to covet and if so how can we determine i mean who's determining factor if you know something around houselessness or whatever is

21:08 related to covet like who's a deciding factor if all that money is directly attached to covet or is that just one of the caveats it's coming it's coming this that particular amount of money is coming in specifically for rental assistance um it's going to help with the eviction status the transition um you know the whole the whole sphere of issues that people ran into once cobit hit um and extended the the noble evictions and all the whole whole body of it but um so that goes specifically towards lane towards uh to lane county in regards to rental assistance and it will come through um i imagine various various parts of lane county some of it will come through human

21:54 services some of it will be with other um uh parts of lane county other people i'm not i can't remember sarai's title but she would be involved in that too the commissioners would be involved there would be a whole range of people that would be involved in determining um how that gets filtered through yeah and i think it's critical to remember right like in a lot of those seats we get votes at the table and the county really is the the primary lead for distributing human services services at the county level right um okay so i'm looking around for any other comments um and also like i'm more than happy to sign a letter um from the rest of us um supporting uh supporting the law

22:41 center and the tenants association in the request but i want to leave it for the option we can attach everybody's signature if that would be something they'd be interested in go ahead aaron um i'll just i i'll just highlight um for that piece um there's actually a portion of these cares relief the cryovirus relief funds that the city does have some decisions on themselves it's not all being handled at the county so i actually will be coming back to you in the next two months to sort of get your direction on how you would like um to allocate funds that are cdbg eligible tied to covid so um i think we could hold off on the letter and i'll actually just be bringing a proposal to you um to say do you want to fund but i'm

23:26 hearing now this legal piece of it both ceta and the law center um being part of that um discussion um so we can talk about what that looks like but before the letter goes out i think you guys will have an opportunity to discuss it um okay steve go ahead uh so that means if we don't fund some of these we need to tell them we're not eliminating them it's just we're just moving them to another funding part i want them to know that there's an opportunity for that yeah okay okay so let's maybe recap what we're saying bring forward so we can kind of get some head nods because we'll get an official vote you know and conversation in a regular session in two weeks so aaron do you want to recap what we think

24:13 yeah so if i'm looking at plan b essentially from uh that the cdac laid out um i'm seeing uh let me just pull up the numbers so we have them um i'm seeing the funding for the home repair program at 90 000. i'm seeing a down payment assistance for square one villages project at 63 000. i'm seeing the nonprofit human services commission recommendation at 100 100 000 548 i am seeing a fully funded catholic community services um program at three hundred and thirty two thousand four hundred and ninety two um and then i am seeing the incorrect me if i misheard

24:58 this that's an emerald art center um funded program um under slum and blight and that would be a total of 22 500 i guess i'll say the remainder of the rfp is what that's going to come to i think there's only 22 and some change um and then the 132 000 for 730 for administration and with a plan to come back with cares additional coveted funding for cdbg and talk about the other the other couple projects then yes okay i'm looking around sure joe sorry sorry for interruption my waving of hands didn't work

25:48 um so i'm sorry to go back around but i was just you made that comment that it's that the home repair program is is very well used utilized which was my understanding as well and um has added does that account get zeroed out or is that is that surplus is it at the breakoff point now that's a great question so each year we try and anticipate what exactly i think we overestimated what we thought we would spend this year um so that ninety thousand allocation is with an estimated thirty thousand dollars remaining for this year so we eventually were anticipating within a full calendar or within 12 months of spending about 120 000 for that and so then we estimated how much do we think we'll have available july 1 and how much would we need to estimate

26:34 to fully fund it at 120 000 so that's where the 90 000 came in okay so that's kind of a misnomer when it comes to looking at that number because next year we can say oh hey last year was 90 000 but we may have spent 130 so it's given a kind of a skewed number or appearance that it's not as used as it truly is good okay that's a good point so i just want to make sure that's fully funded and and um at a level where it doesn't get tapped out yeah i think what i do i tend during the works or during the draft in january to go into what i think the more details are and you're right by the time we come around to april i'm like here's what we are and you know in my head it's already there but okay okay i will keep that yeah thank

27:20 you perfect all right okay we're good erin thank you so much okay thank you all uh the second item is the annual use of force report 2020. uh it we're going to start with nancy and then she's going to hand it off to matt newark nancy thank you mayor good evening mayor and council um i just wanted to uh give some opening comments to this presentation to sort of frame up the issue before you this evening um this is the springfield police department's first time uh making a use of force presentation to the council in this manner so this is a starting point tonight and we're going to use uh your feedback tonight and and our experience to move to

28:07 perfect our processes um so as you're considering this report know that this is our first attempt and we're we're moving on um the presentation itself the data uh was derived from a current reporting structure that really does need to be improved and updated and and we that came to play as uh spd was looking at at pulling these numbers and and collecting the data that we really do have an um an outdated system um fortunately they spd has a proposed solution for that that they will be covering in this presentation tonight so again just recognizing we're at the beginning stages however the police department has

28:53 already taken some steps to create a formal use of force review structure they're going to go over that structure in this presentation this evening i do want to add that this morning i met with spd command staff and they have really demonstrated a forward-looking attitude in improving um policies procedures and practices i i felt very encouraged after our discussion this morning i see a real willingness to to look inwardly and and improve and also and um working with you the council and in the community so i'm very committed to working with the police department in this area

29:38 um and that's all i have thank you city manager good evening mayor good evening council can you hear yes me can okay i'm lieutenant matt and i were uh we met a couple sessions ago in another virtual format like this i'm the jail commander for the springfield police department and as you know over the last few weeks been the acting chief also with me is lieutenant crawley he's the patrol commander he ties in very well to this topic of conversation tonight and in fact chairs one of the new committees and has direct impact on a lot of the decisions

30:23 we're making around here as it relates to use of force training equipment policies in fact he played a major role in revising rewriting our new use of force policy before we get to into this this evening although it's not necessarily part of this use of force review or analysis i want to touch on something that's in the forefront in the national media right now which is one of the recent tragedies in minnesota involving what they're saying is an accidental discharge of a firearm leading to the death of a citizen in which peers i want to armchair quarterback

31:09 their incident but it appears the intent was to use a taser rather than a firearm lieutenant crawley the day that that news broke communicated with our patrol sergeants uh and encouraged them ordered them to emphasize how officers carry a taser and rely back on initial training they had since the number of years ago that we put lasers into play as one of our tools and the options we gave the officers that along those lines the tasers we carry are yellow they're not black they have a

31:54 laser sight type on them makes them stand out even more and the officers are required to carry them on what we call your where your offhand is or your non-support side opposite from your firearm so in briefings right now over the last week the office or the sergeants have talked to all the officers and re-emphasized the difference between how a taser is carried out firearm is carried if lieutenant crawley has more on that allow him to weigh in on that real quick before we get started in addition to the briefing trainings textbook powerpoints all the talking points that go along with this we will also have a revised hands-on training in

32:40 which officers will be hard to demonstrate efficiency annually like they do anyway but re-emphasizing proper draw proper technique proper identification of all their equipment to include the taser one of the first things that i want to talk about is the office in within the police department that's responsible for preparing this annual use of force analysis again i appreciate city manager's comments and her understanding and your understanding that this is the department's first attempt at this we probably didn't do as good a job as we thought we would do or hoped we would do and going through this process we

33:26 realized where some of our weaknesses were where our downfalls are and already coming out of that have made some improvements of how and why this whole process and this product will be better next year as a result the office that's responsible for this work product is the professional standards sergeant sergeant mike massey he actually initially had planned to be part of this presentation with the chief unfortunately he's unavailable he's out of the area i got his report a couple weeks ago along with some notes from him that he wanted me to share that he's not able to share

34:11 the way he went about putting this report together we looked at agencies our size in oregon for examples of their annual use of force report the best one we found that we thought they did the best job with was albany police department it was very thorough detailed got a better appearance than this he tried to model it after it but he found early on the process that he had to go through to get these results was difficult and didn't work well he worked with our records supervisor and accessed our records management system rms to find the

34:57 the police reports that detailed use of force or use of force incidents we found 302 of those individual instances and there wasn't a good way that the data was tracked to pull it and transferred into a report that made sense so unfortunately he had to go through and read all 302 of those reports and go through himself on an excel spreadsheet and he created a checklist for different types of uses of force and checked the ones that applied and tracked those those numbers to put this report together he was clearly frustrated in doing so and during this process

35:44 reached out to albany police department and eugene police department and asked how they produced something like this why we were having such difficulty and they use a program that's called ia pro sergeant massey set up a demo with ia pro that we just went through a few weeks ago and it's a fantastic product it tracks very clearly tracks use of force use of canines complaints discipline injuries to citizens injuries to officers commendations that officers receive the second part of the product that goes along with iapro that these agencies use and have successful is called blue teams

