Thread by @yolopeoplepower

Guess what's happening tonight! That's right it's another live tweet thread!

August 27 Human Relations Commission is meeting at 6:30 pm zoom link is zoom.us/j/99433359847

Agenda is here cityofdavis.org/city-hall/comm…

#DavisCCMtg #Davis #DavisCityCouncil #DavisCmsnMtg

One calendar says 5:30 pm and one says 6:30 pm so I'll check at 5:30 pm and report back

Ok they haven't started yet it's at 6:30 pm

Welcome folks! They're chatting about applications for the commission (someone recently left). If you would like to apply to this or another commission you can find that information here! cityofdavis.org/city-hall/comm…

Sheila is going to run the meeting instead of Judith (the vice chair)

Agenda is approved cityofdavis.org/city-hall/comm…

No announcements from city staff or commissioners. Kate is a liaison for the schools and will report

School has started, all distance learning. Big effort to connect marginalized families. Learning the barriers and working on them.

Sheila: Any progress on finding a student rep for the group?

Kate: A couple candidates, will let them know soon

Leanne - Davis Phoenix Coalition liaison: We have a committee to work on a virtual carnival this year

Leanne: Subcommittee working with the schools also

Item 4 - Public Comment
No one raised their hand

Item 5 - Consent Calendar
Census is still open! Please fill it out!

Consent calendar is approved

Item 6A: Discussion Related to Defining Community Health and Public Safety Improvements

Recapping the joint subcommittee structure

Sheila described the joint subcommittee meeting as "interesting."

Kelly is recapping the joint subcommittee situation more fully

The joint subcommittee is made up of people from 3 commissions - Human Relations Commission, Social Services Commission, Police Accountability Commission

They will come up with recommendations for City Council around public safety and give it to them later this fall

The joint subcommittee on public safety next meeting is August 31. Check here: cityofdavis.org/city-hall/comm… for the upcoming zoom link (not posted yet)

Sheila is recapping the joint subcommittee meeting. You can find our live tweet thread here

https://twitter.com/yolopeoplepower/status/1293360535858159618

Sheila: Knowledge deficits for committee and community as a whole what is happening now. Received some at the meeting and asking for some in the future.

Sheila: Good discussion in response to the presentation to social services. The presentation is here (starting at 1:47:56):

There is also a police department response document that the subcommittee was sent.

Sheila: The PD report went into detail about the racial profiling data and people from Davis versus outside of Davis

Helen: Racial profiling is racial profiling, what does it matter where they come from?

Kelly: Local demographics versus the stop data, want to know where people are coming from who are being stopped. Data won't be representative of the community necessarily

Kelly: Learning the nuances about the data may help people understand it better

Sheila froze, Judith is now describing the meeting.

They're also looking at Sheila's notes

Clarifying different programs:
Portland is CAHOOTS whitebirdclinic.org/what-is-cahoot…

Memphis model is different cit.memphis.edu/aboutCIT.php

Sheila: Police Chief said Davis is more inline with Memphis model than CAHOOTS model

Judith: Did we talked about moving things out from under the police department in this meeting?

They scrolled to that part of the notes

Lmao sorry that's blurry.

Sheila: For racial profiling they were comparing stops to the race makeup of Davis so that might not be the right denominator

Helen: Right now just having data on where people are from is not the whole thing. What's the race makeup of these people that are profiled? Davis loves to talk about every time something bad happens "it's because someone came into town."

Helen: Picnic Day happened because "someone came into town." The kid died because someone came into town [Judith interjects "it's true"]." What's more important is how are they deciding to pull people over? What do those situations look like?

Angela: Our group started the question about a breakdown in numbers because a lot of xxx [missed the noun] do come from Woodland. Though I do agree how they are deciding to pull people over is important.

Sheila asking about people working with the PD on data

Kelly answers that Deanne Machado (the highest ranking non sworn person in the PD) is working on it

Sheila: The community maybe would like to see more of a separation between PD and non sworn people. Memphis model and CAHOOTS do need those partnerships though so not totally separate

Sheila: Initial responses or thoughts? And then public testimony and then a full convo

Kate: Do we have a specific set of questions or goals? Is it "Eliminate racism in policing in Davis" or "improve community safety" or driving question?

Sheila: That's a good thing for us to set

Judith: Did not define anything before the meeting but it's a great question for us to cover at the next subcommittee meeting

Sheila: Might help to move us along because so many things we could be discussing.

Kelly: All 3 make good points. Will eventually need a question to know whether or not we answered it. Council originally left it broad because they didn't know either.

Kelly: How can the city have the absolute best delivery of public safety services in the community? Public safety may be defined differently by different people. "That's kind of where I'm starting."

Helen: Needs to be definition of terms if people are defining public safety. This committee should have one and then open it up to the community to give feedback on.

Helen: Better to try to focus it and then have the public give feedback on. If you keep it open you will get nothing.

Helen: If you want a group to come together to develop a plan, you need to be specific. Otherwise you just have meetings about everything related to everything

Yvonne: Good that there are conversations about what the calls that come into the police department pertain to. Calls like about the homeless - the police must have a difficult time dealing with certain things. Want to switch that to people who are trained to deal with them

Leanne: Having that communication between sworn and non sworn officers regardless of separation is important

Public Comment

Comment #1: Public safety is viewed in many people's minds as incarceration. In general we're trying to get away from that, community safety. Community service oriented.

Comment #1: Public safety has been used to mean "let's lock up more people." Not the direct we're trying to head in these movements. Wants to encourage them to have an expert on stakeholder processes to run this so they can define goals and take concrete things to Council.

Commenter #2: Calling in about the student lease issue. [Possibly thinks they are calling City Council.]

