Thread by @yolopeoplepower

🚨Meeting tonight🚨

Monday September 14 6:30 pm there is a Police Accountability Commission meeting.

The zoom link is here: zoom.us/j/92618382345

#Davis #DavisCityCouncil #DavisCmsnMtg #DavisCCMtg

Let's goooooo

Closed captioning seems to be working - staff person whose name I do not know

Kelly: It's pretty good, not perfect

Brief staff announcements
(The unnamed person above is named Carrie)

If you're trying out CC and have feedback please reach out to them!

City Council meeting tomorrow night - will have a presentation about UC Davis resuming and COVID

No commissioner announcements

Nor liaison announcements (they aren't here)

Public Comment:

Commenter #1: Why are we holding police accountable? Why are we not holding criminals accountable?

Commenter #2:

Terrible what's happening in the world. This is a very important meeting...[swears, lmao]

Kelly: If you don't keep it clean we'll remove you from the meeting

Commenter #3:

[Did they say anything???]

...and public comment is over.

Consent calendar approved

Item 6 - Police Auditor Report

[Mayor Partida is here]

Partida: Good work on the subcommittees, can get a little frustrating because it's very slow going. Appreciates the thoughtfulness around the realignment of the police department

Dillan: Lucas said he had another commitment during this time.

Now we'll hear from Mike Gennaco the independent auditor of the police department

Mike: Complaint resident sent in about police action today.

An individual was put into detention and then released.

Chief is out today but got debriefed by deputy chief

Mike: Preliminary info, subject to change

Inference was that the individual was stopped because of his race and nothing else.

The officers who responded to the location were responding to a request for service

Mike:
Request for service was - Allegation that somebody was contemplating / about to commit a serious crime

Deputy chief will be pulling the body cam footage

Person stopped was not involved in any of the alleged criminal activity

Mike: Looking at the information that caused the detention. If it was appropriate

Will review body cam footage, police reports, and make own assessment

Mike: Hoping that one of the complaints on the list would move to a restorative justice approach. Hoping to do it in person but with "continued raging pandemic and now the raging fires" may end up doing it virtually

Mike: Has a homework assignment for the commission:

Expert report that the DA released about the officer involved shooting that happened around the holidays awhile ago. Any questions for Mike around this time? Re the DAs conclusions. Will discuss at the next meeting

Mike: Information from a number of residents that live in that neighborhood, the police had been called repeatedly about his actions in the neighborhood. Calls for service didn't sufficiently address the troubled man before he took his mother's life

Mike: [Missed a comment about DA's conclusion about the officers I believe]. A lot of factual information in these reports that wasn't presented when it occurred.

A lot of analysis worthy of discussion about the use of deadly force.

Cecilia: The incident today, the man they handcuffed was found not to be a part of the call

Mike: Yes the man was incorrectly identified as being a potential person involved

Cecilia: The people emailed and wanted to know why he was handcuffed and treated as guilty. Wants to discuss next meeting

Mike: Concern that when they approached him the officers did it with their guns drawn. A lot needs to be sussed out, was it an appropriate response?

Cecilia: Is it always the case that when arresting somebody are guns are drawn?

Mike: No.

Mary: Will there be an investigation about whether the call was a real call?

Mike: Yes

Don: Broader issue of officers displaying weapons when in contact with the public. Part of our piece as a commission.

Use of implied force, threat of force

To threaten people, not to prevent a crime but to defend themselves

Don: I have come across a lot of anecdotes recently that amount to a pattern. I want to discuss what training Davis police get about reaching for a weapon, deploying a weapon.

Mike: Police are not told to unholster their weapon only if they intend to use it

Working on Sunday in his office. Alarm had been tripped because of a flood in the basement. Sheriff's deputies came into the building with canines off leash

Mike: Dog comes in, deputy called back the dog, the deputy and partnered ordered him out of his own office at gunpoint. To think one false move by him could have resulted in something very tragic is etched on his mind today. Not trivial and not something to be ignored.