36:31 blue teams is used at the line level by the officers it's additional data entry that they do in addition to writing their police report they have another system blue teams that they access and it's it's almost as simple as check boxes that they go through and document the type of force used and there's literally silhouettes that they can click on a you know a front silhouette of a human body a back silhouette and they literally click on different parts of the body and that produces drop downs that they identify what that injury is that they documented on that part of the body what use of force caused that injury to them and or the arrestee and they can cut and paste their

37:16 police report narratives go along with it to offer explanations there also offers the opportunity to download and attach video which will tie in great with the body cams and in-car video that we're going to they can pull those over and add it digital photos and any other documents they need to add like example right now the way we do things is not efficient they document it in a police report but photos get lodged separately so sometimes a sergeant a supervisor might review a police report and there's mention of photos but they don't actually have the photos unless they go into evidence pulling themselves look at them or if a taser is used a download of information from that

38:01 taser is done that also gets lodged in evidence where now it could be digitally that document can be digitally attached so when the supervisor goes in to review the reports they can pull this up look through everything it tracks and documents which supervisor looked at it when and why they can add any comments they can return it to the patrol officer to make the changes that are recommended or they can approve it and pass it on and then it would go to sergeant massey's office all of them will go to sergeant massey's office and be reviewed by him and then lieutenants and ultimately the chief ones that rise to the level need additional scrutiny or there's concern over policy violations

38:46 or violations of law it's a great product we are already pursuing that with the support of the city manager and risk management we're hoping by summer sometime we can have that up and running have the company come out and provide training to command staff in the department and get that going to improve this we know we need it we have to have it some other things i want to point out that sergeant massey wanted me to talk about in terms of looking at the stats in this report because of the way he had to do it manually he's essentially created the list of different types of use of force ia pro would be more specific and the company has generated that rather than

39:32 starting massey creating a list he had to he had to read these reports and make his own interpretation in some instances what type of force was to use he gave me an example that an officer might describe that they chased somebody and tackled them rather than an option of use of force of a tackle typically in police work so he had to identify and determine if that was a push or a shove or a leg sweep but that's where some of these titles came from and where the numbers came from so again we know it's not perfect he knows it's not perfect um getting into the report and some of the numbers we wanted to be as transparent and possible

40:17 some of the agencies whose reports we reviewed for ideas of what type of force needed to be included in these some did and some didn't use displays of course and by that i mean a display of a taser or display of a handgun the force wasn't used but the the weapon was displayed we included those numbers they make our numbers pretty high overall and we can we'll get into those and talk about them here momentarily we left them in that's what i want to let you know in terms of transparency we think that's a use of force whether the escalator decision or situation or not is up to debate but we're leaving those numbers in

41:07 part of the settlement that led to [Music] the policy revisions and the requirements for us to produce this document that you have in front of you hopefully you've had a chance to review another area that we already recognize as a weakness is our force review committee again a big reason that i want to lieutenant crowley with me tonight is he rewrote the policy and put together the committee is the chair of that committee an area of weakness uh downfall that we had related to this is one of the requirements that we totally agree with and support and welcome is that the committee members received specific training

41:52 unfortunately due to covet the trainings weren't being offered or kept getting cancelled i'm going to let lieutenant crawley speak a little bit now about the forced review committee and the fact that the members for that actually have training scheduled now due to some of the proven protocols letting up a little bit thank you all um of the standing members of the committee they'll include myself uh the toll commander uh secondarily the defensive tactics use force instructor and thirdly the firearms sergeant supervisor will be the three primary members of the committee that are required to receive the training as well as the training itself we say training broadly in this job there's a lot of different ways to get training

42:37 this particular training will cover uh use of force events not just deadly force events but all use of force events as well as administrative investigations i think the key component to conducting an administrative investigation is to be able to provide feedback recommendations and identify flaws in an incident that's being investigated it's not simply signing off on something and saying what's within within policy i think it's important that we identify things we need to work on uh best practices in the field different updates in law that's what this training will provide at a minimum all three of us will attend that uh additionally uh one of us at this time will be the defensive tactics instructor will be considered a cit expert he'll receive additional

43:23 training and crisis intervention so we can plug that component into our force review and make sure that we're analyzing de-escalation uh any kind of crisis intervention techniques so as part of this process we'll be reviewing numerous types of uses of force and making there's a format that's provided within policy now called a template of topics and items that are required to be in a report that's compiled by this force review committee and that report will be forwarded to the chief police for uh follow-up and recommendations it's almost tying up a loose end whereas instead of just writing a memo and sending it off and assuming somebody's read it it's going to require a response from the chief of police to identify an

44:09 issue agree with an assessment and bring some closure to the use of force review um quite frankly we're looking forward to it um i it's it's going to be some more time and more work but how it's going to you know help the whole department as a whole in identifying training needs shortcomings policy violations helping hold everybody accountable it's going to be a key component to the new policy looking at the numbers a little bit in the [Music] use of force the annual use of force report i won't harp on it too much the numbers are what they are we chose which again trying to be transparent we chose

44:54 to put higher numbers in there than some agencies would i think they need to be in there i won't talk too much the numbers are what they are i want to talk about how they could have been lower or adjusted we left them how they are lieutenants do you want questions as we go or do you want to work your way through if somebody if somebody has a hand raising a question we have the screen in front of us so we're happy to answer questions as we go so some of us don't have screen or hands go ahead nearly and then that sounds like joe wants to get in after this yeah mary lee stuck her hand up so i'll go after mary lee when she turns her microphone on

45:42 i had just one quick question in your poc in your um yes force review committee um i appreciate the the deliberation and how you've got it set up and what happens to the information that you come to and and send on through my concern i'm not necessarily concerned my um question is in regard to how how does that kind of information or report get out to the public or is it relevant to get out to the public i i totally appreciate the fact that you folks on the review committee will have training to understand what to do and how to put that together and the recommendations that you come to

46:29 um i'm just i'm looking at it from if i if i pull myself back and make myself a member of the public i'm looking at it from that standpoint going how how do we convey that to the to the citizens how do we convey that to the community i think the uh thank you councilor woodrow i think the easiest way to do this is through this document that we provided you the use of force analysis the annual report on use of force is going to allow us to delve deeper into these numbers and say out of all these numbers the committee reviewed x number of cases and within those cases found a trend about this was lacking this tactic was unsuccessful this policy was a problem needs to be revamped or rewritten so that'll be our mechanism through this

47:16 providing this to you as representatives of the citizens of springfield of showing how we're addressing uh the issues identified by the committee and that's an annual presentation to the council so that would it would come out in that and i realized like i said i realized this is the first first report and there's a lot of there's a lot of holes there for this kind of thing that's why i was asking my question so thank you yo thank you um so i have i have several questions guys so um you're ready all right no i i'm very very pleased with seeing this report i i think i i completely agree i think it is merely a start-off point it's not as complete as i would hope um but

48:01 it's definitely an excellent start in the right direction um that being said i have a couple comments and recommendations um for example the uh um the breakdown where you have on page uh of attachment 1 page 410 you have a breakdown as to ethnicity at the top and then age factor at the bottom below it but it would be interesting to see and it's and it's a little into the weeds but i think it would be very much more transparent as well that if you had a breakdown by age by ethnicity as well so if you had you had uh you know your group of 21 to 30 of 107

48:47 incidences of uses of force in that age group so what percentage of ethnicity or race is of that 107 people so if you had for example um you know 12 of the 13 blacks were in that age group versus an elderly you know more older crowd so we can start to kind of get a model as to um where a lot of that force is happening perhaps some age groups that could uh be a pointer for training so you can uh focus your training using even some age groups to help to help that training uh relating to those to the age group so to speak you know if you're if you're having a lot of use of force

49:32 with a particular race and they're they're elderly for example then then that may be a pointer towards okay what kind of training do we need what are we missing with that age group in that of that race so uh that being said then moving over to page five where it says um level of force used i'm looking down that list i would recommend and for people that aren't familiar with some of the lingo is that where you say for example it says taser deploy taser displayed i totally get exactly what you're saying but theoretically a taser can be displayed and deployed at the same time and someone may misread that but you may be able to say like taser displayed only

50:18 so it doesn't so so once so those numbers aren't counted as a deployment same thing with firearms and then um moving further on into some of the minutia it's um you have you have what the you know what's not mentioned is pain compliance techniques it's mentioned only where it says bent wrist lock but we also know and i know that eschar escort holds many of them are in the realm of pain compliance as opposed to just simply people look at that and say hey we're you know holding his hand and walking down the street as an escort versus pain compliance

