City Council & Police Civilian Review Board Work Session   10/26/2021

Hi Bill.

Hi Heather.

What about me?

Get my documents up here.

Okay.

Afternoon all.

Hey, Bellamy.

Hey, Jeff.

How are you?

Hi, Nancy.

You may sign off intermittently to

Hey, Jeff.

I don't know.

Am I on mute?

Nope.

Loud and clear.

I got it.

I can get to my mute button fast enough.

Chair Brown, is everyone here on your end?

I will send Ms.

Gilmore a message.

Yes, he'll be joining us shortly.

Mayor Walker, Ms.

Gilmore has a family emergency and she will not be joining us tonight.

All right.

Well, we can go ahead and get started.

So I'll call this meeting to order.

Ms.

Ms.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Here.

Councilor Hills?

We're here.

Councilor Snook?

And I called the Police of the Interview Board to order.

Ms.

I guess I'll have to do it.

Chair Brown here.

Ms.

Vice Chair Mendez.

Present.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Thank you all for joining us.

This is a joint work session between the Board and City Council.

And next up on the agenda, we have discussion, but I did want to give an opportunity for the public to be able to comment at the beginning of the meeting also.

So we'll open it up for public comment.

And then we'll have the PCRB interim meeting procedures as a discussion.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

If you're in the audience and you'd like to address Council, please click the raise hand icon.

Each person will get up to three minutes.

First person up is Tanisha Hudson.

Tanisha, you're on with Council and the PCRB.

I really hope that during this joint session we can address

some of the issues that has occurred in this city, mainly with the current chair of the CRB, members of council, and the latest firing of the police chief.

We really need to get to the bottom of what occurred there.

It stinks, and it stinks really bad.

It looks really bad on this city.

We're in the process right now as a whole right now in this city.

A trial is happening right now on Main Street that already makes the city look horribly bad.

And then we just terminated a police chief.

We've been through several city managers.

We've seen only black leadership get persecuted in this

just everything about this city right now just screams racism.

And what's bad about it is that you have black people participating in white supremacy right now.

That's not okay.

So I hope that this work session definitely picks a little bit at what has happened here because it's not okay.

The role Bellamy played is not okay.

The role members of council played is not okay.

The role the PBA played is not okay.

And you all owe it not only to Brackney, but you owe it to this community to be open and honest and discuss it and be transparent about it and bring facts, not opinions.

Thank you.

And if anyone else would like to address Council and the PCRB, please click the raise hand icon.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Wheeler.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

So, Vice Chair Mendes, you've kind of driven the ship here.

Yeah, if you don't mind.

Sure.

Yeah.

Back here to you.

So what we have on the agenda tonight, and I hope we can do justice to it, is

As the commenter said, a way to move forward on police oversight.

And the two items that I thought would be worth discussing were first the interim hearing procedures, which are currently sort of on a critical path in keeping us from hearing.

We now have two review requests.

and so I think we want to get that on the City Council agenda as rapidly as we can.

In response to requests made by Councillor Payne and Councillor Stuck, we amended that interim guidance to include

professional hearing examiners who were experienced in civil rights law or some related area of jurisprudence to preside, to preserve, first off, expertise in the hearing officers, and second, to

to facilitate due process and to make sure we didn't miss anything.

The second issue I was hoping to discuss tonight was the proposed agenda, excuse me, the proposed ordinance for going forward with the police oversight board, which hopefully we can rename

and my personal goal here is to A, get the interim hearing procedures in such a shape that they can more or less immediately go on the council's agenda.

I think working with councillors Payne and Snook that perhaps we can get that done.

and then also for the rest of for us on board to answer any questions and concerns that the council has about the proposed ordinance and we've sent that out with our agenda package so that if we want to go through section by section and whatever level of detail we can respond to your question

So I could just take one more minute here to call to the council's attention some recent developments.

Given that our new executive director, a very bright guy and a very energetic guy, has been leading the charge on screening and identifying

management complaint management and investigative software packages for use by the oversight board and in fact by internal affairs.

He and I and the representatives of internal affairs attended one demonstration session and during that period I asked

I asked the head of the internal affairs you know what they wanted for Christmas you know what would be the most important thing that they thought that the board or the council could do for them and their response was we need a new we need a new complaint management system and the systems that we are looking at would train

We are going to be a beta user to eight or $10,000 a year really make it a lot easier to manage complaints, to transfer information between the board and the internal affairs.

And I think that those, you know, whatever the, if we were to choose software like that, that would make a huge difference in our ability to communicate

Mr. Vice Chair, I do see a member Carpenter's hand raised.

I beg your pardon?

Ms.

One of the things that wasn't quite clear before we get into our discussion from our last monthly meeting was the duration of these hearing examiners.

I was under the impression that it was going to be sundown very quickly and was not going to be a long-term model that we were going to use.

If I can respond, when we made that amendment to the, when we all approved that amendment to the interim hearing procedures, there was only one complaint, there's only one review had been received

Now we've received another one.

And if that goes forward, I guess the hearing examiner provision would apply to that one as well.

Thank you very much for that.

I know I voted for it so we could get to this platform, but I wanted to make sure there was some consideration about duration.

since we just had, at that time, the one complaint that was hanging out there and needed to be processed through our procedures.

And, Council, I don't know if you have any remarks.

I don't know whether you can comment on our second review request.

Is it clear that it's actually going to go through review?

Good evening.

Yes, right now we did receive one review request.

for the interim procedures that council has received well in advance and looked at, and I think has expressed support, but obviously we will discuss this, but I am under the impression and I've confirmed with our legal council that we could vote on this today and just have this be done if there's not a concern with doing so.

Great.

Thank you, Councilor Hill.

Good evening, everybody, by the way.

My question goes back to you mentioned the software because, you know, currently we have the PDF complaint form, which, you know, we all know that everybody doesn't have PDF capability and it could be a turnoff for somebody who wants to file a complaint.

Since Hansel has been looking into it,

Yes, there's a lot of different programs out there, and a lot of them do have that ability.

And some of them even have the ability for complainants to track real time what's going on with their complaint, whether it's been received, it's investigated, and who has it.

Bill, I think you're muted.

Did someone ask me a question?

I'm sorry.

Sure.

So I'm willing to answer any, we are, as the board, willing to answer any other questions related to the interim hearing procedures.

And I certainly welcome the suggestion by Councillor Hill that if the council is satisfied with the

Are there any questions from any of the counselors?

Ms.

We discussed with Counselor Snook and others and Hansel how this has been done in other venues and the response was that there generally are a whole bunch of retired judges around who are willing to act as consultants and sometimes as volunteers and that there are a number of

options.

Yeah.

After some further reflection, my thought was that it would not be a good idea to have a retired judge simply because there may be a perception that that judge may have some

some previously expressed concern or interest in one side of the issue or another, that we would be better off to have an independent hearing examiner.

I know that there was a suggested language sent around, I was trying to pull it up just a minute ago, that called for, I mean, there are in fact certain lists of people who do hearing examiner stuff,

And they're typically, but not necessarily, they're typically retired lawyers or people who have been lawyers at some point and have moved into this as a full-time kind of thing.

They're usually pretty experienced at conducting hearings.

So my only point is I'm not sure it's a great idea given public skepticism of the judicial system in all of this.

I'm not sure it's a great idea to have a retired judge.

Yes, and I apologize, I had some information that's hot off the press, but I did consult with our city attorney in anticipation for this being adopted, and we talked about how that would look like if we to procure the services for the hearing officers or examiners.

Good evening.

Mr. Aguilar and I spoke, you know, it occurred to me that

The Supreme Court of Virginia maintains a list of what they call hearing officers, but they are a group of people who preside over administrative proceedings at the state level when things are subject to what's called the Administrative Procedures Act or Process Act.

And so there's

Out there, there is a list of qualified hearing officers, but more important in the Virginia Code, there are two or three statutes that set out what the qualifications are.

The primary qualification is that they be an attorney and have five years of experience.

There's also a statute that deals with conflicts of interests and

I think that might disqualify a person from hearing a case.

And so if you all were interested in using those state standards, it would be very easy to quickly set you up with a local list of people who could possibly meet those same criteria and follow those same conflicts of interest standards.

And if

What you're looking for are people who are attorneys.

The arrangement of legal services is not subject to competitive procurement.

So what you could do is set a list of criteria and you could just maintain a list of people who are willing to do it.

And when you have a hearing, until you decide what your longer term procedures are going to be,

When you have a hearing, you could select from that list of people according to who might be available on the dates that you'd like to use.

But Mr. Aguilar has a reference to the state standards that I provided to him when we were talking about this.

Well, we don't know how many hearings there are going to be.

And so this would be a, I suppose that it would be a one time charge against our current fund allocation.

And it really depends on how much, you know, we

We tried to ballpark what it would cost.

But it's very hard to say that we would get away with less than $1,000 or more than $10,000 for a single hearing.

And I think it would be closer to the mid range.

Yeah, I was just gonna say my sense of things having been involved with professional mediators

The typically cost for a mediation would be in the neighborhood of $2,000, $2,500, somewhere around there.

Slow hands to the mouse.

The question I would have is the amendment that we put in our hearing ordinance indicated that the city manager would have a process under city code to solicit for the hearing examiner interests of people out in the community.

But it sounds like that portion of the amendment, if

decide to go with this slate of already listed examiners that have done this type of work or similar work or whatever.

If you utilize lawyers so that what you're seeking are experienced attorneys who can

Hey, to maybe go along with what Sena was asking, my one question is, does that come out of our budget?

And the other thought is, do we need to basically start looking for those people now?

Do we interview a few of those people?

And I'm trying to think, I have a third question.

I thought I had a third question that came out of that.

But do we have to interview them ahead of time to get a good feel?

Does it come out of our budget?

And basically their role is to facilitate, my understanding, the hearing.

They're not, you know, we weigh in on the, because I don't know if the public really is aware, you know, as we're talking about this role that, you know, we will determine sort of whether misconduct took place.

and that my understanding is this particular role helps facilitate that particular hearing or meeting.

Mr. Mendez.

Yeah, if I can respond.

Yeah, it's our money.

And the second question was,

Oh, and the second, yeah.

Also, yes, the hearing examiner presides but does not decide.

So he or she is somewhat like an administrative judge, and we are still making the findings set as members of the board.

So it's not like we're giving away our powers

to someone from outside of town.

And also, let me review what the language of the proposed amendment says.

And perhaps city attorney can comment as to whether she thinks any changes are needed.