Mike: How a tactical response is organized and trained by DPD is something to look into.

Dillan: Training, policy, practice. Might be a discrepancy between policy and practice.

Dillan: What is the threshold of information offices would need to make a detention in general?

Mike: You can't detain anybody for no reason (constitution doesn't allow it). Has to be reasonable suspicion. Objective standard - based on facts officer knew at the time.

Mike: Nature of the call, reliability of the informant, description provided by the caller about the individual suspected of a crime, degree to which that description is matched by the individual you see, is that person close by to where the call was about.

Mike: con't from above, Whether the length of detention was too long given the nature of the crime, given information learned later

Abram: Wants to talk about the Gray shooting at the next meeting, the report made them rethink a lot of things about the incident

Public Comment on Item 6 -

No one called in

Mike: Our form of oversight is being discussed by maybe 30 cities in the state of California. Everyone wants to know what's going on in Davis with the PAC and the auditor. Lots of calls coming in

Item 7A - Police-Related Surveillance Technology

Dillan: Commission got a report. Reshape the search perimeters of the data so it's easier to understand for them and the public

Kelly: Council will take this up next week on Tuesday. Commission can figure out what type of feedback they want to give to council.

Sean: [has a powerpoint]

Proposed Changes to DPD Surveillance Report Formats

Changes proposing are fairly minor but will have a large impact

Sean: In a good place with surveillance reporting

Sean: Reports are 40 pages, which is massive, hard to read for staff and public

Sean:

2 core proposals - surveillance impact report, to be drafted pre initial purchase and updated as needed on an annual basis

annual summary - high level, risk-based overview of year's use of tech

Sean:
Surveillance Impact Report
- Specific potential impacts should be detailed
- Safeguards should be detailed
- Need to be submitted before getting them so city council can review
- On a yearly basis should req little or no updates

Specific potential risks need to be documented, examples to follow

Example risk 1 - stigmatization if sensitive information is exposed, control - info is only accessible to investigating officers, store in an encrypted state on a DPD controlled computer with no internet connection

Example risk 2 - loss of trust in DPD with license plate readers

control - info does not leave car scanning devices and is not stored for a period longer than x days.

Annual Surveillance Report - as close to 1 page as possible, separate from staff report

Includes existing info as described in current policy but should add - warrants granted for use, number of uses, number of convictions, etc

A couple slides of suggested policy amendment language.

Pause for questions

Mayor Partida: All these reports that were just copies of each other because there was no info. Ones with a lot of info, which of that should have been looked at more closely? Your suggestions make those reports more useful

Partida: Right at the top say "There is info in this report that you need to look at"

Is there certain information that has to be reported?

Does each city set them for themselves? ACLU has guidelines? PD has guidelines?

Kelly: Our ordinance is somewhat unique, has reqs - what was used, how was it used, how many times was it used

No reqs from any higher jurisdiction

Partida: Nothing that you know of that we legally have to put into these reports?

Kelly: Only by our own local ordinance, you are the law marker in this case

Mike: No state reqs in CA, a lot of flexibility

*maker

Mike: Just worked with Santa Clara County, they insisted that facial recognition be eliminated from the sheriff's bundle, asked the auditors to ensure it was taken out

Sean: Organization called Secure Justice
@SecureJustice

Helped form the conversation around these types of topics, done a lot of work in this area

Don: My reactions has been covered

Cecilia: Can you give us one or two examples on how the two committees / commissions are different?

Sean: Big difference is there's way more info tech in Oakland and Alameda County

Sean: Local, state, federal law enforcement with large offices in the east bay. Oakland is a sanctuary city - wants fact check on that. Different questions that come up there that are very different than here

Mike: Consent decree that was supposed to be over in 5 years for about 20 years

Dillan: Rest of the slides?

Sean: Proposed surveillance policy amendment language. Would want city attorney to look over it.

