Thread by @socialistdogmom

the second meeting of charlottesville’s police civilian review board should be starting any minute now. here’s tonight’s agenda. should be PLENTY to talk about.

i’m interested to see what’s up re: the appointment of a 9th member. at the last meeting, they voted to add jeff fogel. he sat down in the audience, so i’m assuming i may’ve been correct in my speculation that they can’t do that without council approval.

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1024792040742289409?s=21

they’ll also address their response to this letter from denise lunsford, counsel for the southern state police benevolent association. text of that letter here:

https://twitter.com/solidcville/status/1024815479813296128?s=21

i saw quite a few members of this board in the streets this past weekend. i suspect they’ll have some comments on the intense overpolicing we saw over the anniversary of the events of last august 11-12.

all eight members of the board and a representative from the city attorney’s office are seated. there is one empty chair up there, perhaps for the hoped-for ninth member.
reverend don gathers has called the meeting to order.

looks like lisa robertson from the city attorney’s office is going to offer some guidance on FOIA (there was some confusion at the last meeting about the requirements & responsibilities they have)
necessary & important, but dull as disLG5CjmXr

officers have not yet been elected (that’s on tonight’s agenda) and they are struggling to get someone to volunteer to take notes on tonight’s meeting.
starting off now with community input. jeff fogel now speaking (from the audience).

he’s offered printed packets to the board members about police ethics.
speaking now about the “consensual” bag searches we saw over the weekend - says brackney admits she lied to us about the searches.

“there seems to be a misunderstanding about the constitution, which these people took an oath to uphold,” says jeff about the city’s statement that security trumps convenience re: street closures & searches downtown this past weekend.

he says they should be “concerned about the police chief’s willingness to lie, deceive, and manipulate”
(agreed)

jeff speaking now about a lawsuit he’s filed about police misconduct, an officer who told a suspect that if they didn’t consent to a search, they’d be taken to jail, basically “if you don’t give up your rights under the fourth amendment, i’m going to punish you.”

apparently the city has not been in proper communication with jeff about the complaint.

board member sarah burke: we’ve drafted a form for community input to hear about problems people are experiencing. the city did not say they aren’t allowed to post such a form, the board created an email address, had the form translated into spanish...

when sarah noticed the form isn’t on the website, she contacted the city. apparently the interim city manager & other city officials decided the board IS NOT ALLOWED to solicit this kind of input directly?

josh bowers: “it was extremely upsetting” that the city “stood in the way of the form being posted” and didn’t even communicate with the board about the decision to prohibit it.

the city-maintained website for the CRB links only to the official police department complaint form. it’s not clear to me, but i believe this form does not communicate with the CRB in any way.
charlottesville.org/departments-an…

sidebar question of my own: what is the FOIA-ability of complaints filed with the police department directly? is there any risk to having a separately available form that may contain personal information of witnesses, etc?

this meeting is, like the last one, in the small meeting space on water street. almost every seat in the audience is full and the acoustics are awful. personally, i wish they’d meet in council chambers (like many other boards do) so they’d be mic’d.

no other takers on public comment. moving on to lisa robertson’s presentation on FOIA. IT IS POWERPOINT TIME, Y’ALL!

sarah asks lisa how long she thinks this might take. she doesn’t know. hallmark of a good presentation & a good meeting 🙄

good reminders: any time three or more members of a board discuss board business, it has to be a posted public meeting.
meeting date, time, and location must be posted three or more days in advance. (this goes for all boards and commissions!)

she’s not going to get into detail on the requirements for going into closed session — there shouldn’t be much reason for them to do this. their mission for the next few months is just to create the bylaws for the newly created board.

thrilling details they’ll need to outline in the bylaws as they write them: guidelines for remote meeting participation and who can call for emergency sessions

the guidelines re: how much emailing constitutes a violation of the public meeting requirement still confuses me a great deal. this was discussed in detail at the city council retreat back in january, too. better to err on the side of not doing a lot of reply-all.

apparently “study committees” and “subcommittees” don’t have to keep minutes. there is no actual definition of a “study committee,” but the asst city atty says they aren’t one and must keep minutes.
i know, this is a rollercoaster of emotion.

the requirements for minutes are actually really lax. just the time/date/location, who is present/absent, a brief summary of items discussed, and a record of votes (and it only require a numerical account of votes - not who voted which way!)

“five is just one more than four” - crystal clear insights from our city attorney’s office
(talking about establishing a quorum for the board. city council requires 3/5. she recommends 5/8 for this board, but they will make this choice when writing the bylaws.)

the issue of how much emailing constitutes “simultaneous conversation” and therefore a violation of the public meeting requirements remains confusing.