The relevant section is hearing examiners will be engaged by the city manager.

I would just add to that that I think it would be I would strongly recommend against any thought that the PCRB or PCOB I guess we would be calling it members would interview prospective hearing examiners there are

If you wanted to get into something like where you're assessing who the person would be and making some substantive determination of that, I mean, there are ways you can suggest a list of three people and then see if you can get agreement on who the person would be.

But at some point, I think just recognizing that this person is not going to be making the decision is

all that they're gonna be doing is making sure that things flow, that the rules get followed.

I'm sorry, Ms.

And then I just wanted to note that in speaking with Mr. Aguilar, I'm not sure that the reference to City Code 2-156 is the correct one.

It's the code section that allows the city manager to undertake investigations and inquiries.

And so I was a little bit curious about why you all preferred the word examiner over officer.

So I want to make sure that

Everybody's on the same page about what this person would do.

I think you can create this list of people, whether you call them examiners or officers, but we do need to be clear that it sounds like what you want is just a presiding officer, not somebody who themselves is going to take on your role to ask questions and inquire into these matters.

And then...

So if council were to approve that tonight, would that section have to be amended?

I don't particularly care which word you use.

When I saw the proposed language, the reference to examiner combined with that reference to the code section made me curious about whether you wanted that person to be an active participant in your hearings, but it sounds like you don't.

But as long as that's clear, I don't care if you prefer hearing examiner over hearing officer.

I don't think that matters so much.

You have to be clear about what the role is.

Here's the language that I would suggest.

I sent this back to Mr. Aguilar on Monday, I guess.

Let's see.

Hearings is paragraph H in one of your sections.

I can't remember which section it goes in, but

Hearing Examiner.

Okay.

Hearings that are convened to address complaint review requests under Section 2-461 of the board's enabling ordinance will be presided over by hearing examiners with professional experience in mediation, labor, civil rights law, police oversight, or other relevant areas of jurisprudence.

Hearing examiners will be engaged by the city manager and the city manager will establish a list of hearing

hearing examiners who shall have qualifications and shall perform their duties in accordance with state laws governing administrative hearing officers consistent with Virginia Code 2.2-4024 through 2.2-4024.2.

That sort of brings in those standards so that you don't at this point have to draft your own sort of

Yeah, I have absolutely no problem with that friendly amendment and, you know, it's

At this point, it's an amendment made to the council and not to the board.

So I don't think we would need to vote on it twice.

I may be wrong procedurally.

And in terms of the terminology hearing examiner, this was purely sort of a cosmetic sort of aesthetic judgment.

Hearing officer was thought to raise the idea that it might be a policeman.

in very simple terms.

I'm a lawyer, yes.

Oh.

So if we were, again, if council were looking to approve that tonight, we could substitute that section, Ms.

Robertson that you've, okay.

Are there any other additional questions or comments on the hearing procedures?

Where is this?

Yeah, I've got a number of questions.

And let me say, first of all, I don't know that it matters at all whether we call them hearing officers or hearing examiners.

But if there is a particular

language that triggers something in particular in the state code or in the Virginia Supreme Court procedures or something like that, it might be useful to use that.

I've got a number of questions that I don't completely understand how you all think that this is going to move forward once the hearing is scheduled.

And maybe you understand and maybe I'm just trying to be

difficult.

In your paragraph three, under investigation, for example, material from the city police department, the written record shall include material from the city police department, which would include a complete copy of any internal affairs investigation file and so on.

Is it the intent that that file would be available to the PCRB in the hearing, that it would be, that portions of it would have to be sort of admitted or proffered or identified as being relevant?

is everything that's in the file going to be deemed to be sort of admissible, so to speak, or if there are affidavits or statements in there, would those make it unnecessary for somebody to come and actually testify?

I mean, I can just very, very quickly say,

This language parallels what's in our current ordinance that we will get access to an internal affairs file in support of a review request.

And there's nothing much else in our ordinance that the one other thing in our ordinance is that we are all going to hold this information confidential.

No, you go ahead.

So, I mean, it sort of blends in then to my under paragraph five for conductive hearings.

where paragraph C, three little I's, the PCRB and the parties may call witnesses or seek to introduce documentary or other evidence not already part of the written record.

That sort of presupposes that the written record is in fact admitted.

That is in fact in front of you all for the hearing without anybody else having to do anything more.

Is that what you all intend?

I believe so.

Okay.

Would there be a possibility, and I'm not pushing this, I'm just, and this is, some people do it this way, that they would have, that witnesses could appear either live and in person or they could submit a written statement or an affidavit.

Any thought about that?

Go ahead.

I think the affidavit part, we ran into the question that or the issue of the board not being able to take those or give those to folk in general.

I think that would mean, you know, we have, you know, notification requirements and people wanted to file statements and affidavits that I can't imagine that we would not accept them.

I mean one of the things any hearing officer or hearing examiner is going to say okay you want me to apply the rules what rules at this point we don't have any really set out except for the few things that appear under paragraph 5c and the only thing that really relates to the conduct of the hearing is this one paragraph

that says the PCRB and the parties may call witnesses or seek to introduce documentary or other evidence not already part of the written record.

The PCRB shall determine the order in which parties shall present evidence.

Well, Section 1A at the beginning,

says meetings shall be conducted in accordance with Robert's Rules of Orders or such other procedures as the PCRB may adopt.

Robert's Rules of Order doesn't tell us things like, for example, do you want the witnesses to be sworn?

It doesn't tell us whether the record comes into evidence.

Which is kind of what we're working on right now, I think, right?

Well, I think it's as necessary to make the hearing commence.

I wouldn't envision that this would be, we're going to adopt new rules every week.

When you say any PCRB adopted procedures shall control, the ordinance provides that PCRB procedures are to be approved by council.

No, I think it's pretty clear that all the procedures are going to have to be approved by council.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

If I can interrupt here, we also have bylaws.

And the bylaws, I believe, are a little bit more...

have language related to review request hearings and the procedures that shall be used.

And Lloyd, we did discuss some of these issues in our two meetings.

And I think it's necessary to keep some sense of perspective here that this is one hearing.

And it's not a hearing that involves

something that really, really terrible had happened.

And then, you know, so this is not a perfect document, and we know it's not a perfect document.

It's an interim document.

We discussed that, you know, the record of the hearing would be, you know, whatever oral testimony was presented.

So I don't know how much farther we want to go tonight, how much, you know, how practical it would be to dot all the I's at this point.

Well, okay, here's another question for you.

Well, it certainly could be FOIA'd by the complainant.

Well, so that brings up sort of your FOIA issue and the need for a policy that addresses, you know, the internal affairs files are still exempt under FOIA.

Yes.

And so I think that

You know, ultimately, one of the things so, you know, the way I read these procedures, the civilian oversight board would have those files, and would make determinations of what portions of those files should be relevant to the questions before you.

But you also you do have in the procedures, you know, up in section

on page four, you have some presumptions, you address how parties and witnesses, you address whether or not certain prior conduct would be considered, you reserve to the PCRB, which I think could be delegated to a hearing officer, you know, the

the right to determine whether something is relevant to a question in front of you.

And then you also say that the rules of evidence might not be binding, but they are the basis for arguments.

I think that would also give a hearing officer something to work with.

But I do think that part of what's missing here is a concrete approach to

how those records are going to be used and how they're going to be shared.

Thank you, Chair Brown.

I just wanted to give some sense of perspective from the assistance provided

in drafting the procedures in consultation with the

the PCRB and with the city attorney at one point.

And with respect to the overarching question of the role of the written record, which is the investigative file essentially from the police department, the idea is that, and obviously it's up to counsel as to whether or not that continues to be the idea, is that the written record as an internal affairs investigation file of the police division

maintains its integrity in terms of its confidentiality except as maybe available to third parties under the Freedom of Information Act, which is, you all know, is on an extremely limited basis.

So with respect to that aspect of this, the interplay between

The language that Councillor Snook cited about provision of the written record by the police department to the PCRB at the initiation of a hearing and the matters about whether or not they are actually evidence in the case is not so much that it's evidence to be made available to another party.

but this is an expansion on that investigation and the hearing is going to adduce evidence that the parties may put forward either through their oral testimony, through additional documentation, through additional witnesses that supplements that record for the board's consideration but not that the internal affairs investigation file would necessarily be laid open to the parties in the

in the hearing.

Now, keeping in mind that this is a hearing involving the conduct of a police officer or a civilian employee of the police department, that record or much of it is available to that individual anyway under FOIA.

It's a personnel record for them to some degree.

Obviously, there are parts of it that are not available to them, but there is much of it that is because it's about them.

So we can't lose sight of the fact that

to the extent that the allegedly offending party is an employee and the record relates to that employee's performance, there will be some disclosure to that individual of necessity, certainly at their request,

because they'd have some accessibility to it even outside of a hearing.

The question regarding affidavits and whether testimony or evidence by affidavit is permissible, one of the issues that was raised repeatedly in the public comment to the PCRB about these procedures was the

need as a matter of due process to be able to cross-examine witnesses.

And to the extent evidence is permitted by a witness solely by written affidavit, it negates or diminishes that opportunity for cross-examination.

So the procedures as written or in the thought of the drafting process was not that testimony would be by affidavit but would be

or tennis or orally in person, hence execution of the subpoena power that the Virginia Code gives to the PCRB.

Just thinking to myself that we're in good shape because we have Ms.

Hudson on our side.

Yes.

I forgot what I was going to say.

I wanted to ask Mr. Aguilar, we were talking, Lloyd was kind of bringing up, if I understand correctly, the fact that this person that we hire as a facilitator is going to have to have some kind of operating procedures that they abide by.

They're going to have to know how to facilitate this.

What are the bounds?

What are the rules?

And so I wanted to ask Mr. Aguilar, if I'm understanding all this correctly,

If you all had a person fulfill that role in in Fairfax, and if so, that they have a set of procedures that they perform their job by.

Okay.

So, and again, this is a big difference in terms of the body that we had there, we were operating under the prior law and now

We were very careful with the usage of the word hearing.

So we didn't have hearings.

We had meetings and the review request meetings were the purpose was to review a completed IA investigation for thoroughness, completeness and impartiality.

and we allowed the individual to the complainant to explain why he felt that the investigation was incomplete and what he would like to see.

And then we invited the police department to provide their review of the case and information about what they did in the investigative process.

We would then deliberate and put forth our finance as to whether it was complete or not.

In here, you're using the word hearing, and it's very intentional, and it's a different procedure, as you were saying.