Kelly: Still fairly new ordinance. Always wanting to look at it after a year or two, see if it's working, if it's doing what intended.

In our attempt to be as transparent as possible and provide /all/ the information made it hard to find the information.

Kelly: Not hearing feedback on the use of the technology itself.

Sean: Davis because of this ordinance has an extraordinarily low use of surveillance technology

Sean: More questions might arise once they dive into the RIPA data. Is this tech being deployed in a way that is inequitable as reflected in traffic stops? Don't have that info yet but will begin to understand with RIPA data.

Sean: Proposed amendments don't include putting demographics in. Based on sample sizes and numbers, don't know if they'll be able to do meaningful analysis. RIPA data looks at a lot more police interactions

Mary: Stuff we have in place I am ok with, agrees with Sean

Dillan: Hard for me to give a thumbs up thumbs down with what we have. Not presently able to make that determination. Looking forward to putting forward suggested changes

Public Comment on Item 7A -

Commenter #1: @ConnorForDavis Agrees with a previous commenter at a previous meeting re general skepticism towards surveillance. Don't know enough like Dillan to comment on specifics.

Commenter #1: Davis using it much less than Oakland could be related to race and economic make up of the two cities. People losing trust in the police as a risk, information coming out of surveillance tech not the primary factor there. Might exacerbate the issues

Commenter #1: Fundamentally the way modern policing works is why people don't trust it. We need to restructure. Changing ordinances is good but doesn't address the problem.

Commenter #1: In general supports reducing length of the reports and making them accessible

Sean: Public comment was great, Connor brought up multiple good points. Not going to rebuild trust in policing in America by doing this. This gives DPD a chance to talk about what they are doing to safeguard information.

Mary: Are we ready to say that the suggestions to streamline the reports we're ready to forward to the council?

Dillan: Do we need to take a formal action?

Kelly: Yes, we need a recommendation that is specific

Sean: Moves to send recs to council

Kelly: You mean the powerpoint recs?

Dillan: @Dillan4Davis, always put your ideas in memo form

[Discussion on how to give recs to council

My snack today is chocolate covered pretzels]

"For the purpose of streamlining the surveillance technology reports, decreasing undue administrative burden of completing the reports, and improving the long-term transparency and accountability of privacy and security protections of the public..."

"...I move to send the proposed changes to the surveillance impact and annual surveillance reports to the City Council for consideration (specific slide numbers)."

It is passed

Item 7B - Racial Identity and Profiling Act (RIPA) Data

Jean Lyon - records person for the Davis Police Department

[Jean is having technical problems]

cityofdavis.org/city-hall/poli…

Moving on to Item 7C for now

Subcommittee reports - Outreach, DPD policy/procedure, PAC and DPD meetings, 4 others on the next slide

Kelly: Public comment all at one time unless you want to take it 7 times

Judith: Awhile ago a citizen requested we reach out to the immigrant population in Davis

Dillan: In relation to the joint subcommittee?

Judith: Prior to that

DPD Policy / Procedure

Joint subcommittee got tasks, next meeting will be on the 23rd

[Jean is back] Going back to 7B now

Jean working for DPD since 2001.

Don't necessarily perform the heavy analysis on the numbers but collects the records

The state came up with the RIPA board, came up with the type of data they wanted to collect

First RIPA report for 2018, 6 months July - Dec came out last year

Jean: Will get full 2019 report soon for the 15 biggest PDs in the state, then other PDs will join in too.

Cecilia: Can you share how the data is collected?

Jean: Part of RMS Cat [sp??] system. Whenever a person is stopped, detained, or a call for service, officer logs info. Certain fields are req'd

Jean: Right now review process is manual, Jean or lieutenants go through it. Next year will be built into the system to have a review process

Cecilia: What's the data they're req'd to report?

Jean: Several different data sets. [Kelly forgot to forward that, doing it right now].