51:06 does that make any sense to kind of separate um whether you know because one would would not necessarily think that um an escort hold would be force and people may be looking at that saying okay well why is it in the force you know a reporting of a force situation where it doesn't appear to be it kind of looks almost sugar coated by using escort hold so i just call it the way it is just you know pain compliance technique and and that that takes a bunch of into the same same realm um two things also is that it assumes based on those numbers that there is no use of batons during 2020 and also assumes that there is no use of pepper spray

51:52 i assume it's still carried so i can probably touch on that a little bit counselor pepper spray has almost gone by the wayside uh by by law enforcement around here due to the effects it often has on the officers assisting officers using it i myself haven't deployed pepper spray in probably 17 18 years as far as batons go um i did speak with sergeant massey inquiring about batons because i wanted the same thing um as far as using our collapsible asphatons there were no deployments of batons being used as use of force last year most officers are using their batons to do things such as clear brush and after in a foot pursuit with the suspect clearing branches and

52:38 rush out of the way as they're going through a rural area so that's right as far as the rest go those haven't popped up okay which is fine but maybe that may be uh worth mentioning somewhere in the narrative that um these type of options were not used although available so folks know that those still other force options are available but were elected not to be used um it is it's very concerning though i know that i know exactly what you're saying with pepper spray that they've fallen to the wayside because i saw that the moment the um taser came out is the moment oc went away so to speak and so it's really a substitute that's being used

53:23 and i i um i know exactly what you're talking about i yeah you know i know and with the pepper spray and i think that it's something that may be worth revisiting um it's it's a pain compliance technique it is not a chemical it's an organic ingredient it doesn't hurt people physically it hurts but it doesn't hurt them and so we don't have an injury with pepper spray so to speak as opposed to i'm looking at the focus blows and all the related injuries with focus blows with the subjects receiving a focus flow and the officers delivering focused blows when i know that there's going to be cases where pepper spray could have been used in lieu of a focus blow

54:08 and i think that that you know should be a reminder to folks that yeah you may not have used it and yeah it's it stinks it sucks it's it's very uncomfortable but it's a lot better than an injury and it's just something i i think that needs to be brought back and if we're not if someone's going to make a determination that they just don't like to use it then why do we have it why do we carry it then take it off the belt and that would be i think would be really crazy to take that option off the belt because then we do take an option away that could be used so something to consider i think it's there there's a lot of i don't i guess thought process behind that and i i get it the the popularity that we'll see is not there but we either not use it at all and take

54:54 it away or if we have it then i think it should be used when appropriate thank you i completely can i respond to a couple of things surely i'm sure matt sure matt um regarding some of the stat based questions you have i absolutely agree with you and taking notes while you're talking about combining and the ia pro is a perfect fix for that because you can when you generate any kind of report whether it's an annual report or an individual report on an officer or somebody that's been arrested if you're searching by that criteria you can get any kind of data you want you literally just check

55:40 the boxes so that would be a really piece of an easy piece of data to add and capture the same with differentiating between whether something's deployed or displayed i agree with that i want to touch base on you mentioned focus blows or stripes as a use of force our use of force instructor our sergeant that supervises our defensive tactics program he's a newer sergeant he's very motivated he's very very on board to making any changes are they going to benefit us he's very open to recommendations from city council from city leadership he's already taken it upon himself to look at this report and find some areas

56:26 that were deficient in training and our tactics and actually met with me last week and brought one of the defensive tactics instructors with him who has a wrestling background and they're concerned with the focus blows or strikes with hands and knees they don't they don't look good to a bystander or to a witness and they aren't always effective in gaining compliance and often lead to injury of an arrestee and or an officer officers are hurting their hands and they're hurting people by hitting with them where their new idea that they proposed to me last week getting back to that is introducing some jujitsu techniques

57:12 i'm not a mixed martial art expert or by any means but there are some basic moves that police are going to uh in terms of pain compliance that you were talking about counselor missionary to tie directly into that and so our defensive tactics instructors are going to receive training on that and incorporate a program here based on a program he founded an agency back in georgia that tried to bring bringing starting with the new officers that come on board during their orientation training incorporating with them and doing an hourly once a week training during the first however many weeks months and adding the department on as we go but i think it's a great idea and it gets away from some of the

58:02 perceived use of force in the community that doesn't really benefit us it looks bad and there's a better way to do it yeah and and street brawls are as far as i'm concerned um very avoidable and they look terrible and and historically out of many many years of me observing and you observing we all have to admit that that more likely than not someone's going to get injured when we use focus blows typically it tip and i'm not against them how as long as that level of risk is justified to protect even the suspect and the officer but given the circumstances from preventing to have to go to a higher level of force i i get that and i have no problem with that whatsoever i would rather

58:47 uh have someone get hit really hard with a fist as opposed to getting hit really hard with a baton i mean i i get that or even shot so but there's a place i think that that needs to be further defined um so that's the right that's given the right direction i'm really looking forward to the following report to see how much this has progressed but but this is a great foundation i do want to add also that um and the use of force reporting in that program um was it ia plus or ia pro so uh i think it would be wise if we had um required if there is a complaint of injury versus a a diagnosis of injury so that way we know that someone is

59:32 complaining that hey you put my eye out well that needs to be documented but that also needs to be put in the use of force and and basically you know if it's unfounded or no no documentation to show there's an injury that's part of a good stat that that we should track that we should know that that if there's a complaint of injury and definitely definitely will help cover the city in regards to someone saying down the road hey i told the officer i was hurt now i'm suing you and it's like well oh we really don't have a very good report of that because you know the guy said he got hurt well we didn't report that he used to force so i think that we need to up the ante and i know the officers don't want to probably don't like to i get it but but the incidences of reporting use of force i think should be

1:00:17 um broader um and then sorry folks but but i know a lot about this area and i think it's a great opportunity for us to get some good stuff out so pardon my my hog in the time um also uh when it comes to let's see here um yo your comment i think i may have already said it where you said that you wanted to leave the display of weapons in there that i don't think excuse it at all i think it's an amazing awesome uh stat that should always remain and that that will help show us and it definitely shows that it's a de-escalation so i think that's a great step because you didn't have to use it and then finally lastly

1:01:04 um will the will that ia plus or ii pro program would you be able to pull um by polling these specific reporting officers the uh numbers of use of force incidences they are involved in so if you have officer a that's involved and you know had 100 or 302 instances and officer a was involved in 210 of them that would be indicative of a problem not necessarily that he's just or he or she is just a busy officer but that's a problem so is there you know that that should be able to call that information so it will help your command staff um to

1:01:50 show that if there's trends appearing um it may you know call for more more attention or training that may be in that that officer that particular officer needs training in that area before we have a problem it absolutely can do that and that's one of the things we're interested in they call it early interval early intervention warnings awesome fan staff can set be anything it's an arbitrary number you pick what you want but you enter a number of uses of forces when somebody reaches x number of uses of force incidents in a set period of time it's flagged and command staff is made aware of it too it may mean nothing but it could be very concerning and it needs to be

1:02:36 looked at and it's dependent upon what those incidents were and who the officer is there are all kinds of early intervention systems in place and you set those as you want that's great feature and it's not like trying to head hunt it's a matter of trying to identify like i said pre-identify the problem get it resolved before it gets to be a big problem and thank you that's all i got i apologize folks leonard and then i'll have corey after that um thanks sean yeah thanks uh thanks for doing this uh this use of force review for us um i um i heard with great interest that we're planning on implementing some mixed martial arts moves um so i i think joe made a good point on the use of pepper spray or

1:03:21 even a taser as a result of maybe uh focused blows so what i i saw the the departments using arm bars in some cases which mixed martial arts moves are we talking about implementing it's it's jujitsu based and at this time i don't know exactly again i'm not an expert in that area at all but there are pain compliance techniques wrestling type moves jiu jitsu is a form of martial art that it's better known as ground fighting in layman's terms so they're gaining control of an arrestee with specific maneuvers and manipulation of

1:04:06 the body rather than striking with their hands or their knees i don't know exactly what moves those are going to be though to answer your question can can you sort of walk us through the decision tree on whether you're going to use pepper spray or a taste or as opposed to focus blows a lot of it's going to have to do with officer experience it's going to be um their comfort level with using one tool or another maybe their success rate using it in the past it's going to be the proximity to a suspect a lot of times merely drawing a taser from a holster and holding it at a low level gains compliance further holding it pointing at somebody gets

1:04:51 more compliance you still have a and you can still engage somebody from a greater distance to go hands-on and actually strike a person you obviously have to be face to face as far as pepper spray goes my experience and the experience a lot of the officers has to do with for one environmental factors outside pepper spray is not very effective in oregon due to our our weather conditions often between rain and wind that pepper spray even on a solid stream only goes so far in a closed environment where in my experience in the past i've used it the most inside a house is myself or another officer engaging with the suspect resisting arrest and instead of using a focus blow and risking injury to that person or injured myself we use pepper spray