So the Fairfax process may not be the best parallel, but the one in DC is a little bit more closely related to this process.

And in fact, it's very similar to it.

In DC, we were the investigative body, or in the civilian side, we also had the ability to investigate.

and we didn't have the ability to make a final determination within the investigation office that something was misconduct.

We sent it to the complaint examiner who held the hearing and within the hearing they were adjudicated as misconduct or they would then say that it was dismissed as a complaint.

So I just wanted to make sure that those

that I was explaining that correctly about the differences and similarities.

So in Fairfax, we as a panel, we ourselves conducted our deliberations in our meetings, not hearings, but in DC, there was a complaint examiner, there was

a procedure, operating procedures for the complaint examiner.

And this is something that Ms.

Robertson and I spoke about potentially crafting now what that process could look like.

Yeah, thank you.

And I don't know if that's a showstopper.

You know, we might be able to get a copy from D.C.,

your contacts of what they have and see if we can adopt that.

But I don't know if that is a all out, you know, hold us back for another six months type thing.

Not that anybody's saying that, but I'm just, you know, putting that out there.

Yeah, so I guess the basic question, sort of the underlying question here is, to what extent do we see this procedure as the complainant

versus the officer as opposed to the PCRB versus the officer.

In other words, does the complainant have a lawyer of his or her own?

Does the complainant receive copies of the evidence

that are a copy of the written record.

I'm trying to grapple.

I can imagine very different scenarios as to how this mail play out, and I'm not seeing the answers in what we've got here so far.

Is there a confidentiality requirement on the part of the complainant if certain information is made available

either during the hearing, of course, it's a public hearing, so there wouldn't be any confidentiality in the public hearing, but I'm thinking if it's truly intended as the complainant is an active participant in this and not merely the PCRB doing the investigating at the complainant's request,

then there are a lot of other procedures that flow from that, like the access by the complainant to the information, like the complainant having his or her own lawyer, like confidentiality requirements and so on.

Okay, go ahead.

Go ahead, Mr. Watson.

Well, you know, just kind of thinking about the beginning of what Lloyd said, we're not taking a stance necessarily, you know, until we hear all the facts, right?

Because I think you were saying, you know, is it us versus the police or police versus us or anything like that.

So, you know, whatever we do, however we move out, you know, we're non-biased, right, as we're going into it, even though our goal is to make sure that people aren't being taken advantage of.

But I do believe that

that an officer can have a lawyer present.

But what I was thinking is maybe Bellamy had that in his mind too.

I was gonna maybe get a take from Ms.

Well, I wanted to, I mean, so I guess before you do that, I mean, in drafting this, because I mean, I was the primary drafter here.

The idea was that this was a mechanism to create an atmosphere for the complainant to present his or her case against the police officer.

Part of that, when we go into the investigative file and all the other things, that would be the body of knowledge that

the board in this case would have prior to, and it would be, you know, a verbal here, verbal with the complainant, verbal with the police officer, and there's obviously this section in there for the introduction of stuff that's not in the written record, and I think that's the most, I guess, streamlined and

Way to have it done, where the board's the adjudicators, but the complainant still makes his or her complaint against the police officer.

And I believe, which Ms.

I was going to say that Section 2 clearly states that parties in the hearing can have representation.

So, I mean, that in

and it specifies that with the approval of the board, there can be cross-questioning of witnesses.

So I don't know whether that answers sort of the question.

There is, I don't think, any provision that the entire IA file would be made available

There is.

Regarding the conduct or matter that is the subject.

Two from the PCA.

No, that's going to go straight to the PCR.

So yeah, you're correct.

Yeah.

And this is something of a hybrid procedure.

So I can see why people would have questions about it that's not

not unprecedented or too atypical for oversight bodies to act in this way.

Not quite itching, but I'm certainly willing to say something.

And I think it's important to hark back to the posture in which

these matters will come before the board.

And there are a couple of ways, more than one.

One is in its capacity as an investigator of complaints that are referred to it, where perhaps there has not been an internal affairs investigation yet, or at least not one that's complete, because the board has taken it upon itself to supplant the

the role of the police department in investigating the complaint on its own.

So it's an investigative situation and they're gathering evidence in order to come to a factual finding about whether or not an officer or civilian employee committed misconduct of some nature.

And that's one posture.

The other is indeed the complaint posture where there has been

an internal affairs investigation, that investigation has concluded the complainant is not satisfied with the disposition of it and

invokes the procedure under the ordinance implemented by these procedures to have that finding of the internal affairs investigation by the police department reviewed by the independent police civilian oversight board.

And that's where

Sheehy, she's a member of the Department of Justice for the back and forth and the issues regarding the record because in that circumstance a record has been developed and it's very much akin to the kind of record that has been developed in the course of a civil trial or other trial where a matter

evidence has been collected, whether it's from both sides or otherwise, but the complainant certainly has given his or her evidence as to what they believe constitute the circumstances of misconduct.

And they're free to put that on again, possibly to supplement it.

And as far as the officer or employee is concerned, they too, in that circumstance, have also had the opportunity to be interviewed

and to have given statements that constitute a record.

And now all of that is going to be reviewed.

The procedures allow for additional information to supplement that, allows for the parties, the parties are the complainant and the officer or employee accused of misconduct or alleged to have engaged in misconduct,

to speak directly in person in addition to what they've already said in the investigation.

And once again, the Police Civilian Review Board is in a fact-finding mode.

They're going to determine whether or not that misconduct, whether it's more likely than not, that that misconduct occurred in the form of a determination as to whether or not that officer or employee is exonerated or whether the complaint is founded.

and then procedures flow from there depending on whether we're operating under the current ordinance or the ordinance that has been proposed to be amended by counsel.

And that might contribute to a little bit of the disconnect here is that these procedures

are drafted with the current authority of the board in mind as opposed to the authority that it seeks to expand by way of amendment of the ordinance.

So we're kind of in this netherworld a little bit with respect to the nature of the authority that the board presently has versus the authority that it seeks by way of amendment.

Can I ask Mr. Aguilar for his experience with how this has worked, either in Fairfax or in DC as far as what the complainant, what information the complainant gets does the complainant have access to the IA file and so on.

Sure.

So in Fairfax, where we had the review model, we didn't have hearings.

Again, we had meetings.

The complainant, what they received was, well, they had their complaint and they had the disposition letter.

And that's how they made the basis for the review request.

And that's something that actually we worked in.

One of the policies that we were able to work with the police department

is to be able to provide more transparent and thorough disposition letters.

The complainants, a lot of the questions, and we saw somewhat of a change in pattern when the letters got more transparent because the complainants understood what the police department did.

So they didn't need to request a review.

But when they said, oh, we investigated, found no misconduct, then they had all sorts of questions.

But that's the only thing that they had at the review request meeting.

They would come forth.

They would say, this is what I experienced.

This was my complaint.

And this is what the police told me.

And sometimes at these review meetings, the complaint is there would be the first time they learned about these investigative procedures that the police department took.

And some of them even said, hey, if I would have known this, I wouldn't have asked for a review request.

So I think that that was some of the observations we made, but they didn't really have access to more information beyond that.

But in improving the disposition letters, I think that the complainants were able to better appreciate what happened.

In D.C., there were instances where

There was representation and they did have a little bit more information and access to to the investigative file and records.

And also, if a body worn camera footage was available, they would have potentially had the ability to to see some of the body worn camera footage in Fairfax.

They were still rolling out the policy.

So they not all complainants had the ability to see the body worn camera footage.

Well, like Ms.

Hudson was saying, I think that because the board is seeking two or in hybrid models and two separate processes, I think you're going to create a situation where

You're going to have to have two hearing processes or procedures.

And I really very hesitant with the word hearing for review request.

And that's just by the tradition that from Fairfax, I don't because it sounds similar to the current ordinance.

It sounds like really you're somewhat parallel to what we did at Fairfax.

But with these hearing procedures, it's a little bit more involved, which is fine.

But I think that if you envision

If you adopt a new ordinance, you definitely want to be very specific about what type of hearing you're going to have, because I think a review request hearing is certainly different from the fact find adjudicative hearing that that you're going to have.

Are there any additional questions or comments?

Seeing none, I don't know what, I mean, Ms.

Robertson, do you

I guess, could you, I guess, articulate a potential process for council to review this tonight and potentially vote on it tonight?

It is allowable for them if they're comfortable with it.

I think you all have placed these procedures in front of city council and under the new state law, the procedures are city council procedures to be adopted.

So

Thoughts?

Well, it seems like there are still, well, there's just some things that are really obvious changes that we've already discussed.

I was just, I'm still kind of curious about just kind of the concerns that Councilor Snick has raised.

An alternative to tonight is if there are some clear direction that we can give, and, you know, we do have a meeting on Monday, and I realize, you know, we're trying to

you know, get materials prepared and our staff's pulling that together, but that would be the next opportunity the council would have to vote on this so that you could kind of set yourselves up for being able to take action on it during this next month.

Well, yeah, some of the gaps are things that we just have to sort of make a choice.

So there's a, you know, choose A or B, but choose one or the other so that a hearing officer has some idea of kind of what's going on.

The really fundamental question that I think

needs to be figured out is to what extent the complainant is going to have access to anything in the police file.

Is it simply you just complainant shows up, the complainant says, here's what happens to me, and that's the end of it.

And in which case, it's really very difficult to do any cross examination or anything else.

or do we want to construct some procedure whereby the complainant has at least some ability to take a look at the file or to have an attorney take a look at the file or something like that.

So there's at least some opportunity for

for cross-examination, for meaningful engagement by counsel.

And the two models, I mean, you can go either way.

You can go, as I guess Fairfax did, essentially giving the complainant very little opportunity to do much, or you could go in the way that D.C.

has gone to create a little bit more ability for a lawyer, for the complainant to be useful.

Yeah, first off, I don't think I've heard anything hostile here from the Council in terms of sort of a general desire to move forward.

And I applaud that very much.

So if a modified set of guidelines were to be presented on Monday,

embodying either of the options that Counselor Snook was considering.

I don't think that would be a problem for me.

And let me say from my perspective, Mr. Mendez, you're absolutely right that

I want to get to the finish line with a product that a hearing officer can implement successfully.

And I say, let's choose one or the other, but let's understand that we're making a choice.

That's all.

I don't know how other counselors feel about it or other members of PCRB feel about it.

Oh, I was just going to add for with respect to two particular points that have been raised.

And again, this is in keeping with the fact that presently the PCRB operates under the ordinance that enabled it and created it in 2019.