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/954382026978807808?s=21

27 minutes into her presentation and lisa is moving on to discussion of “public records.”
she has not yet referred to the slide being projected onto the wall behind the board.

board member gloria beard asks:”if we are allowed to take complaints, are you saying that’s public record?”
lisa says yes, probably. there are no FOIA exemptions for privacy. “we need to look for exemptions that might apply.” this sounds like a job for the city attorney’s office.

lisa robertson says “it’s certainly helpful to city staff” if they can cite the proper code & redact their own documents when they get a FOIA request. honestly that makes me u comfortable. the city attorney’s office should take a more active role here. this is important.

don gathers: “are you telling us that there is potential that if someone comes to us with a complaint, they won’t be protected?” lisa says she can’t answer that tonight.
don: “my concern then is why would anyone come forward with a complaint?”

board member sarah burke now asking for clarification - FOIA only covers WRITTEN information and she couldn’t be compelled to disclose information someone shared with her verbally? lisa seems to be evading responding to this specific question.

board member josh bowers asks if they can consult with outside counsel. lisa thinks for a moment. says she will “take this under advisement.” city council must approve outside council arrangements. “if that’s something pure gonna want, you should make a request to city council.”

sarah: “the city attorney’s office is counsel to the police department.”
lisa: “we’re counsel for everyone.” [for all city departments, boards, etc]

seems like an obvious conflict of interest.

she’s acting like the board members have access to exactly as much information and expertise as she does, keeps saying they should all read the whole freedom of information act. she’s... the assistant city attorney. she should be a subject matter expert here.

sarah: “we are supposed to assume you have an iron curtain in your head” — the city attorney’s office represents both the police and the board seeking to hold them accountable.

lisa: our job “is to ensure the entire entity” is well served.

lisa now says the city attorney’s office will look at the board’s stated function and determine if it’s consistent with virginia law. she says she hasn’t yet looked into how the two other virginia cities with similar boards function. (seriously? why not?)

“i’m not real clear on what the mission is, organizationally, and how you fit in.” lisa, where have you been?

board member josh bowers: he understands the city wouldn’t want to pay money for outside counsel, but surely they wouldn’t take issue with pro bono legal assistance offered to the board?
lisa is visibly uncomfortable now.

how can the city attorney’s office in good conscience send a representative into this meeting without having done the prep work of consulting with the city attorneys in the other virginia localities who already have functioning CRBs? this is amateur hour.

lisa is getting defensive. this has ceased to be a presentation about public records...

lisa, on how other cities handle this, accidentally set up a dichotomy of “in-house counsel” and “outhouse attorney”
she may be in-house counsel for the city, but she is an outhouse lawyer.

lisa says it needs to be established whether this board will be “investigating and making recommendations to somebody or if you are investigating and making decisions”

she isn’t wrong about there we are in the process (the beginning - the mission has not been defined at all!), but she doesn’t seem to understand that they CAN’T make some of these decisions without sound legal advice about how to protect people who make complaints to them.

can we please all just agree that the goddamn lawyer at the table should be the one to communicate with the lawyers in virginia beach & fairfax on how they handle these issues? quit whining & try to help, lisa.

gosh it’s a shame city council neglected to put veteran civil rights attorney jeff fogel on this board. what a terrible accidental oversight that was 😒

i hope don realizes he’s parked in a two hour spot where the time limit applies even after 6pm... he must’ve been optimistic about how long this would take.

note that just because something is subject to a FOIA exemption doesn’t make it actually CONFIDENTIAL.
she says there are some laws that make things confidential, like SSNs (uh someone tell the albemarle circuit court? i saw some nazis’ socials on docs i got from the clerk)

“i’m gonna stop talking now unless you want me to go on...” no protestations for her to continue. she’s going to send some documentation on the conflict of interest regulations to board members.

board member josh bowers asks for more information about conflict of interest - is it just about financial conflicts? he says he chose not to be a legal observer this past weekend because he wasn’t sure if that would present a conflict of interest for him as a board member.

she... didn’t really answer this.

she says “if you’re collecting a lot of sensitive information” they have an obligation to manage it “in a way that it won’t be released for purposes other than how it was gathered.” but doesn’t offer any guidance on what this means or how to do it.

she spoke for a full five minutes after saying she was going to stop taking. finished by reminding them that the city attorney’s office won’t send a rep to meetings unless they are specifically invited. she’s now left the building.

i turned around to watch lisa leave and noticed denise lunsford in the audience. don is now reading the board’s statement in response to denise’s letter on behalf of the police benevolent association. i hope i can find the text of it later... it’s very hard to hear.

at the end of the last meeting, they were all charged with thinking about what the board’s mission statement should be. it sounds like they are still thinking... they’ve motioned to table voting on one tonight.

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1024810007936880640?s=21

the motion is actually to table DISCUSSION of the mission statement, not just the vote.
moving on now to discussion of electing officers... they seem to not want to do that, have rotating chairs instead.
approaching the 2 hour mark with lots of agenda left to cover.

it seems i was correct in my speculation at the last meeting — paige rice, the council clerk, informed the board after their last meeting that council must appoint board members. they voted to add a ninth member, but they don’t have the authority to name the person.

josh bowers says they need more clarification, “paige’s emails tend to be in the passive voice” 🌶

updates from the room: don must be aware of the parking situation. he’s just exited, i assume to move his car.
i BELIEVE the man sitting next to denise lunsford is former cville police chief timothy longo (before brackney, before thomas), but i can’t tell men apart.

don is back - they’re filling him in on the vote they took to send an email to council for clarification about outside counsel, adding a ninth member, how the decision was reached to block their form from going on the website, etc. sarah will draft it.

josh bowers is in communication with some law students who will present research they did at the next meeting.

the board is in agreement that they will all try to attend monday’s city council meeting to address council about the board’s issues.

now that lisa has left, i don’t see any member of city staff here. the board is now discussing that they need to communicate with the city that some member of city staff (josh, sarah, or paige) should be present at every meeting.

don points out that when he was on the blue ribbon commission, the city provided snacks, drinks, and printed agendas... they need to communicate with city staff & get these meetings taken care of!

motion to adjourn!