1:05:36 problem is that pepper spray doesn't differentiate between the bad guy and the good guy once it's in the air and impacts something it disperses throughout the area everybody gets impacted by it so the decision to use pepper spray often has to do with your comfort level of fighting through that and we've all been trained with well i shouldn't say we've all a long time ago we all got trained and used pepper spray to where we all got sprayed with it and you learned how to fight your way through and realize you can battle through this and be okay it's going to have some short-term effects certain people's uh systems and their in their body isn't prepared to deal with that the right way and they won't stop crying and sneezing and can't see and they weigh the risk of not being able to take care of themselves versus using a suspect

1:06:23 so a lot of it is just trying different tools and what an officer gets most comfortable with using that's effective without causing injury i know that some of the um some of the bigger judgments that we've been paying over the last couple of years um involved suspects that had a mental health component in their conduct um is there thought being given to prioritizing bringing cahoots in or mental health um professionals as opposed to use of force i think it ties into our cit training so the short answer is yes it depends on the circumstances of the call um if we have a report of say an armed subject in the parking lot of gateway mall who has a knife or a gun

1:07:09 who's threatening people typically cahoots won't be responding to that nor do they want to because they're they're put in a certain sense of danger at that point we would have to respond and use as many de-escalation techniques as possible before we get to a level of force that's why we have the cit training to help us get to those solutions however there's plenty of times where where some you know a call comes in of a citizen who's in that same situation acting out in the mall parking lot talking to themselves yelling stopping on the ground that may be a situation where we do have used cahoots to intervene see if there's a mental health component but yet we're not putting them in danger just a couple weeks ago they went to a call over i'm using gateway street because it's a busy part of town i apologize

1:07:54 but they went to an apartment complex across from the mall uh subject got there and i believe i can't remember if he had an axe or another object and threw it at the van and the cahoots got right back in their hand and drove off and said sorry we can't help this guy police need to get here and solve this problem short answer we're going to use kahoots as much as possible in situations to you know resolve a situation before we have to one dispatch an officer to use force that's our goal so so what i'm hearing is if the suspect is not using force and there seems to be a mental health component then the first option would be to to bring some sort of mental health personnel in absolutely and fortunately we have a great working relationship with cahoots uh they have

1:08:39 an office here in our building we share a break room they prior to covered they took part in our potlucks um it was just a good relationship so we're able to share a lot of information about people springfield's a small community we deal with a lot of the same people over and over again and there's a lot of times where a call will come in about a certain subject joe smith for instance and cahoots can share information with us saying hey by the way last time we dealt with this guy this was a problem or this worked for us and vice versa our officers can share that with cahoots as they attend our briefings and say by the way we went out with this guy the other day just maybe next time we got to call on him this may be better suited for you because he reacts better to you than he does to us we're getting better at that are we perfect at it no is cahoots always available no because

1:09:24 they have their share of calls to go to but we are trying to involve them as much as possible in those scenarios thanks a lot thank you um and thank you for this report i appreciate it along with a lot of the other information that we've had in the last few weeks um i'm a systems person less of a tactics person so what i see this as an opportunity for us to for us to look less at where we've been and to start to talk about what kind of a police department what kind of a community do we want to see in the next five years in the next 10 years and i think that i'm really interested in us leaning into the software and i think an important piece of that

1:10:11 which i i'm just going to just guess we're going to be talking about is making sure that i mean what goes into that software is what's going to impact what we understand and it's only and our reporting is only as good as making sure that we all we have a shared vocabulary and by we i'm talking about all of our our team of police officers that because that's part of what i'm hearing here is that people are calling different things different things and we have an opportunity now going forward with this new system to get us all on the same page so we're all talking about the same thing and one of the things that we have was not mentioned in here which is a piece of our challenges is just tracking um what happens with interactions with gender non-conforming folks so i'm hoping that we start to think

1:10:56 about that and as we think about all of these trainings and what are what's happening one thing that we're not talking about is bias and thinking about this is an opportunity for us to really unpack and say where are we going to be in 10 years and how are we going to be thinking about people um you know i really appreciate the extra taser training in regards to what's going on and nationally but in association with that is let's talk about bias let's talk about implicit bias let's talk about what happens when you're under duress and you may forget where things are so that's my piece is that

1:11:41 let's lean into the systems and it's less about the tactics of what we've done in the past and thinking about where do we want to be where do we want to go how do we build the police department of 10 years from now as opposed to just sort of patching together things from where we've been so thank you i appreciate your comment and i agree with you the we have not done much in the way of bias training over the years i've worked here a long time and it's something that we haven't done we incorporated it last year um still in the early stages you're right and i don't want to blame kopit for everything but because of cobit we did it as an online training all officers were required to take it and did take it

1:12:27 but there are ways to hopefully we get out of this pandemic at some point and do some more progressive more detailed trainings than we got to do last year so i saw a just a couple of things that really jumped out uh jumped out to me so one thing on page five so this is attachment five of a one five of ten um when when you look at the total occurrences there are those total occurrences per person or can you have multiple occurrences per person so the 302 you're talking about so are there 302 unique reports there or

1:13:13 we've only are there three are in some cases or is there multiple reports of multiple uses of force on a single individual to put it simply that's 302 people so a use of force you could you could tase somebody two or three times in the same occurrence same incident and that's one use of force report um i would think that that would like and i understand that we're gonna we're going through iterations i think that's a prob when we talk about new software that's probably a critical distinction to make um because if if we're talking about 302 people and they're experiencing multiple uses of force right like then that would give more i guess grade

1:13:58 gradients from from from a training perspective i think you have to be really clear um about what you mean when when you guys write this when you mean occurrences because that could mean all sorts of things and i agree and i think it'll be easier to extract this data when it's entered in a different format and track more thoroughly like i explained earlier i won't go into it too much because i don't have a thorough understanding of it yet either but in the demonstrations that i saw it looks very easy for an officer to document the different uses of force in one incident and track it to exactly what occurred so

1:14:43 it's not just in a written format from the officer's perspective it's it's data that's entered that you can you can look at a lot yeah and that kind of format drives accuracy so um one of the other questions that i wanted you to maybe commented for when you look at the level of force used your focus flows are eight percent of your total uses of force but when you look at injuries and i'm not gonna and i'm just doing back of the napkin math here to individuals and injuries to officers they're about 25 and 35 of the total injuries that are caused by like just kind of walking through this um for the amount of time you're using for that type of force and the amount of

1:15:28 injuries it's causing are a huge proportion of your your uses of force could you comment a little bit about that or you know maybe training that's associated to it because it's clear just looking at the sort of data that it's got a higher chance to injure people and officers you're absolutely right and that's the comments that i made earlier i think in reference to counselor pictionary's question uh our new defensive tactic supervisor sergeant wilson looking at these numbers as you just pointed out is the same thing he did and said we're hurting people and we're hurting officers with focus blows or strikes and that's his idea to get away from that and give officers a different option

1:16:13 in the form of pain compliance jiu-jitsu type moves and training that's what i was referencing just to get use that to get away from the focus blows so uh one of the other questions when we went through this in fall of 2020 when we looked at the sort of 2019 use of force and then we're looking at it again this year one of the questions that i think is sort of critical is to begin to give context to this um right i we don't know if did we use the same amount of force in 2020 is a 2021 like are we like are we getting better you know how do we compare to how do we compare to other communities um that's a natural iteration to make with this type of data

1:16:58 the other thing that i think is critical here and i acknowledge you guys are gonna have to work you know again i'm supportive of getting the new software but really um you can mask the officers but it's to really get transparent about you know the occurrences per officer we're not really concerned about the names right because that's sort of an internal thing but really understanding that like you know you know do you have certain outliers are you looking for certain patterns right like are you looking for sort of the coaching and training i think the intent long term was to kind of describe all of that in in the actual report um and then lastly i would strongly encourage whoever's responsible for this is to just like if they you know i don't know what their background is but if

1:17:43 they just take some basic statistics right it would help them put this together and unders because the next thing is to start sort of comparing it and contrasting it and like i think corey has this really interesting how do you go forward from here but you know having you know taking a basic statistics class that's going to help comb through the data and look for patterns for you guys to act on i appreciate that comment i totally agree with you and that's an area that i myself am weak in so i i get it i don't know how or where sergeant massey lies in that world but um i'll certainly relay that to him and knowing him as motivated and as excited as he is to do new things and try to please people and