And in that ordinance, it is still effective.

It's specifically

forbades the PCRB to take evidence under oath.

So the issue about whether the testimony will be sworn and that kind of thing is addressed there.

So it would be inconsistent for these hearing procedures that are just supposed to operate in this, again, this interim, this transitional period to require testimony under oath.

The other piece is that with respect to the role of the internal affairs record and information obtained from the police department,

That ordinance provides specifically for the complainant to receive information about this in the following way.

Upon the completion of the individual filing the review request presentation,

in that circumstance that it matters before the board, a CPD representative familiar with the internal affairs investigation that is being reviewed by the board shall present a statement which summarizes all findings of fact and review of all evidence collected and received during that internal affairs investigation.

The police civilian review board may ask the CPD representative questions about the investigation.

So in that circumstance, all parties are hearing that summary at the same time and have

access to the information that's been collected by the police department in that fashion by operation of the express ordinance language.

Very well.

Vice Chair Mendez.

I just wanted, thank you.

I just wanted to clarify, Ms.

Hudson, you're reading from section 2-461

Well, I'll just point out also, you know, I think that what Ms.

Hudson said kind of summarizes the extent of the authority that we've been given, and so even if we wanted to

to go further than that under our current ordinance, it would be probably legally difficult for us to do that.

Also, in terms if we're worried about fairness and due process, the board is gonna see the IA files, the board is gonna see the evidence.

And if there are concerns about the quality of the investigation or concerns about whether something happened in a certain way or another way,

We are going to be aware of that issue and we can raise it.

And the complainant can also raise it during the hearing.

So if we're primarily focusing on, at the moment, the one hearing, excuse me, that goes back to the complaint from, I think it was June or July of 19, no, June or July of 20, based on the current ordinance that we have, it seems like what Cynthia said kind of answers all of Lloyd's questions.

But in addition to that, I mean, I haven't seen the IA file, but literally the whole thing is on videotape.

and the chief was open and played the videotape.

And there's multiple, I think, Instagram videos of that particular incident.

So there probably really isn't a whole lot beyond that that's out there for that particular situation.

I know we have two of these and I don't know if the second hearing would be under the new ordinance once that's approved.

But remember, I think about 90% of everything seems to be on the videotape.

I was just noticing again, and Ms.

Hudson, you may correct me if I'm reading this incorrectly, that paragraph C of the section 2-459 or whatever it was, access to materials provides that the board will receive a copy of the file

Each board member gets a complete copy of the internal affairs file that is the subject of the review request.

The city attorney shall review the file and redact any information related to a juvenile and so on.

But then at the hearing, there does not appear to be any provision for information being given to the complainant except during the review hearing.

at which and where it has the language upon the completion of the individual filing the review requests presentation, a CPD representative familiar with the internal affairs investigation that is being reviewed by the police civilian review board shall present a statement which summarizes all findings of fact and a review of all evidence collected and received during the investigation.

And the PCRB may ask the CPD representative questions about the investigation.

Is it the expectation then that the complainant would not receive access to the internal affairs investigation report except through that CPD officer's summary?

And is it the expectation that while the PCRB may ask the CPD representative questions about the investigation, the complainant would not?

Well, your reading is certainly the same as mine, Counselor Snook, with respect to the manner in which the complainant receives information about the file.

It's in that summary and the hearing procedures attempt to give the

complainant the opportunity to ask questions about that report by including this provision that states that the parties, which would include the complainant, may submit written questions to the board to pose to the witnesses.

That's a procedure that is somewhat similar to what I'm familiar with at the University of Virginia for Title IX hearings and things like that, where there's not actual cross-examination, but you can submit a question.

I also know that under the Trump administration, they tried to roll back some of those policies.

So I'm not going to necessarily go there.

But this is a sort of a philosophical question of which way are we going?

And if the answer is that we're going to a relatively scaled back view of the complainant's ability to sort of prosecute the case,

then this makes sense.

If somebody wants a more expansive view of the complainant's ability to prosecute the case, this doesn't get there.

I think, again, not being a lawyer, as I say, I think that your reading of the black and white letters on the page is perfectly accurate and that

that may be the model that is consistent with the 2019 ordinance.

And it would be very hard to go any further than that.

Remember, we are going to be redrafting our operating procedures for the new ordinance as well.

And a slightly different model could be adopted at that point.

I also just want to point out

that at the top of the fourth page of your procedures, there is a provision that's built in.

Now, again, this particular provision will depend on there being sort of a good relationship among all of the various parties, but there is a provision in here that allows for a person to make

a FOIA request for certain records of personnel information.

And what this procedure says is that that request will be referred to the FOIA officer and then the chief of police will determine whether or not a particular request would be released.

So for example, in a given situation, if somebody said, look, I really think

You know, to prepare my case, I need a copy of the body worn camera footage.

There is a mechanism in here for that to at least be considered.

And I think that while, you know, ultimately in a set of procedures, it might be better to be more specific.

But I think until you all get started, it's really difficult to lay out

For example, a list of documents that would need to be shared or that sort of thing.

But I just want to point out that that's there.

Very well, thank you.

Are there any additional comments or questions on the hearing procedures?

Are we looking, Vice Mayor McGill?

So I just, just reading through some things.

The one thing I want to, if somebody comes forward and something to be looked at

and let's say they have a personal relationship with somebody on the civilian review board, either positive or negative.

Would that hurt?

I don't see anywhere.

We're a small town and it's easy for someone to be related to somebody or somebody to know somebody well who might bring forward a complaint.

Does somebody need to recuse themselves or anything?

I don't believe that there is a recusal or mandatory recusal piece or recusal piece at all within the procedures themselves.

I think that thought has been presented, but it hasn't gone into black and white at this point.

I'm just going to say we had at our last board meeting proposed

the code of ethics and rules of behavior that included conditions for recusal.

But for this interim procedure, no, there's nothing there.

Are there any additional questions or comments?

And it's fine if everything is resolved.

I just, if there was anything notable changing, I just knew that this other, this current version with some minor tweaks, we were okay with, could go tonight without any kind of public way opportunity for weigh-in.

But if what we're saying is not viewed as like transformational, then I think there's no reason to not act tonight.

Yeah, I just was sensing the urgency coming from PCRB, so I just asked Ms.

Robertson, like, is there anything precluding counsel from taking action?

Because Lloyd had just acknowledged also that this is something that they just wanted to be able to move forward on so that they could hear this one hearing that's been outstanding for some time.

So I was just trying to help them expedite it if it was just minor things, because this has definitely been

Mayor Walker, let me just say, I'm glad this is the source of a lot of the questions here.

The way that the questions have been answered suggests to me that the version that we've got in front of us is probably a fairly good way to proceed under the current ordinance.

A lot of stuff would have to get changed before we would consider

under a new ordinance.

Of course, we haven't passed a new ordinance yet, but I think that given that we've got an ordinance right now that clearly contemplates a very limited role for the complainant in the proceeding anyway, a lot of the questions I have don't make any sense.

If we're going to go with that limited role, then what we've got here is fine.

And I think that...

The city attorney would like to change that last sentence in Section 1H to fix the procurement procedure for the hearing examiners, which I consider to be a very friendly amendment.

Well, do you want to just figure then that we will get that part right by Monday and we'll pass it Monday?

Very well.

Does that sound reasonable, Ms.

I can work with Mr. Aguilar and Ms.

Hudson, and we can get that taken care of.

And I just verified, does everybody want to stick with hearing examiner?

I don't think it does.

We're referencing the state hearing officer sort of criteria, but I don't think that means we can't call the local person something different.

It's just incorporating reference to standards.

Robertson this is something that you're suggesting we wait till Monday because normally I'm okay either way whatever you all would like to do if I can read the language again if if you wanted to act tonight you could I can I can read that language that I read earlier in the meeting back to you again

or I can just work with everyone to prepare a final document that has the exact language in it and present it to you on Monday for adoption, either on the consent agenda or as an addition to your agenda at the end.

That's fine.

The language that we're talking about is the citation to Section 2-156, which you say is probably not the right section, so

I don't think we really need a reference to the Charlottesville code if everybody's in agreement that we'll use attorneys and reference the other additional language I was recommending was reference to the state statutes that set out the

I think that's a good idea.

But yeah, I can work with Ms.

All right, thank you.

I have a question.

Quick question, and I don't mean to interrupt, but since I haven't seen it yet, how long is the Monday's agenda you have on there that might be, might take a substantial amount of time prior to getting to that last piece on the agenda in case there are members of the public that are on this work session now that might want to

weigh in at some point regarding that or listen in even.

I would suspect not much.

And that relates to Ms.

Carpenter's question.

I'd like to thank the City Council for putting this on their agenda.

I would like to ask Lisa again.

You know, does this need to be a showstopper?

I mean, it may feel a little bit like, kind of feels a little bit like the can is getting kicked down the road a little bit.

I mean, what, you know, if the I's aren't dotted, you know, T's aren't crossed, whatever.

No, in terms of the hearing examiner, the primary edits are to edit out a reference to section 2-156 of the city code and then to add in some language about the state standards that administrative

Hearing Officers or Examiners are required to adhere to.

There's some qualifications such as they must have a certain amount of experience as a practicing attorney and that sort of thing.

And we would be editing out some language that references due precautions to avoid bias because the

The state standards that I'm suggesting you incorporate by reference into the procedures deal very specifically with when a hearing examiner would have to disqualify herself or himself due to not being impartial or if they had some connection to someone.

So with some fairly simple edits, this is ready to go.

No, I don't have any questions.

But could it go on consent and pull for a separate vote?

I'm just thinking about Ms.

Carpenter's point about if people are thinking that we're going to have a broader discussion on this, I don't want to tie them up the whole evening because we've just discussed it.

I don't think that there was any discussion.

Do you have specific concerns?

So it's not to discuss anything.

It's just for the vote.

Oh, OK.

I think there was a confusion that you wanted to put on the action items.

Thank you again, Bellamy.

We have sent out with the agenda package an outline of the proposed oversight ordinance that was forwarded to you in August in this document that we sent out just as a

a couple of bullet points for each of the sections with the important provisions in each.

And I don't have any plans as to how I would want to discuss things.

And I think I'm just ready to answer questions from the board and from the council about specific hours or specific items

in the proposed ordinance that are of most concern.

The idea being that we can move forward as quickly as possible.

I know Counselor Snook, for example, has asked some specifics about the procedures and conditions under which the board would do investigations.