Sheila: Lets public commenter know that they do not respond to specific public comments but will include it in their discussion.

Kelly: Council put out a piece coauthored with the university. You can email me and engage in a convo about this if you want

Sheila: Wants to come up with "this is the HRC message to the subcommittee" suggestions of directions too

Judith: Is the definition of public safety shared by the commenter common knowledge? Is that something we should address? Or is it for people only working in that field? Want to be aware of what message we are putting out

Sheila: Council might be open to a name change that reflects what our goals are for the department [PD I believe].

Judith: Community safety sounds really nice.

Sheila: Do we want to have an item about terms we want to bring forward?

Judith: Is the term public safety an issue for anyone here?

Kate: Don't know if we want to discuss that here. Maybe make a note that we are aware of the political usage of these terms.

Emma: Maybe we take time at a future meeting to talk about process. Important to name the goal, name a couple objectives, name the language conventions

Emma: Look to the work Council did a couple years ago when creating the Police Accountability Commission. Helpful to bring in an external consultant.

Develop a plan to engage the community, followed by implementing that plan

Kelly: Is a report from a couple years ago, can pull out parts that are relevant. Report is also online.

Emma: Part of the process exercise could be around prioritizing or identifying what feels like the most relevant topics that have come up. Themes that keep reoccurring. After priority setting thinking about feasibility in Davis.

Angela: Looked up Memphis model. Looks like it's a collaboration between police officers and mental health. Especially since the Davis police chief said it's a better model. Good place to begin to pull things together also with org chart

Sheila: Police chief said new opportunity for this type of model?

Kelly: Yes for crisis intervention related to mental health. With the county in the very near future

Helen: Interesting and important to find out how they're collaborating now. There's a lot of collaboration now. DPD has an office that basically services the homeless. Trying to work with the county to get these people housed, get them services, work with nonprofits in the town

Helen: A little bit of room for maybe getting Pytel or someone else to talk about how those different parts of the org work with other parts of government

Sheila: Chief Pytel coming to the next subcommittee meeting?

Kelly: I don't know, it is a public meeting. I could ask

Sheila: As the person at the top of the org chart, should know how all the parts work. Could he be there to explain it?

Emma: Could be interesting framing and working with the subcommittee near term and long term goals. Realistically maybe can't take non sworn officers out of the PD in the 2020-2021 year but if Davis wanted to make that a goal for by 2025, seems more reasonable.

Kate: Is there a principle we want to adopt, what we're aiming for. That we can organize under like "no person lives in fear of the police" for example. Clear principle we're trying to achieve

Sheila: Still in the information gathering phase. Discussion of org chart etc.

Sheila: Pytel was talking about "if somebody is experiencing homelessness is out on the street don't arrest them during non COVID times they have a place they take them / non jail process" want to rehear about that process.

Angela: First bullet points talks about identifying a gap. Not a lot of talk about the problems or finding them after that. Goal is helpful when you know what you're trying to solve

Sheila: We did a little bit of problems but we did jump to solutions. Need a process check and put in a plan about how to move forward

Sheila: Racial disparities key issue for human relations. No matter how you look at the data there is racial disparities. Haven't talked about that.

Kate: One of the primary goals maybe. To address racial disparities in our city. An anti-racism move. All this work we're doing to change the idea of what's been called public safety is to address structural racism.

Kate: Still loves Seattle's work and King County. Work on specific race initiatives.

Judith: Police have such a reactionary response sometimes. Like with the...Jacob situation. They escalate. Maybe we can discuss with Pytel what deescalation training they have.

Kelly: Pytel has talked to the police accountability commission about this so people on the joint subcommittee will know.

Yvonne: Training soon for chamber of commerce by police on how to deescalate situations

Talk about how much everyone is or is not participating

Sheila: Requesting appointing another person to be on this commission.

Emma will be on the joint subcommittee now

Item 6B - Commission application process and outreach implementation

Explaining the process. All applications are interviewed by Council members.

Talking about focusing on how to get more diverse applicants to apply

Emma: Indicating average word length. Make the application as accessible as possible - has research on it.

Sheila: A place to click on the website where you can change the language on the website?

Kelly: Have a button on the website that will make the print larger, read it to you. Really fun, sometime try that. A variety of options there

They're going through the application now.

Helen: I left all kinds of things out when I filled this out. Didn't answer some of the questions. I am part of a lot of stuff in town though. Implicit in this application is "are you an upper middle class person with an education"

Sheila: Do we want to add a note at the top that we are not trying to find a specific type of person?

Helen: It just felt very oriented towards an educated person. And to be involved in all the things implicitly the questions were asking it had to be a middle class or upper middle class person. I don't think that provides the range that should be on this commission.

Judith: I don't know that I entirely got that. This application is 4 pages, seems kinda long. [They scroll] Ok I think I kinda get what Helen is talking about

Kelly: Can I add something here? The applications come in with different amounts filled out. The interviews don't differ in questions asked, they use the application as a jumping off point for the interviews.

Kelly: One of our biggest challenges is that we get people who are at a place in their lives, an oversimplification, but we get people that are near retirement or have time to give.

Kelly: Don't get a range of ages. I see one of the biggest challenges as encouraging people who are in different phases of their lives.

Emma: I applied in my mid 20's. There is an intimidation factor. Concerned I didn't have enough experience. The application explicitly implying I should have experience on governmental boards.

Emma: A long term solution is what is the best times of day for these meetings. A bunch of accessibility pieces but if we identify trends of groups that are missing then there are targeted actions we can be doing.

Ok folks I gotta log off early tonight. Enjoy the rest of the meeting!