1:18:30 fill their recommendations and suggestions i bet he will do it you know and i guess i would strongly encourage you guys to go back and like the the annual report and we'll find like i think as a council we've got to find you a normal spot that you're coming back when this report comes out because consistency and clarity matters um but go back and really encompass um reading reading the kenny settlement because i think between the two of them like where we're going is the that review committee i think's got to get tied to this actual report and you guys line that out really well in your initial um your sort of uh initial description but i just want to make sure that like you know the whole the whole goal here is to get better at this

1:19:17 agreed and you brought up a point that i wanted to make while we still have a little bit of time with you we've had an opportunity to read the report from oir we've had an opportunity to read the report from rick brazil separate report i wanted to point out tonight so you're aware that lieutenant crowley has taken it on himself to form a subcommittee made up of himself our defensive tactics sergeant sergeant wilson and two defensive tactics instructors he's assigned them that report read go through all the recommendations and look at everyone but not to get too far tracked some of

1:20:03 them i understand apply to idfit i've talked to the lane county district attorney patty pearl she's also done the same thing with her office the state police and the land county sheriff's office informed the subcommittee to review the recommendations lieutenant crawley is doing that here on our end and they will find areas to improve policy training equipment that's underway right now the rick brazile report lieutenant repay our investigations lieutenant is doing the same thing he's formed a subcommittee and he's going through those recommendations and looking at areas for policy improvement training equipment and obviously some of them are already we're already doing they're easy to do some of them are more difficult to do and they may take

1:20:50 more time and we may have to be a little bit more creative but both of those reports are welcome to the suggestions and we're making every effort to see what we can do to improve yeah well um i've worked in continuous improvement for like ever it seems like and the one thing i can tell you is it will take time right like and just and it's gonna take putting out reports like this that we're going to sort of mark up and talk about and go okay that's not it to really get our arms around how do we get better here so you know i appreciate your guys's willingness to have the discussion um and you know the the openness to go like progress is different than perfection here and having you know a lot more uncomfortable conversations is going to be the thing that drives this thing forward

1:21:35 um does anybody else have any other comments before we wrap up steve i suspect that new software will have the statistics that you want i hope so i think so it should be that way and the other is uh corey or sorry calling you by your first name you say 10 years and i'd like to see it in two years just as close as we need it now so as soon as we can we we're getting going now and i'm glad of that and we just need to go forward mr mayor and counselors i i just want to add that we're a forward-looking organization right now we're realizing we can't just look back at how we used to do things and say well it worked

1:22:21 we're going to keep on doing that um you're talking to people right now that realize we have to be self-critical and we have to be able to receive criticism to move forward and and build and become a better department any any uh agency or any company that can't be critical of what they're doing and look at improving in a year two five or ten years later is not going to succeed and we're committed to succeeding perfect great guys um in the last thing i think before we wrap up and is you know uh nancy um i don't know that we want to wait another year before we hear about the progress on the software and some of this other stuff so maybe you know you know between steve you and i we can find some time

1:23:06 if it's early you know early fall or late the spring term to just check in and say how how are we doing on this good mayor thank you for um pointing that out we did discuss that this morning just about making it happen and purchasing the software and getting the training lined up we will i will find funding for this it's it's for the benefit that it will provide the city it's relatively and it's not dirt cheap but it's not onerously expensive either and i also just really quickly want to um thank our our police department and um uh lieutenant i were lieutenant crawley um it's been a pleasure working with them both on this

1:23:52 on this report and i'm very encouraged by their openness and their receptiveness and the fact that they both took a lot of time to explain things to me as i asked questions and i think i think that's what what everybody kind of just wants is that context from from our law enforcement experts about how things really play out in their world and why some decisions get made is very helpful the more we can engage in conversations like this i think is there is a growing experience for all of us one last thing sure steve isn't this the first interaction we've had between the council and the in the police in conversation constructive conversation this is great

1:24:38 keep it up all right um i'm going to adjourn us for five minutes and then we'll reconvene on the same uh same zoom links so that we can go through go through the public meeting thank you guys we are adjourned i'll talk in a couple minutes thank you thank you

1:29:51 [Music] aj okay we have damien um perfect i'm going to call the uh springfield city council regular session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here counselors pitts here moe here bradley here here woodrow yeah and pictionary uh counselor pictionary will be joining us a couple minutes late he's got to run a personal errand will

1:30:37 you please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of the united states of america into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us online to please keep yourselves on mute until you are called on to provide public testimony there are two times this evening designated for public testimony and will be listed as public hearings in business from the audience on the

1:31:22 agenda if you are joining us with tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak during at that time please use the raise hand option to be called upon to provide comment when the designated time is announced when we will call on you please state your name order general location for the record the order of the public testimony is as follows anyone who has raised their hand and then anyone who has submitted email in advance if there's a remaining time neil will read it out loud first item please the first item is the consent calendar and make a motion that we approve this consent calendar

1:32:08 hi second it's been moved and seconded um neil will you please call the role yes councillor pence all right counselor mo here yes council rodley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and council pictionary motion passes uh five yes zero nays and one absent next item please next item is public hearings you have two public hearings tonight um public hearing number one uh public hearing for declaration of downtown area surplus real property courtney griezla and christina kraus are here for the staff report

1:32:53 good evening uh we are here this evening uh for your authorization as city council to surplus downtown real property approximately 0.2 acres located at the corner of a street and pioneer parkway east uh taxot 29 is the reference i will pull it up briefly here on my screen the property is currently a city-owned parking lot for monthly lease we have not been leasing spaces on the lot since middle of last year in anticipation of sale of the property to the springfield utility board which is directly next door this surplus property would be part of a future transaction that would involve the springfield economic development agency as well

1:33:38 but we are requesting your authorization for surplus this evening on just tax lot 2900. if you have any questions are there any questions i don't see any um so i'm going to open the public hearing is there any cards neil or anybody raising their hand to speak mayor will give folks a moment but if anyone is wanting to speak to this particular issue now is the time to raise your hand and we can activate your microphone mayor i don't see anyone at this time perfect um i'm going to close the public hearing and entertain a motion i would like to

1:34:23 make a motion that we adopt resolution number one resolution declaring certain real property owned by the city of springfield surplus and directing the city manager to offer such property for sale a second it's been moved and seconded uh neil could you call the roll please yes councillor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor rodney yes counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and count sufficient airing motion passes five yeses zero knows and one absent next item please you have one more public hearing tonight a public hearing for a declaration of surplus real property uh courtney griezel and christina krause

1:35:09 are here again for the staff report good evening again uh we're here to discuss real property located in glenwood it is along the franklin south corridor often referred to as mcbay highway we're asking you to adopt a resolution declaring a portion of property which was formally under ownership of odot transferred to the city's jurisdiction for future right of way and then portions of it transitioned from use of right-of-way into the ability to redevelop late last year i will also show an image of this slide

1:35:55 we are requesting you to adopt a resolution to surplus only a portion of the parcel the tax lot a full tax slot is actually included here extending all the way to the south and identified in yellow the portions we are asking to surplus this evening are outlined um in this illustration uh in brighter yellow and equivalent to about 11 800 square feet this property would be put into redevelopment use on the adjacent parcel with wildish and would also include an exchange of about 3000 square feet of land from wildish properties along nugget so they would be purchasing the remaining balance of this portion which is 8 800 square

1:36:41 feet from the city to complete the headquarter facility under construction right now adjacent we're here if you have any questions or for a comment are there any questions okay then i'm going to open the public hearing neil is there anybody wanting to testify again if anyone would like to testify in this particular issue please raise your hand and we can get your microphone activated mayor i'm not seeing any hands for this issue all right great i'm going to close the public hearing um and then entertain a motion i would like to make a motion to adopt resolution number two a resolution

1:37:27 declaring certain real property owned by the city of springfield surplus and directing the city manager to offer such property for sale a second it's been moved and seconded um neil can you call the roll please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes council radley counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary uh the motion passes five yeses zero knows and one absent next item please mayor the next item is business from the audience um we have our normal open business but we also have an item number one an ori group uh presentation and mr

1:38:13 michael janako is here [Music] i believe we can unmute your microphone when you're ready and also turn your camera on if you'd all right good evening everybody hello and we can hear you that's a good thing um my name is michael chinaco it's uh my privilege and appreciate the opportunity to address uh you all this this evening mayor and council um as you know i

1:39:01 conducted an independent review of an officer-involved shooting involving stacy kenny and i produced a report which i believe is part of your council package and i appreciate the opportunity to to talk with you for a few minutes about it obviously in the short time that i have i'm not going to be able to go over all of the recommendations um there are 33 of them so i'm really going to talk in the next few minutes at a very 50 000 foot level with regard to the work that i did and and what i found i looked at both the investigation of the officer-involved shooting and the way in which that