And people may have concerns about that or

the review procedures or who gets to see complaints or, you know, the procedures for disciplinary recommendations.

And it has obviously been a lot over the last few years, like a lot of conversations around some specific issues, but I think that

How the complaints get handled has been a very consistent theme.

And when I'm looking at just the summary of feedback that counselors provided, it's really on this kind of front end in terms of vetting of the complaints and verifying, you know, just the, you know, how far the complaint, you know, might go in the process in terms of just, is this really something that we should be acting upon?

Yeah, sure.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Is that me again?

I actually sent Counselor Snook some responses to his comments.

Oh, yeah, I just I have his outline.

Yeah, no, I also, in sort of the background for the issue of who receives complaints and what happens is when the complaints come in the door.

I think that discussion has been transformed by this tentative decision, and I think it's an ongoing decision, I think it's going to happen, of the police, of the IA and the civilian oversight or review board.

choosing and agreeing on a software package for the receipt and management of complaints.

Each, you know, the options, you know, these are very time tested and rather polished software package that we've been looking at.

They've been designed to address the question of multiple users who have access to different sets of information.

And so the idea they handle complaints

either electronically or by being scanned in.

They essentially elicit from the complainant whether they were a victim or a witness or whether they're acting as a representative.

And it is entirely possible to share complaints or selected fields

Necessary to separate them simultaneously with the head of the Internal Affairs Division and with Mr. Aguilar.

And so that obviates a lot of the board's concerns about whether we are actually going to get to see all the complaints that are filed because we will see them and that way we will be in a much better position to know the dimensions and

nature of the complaints that we're getting.

In terms of vetting, as I said, the input procedure will take care of some of this, will provide some of the data for vetting, figuring out whether this complaint actually involves a Charlottesville police officer.

And I have no problem with

the submitting of a complaint having an automatic follow-up call go out immediately or within the next 24 hours to further elicit whatever information is not complete.

And I think the implicit problem with vetting is standing and I may get

may be wrong with this, but I saw Lloyd's head come up.

So I think that's probably the issue.

And one of the things that will be considered in the new operating procedures is who has standing to file a complaint.

And we have not discussed that in any detail right now.

But my thought is that it would be someone who is directly involved in an incident

their designated representative in writing or a witness.

And so, you know, I don't know who else you would want to exclude.

And given the fact that

Hansel and Lieutenant Moore and the chief have simultaneous and immediate access to a complaint.

I could just point out that, you know, two of the outstanding questions in my mind are one of them that Michael Payne has raised and that we have discussed internally, which is what is a serious complaint or what is a serious allegation because under the new Virginia code,

We only have authority to have any disciplinary input for a serious complaint.

And so that does need to be resolved.

I can refer you for an example of such a set of conditions to the Fairfax County

governing documents where they have a list, a specific list of items that might fall under the purview of being serious misconduct.

And we can certainly add or subtract.

And to reassure Councillor Snook, again, we're going to stay away from allegations of criminal conduct because we don't have any authority over allegations of criminal conduct.

The other big issue is what would be the criteria for the board to elect to investigate a complaint?

And I think those would be a little bit different from the criteria for seriousness, something that needs to be spelled out in the operating procedures.

And if you look at some examples from around the country, like I think Oakland, California, if I'm not mistaken,

It's basically a combination of the seriousness of the alleged misconduct and the degree of public concern.

And so I think that that is the kind of criteria for investigation that you will see as we move forward on the operating procedures.

And

One of the, excuse me, a suggestion that has been made is that for the time being the best thing that we could do is to have our executive director simply oversee the internal affairs division very closely so that Mr. Aguilar would be in constant contact with

with Lieutenant Moore and would be making suggestions as to why haven't you interviewed this person and why can't we see the full camera footage from this person and so on.

And that way, to assure that the internal affairs investigation

that the investigation is complete and unbiased and so that we won't really need to ever do an investigation.

I think that the criteria for doing an investigation will be pretty narrow.

And I think that in the meantime, in the early going, as the Internal Affairs Division updates how they manage their evidence,

So there is support for this current board to allow for the ED to oversee, sorry, partner with, you know, CPD would conduct the investigations, they would kind of oversee that, and then there'll be certain threshold of criteria by which the board might want to pursue its own investigation, but that would be pretty limited.

The goal is to kind of leverage the existing resources that are already in place.

Yeah, basically it is.

And we're trying to balance, among other things, the resources, as you say, and maintaining as much the appearance and reality of independence as necessary.

And Hansel is a very smart guy, but it may be that there are expert investigators who have dealt with a specific kind of case.

Yeah, thank you.

Let me say I have been suggesting this notion that we rely on the executive director to sort of

supervise or to look over the shoulder of the internal affairs investigation.

I think that's a very good compromise that keeps us to where we're only having one investigation.

The notion that we would have two investigations of every complaint, I think, is kind of hard to deal with.

But obviously, we could still have a second investigation if the first one was inadequate.

But I think as a practical matter, if the executive director is speaking to the internal affairs investigator and says, Have you talked to this witness?

And the investigator says, No, I'm not going to talk to him.

Forget about it.

That's not going to happen if the ED says, why don't you talk to that witness, the internal affairs investigator is highly, highly likely to go talk to that witness or go ask the additional question that needs to be asked.

So I think that that's a good way to get started.

The question that I have overall, and this is not a problem unique to this ordinance by any means, but it's sort of characteristic of the issue as it comes from the General Assembly.

is that on the one hand, we are not supposed to be investigating cases that involve criminal conduct, civil actions, civil lawsuits, and so on.

On the other hand, we're supposed to be investigating serious offenses, serious breaches of departmental and professional standards, which various people have defined.

I guess Fairfax talks about unlawful arrest.

That's certainly a civil action.

Excessive or inappropriate use of force can be a civil or a criminal action.

Unlawful or inappropriate search or a seizure would be a civil action.

Use of abusive, racial, ethnic, or sexual language or gestures certainly could be civil and some circumstances could even be criminal and so on.

And then we look at the definition, just to use a slightly different version, is Alexandria's definition of severe misconduct.

It's all basically, these being the things that we would expect the PCRB to be investigating, use of force and severe misconduct and incidents resulting in death.

Well, I think it's highly likely that any incident resulting in death is going to be, is going to involve some allegation of either criminal or civil action

I'm just trying to figure out as a practical matter, where did these exclusions leave the PCRB something meaningful to do?

What's left?

Well, maybe, sorry if I jump in here, but the ordinance does, the board cannot anticipate if a civil action is going to be filed.

So the proposed ordinance

requires the board to cease investigating if after consultation with the city attorney or its own counsel, there is a civil action that is underway.

In terms of investigating criminal activity, I think we again have to take our guide from

the powers that be in terms of whether there is an active criminal investigation that is ongoing.

And that's all I can say.

99 times out of 100, if we're talking about failure to provide service or rude behavior or using a racial epithet, well, no.

We're not going to be worried about criminal activity.

And if the individual wants to sue the city or the individual policeman, then we get out of the way, but only when they file their action.

In the meantime, that falls well within our purview.

In the case of a situation where there is alleged misconduct

is independent of criminal action.

I think there might be parallel investigations of the same incident, but not the same allegation.

If somebody gets arrested for breaking and entering and they're a defendant in a criminal trial,

but they maintain that when they were arrested the following week, they were mistreated by police, then that would fall under our purview too because that has nothing to do with the ongoing criminal action.

Yeah, so I'll just talk a little bit about Fairfax and D.C.

So in Fairfax, we had the hybrid model of the independent police auditor.

He handled all force-related cases, and he was the paid staff member for the county, and he was a use of force expert.

He had just retired from the FBI, and he taught use of force at the academy there.

very well credentialed.

And what we had the opportunity to review as a panel was anything essentially not force related.

So it could have been discrimination, abuse of authority, discourteous conduct.

And there were also some times where we might have had joint jurisdiction, so to speak, if it was a use of force that unless discrimination, we would not look at the use of force that would be the independent auditor, we will look at the discrimination element of it.

So, in my recollection, we probably had only

one that comes to mind.

But that was something that kind of a joint feature.

In DC, though, we had the opportunity to investigate both use of force and anything else, any violations of law or general order.

I would say, though, that

did, when there were use of force cases, we didn't investigate the criminal part.

We would do a preliminary investigation, take the complainant's information, review body-worn camera, and do a summary, and then send that over to the US attorney who would then investigate it for criminal misconduct.

Once we received the file back in a declination letter that they were not going to prosecute, we would then have the authority to investigate violations of the use of force under the general orders of the police department.

So it wasn't that we didn't have any authority to investigate use of force.

It was just we did not focus on the criminal element of it in that Garrity issues and reverse Garrity came up with those matters.

So if there is a declination letter, as you refer to, then that would help us to understand when it was appropriate for you all to move forward.

The one concern, I guess, just thinking about a civil proceeding, as evidenced by a notice of claim, which may be filed under Virginia law a year later,

or under a filed complaint, which may be filed two years later.

I'll tell you what I'm really kind of concerned about is the idea that somebody could use the PCRB process as a tool for discovery

where perhaps different rules might apply from those that would apply in court.

That if for whatever reason we end up creating a system that allows the complainant to have access to information that he or she may not have access to if there were a judge saying

basically reviewing a subpoena request or reviewing a request for production of documents or something.

Again, I don't know, Mr. Aguilar, did you all ever have the sense in D.C.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, and our, maybe I can just, again, big mouth, you know,

We have due process requirements that are required before we can subpoena anything.

We have to make good faith efforts to compel evidence or testimony.

You know, again, this is something that's going to happen very rarely.

It's something that the General Assembly had in their wisdom granted to oversight boards.

And you know, if we have a legitimate reason to need to see a document, I don't think we should necessarily worry about

Any additional comments or questions?

Thank you.

This is a in section 2-453 item a subsection four where the no police civilian board member shall be a current city of Charlottesville employee.

I would really love it if

We could maybe take the opportunity or if the board would take the opportunity to potentially narrow that we've had some very good candidates for the civilian review board who worked either in social services or driving a bus candidates who wouldn't necessarily I think I don't know if this section is in there so that there's not some sort of

conflict, but I don't, I can understand not wanting somebody in certain departments necessarily to be on the Civilian Review Board, but do we also want somebody who might be working part-time at Parks and Recreation?

You're not the first person to raise this issue, actually.

And I'm certainly flexible in terms of expanding the membership issue.

Obviously, the board would have to discuss it as well.

What's that?

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair.

Was that the rationale, Ms.