Jean: Perceived age, sex, race. If they ID with a protected class

Cecilia: Officer's perception of what that individual is, do they ever check?

Jean: Solely officer's perception, not allowed to ask

Jean is screen sharing. Have to select options from DOJ.
There's a ton of writing here.

Jean's screen still

This is from the doc Kelly sent to commissioners

[It's wild to me that officers are judging if they think someone is trans or bi or what race they are or any type of protected class and report that]

Cecilia shared how she gets read as a lot of different types of ethnicities

Cecilia: Law enforcement has a lot of responsibility in how they report this

Jean: You can choose multiple options

Don: I have so many questions about this I don't even know where to begin

Don: Does anybody think that this is science? What good is this? I'm not being sarcastic. The data is so subjective.

You mentioned the DOJ that suggests this is a national program.

Jean: It's the state of CA

Don: I find this disturbing that policy for Davis would be based on these perceptions. If we know anything about what's happening in our town, the relationship between the police and the public is so much influenced by emotion and experiences and expectations

Jean: Not a national req, but there are other states that have similar things in place

Judith: Jean can you explain why you use the officer's perceived perception of the person

Jean: That's how it's written in the law. Trying to identify bias in their perceived race.

Mike: Jean is right about the intent of the legislation. It's not about what the individual actually IDs as, it's about the perception. The officer can't (and legislature doesn't want them to) ask these questions of someone who is detained.

Mike: Looking at disproportionality of people stopped based on what the officers think they are.

Jean: Not necessarily any contact, it's any detention or any search

Dillan: Took a look at the numbers, compared to the 2010 census (so not totally accurate but most up to date national numbers that we have). Disproportionate stops. African American contact rate more than 3 times the population rate in Davis community.

Dillan: How does the department react to these numbers?

Jean: Can give a broad answer, anything more specific would have to reach out to people

Jean: Along with the arrest rate, a lot of people arrested in Davis not from here, just as important but can't compare to resident numbers. Broader geographic area.

As a department want to see info compared to combined census data with N California

Jean: Census is self reported instead of officers perception

Dillan: So not a reaction or is less jarring than it seems?

Jean: Is an indicator, but difficult to compare with census data

Kelly: It's one of the tools we would look at in terms of trying to understand the broader picture. But don't use it to do xyz necessarily.

Dillan: So how do we figure out if there's a problem here?

Dillan: It's critical if any of this is important. To be able to look at this info to see if there is a problem here. Comparing to the census is always problematic but 10 point disparities says something is off.

Sean: All of the points Jean has brought up are relevant but 6% of CA pop is Black. 18% of citations in Davis are Black people. Even if you were to account for people coming into town, commuters. That's a big distinction.

Sean: Our comparative data sources are imperfect, but if we don't have a reaction to the vast discrepancy in the numbers between races, like Dillan is pointing out, we are not looking at it properly.

Sean: It's not like there's a big commuter population into Davis. UC Davis has a flux student population but they have robust race data.

Sean: Concerned that we're overly focused on how difficult it is to do the counts. If we were under 10% maybe a margin of error but that's not the case.

Granted this is a brand new system

Mike: Comparison across data sets is difficult but not impossible. Suspects people down the road in the city can do it

Mike: Half the people that are arrested, cited, stopped, searched in your city are not from here. Calls into question the use of census data. A lot of theories that are anecdotal about why that is, what the other half looks like

Mike: Focus on just arrestees in Davis, make that your denominator

Judith: Wants to look into stop for citation versus suspicion. When it's suspicion brings in bias

Jean: Have to report stop data by the end of their shift - RIPA directives and department policy

They're discussing the RIPA report and how the total N of people is reported. This is on the screen

Sean: Is any of this available in a CSV format?

Jean: I can look into that to you

Partida: Good for us to start thinking about what we're gonna do with those stops - policies going to be so we're not criminalizing poverty or people of color. Finding a way to be helpful. More important to have solutions come out of that.