1:39:47 officer-involved shooting was reviewed internally by the springfield police department focusing on the investigation for just a minute as most many of you likely know uh an invest when an officer-involved shooting occurs in your city involving an officer with your police department the investigation uh the initial investigation is handed off to a regional group called idfit which is an independent uh group that is a group of agencies who then conduct an independent investigation so for years that has been the process and your agency does not

1:40:32 lead the investigation into the shooting i had a number of recommendations that were intended to improve that process things that i found to be um there was room for improvement regarding consistency of interviews and scoping of the investigation and other um crime scene protocols but um quite candidly in my limited time since that those recommendations are more directed to the idfit team i'm going to not focus on my comments this evening on them the good news is that the district attorney who has a large

1:41:17 hand in sort of crafting and leading that program has agreed to conduct a working group to discuss our recommendations or my recommendations in a different forum and so d.a pirlo is is going to be convening a working group and i've been invited to participate in that group with regard to whether the recommendations that i have might be incorporated into improving uh her process or the infant process so i'm i'm happy to hear that and we'll look forward to participating so what i'm going to focus on in in the remaining time that i have is on the review process and that is when uh an officer-involved shooting occurs

1:42:02 per springfield police policy there is supposed to be an administrative review of that incident internally and that administrative review is intended to accomplish a number of objectives one the objective of determining whether or not the officer who used deadly force was in compliance with the deadly force policy of the department but also uh the other the other intent is to see whether or not the department can learn can improve training and can be better prepared on a forward-going basis to learn from what has occurred in the hope that that learning will reduce the likelihood or the um or the uh future occurrences of deadly force

1:42:49 which is um consistent with uh best and progressive practices of policing throughout the country and it looks great on paper what i found though is even though the mechanism for that kind of review existed within the policies of your police department and when in fact there actually was a review board that was convened in this case and identified issues actually that i think were helpful that there really wasn't any follow-through with regard to either identification of the issues that the department itself had identified there was no training coming out of those issues they were identified and no remedial action apparently whatsoever

1:43:34 with regard to issues that were identified with the idea of improving um improving the training and improving the performance of officers on a forward-going basis and i think that is probably one of the biggest issues that i discovered with regard to the way in which the process worked or maybe more accurately the way in which the process didn't really effectively work so our my recommendations are intended to develop policies and protocols so that there is follow-through on a forward-going basis and to improve that review process in a way in which when issues are identified that are deserving of training or deserving of remediation or deserving of

1:44:21 policy changes that in fact there's actual follow through on them i also found that there were a number of issues that the review board in our in my view could have identified to improve the organization but didn't identify so for example as you um likely know this involved an encounter with an individual who had a history of mental illness and was behaving in a way in which it appeared that stacy kenny was going through some mental health crisis during the encounter yet the officers failed to identify that during the encounter and also failed to effectively plug into

1:45:06 information that the department had in their computer data tracking tracking database and the questions were why wasn't the officer apprised of the information that had already been supplied to the springfield police department because the family had actually visited with members of the police department and told them that there's their um their child had a um issues with mental health and wanted the department to be apprised of them but that question which i think is an important question during the review process should have been approached asked and hopefully answered and it wasn't addressed at all it wasn't addressed at all there was

1:45:51 other force that happened that preceded the shooting of kenny numerous uses of the taser numerous punches to the face of the body to the head the attempt to pull out uh kenny from the car after it had stopped through the window of the car and um none of that other force was ever evaluated even though the chief in his memo to the board asked that that information be evaluated it didn't get evaluated and even after it didn't get evaluated the chief didn't send it back for the evaluation he had actually asked for there were other issues that were apparent from my review of the

1:46:37 incident such as de-escalation as many of you may know the use of de-escalation is a increasingly important tool that officers are trained to use and in fact springfield trains its officers on principles of de-escalation yet there was almost no evidence of any effort to de-escalate the situation in my view if there had been this whole incident and the use of deadly force may have been avoided something the department did identify is the danger and risk of an officer entering a car in order to effectuate an arrest because of what might happen

1:47:22 if the officer enters the car and the driver of the car drives away which is exactly what happened in this case that issue was identified by the review board but never addressed by the review board no training was provided to officers about the dangers of getting into a car that's occupied with the driver still in the driver's seat and no remedial action was given in fact the sergeant who entered the car was never talked to about how dangerous that technique is um so uh so we did find in our review a number of issues that in our view could have been identified and weren't identified

1:48:11 the final thing i would say because i think my time is is drawing near is that um at the after an officer involved shooting um one thing that more and more progressive police agencies do is have the leader of that organization the chief of police if you will at least offer condolences sympathy to the remaining family members about the loss of life that has occurred and in this case that did not happen that did not happen and the reason that was um put forward as to why the kenny family was not approached by the chief

1:48:57 of police no phone calls no sorry for your loss no condolences is for the fear of litigation and the fear of litigation in our view and in most progressive police agencies should not be an obstacle for that kind of human humanness of that kind of empathy because you can feel sorry for a family's loss without admitting liability those two do not connect and it was a fad in my view that that communication was never done and when i talked to the kenny family they also felt that there was something missing in the way in which the city of springfield communicated to them

1:49:43 in the sense that that conversation was never had um so i will wrap up here in my closing remarks i am certainly available uh should any of you on council or you mr mayor have any questions about my report but i know that you were not required to hear from me pursuant to the litigation or the settlement agreement and appreciate that you did take some time out of your important meeting to hear from me and for that i'm grateful and i'm also obviously available to answer any questions any of you might have about anything in my report and my review thank you great thank you

1:50:29 so much for uh presenting to us um my plan right here was to let you guys let uh open this up for questions and then maybe save some of the commentary um in discussion elements for when we get out of uh public testimony our uh business from the audience before we get started um nancy could you help maybe provide some guidance for people to frame up their questions sure um and i may um call on christine too if she has any additional thoughts um first of all i think it's important to recognize and i think we all recognize the the tragedy here and um i want i kind of want to preference my comments by saying that

1:51:15 um i would ask council just to be mindful that although this particular incident has been has reached a settlement with the family we have uh one at least one active um lawsuit against the city um pertaining to use of force obviously there are two different scenarios but um you know i would just caution you to be judicious and in how you phrase your questions um and but i think more importantly um i um i wasn't

1:52:02 here when this um when this incident took place and it is it's weighed heavily on my mind um and i know you know it's offering condolences to the family um your your point mr chinago um is is it was right on and i wanna i just myself wanted to say that um and you know i just it weighs heavily in my heart and i know that it has been a real loss to the kenny family so that's all i have [Music] christina did you have anything you wanted to add before i opened it up for questions thank you mayor the only thing that i have to add is that our office primarily mary bridget smith has been working with the police

1:52:47 department as well as the police association and the kenney family through their attorney on looking at updates to the use of force policy in part to look at some of these recommendations as well as the recommendations in the thurston report prepared by mr brazil um and so i would ask the council to ask questions about mr janako's report but but know that staff and legal counsel are working through that use of force policy with the police department and more information about that will be forthcoming from mary bridget all right uh councillor steer thank you mr janako i want to thank you so much for your report just now and i can assure you that nothing we do tonight is

1:53:33 going to be any more important than what we just heard um i would like to ask so you you said that there was not an effort made to evaluate the mental health of stacy kenney is there a procedure that the police have to evaluate the mental health of someone that they've stopped and was it just not followed or is there a procedure to begin with yes um it's an excellent question and maybe i can enlarge this a bit so um the initial officer who first stopped um kenny and then stopped kenny and then stopped kenny there were three stops actually before

1:54:20 the force was used there were certainly indicia based on the report and based on the interview and based on other evidence that was collected during the investigation that stacy kenny was behaving erratically behaving in a way in which it could be suggestive of somebody going through a mental health crisis or who had some mental health issues and it would have been helpful to learn through the investigation whether or not the officer identified those issues and have targeted questions asked of that officer about whether or not there were anything of these of these uh indicia that caused

1:55:05 him to think that perhaps the individual he was stopping was going through a mental health crisis but unfortunately the investigation didn't go there so we never learned through the interview of the initial stopping officer what he knew or what he didn't know what his thought process was about that or what his thought process wasn't and that's because the initial investigation didn't go into that area with the individual with the individual officer nor was there any follow-up interview when springfield did their inquiry so those questions largely remained unanswered as a result of the insufficiency of the investigation

1:55:50 but there was certainly indicia that the officer might have been able to pick up on the second piece is that when the final or third stop was made instead of trying to negotiate or develop a dialogue with stacy kenney the officer instead chose to rush up to the car and start to break out the window of the car of the driver's driver on the driver's side the sergeant uh broke out the window on the passenger side and then that was preceded by immediately going to force punching uh kenny in the face repeatedly and then trying to pull him out from the window of the driver's seat which was