Robertson, for whoever inserted that provision was the conflict of interest question?

Because I agree.

I think I necessarily participated in the drafting of that particular provision, so I don't think I can speak to that.

I think that in general, at least under the state Conflicts of Interest Act, unless I don't think a city employee, for example, in the parks department is going to have a financial interest necessarily that would disqualify them

from serving on or making decisions on the civilian review board.

But you know, it's interesting, you do have a provision in the ordinance that suggests that there can be some mediation.

And I think depending on whether or not, I don't know, I don't think the Conflicts of Interest Act necessarily precludes it.

I think when this was being discussed before, the thought was

a person in the field of law enforcement.

And so the individuals who have applied since then have not been.

And it's been hard, as you all know, to even feel the non-voting chair for law enforcement.

Ms.

That's a good question because I don't recall the historical reason why that was done.

I kind of would like to hear from someone that was on that inaugural board when they were discussing that section of eligibility.

Was it because of concern about someone either being a former

employee in law enforcement in some capacity, whether on the street or, you know, some other capacity or whether, you know, what that concern was.

I think it's a good question because you're right, we have had, you know, issues with seating some people recently and, you know, if there is a concern that can be, if there is one, maybe I'd like to hear it.

If not, I mean, I guess we could open it up.

I don't

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Just a general comment and I've seen it in other boards.

I think it's really about the appearance of a conflict and the optics of having city employees be part of this process.

The

So it's kind of an independence thing.

The more that you have individuals within the city involved in this process, it may give the appearance that they're not being as impartial as they could.

So there's an optics thing there, but there also may be some laboral considerations if an employee is

is part of the board, then now you have to have guidelines as to when they can participate in these proceedings and are they going to be able to do it while

work on a case while they're supposed to be on duty.

So I wouldn't want any of my peers to be in a situation like that, that they want to participate, but then they may be in a situation where a supervisor may not work with them.

So if you allow that, there has to be some guidance as to what they can do on duty or not.

But as a general statement, I think, and I've seen it in a lot of places, just the optics of having...

Are there any additional comments or questions?

A lot has been discussed, but a couple specific things.

There is not.

There is not now, but there certainly could be.

And depending on what software the UVA police or the Albemarle County police are using, we might even be able to use some automated file transfer.

So yes, that's a good idea.

I guess the way that it's currently worked now is either contact has been made with the respective policing agency.

The most recent, it was again presented to CPD and I believe Lieutenant Gore had reached out to UVA police to kind of work that out.

So I don't think it needs to be codified, but if cross every eye

or whatever dot every I cross every T, you know, that's fine.

Yeah, there's an interesting problem under the statute.

9.1-601 paragraph C provides that a law enforcement civilian oversight body established pursuant to this section may have the following duties regarding any law enforcement agency established within the boundaries of such locality.

So that would seem to permit oversight of the deputy sheriff, perhaps.

I'm not sure it would apply to the University of Virginia Police Department, since I'm not sure that they're established within the boundaries of such locality.

On the other hand, I look at paragraph one,

and it says that the board will have the authority to receive investigate issue findings on complaints from civilians regarding the conduct of law enforcement officers and civilian employees of a law enforcement agency serving under the authority of the locality.

I haven't thought about whether serving under the authority of the locality means the same thing as established within the boundaries of such locality.

But that's the sort of the degree of nitpicking we would have to get into to get an answer on whether we would have the ability, whether you all would have the ability to review, for example, the conduct of a university police officer who was conducting an arrest in the city of Charlottesville pursuant to their concurrent jurisdiction agreement.

I don't know the answer to that.

Actually addressed within the statute, if you look at 9.1-601A2, it says, for the purposes of this section, a law enforcement agency serving under the authority of locality shall be construed to mean, and then it goes on to say, any campus police departments of any public institution of higher education of the Commonwealth established within such boundaries.

So I think that at least on the surface of it, the statute does seem to contemplate that a campus police department might be included.

Yeah, that's why I say it may not be entirely clear.

You know, it depends on, you know, the university property may or may not be considered city of Charlottesville property, but if you're looking at the territorial boundaries

perhaps the answer comes out differently.

So it's not entirely clear, but I just wanted to point out that the statute does specifically reference campus police departments.

And if they're operating under the MOU that they have with the city, then that should

Well, as I said, the language in the statute that would have to be sorted out is whether or not the university campus police department is, quote, established within the boundaries of the city of Charlottesville.

So, um, um,

That would be the language that would have to be sorted out, both from the perspective of, you know, is the campus police department established within the boundaries of the county or within the boundaries of the city or within the boundaries of neither.

It just, it would depend on, we have to take a look at that a little bit further.

But again, I just want to let you know that the statute itself

Yeah, I suggest say that under the current language, it doesn't assert any authority over either the sheriff's department or the UVA police.

as I understand it, that our general assembly representatives understand that this language is kind of ambiguous and that there were going to be some technical changes made this year that was going to clarify it.

Thank you.

I just wanted to affirm the last comment that it was absolutely the intent of the legislature to consider campus police in this process.

Farewell.

Thank you, Adele Hudson.

Two other things is one in your hearing processes, is there an ability for the complainant to appeal after that hearing process is complete?

Currently there is no appeal option in the hearing procedures.

Yeah, just to agree that

interim hearing procedures, which you agreed to vote on on Monday, there is not any appeal.

The proposed ordinance does not also grant any appeal beyond to the city manager or to the city council, but even that's not

The question I have is I know in earlier drafts, I think the language seemed to have precluded the executive director's

ability to have the authority to investigate in one, is that still the intent?

Again, you're not the first person to raise the issue.

There are appealing features of having the executive director involved leading investigations, like presumably that would be less expensive.

know the inner workings of IA.

We want to preserve, yeah, and to answer your question directly, in the proposed operating procedures, I would think there would be a language that would allow the ED to conduct investigations

on, you know, to lead investigations himself.

The issue is we don't, A, we don't want to overload him.

He's got plenty to do.

Yeah, a couple questions.

One, just a piggy little thing.

On the question of terms, it says each member of the board should be appointed for a term of three years.

The Planning Commission, for example, two full terms.

Obviously,

but two terms.

Is there other boards like that that we've got some term limits on?

CRHA is another example.

Anyway, okay, so that's something to think about.

I'm curious about the, there's a provision in section 2.459A2,

says that the Civilian Oversight Board may initiate investigations under any of the following circumstances.

Paragraph two, when a police department internal affairs investigation of a civilian complaint is not completed in 75 days and after consultation and so on and so forth.

Within 75 days of what?

Of the filing of the complaint?

Of the filing of the complaint.

And this comes, this is actually right out of, it's just the same authority we have now in 2019.

So when we talk about the complaint intake under Section 2-457B, it would, we probably, I mean, it's not one place or another, we ought to make clear that the filing of the complaint is

triggers the running of the 75 days that is referred to in 252-459-A2.

Not a big thing, but certainly something.

I also note in 458 that you've got two paragraph Ds.

So we need to clean that up a little bit.

Back to the question that we've discussed before is that I'm looking at 2-459 paragraph B.

where it talks about the investigation and how the concurrent notice of the chief of police who shall ensure the police department's cooperation with the investigation in general.

Are there things, and do we want to specify if so, what they might be that would remain confidential in some way?

Or is it simply everything gets opened up?

I'm thinking, for example, if there is an allegation of a sex offense that has been made.

Of course, presumably that wouldn't come before anybody because it would go to the criminal courts.

But the way we're describing things, if somebody says, no, I don't intend to pursue that criminally, it might come back.

Or obviously there are issues that are referred to a couple of different times about dealing with juveniles.

And I imagine there are other things too.

I know that one of the issues that we have on our legislative agenda and

I see Delegate Hudson is still with us on this, that we really need to get the Freedom of Information Act

figured out as it applies to PCRB proceedings because this is something that crops up in many different places.

One of the places it crops up is on the question of whether the PCRB, when it deliberates on the issue, does it deliberate in confidence in a closed session or does it have to do so out in front of everybody?

And there are a number of issues there that

that I hope that we can get resolved from the General Assembly.

Well, one of the things, one of the drumbeats that I've been hearing from our stakeholders is that the police have been

They don't ever provide any information, even when there's no possible conception that this bit of information should be held confidential.

Again, I tend to come up with these very naive scenarios.

What I thought we would want to do would be to have a systematic consultation

with Ms.

Robertson about specific elements of investigations regarding which item would be exempt from FOIA, which item legally needs to be redacted, which item does not need to be redacted, so we would have an opinion

I think the one thing that I would like to point out about that is that this is another area where it's really important to establish

a good working relationship with the police department because those exemptions under FOIA are for the custodian of the records.

And so that would be the chief of police.

And unless city council directs otherwise, that discretion would stay there.

And so, you know, I can help sort of

facilitate communications between parties.

I can advise city councilors as to what types of documents might not be the best documents to release, at least before you know whether or not you're going to receive a lawsuit.

But in the end, I'm just assisting or counseling people.

And so I would not want to step into the shoes of

of the police chief or the police department.

But I do think that getting the FOIA issues straight is absolutely essential.

And both at the state level and within whatever operating procedures will apply to the different functions of the board.

And so I think that in your operating procedures,

For example, if you're doing an investigation, those records generated would be your investigative records and you would be the custodian of them and have those decisions.

Okay, thank you.

The other issue, I guess, that we talked about in terms of the procedures in the first half of this meeting, I'm still concerned about whether, again, because the new statute and presumably this ordinance under this new statute may lead us in different directions if we want to, but

I'm curious about this whole question of to what extent under the new version of things the complainant would have would they have any additional rights to access to information or anything else more so than they do in the in the first version under the first statute.

This is a place where I think

we have a little more freedom to get to where we want to go rather than just because the statute is not as confining as our previous ordinance had been.

So I'd just like to hear from particularly from the current members of the PCRB how you all envision

I think, I mean, my answer is that we're certainly, we're still thinking this through.

And I think I thank you for making the stark choice that we face more clear.

and it may well be that in our operating procedures, new operating procedures, we do in fact allow a more formal access to the IA investigation or aspects of the IA investigation.

Well, I

You know, again, we're working out with IA.

We will need to work out with IA understanding about what the actual record, what the IA file comprises.

And again, we've had

you know complaints from stakeholders that even when they're given access to you know IA documents that they're redacted or that they're incomplete or that they've just been totally refused and so we need to work that out and again I hate to be you know the sort of the technocrat but

If we do manage to implement one of these file management systems, this will make things a lot easier in terms of being able to share information, share it confidentially, and share unredacted information between our two organizations.