Partida: What are the outcomes after these people get pulled over? Cited? Arrested? If that proportion is higher for poc what we need to look at that

Public comment time:

Commenter #1 @ConnorForDavis: Yolo People Power researchers (that's us!) looked at the data they talked about earlier re Davis residents arrest rates.

Commenter #1: Report will be released soon. Black residents of Davis from 2016-2019 were 4.4x more likely to be arrested than white people. For felonies, 6.6x more likely for Black residents of Davis than white.

Commenter #2: Would be great to have this data available in a raw format rather than charts that only reflect some analyses that can be done

Jean: People who do the analysis were not able to do it this year. Which is why the report looks like it does. Next year they will do extensive analyses

Jean: AB 953 has a website, attorney general's website

2018 report is on their website. Draft report for 2019 is available too. Very heavy statistical data is there too. Lots of numbers and charts.

[I think this is the website Jean is referring to]
oag.ca.gov/ab953/board

Judith: We are a half hour over

Dillan: Does anyone want to make an extension motion?

Approved to extend for 30 minutes

No mental health updates

Authorizing Resolution Revision
Kelly: Trying to define what accountability, oversight mean to the Council, commission, public

PAC and UC Davis Relations
Abram: City of La Mesa contacted them in July ask for their own PAC help

Have their heads in the right place about this

Abram: Asked if they should include a law enforcement rep on their committee. Wished there was more police communication before everything got started here. Own rec gotta work together but also a lot of folks react to someone having a gun in the room.

Abram: Working well, like working with the Davis independent police auditor. Slow info flow however. Wish commission had more than 4 teeth.

Joint subcommittee updates

Don: Fair to say at least a couple of points of view that have been expressed. Organizationally trying to get a handle on it. Police chief presented an org chart.

Don: Divided the police department into left & right side, left side traditional sworn officer side law enforcement, right side social services - mental health, substance abuse

Don: Opinion in the group that view that the social services should be performed by a separate org from the sworn officers. Chief wants them all to be under the police department.

Don: A lot of time was spent trying to gather additional information, social science analysis

Dillan: Don't know if I've identified that much consensus in the subcommittee

Dillan: Did come to a resolution in the process on the way forward, still murkiness with end product what they're producing

Kelly: Only have had 2 meetings, many meetings with different combos of people but only 2 full meetings.

Judith: Desire to have community conversations, around mental health

Having a common data source - thinks it's solved. Maybe need to look at other options to have community and police department agree on the data.

Judith: Saw the survey they're using to gather the stories. Demographic data is ahead of stories, stories are the 29th question. The way that is being collected has concerns about introduction of bias. Have to go through so many questions before they get to tell their story.

Public Comment on any of the subcommittees

Commenter #1: @ConnorForDavis Is now a cops off campus campaign across the UCs. Cops off Campus. A lot of faculty and grad students at UC Davis are working on.

Commenter #1: A lot of people agree PAC needs more teeth. Can bring this up to other cities looking at our PAC. Hopefully they (and Davis) in the future can give PACs more power.

Commenter #1: Department of Public Safety should be independent of the police department. A lot of people in the community feel similarly.

Traffic stops should be separate from the PD as well. Maybe in public works?

Commenter #1: Timeline again, should be seen by Council much earlier than the current plan. First time seen doubt there will be a vote, just discussion. In the next few weeks.

Commenter #1: Especially now that the Yolo People Power researchers will be releasing their report soon.

Commenter #2: Compliment on DPD's speed to respond to a recent public records request as compared to UC Davis request. When both were asked for 5 years of arrest data. When people talk to UCPD ask about why there's a legalistic stonewalling.

Commenter #2: Could help with mental health subcommittee if they want assistance.

Judith: Welcome contact from people who are interested in the mental health aspect

Dillan: Request Ryan Collins come to a meeting soon (Ryan is the homeless outreach coordinator)

Adjourned! Night y'all