1:56:35 impossible to do because stacy kenny was still belted in to the car with a seat belt so those are all the questions that ended up not being reviewed internally a council member store i i know that you're essentially reviewing the review here um i guess what i'd like to do is just ask and that this might go to the city manager or to the council is is there going to be any action taken on the basis of what mr gernanko has told us as far as addressing it with the department maybe we can save that conversation for just a little bit while let uh counselor christianity ask this question and we'll come back to it

1:57:23 thank you mr mayor uh mr janako it's a pleasure to see you and hear you um i've read the report actually um several times um i've got a long history of law enforcement i'm not sure if you're aware of that but i am thank you okay and um so i come from it from a probably a different angle than most and i was prepared when i read it to you know raise my eyebrows and roll my ears my eyes back and yeah yeah and i'm going to tell you first off that um i appreciate how you dissected it i appreciate your thoroughness i really appreciate how you look at the interagency deadly force investigation team investigative team

1:58:09 i think that that was a a very a very insightful look at saying this is a weak link and i agree it really is and i'm glad i'm really happy when you told me that d.a perlow is is welcoming to look at it and review we'll see if that makes changes but but you're spot on there's definitely some insufficiencies there so i appreciate that um i also i also know that you know you have a a plethora of recommendations and and i do i will tell you that i agree um wholeheartedly with with most there is some that um i don't necessarily uh agree with but there's also some that i think has already implemented so it's not like a uh cross-the-board

1:58:56 change of every single thing that you recommended but it certainly uh allows for people to say okay are we already doing this and if not how can we do this uh better um and and you know as well as i know um you know intoxication levels for example play a huge role in human behavior and what preceded the event but but a person has to look at this with an open mind and and not get so um tunnel vision to think that this is this has got to be you know an intoxicated person i don't know i'm not going to get into his mind i don't want to get into his mind and it's really easy for you and for us to backseat quarterback and and and do 2020 hindsight i get that but i appreciate the overall um how do i put it the the the direction

1:59:44 which you came from isn't was not in my mind wasn't one of these but it was really dissecting and looking for where the improvements could be made and and you found a bunch of them and i really look forward to seeing um a lot of these implemented to where we can really be a a pristine agency and it hurts to know that there is a lot of change that needs to be made but it's also awesome to see my fellow colleagues sitting here listening and and soaking us in and willing in our agency our police agency very much willing to look at this and say okay we need to have a this is a reality check and we need to you know get up to speed and i anyway

2:00:30 i'm done but but do know that i i'm gonna be looking at this and reading it again and and totally look at where i can where the council can work with the the pd and through the city manager to to make some good positive changes and to prevent any unnecessary harm whatever whatever level of harm it is from a scratch to unfortunately death if those any of those can be avoided then that's what we have to do uh council member patient area i really appreciate your comments particularly based as a result of your experience in law enforcement so thank you your your 20 your monday morning quarterbacking analogy is interesting because um i kind of

2:01:18 understand that hindsight's 20 20 but i embrace the idea of being a monday morning quarterback because that's what the nfl does and why do they do it they do it because they want to get better right they do that quarterbacking on monday because they want to get better and that's the whole goal right this report thanks that's how i interpreted that it looks like we're we're watching the tapes so all right okay um i had one question um before before i let you go i think you said there were 33 recommendations in the in the report um which one is the number one like if you were just gonna say you guys need to do this first today before you adjourn the meeting which one

2:02:03 would it be all right mayor uh that's a hard one but i'm going to start with my last one which is one i did mention which is perhaps a commitment from the city that the next time a tragic situation happens and there's a loss of life uh to one of your constituents and there are family members remaining that somebody in the organization extend apologies and condolences for the loss of that life even if it was quote justified to extend those kinds of and extend that kind of sympathy i think goes a long way to starting the healing process i appreciate that and i i think we're all committed to that

2:02:50 don't let your lawyers talk you out of it though please maybe just how to say sorry is really the the best way to do it there's nothing wrong with saying sorry and i'm i think it should i mean i would be comfortable saying that coming from an elected elected position leonard do you have one more thing yes one more thing um i i guess what i want to do is just repeat my question from earlier i who is going to make the decision which if any of the 33 recommendations are going to be adopted thank you um counselor i've already been in discussion um with um acting capacity chief nyort and

2:03:35 i i have to say that the springfield peace police department um has been agreeable to these recommendations and we know um obviously i can't speak for them precisely but i know that there is a willingness and i would say even an eagerness to to do better and to change and move forward i view this as something that i would work on together with the department um because ultimately um you know whomever is running the police department is accountable for the actions of their employees their officers their sworn and non-sworn personnel but as the city manager

2:04:20 i am ultimately accountable for all of our employees and all of our actions that we take in the city so it it's important to me personally to see these changes happening um i was like i mentioned earlier this evening i'm very encouraged with the progress um that i i see already um and i know that um we have more to do um i was just you know kind of jotting down a couple of notes on myself as far as what i wanted to focus on moving forward i think obviously the recommendations um from mr tanako is would be a foundation that we can build on for

2:05:05 training for our policies we've already updated the use of force policy to include the recommendations from this report that policy is now on the springfield police department's website so you can go and look at it they worked hard to do that and and to work with the uh labor unions uh to put forth the policy so um we're already in the works of of working on what i call you know we're just methodically going to go through this some of the things that we can do we can look at as here are some more short-term things that we know we can do in the media some of the recommendations will have to be um within a negotiated context

2:05:52 and then other recommendations um are not necessarily within the scope of our control for instance the ones uh relating to it but i'm i'm heartened tonight to hear that those are being addressed as well overall just my overall philosophy with this department is hoping for some meaningful change around promoting de-escalation increased mental health training um really protecting the public and our officers so i i really um i thought the suggestions about using different types of um holds rather than blows was a creative idea that um i really appreciated and i'm

2:06:38 i'm encouraged by what i see with the department i will continue to work with them on that well if um if it's possible i for one would like to request that if any if the decisions ultimately made not to adopt any of mr chanako's recommendations then i um i would appreciate it being run by the council absolutely um and i don't i mr janako as we get into this um i think we're done with our q a for you so you feel you're welcome to stay and listen to the conversation but don't feel like you're um obligated to say that we're we've got another question coming your direction thank you mayor i'll i'll hang in there

2:07:24 um in leonard my sense of this is in in general i'm supportive of like 99 of these right by the time we dig into them we got to get some facts about them and things like that um and especially with the roadmap that the brazil report lays out really what i would like to do is you know is have a couple counselors sit on a subcommittee and provide some sort of guidance from you know um about getting us to agree on how these conversations are gonna happen um you know and you know get get some sort of understanding about because there's going to be some details about training that come up that are going to inform budgets and and things like that that way we can support nancy and the staff through this um i think we're ready for that conversation because we now have got the

2:08:10 like basically the three foundational reports in place so steve and i will be talking about it on friday i think that like you know a model i would think about would be like the um code rewrite governance committee right like where we've got people that are getting regular updates providing some guidance and then we come back to the council and kind of think about and kind of head out a general direction that yes we're doing this all right any other questions all right then i think we're ready to proceed to business for the audience next item neil okay thank you mayor we have three hands

2:08:56 raised and we'll remind folks if they would like to participate in business from the audience they could just raise their hands our first speaker is june father gill and she is followed by kirsten vignetta and june you should be able to unmute your microphone hello we can hear you okay great this is june father gill i'm at 317 30th street in springfield and also the pastor at everett united methodist church just down the street from city hall and i would like to comment today about the use of force by our police springfield police in my experience as a local downtown pastor to a church that

2:09:41 feeds and provides care for low-income and unhoused residents police presence chain can sometimes be helpful but it can also sometimes escalate situations i have appreciated the police who take the time and put in energy to getting to know myself and the community particularly the unhoused community this builds trust and is a good step toward reduction of the need for use of force i would also recommend that police officers partake of the de-escalation training provided by white bird cahoots they don't already these basic skills of slowing down and listening can go far in most situations

2:10:26 i also recommend police seek out training in non-violent communication or compassionate communication this has helped me find ways to deal effectively and respectfully with conflicts in life home and even on the streets i believe we can and must put a stop to violence and racism in our community including in the culture of our police department and ourselves and i thank you for listening to me today uh our next speaker is kirsten vignette followed by dan isaacson and kirsten you should be able to unmute your microphone

2:11:11 good evening counselors my name is kirsten and i'm a resident of ward 2. i first wanted to thank city council mayor van gorden and nancy newton for taking policing matters seriously and starting to take action and i also wanted to deeply thank mr gennako for bringing some humanity to today's session that was really refreshing i read the use of force report that was developed and i listened to today's working session and there are promising developments such as the prospect of procuring use of force documentation software that will improve spd's records tracking uh police interactions however the issue remains that this software's utility will only be as good as the validity of the data reported