And Mr. Aguilar had his hand up first, if you don't mind.

I just wanted to make some kind of romanticized comments about the spirit and the purpose of civilian oversight.

There are some some legal barriers that we may never be able to resolve.

But I do believe that in having a board and a body that that are peers of the community members that are having access to this and are deliberating openly and transparently, it gives the

community, a level of

assurance that their matters are being listened to.

So there are things that we may not be able to resolve in terms of access to information, but it doesn't mean that the board itself is not doing its function.

They will have access, unredacted access to these case files, and they are going to deliberate openly about it, obviously to the extent that they can within the law, but they will review and look for issues that can be addressed by the department and by city council.

So I don't want us to or the takeaway for any community members and anybody who may review this that, well, they're not getting access to the complete file.

So what good is it?

Lack of transparency.

And in my practice and experience, it hasn't been the case.

Vice Mayor McGill I was just going to say that it sounds to me that most of the issues that are being brought up are more about the development of the operations versus the actual ordinance itself.

I know that's where most of my concerns are are more about the how things will happen versus the power of it happening.

And

A question for Mr. Aguilar.

When you were doing this in D.C.

and Fairfax, did a lot of the police officers end up just quitting their job?

It seems like in Charlottesville almost every time we've had

What the hell, James?

Who cares?

No, what I'm saying is it seemed like everybody's Twitter gotten fired by the time it, you know, kind of came to us.

So I'm just kind of curious if, you know, that person tended to mess up so bad they knew it was over.

And that was, you know, and if somebody does quit, do they still have to come before us?

Yeah.

Ms.

I'm sorry.

That's what I was.

I was just wondering how that works.

You know, if somebody says, hey, man, I was I did wrong.

Right.

And we have we have a hearing plan, but they go ahead and quit and leave the state or whatever.

I mean, do we do they still have to come before us?

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

I thought I understood the question and then it was a curveball.

We actually did have officers that were that, but they left during the process of investigation more so in DC than in Fairfax.

And our

There were decisions made that that was the end of their involvement with the case.

But legally, I think there would have been avenues by where we could have subpoenaed that officer, even if they're not on force anymore.

But I think those more administrative investigative decisions were made that

that individual officer wasn't adding any extra value or the matter could be resolved without their involvement.

But certainly with subpoena powers, I do believe that that's something.

But I thought that the question was originally, was there like a mass exodus in having when these boards were established?

Vice Chair Mendes?

I'm not sure that the process of the IA process is any more transparent or seen as fair anymore by the officers now as it is by the complainants.

and so again as as a idealistic technocrat you know what I'm hoping is that the we will be able to institute changes that will increase transparency for all you know all parties to any any case and the you know once

someone leaves, that's the ultimate sanction.

And it may well be that we can subpoena them back.

But other than that, we're working on administrative discipline.

And once they've gone, they've disciplined themselves.

I should also point out that Chief Brackney instituted this procedure whereby she was very aggressive about communicating adverse disciplinary findings to

The final two comments I have right now are just one.

I think it will also be important to have in the ordinance

just a clearly enumerated process for council removing board members that's tied to a code of ethics and maybe within the operating procedures having that be internal for the board but I think that will be important to just have enumerated and explicit in the ordinance and the last comment I have is I just you know I know there was some discussion

of investigation pieces.

To me, I think it's just really important that the board and what we adopt does maintain the authority to have independent investigations of its own.

Yeah, I just, you know, again, we have discussed, you know, boards, a code of ethics and, you know, rules for board members, which, you know, variations of which I hope will be put into the operating procedures.

I noticed that in the

Fairfax operating documents.

They have a procedure whereby the board itself can hear a complaint against a board member and then file a report with the county supervisors.

So that's something we might want to think about.

Mr. Chair, at the risk of sounding like I'm beating a dead horse, I would really like to have the benefit of your thoughts as much as possible on this question of

of what kind of a role we're talking about for the complainant, because I was going to suggest that if we can get agreement on what these outlines would be, then final drafting of the ordinance and even the procedures under it may flow very easily.

But if we don't have that basic agreement, it may be very difficult to

for those of us who are trying to work behind the scenes.

One of the problems that Mr. Mendez and Dr. Frazier and Mr. Payne and I ran into was not being 100% clear on where everybody else was coming from.

And therefore, what did we really sort of have freedom to negotiate?

And I'd like to have as much

even if it's just sort of thinking philosophically at this point from you all whom I don't have a lot of contact with as well as from other counselors who I might have more contact with on that basic question.

Vice Chair Mendes Yeah, I, again, in speaking with, you know, folks who have been involved in this process and stakeholders, the major, you know, back when we started to work on the revised ordinance, the major concern was that there was no opportunity for complainants to be heard publicly.

an independent, unbiased board.

And so the goals of the procedures are to give them that opportunity.

And it's not a criminal defense.

It's not circuit court.

It's a forum wherein

People who feel powerless can exert some power by speaking.

And that's sort of my vision of it.

And I can understand where there would need to be procedural details that need to be worked out.

I agree, Mr. Snook with Mr. Mendez.

I think that it's going to be very important in terms of both the process of the board and the optics of the board that that be primary, that the voices that have heretofore felt that they weren't being heard are

are being heard and that's clear to everybody involved.

I mean, I am along the same lines.

I think it's the same thing that I'd mentioned earlier with regard to the thinking and the setup of the hearing procedures.

There is the complainant

presenting his or her case against the police officer.

And I mean, as much involvement as he or she may need to do that effectively seems to be, you know, the right way to go.

Obviously, that's going to take into consideration some of the privacy concerns and all the other, you know, legal matters that are, you know, surrounding that.

I would agree with what's been said.

I don't think I have anything more to add to that.

So I'm sorry, I guess we hadn't heard from Mr. Watson.

Yeah, I concur as well.

Well, so I appreciate that because, as I said, it makes a difference in how we structure the rest of the process.

if we have that basic philosophical sense that we are intending this process to be more, I don't know, more open, I guess, for lack of a better way to characterize it than the first set of things.

And I think that's right in terms of what the General Assembly was getting at.

But I wanted to hear it from everybody before we try to start

start figuring out what that's actually going to mean when we get to writing things.

That was my reason for asking the question.

Yeah, I think over time we are going to have to look at what role we play over the university police.

We all know there's going to be pushback, but we also know that the University of Virginia

has basically encroached over time into a lot of different neighborhoods.

And, you know, we saw last year with Mr. Hoffman, you know, you can be walking through part of what's considered UVA or the neighborhoods around UVA and somebody decide, oh, they don't think you should be there.

And, you know, that could have negative consequences.

And so, you know, I don't I don't think that I know we're going to get a lot of pushback because UVA is the big elephant in Charlottesville, but

I do feel like if a serious case were to happen, if they don't have a board of their own, then, you know, people have to have somewhere to come to.

And that could probably take forever to, you know, make that happen.

But, you know, looking at the nature of UVA, looking at what I'm seeing at, you know, 10th Street in different areas and how UVA is expanding.

And I've seen it on a lot of different levels because I've been a UVA student and a Charlottesville resident.

Excuse me, I worked on a UVA corner back when people were being swabbed for DNA.

I had a lot of friends that were UVA students that, you know, that happened to.

I had a buddy that was getting off work at the bistro, Michael's Bistro.

He was working, got off two o'clock in the morning, got into a cab to go home.

The cab took him to the police station, not to his house.

and he was swabbed by the police.

So I do think that it's going to be difficult, but that's something we've got to keep in mind that UVA, the city of Charlottesville and some of Albemarle County, they all blend.

I live in a neighborhood that's both city and county.

So we definitely got to keep that on the horizon.

If I may, just where do we go from here?

Okay.

So, Mr. I mean, Vice Chair Mendez, can we do what is this?

Yeah, I was going to hear Tim.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My only concern, and I've shared this with the work group, is that, you know, if we could make a pitch to council to fast track this, because I'm concerned if we have to start over the first of the year with two new counselors and their learning curve and all that they're trying to learn about being counselors, it's just going to

Kick the can further down the road.

So anything we can do to expedite the process without short-circuiting the public comment or the necessary number of readings, I think would really be beneficial to the process.

I'd love to get this done so we could get on with the business of our board.

We will certainly like the goal of Council.

I know when I was asked for the top handful of priorities that I had for the end of the year, it was just to try to get at least this ordinance passed.

But we also should be realistic about how much time we do have left.

just in what remains in the year, but we certainly want to make sure that we're getting it right.

I totally agree that having a smaller work group hammer through some of these details is much more effective than trying to get all of us involved and certainly entrust that in two of our colleagues here and then obviously all of us will weigh in as we see fit.

But I don't want the board to think that it's not in all of our goals to get to that point.

I just think that here we are at October 26 and just the timeline of when materials have to be prepared for our colleagues and I'm sorry, by our staff and just there is stuff to work out through.

So I mean, our first goal was to get this more interim procedure done, which I think on Monday we'll have that passed hopefully.

So that's one step.

I just want to make sure that we're all managing expectations, but I certainly hear it.

Okay.

Very well.

It looks like the ordinance discussion has concluded.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

If you'd like to speak to counsel in the PCRB, please click the raise hand icon in the zoom webinar.

Delegate Hudson has raised her hand.

Thanks very much and good evening everyone and thank you for your work tonight and for all of this over the long haul.

I know it's been a long time in the making, starting with the residents and organizers who raised the call for this critical work and identified it as a top legislative priority so that we could shepherd the bill through the General Assembly now almost a year ago and of course all the work that has followed since then.

I know we serve the same residents and have all heard the consistent calls for meaningful civilian oversight of law enforcement and I think that the ordinance that you're converging on now is a critical step in that direction.

I just wanted to affirm again that it's absolutely the intent of the General Assembly to provide localities with the flexibility and framework that you need to implement an impactful civilian review board so I hope you will continue to consider our legislators as a partner in pursuing any

Additional legislative clarity or authority that you need to do this work well, please don't ever hesitate to ask if there's something more that we can give you to give you clear tools to carry this work forward.

I hope that we'll all also continue to stay open and responsive to feedback from the public.

about what parts of this work well and what parts of it need more work as it continues to roll out.

I know I will have my ears open to any and all feedback that we get.

And lastly, I just wanted to really elevate the piece that Mr. Watson mentioned in his last remarks, which is that it really was the intent of the General Assembly.

And in this case, I'm speaking for myself and my close colleagues in understanding that in a lot of our college towns, that there are porous boundaries between our university law enforcement

the cities and the counties that those communities all intermingle.

And since we are one Charlottesville Albemarle UVA community, we want to make sure that you have the authority so that any of our residents, no matter which of those streets they happen to be walking on, feels safe and that they have the opportunity for accountable oversight as well.

So if you need any additional clarity on that, let's please make that a priority.

for the upcoming General Assembly session, and perhaps, Councilor Snook, since you're handling some of the details of the markup, and I think also on the legislative subcommittee for council, any attention that we can give to that in the run-up to session would be great.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Tanisha Hudson.

Tanisha, you're on.

Well, I feel like what you all are doing is pretty much a rush job.

You covered a lot tonight.

You also talked about people being able to do the work of being on the CRB without being impartial and without having a bias.

You all definitely need to consider, even with all that you discussed tonight,

Members being on this board, being highly connected to speaking with individuals within departments, within the city, whether it's the city manager, the members of the police department, members of council, they should be held to a standard too.

If you don't want board members handling a case because them knowing someone in the community, members on the board shouldn't be reaching out to members within city hall

in reference to situations.

You have to set some boundaries and hold them to a standard also, because we've seen that.

and I'm not going to let that go.

And I don't care that that's not what you were discussing tonight.

But what you're trying to do now, I know that Mr. Fogel has been requesting this hearing for quite some time.

And it's almost like you all just threw some stuff together just to have something to be able to perform this hearing.

That's unacceptable because the next person that comes through with the complaint that's requesting the hearing, it could be totally different.

And you're ready to put something

in stone about a hearing process and every single situation could be different.

Every single one.

So I know y'all trying to get some things done to make it look like you accomplishing something before you get off council, Heather, but this should not be a rush job.

You all need to look at this holistically.

and understand that every situation is gonna be different.

So if you're gonna implement something just to give Jeff what he deserves, that's one thing, but y'all trying to really put something in stone.

And then you sit up here and you say people shouldn't do things impartially or with bias.

Lisa's done it.

Council's done it.

Chip's done it.

Mooney done it.

Bellamy Brown has done it.

You all have contributed to doing that.

It's unacceptable.

Take your own advice.

Our next speaker is Katrina Turner, who will be followed by Rosia Parker.

Katrina Turner, I'd just like to say that, you know, as far as the FOIA and

people having to FOIA their record, you know, that's one of the problems because people can't afford to FOIA the record.

So, and if we come to you with a complaint, I feel that everything that you have

since now the police department is releasing their information, why is it that you all will not release your information to, I'm not gonna say the complainant, I'm gonna say to the citizens because the complainant just does not sound right.

You know, sounds as if we're complaining

about what's going on, but we're not really not complaining.

We're letting you know what's going on in this community.

So the word complaint, I really don't agree with.

So I think that really needs to be changed.

And I know that's been talked about.

But Miss Hudson, at the very beginning,

spoke about how we need to talk about the chair of the board and everything he has done and said, but not one person on the CRB or the city council has spoke up about the chair of the board and everything he's done.

One of the most despicable things

is how he talked about all the races that apply for the position of the executive director.

And for Heather, from what I hear, to be involved in all of this, that's a problem.

So I'd like to know why

it was overlooked about the chair of the CRB and everything he has done.

And if anybody can answer that question for us right now, or whenever public comment is over with, I would love to hear that answer.

Because this chair has

tainted this PCRB.

And one more thing before I go, I need to know who else in the PCRB is, you know, sitting, having lunch and everything with the PBA because the PBA is a problem.

And if you all continue to have a relationship with the PBA,

Thank you, Ms.

Next up is Rosia Parker.

Rosia, you're on with counsel on the PCRB.

And you'll have to unmute.

There you go.

Good afternoon.

Oh, well, evening.

Um,

Going back to what Ms.

Turner says about the chair.

I'm not going to get on here.

I'm not going to bash you.

I'm not going to do anything like that.

But that was completely wrong.

What was done using the PCRB platform for the bias of the police chief.

it should have been used on the complaints of the citizens instead of the police because that board was created by victims of police brutality, disadvantaged communities was created in that resolution.

Everything was void

and what you did by using that platform for the police.

Not only was that the People's Coalition created the resolution was because of the people, not from just 2017, but from 400 years of black people in slavery being harmed by the police.

And it's been going on too long in Charlottesville.

myself and Katrina was the last two black women of a whole bunch of people on this resolution.

We have put in over four to 500 hours of work without

the PCRB of putting work in to make sure that this work goes through and having an understanding of what we've been through 2017 and what these communities we've watched people go through, the homeless people, how black and brown people are treated.

And Mr. Wells have abused myself and Ms.

Turner.

yelling in our face.

What y'all saw from him wasn't nothing compared to what he did to us in public, especially myself.

So listening to the PBA or whatever you're listening to, that is not the community and you're not representing the community.

But I love listening to what the new people are saying because they're feeling

what we have felt.

So I just hope that y'all really do take y'all's time and really putting forth an effort and put these ordinance and what we've done with legislating the Senate and do right by the citizens from July 1, 2021, what we work for.

I appreciate y'all's time tonight.

And the next hand is Abby Guskin.

Abby, you're on with counsel on the PCRB.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

I just wanted to, Mayor Walker, thank you very much.

I just wanted to reiterate what you said to make sure that any changes go out to the public for review as quick as possible.

The changes to the interim hearing procedures that

they go directly to the PCRB website and any edits or changes to the draft ordinance as well.

I want to also reiterate what Katrina and Rosia being in many of the meetings from the original PCRB board members and what they struggled through and what they deliberately tried to

do for this community so people had a safe space to go somewhere to air all their grievances.

I just want to make sure that it's not tainted by what your chair member, the active chair member, Mr Bellamy, has has done to this community to it's just

It hasn't been well received in the community.

And I also don't understand why he's still with us, but that's something that we need to continue the conversation with.

Also the wrongful termination of Chief Brackney and reinstating all the black leadership would be a joyful thing for the city.

Bellamy Brown, Ms.

Heather, Lisa, Chip and Officer Mooney and the other council members it's just there's a there should be a lot of shame on on their face because what what has been going on

has not been resolved and it needs to be resolved because since the CRB now and the PBA and Ms.

Carpenter, I leave you and the ladies out of this scenario played a role in her termination.

We need to hold everybody accountable.

And I just wanted to try and wrap up some thoughts that I've had this evening

Our next speaker is Ange Khan.

Great.

I'm so glad to have both of y'all together.

One, I'm finding it really odd that no one has addressed, or not to my knowledge anyway, the chair of the PCRB collaborating with the PBA.

I'm just wondering when that is going to take place.

when that conversation is gonna happen.

How do you all expect, for those who believe in PCRBs, how do you expect members to have full trust in this current PCRB?

it's just unbelievable like every time somebody brings it up is it getting addressed it's not so I would like to call for that PCRB chair Bellamy Brown to be removed it's it's unimaginable like how do you expect folks to actually believe in this and all the time that community members have put in to forming this

and then have a person come around and say, oh, I'm gonna take it upon myself to just go ahead and have these conversations with folks and not see a problem with it until they're called out.

So, I mean, that's something that needs to be discussed.

Thank you.

Doesn't look like there are any more hands.

Last call.

If you'd like to click the raise hand button.

And Teresa Hepler, you're on with counsel on the CRB.

Hi, this is Teresa Hepler.

I'm an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center.

I don't mean to switch gears necessarily because I think all the public comments that have come before mine have been very important, but I wanted to

make everyone aware, including people who are listening, that it sounds like there has been some conversation earlier around the ordinance to potentially water it down.

So the ordinance, the draft ordinance that has been presented under section 2-459, which is the investigations, allows the civilian oversight board to initiate investigations

when they find that it merits such an investigation.

But I did hear a comment that wasn't discussed very much about instead of having the board do an investigation, having the executive director kind of look over the shoulder of internal affairs.

And so I just wanted to highlight that

that the community and voices that I have heard have been very concerned with the police investigating themselves.

and there has been a big push to have independent investigations.

And so what I'm hearing is more talk about ensuring that there isn't a power shift.

And that's kind of been a theme that I've heard tonight in general, away from the police, which has allowed them to engage in the behavior that is the cause for so much of the community's concerns.

So I just wanted to highlight that because I didn't want that to be missed.

And if that does come up in a marked up version of the ordinance, I did not want that to be missed again.

I would push for there to be further discussion among the public and the communities if that's

if that's something that they actually want, if they do not want the PCRB to have that independent investigatory power and instead they want the executive director to just look over the shoulder of internal affairs and let them continue doing what they've already been doing.

All right, thank you.

I'll just start off comment for Ms.

Turner's, the question she brought up first.

I did bring this before council, the behaviors that have been displayed from Chair Brown, which are now being claimed to have been private affairs, but I'm looking now at a August 18th

post on Facebook where he talks about a meeting between that Mr. Mendez and he had with me that was a pretty good meeting and claims that I did not follow through on that information.

If there's only the will of one person to take that information

take his behaviors over the course of months and look at them and determine whether he is a good fit for the board, then there's not much that can be done.

I expressed my concerns multiple times through emails, through council and the board in response to Ms.

Carpenter's initial email and feel very differently than

apparently the other members of council.

I'm just kind of curious what, what do we see as our next steps from here.

So on Monday, we'll be having in front of council this, you know, intermediate process procedure so that these other hearings, this immediate hearing can be handled.

Then it sounds like there'll be a workgroup that's going to work through some of the more detailed things that are needed and outstanding on the ordinance.

And maybe we can just have that group maybe check in with all of us shortly thereafter.

Obviously, the mayor has asked.

We have all those documents that are marked up so we can see the changes that are made as kind of public.

And I think at that point, we need to kind of make a decision in terms of when this may or may not be ready to come in front of council for a formal vote.

Is that kind of where we are?

And that was one thing that I've been consistently asking for, and I still would need to understand the how this happens and to make sure that the people who would be able to execute, especially the independent role that they have been expressing, not just with this board, but with the former board.

And I understand why, but with that kind of

Any other comments, questions?

No?

Well, just in terms of the board, we have four meetings left and you all have two, I think.

So just to just make sure that it's understood, I would very much like to be able to

vote on this before I leave, maybe.

I am struggling with some of the things that you all have had the power to do that haven't been done, but I do understand that this is bigger than any one person or any one-person actions, and so that's something that I need to work within myself to move around, and so I will attempt to do that, but

just based on timeline.

It's just really good, I think, to understand.