2:11:57 and so i guess my question is if this is largely left up to officers who have it in their interest to minimize reports of inequity or excessive use of force how reliable is this data the spd has then also stated that they will be forming a force review committee which is a positive step i believe but to date the four people that are slated to be on the committee are all internal to spd so again it's hard for me to believe given the insular camaraderie within most police departments that integrity towards the community at large will always come above protecting another officer's ass pardon my language but especially if that officer is someone that you know that you care about and that you feel is part of your police family and so how will the force review committee ensure integrity

2:12:42 and transparency and how will they interact with the public and hold themselves and their officers accountable finally i also noticed that the officer trainers the officer trainings offered in the last year were especially minimal in terms of de-escalation tactics and trainings pertaining to addressing suspects with medical distress which i assume would also involve mental health issues and so uh the ti and the topic that was actually a lot of the most training was firearms training followed by crowd control training and so this is the kind of training emphasis that seems troublesome to me in light of recent developments within spd i appreciate that we're slowly moving forward uh but clearly spd's self-reflexivity thus far has been

2:13:27 lackluster and i think that more transparent forms of police accountability need to be established if we want any chance of establishing trust between spd and the community thank you for your time mayor our next speaker is dan isaacson followed by jenny potter and dan you should be able to unmute your microphone hello my name is dan isaacson and i'm the incoming president of nami lane county the national alliance of mental illness the co-chair of the suicide prevention coalition of lane county i come to this topic through trauma and tragedy as well my best friend of 25 years was shot and killed in a nearly similar circumstance after having spoken with a kenny family

2:14:13 i can tell you that this is a club that you neither of you any of you want to be a part of the search for answers to questions that cannot be answered never leaves and when your son or friend dies of brain cancer when you tell someone about it the response is immediate and empathetic when you tell them that it was involved with a police incident the response is an immediate judgment of the perceived actions of your son or friend you were denied the humanity desperately needed for your own grief and healing and i cannot express enough how important that is to offer to families that was the biggest takeaway i had from his report there are specific low-budget high-impact proven programs that you as a council

2:14:58 can implement to aid those experiencing trauma as a result of any violent act by anyone please or otherwise and i will be reaching out to each of you in the hopes that soon we can discuss them i truly look forward to being able to have that conversation thank you mayor our next speaker is jennifer potter jennifer is followed by jenny osteen and jennifer i think we lost jennifer let me see if she is still here jennifer your hand went down so we'll go to uh jenny osteen okay jennifer's back sorry world of zoom

2:15:43 um jennifer you should be able to unmute your microphone hi can you hear me yes okay great my name is jennifer potter and i live in ward three and um i really appreciate the council taking the time to listen to the report today and i appreciate uh the concern about giving an apology to the family i think that's a really important step that the council needs to take and i think that we really just need to implement the recommendations as soon as possible of both this report and the brazil report and then any upcoming reports i think there's an investigation going on right now about a sexual harassment issue

2:16:28 and one into the chief so as soon as those reports are available i hope that those are made public and that those recommendations are implemented as yeah thank you all right our next speaker is jenny osteen and currently our last speaker and jenny you should be able to unmute your microphone hi i'm i'm assuming you can hear me um i've kind of rewritten my testimony so i'm kind of winging it here but first i just want to say that so far well the reports today and during the both of them were

2:17:17 more sad and you know disturbing but also so refreshing and not just because but thank you again for your humanity as other speakers have said already but over the past few years we've been saying we want transparency from our city council and you always tell us that well we cannot meet without you being here but then you say you're going to do something and then we don't really hear what's going on but this is what we mean by transparency what are the employees of the city that are paid for by our property taxes and other taxes doing

2:18:03 and you know from filling potholes to mo you know doing something in the parks to using force necessarily or unnecessarily how much how often do the residents or people in the city how much force how brutal are they and then what happens when someone gets killed you know i mean there was a with the kinney family they um there was an article in the paper it was it when he when uh stacy kenny was shot it was in the paper for just a couple days and that it happened and then we never really

2:18:48 knew what happened until what was it a year and a half later wow the largest you know lawsuit settlement in the in oregon's history and then you had to drill down and find the actual lawsuit to see what actually happened so um so i think the community all of the community needs needs and wants to know this and i think and what we need to know is these reports are the result of this of the settlement of the kin with the kenny family they filed suit because they wanted reform in the police department they wanted the public to know what was going on they wanted the public to know

2:19:33 what had happened to their child and i know mr um janako i'm sorry if i mispronounced said that he wasn't required to be here but to speak to us but the report was required by the kennedy settlement as was the first annual and the preceding annual use of force reports and future and other reforms thank you mayor that appears to be all of our speakers for this evening uh thank you um i'm going to open it up for any council response before we move on uh corey thank you and i want to thank everyone

2:20:19 who has been a part of the meeting first the work session in this session um i also excuse me appreciate that we are finally digging in to having these shared conversations about our public safety and policing issues and i like i said earlier i believe we have an opportunity to rebuild and create a modern effective police department i like to win just so you all know and i want springfield to show how this hard challenging work can be done with professionalism with compassion and with humanity and i want us to lead and i want us to succeed and i hear we have heard the public and we

2:21:04 have read the reports and i think now is the time for us to just roll up our sleeves and figure out how to push this work forward and create the police department that suits and fits springfield and that's what i have to say about that primarily uh yes i had a couple things um just if i can cast broad brush to the community we don't always remember everything that you'd like us to talk about or to mention or to respond to so if there's something that hasn't been mentioned that i mean jenny mentioned you know street repairs and different things like that if there's something that isn't coming up in conversation come and ask us i can't really think of

2:21:51 anything other than something that might be a legal issue that we can't talk about um something that's in in the middle of a process um that we wouldn't be willing to to discuss so but we but if we haven't uh gotten to it let us know because we don't we don't always remember everything in line that you're looking for information on or or answers to the other thing i wanted to mention was i wanted to thank mr isaacson from nami um my background is in social services quite quite a bit of my background is there and his point tonight uh of talking about people's reactions to incidents of somebody losing their life is so on

2:22:36 point and i have to admit that it's uh it's something that i haven't necessarily been thinking of recently but it sure brought back a lot of my background a lot of my previous experience and i i appreciate what he said i appreciate the point he made it's a it's a very strong point that needs to be made we need to be reminded of it all the time um is that we just we need to be mindful of other people and and we need to be mindful of of their that they are not from our perspective they're from their own in perspective and their their own individuals and we just need to stay mindful of that and so i just really appreciate the the point he made tonight

2:23:30 next item please mayor the next item is business from the city council you have one item committee appointments for the budget committee neil obringer is here for the staff report good evening mayor and council as follow-up to the budget committee interviews that were held last week on april 12th staff has brought back the names of darlene reich and stephen schmunk for appointment to the to the budget committee with that i am here if you have any questions all right is there any questions or a motion i'd like to make a motion that we appoint darwin rash award three or four ward three and stephen schmack for ward 4 the

2:24:15 budget committee with terms expiring december 31st 2023 it's been moved and seconded neil will you call the role please yes councillor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor rodney and that was a yes from you council rally so are you froze for a moment yes yes thank you froze councillor aye councillor woodrow yes encounter pictionary all right the motion passes 6-0 uh next item please any other business from the city council

2:25:03 is there any other business i have two quick items but i'll give okay so two quick items um the uh saturday is desserts for dinner so you have an opportunity to buy one of 11 boxes left i'm looking at you counselor pissionary only 11. we're almost to the finish line yay but it's a good opportunity to serve homeless uh families in springfield support local bakers and uh make sure that you're out supporting uh g street oasis and i'll be handing out the boxes when you come by and pick them up service with a smile um the the last thing um so united front virtually was last week so um i had the opportunity to go and lobby

2:25:49 our federal delegation with springfield staff eugene staff lane county staff as well as elected officials from the united united front partners just a really good opportunity and reminder to get in front of folks back east and talk about our shared uh shared priorities and especially highlight things like franklin boulevard and glenwood by far every meeting we heard was it's our number one shared priority is to finish that boulevard we did that one for you steve and to talk about and to talk about the 42nd street levy which is quietly an issue that we just need to make sure is addressed here um i'm really proud of the staff work they did a lot of work putting everything

2:26:34 together and i'm really grateful with how the rest of the entities showed up and we could talk to our our delegation about what we need in lane county all right next item please hey our next item is business from the city manager and no business assuming thank you and any business from the city attorney no business thank you thank you very much we are adjourned have a good night everybody good night