Community_Policing_092329.m4a

Community_Policing_092329.m4a: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Community_Policing_092329.m4a: this m4a audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Jen Herring:
All right, we're recordng. Hi, everybody. I first want to say welcome to everyone, especially our panelists, those who don't know me. My name is Jen Herring. I am Doylestown Township supervisor. I was elected in twenty seventeen for a six year term. I am also the chair of this group that's holding this this webinar, the progressive local officials of Bucks County. And a lot of you may or may not know what this group is.

Jen Herring:
We are supported by the County Democratic Committee and as part of their strategic planning initiative and Amy Strauss used to be the chair of this, she hosted some wonderful events when we see each other in person. I certainly hope, again, they can do that again. But the group, the main purpose of the organization is to support local elected Democrats in Bucks County. So we're here for you. So if there's a presentation information, support that you need, please feel free to reach out to me and I will try and contact the right people. But part of it is absolutely education, especially about issues that are very important to Democrats. And that is why my first webinar is on our policing. So I want to just lay down some rules first. If you have any questions, please feel free to go into the webinar chat and put your questions in. I'll be fielding the questions and if you want to, just tell me who you want that to happen, to direct it to whatever panelist you want me to ask.

Jen Herring:
We also have an official Q&A session after our panel discussion. So if you would like to hold questions until then, I'd be happy to just ask as many as we can. If there's anything left over, I'll have you separately with a response.

Jen Herring:
And with that, I would like to introduce you to our panel. We have Bryan Monroe, of course, you have Mayor Ron Strouse and we have Kayma Sherman-Knuckles and Ron, would you like to tell us a little bit about why they were interested in being on the panel tonight?

Ron Strouse:
We have a perhaps a little different format in terms of policing in Doylestown, and that's because we are part of the of a three municipality regional department, which is about six years old now with its purchase and coming in a little more recently. So that creates a little different environment in terms of policing and much county. And then we can talk about that by way of background. And this may be very general background for some people in Bucks County. We have over over 40 police departments. Some of those are small, one policeman or policewoman. But I think in this case, the whole policing of it and then to some rather large ones like that. So the central Bucks regional police departments, which I am part of the commission falls sort of in the middle to the larger sort of those. So so like our municipalities throughout Pennsylvania, where we have so many, perhaps the most of any state, our policing is also an environment where we have many, many police departments operating in the county. We can get into that that frankly, from my standpoint, is a challenge. In some ways the challenge to good progressive policing, but we can get into that.

Jen Herring:
Brian, would you like to to talk a little bit about your experience in policing and why you're interested in being on the panel?

Brian Munroe:
Just to give everyone a quick background in case there is anybody on here that doesn't know me. So I'm the Bucks County Clerk of Courts. That's the most recent thing. The courts deals with all criminal court documents. So everything that happens out on the streets, that winds up with, you know, in some form of paper traffic stop, not traffic, criminal complaint, it comes up in my office. And then from there gets disseminated down to the judges. Prior to that, I was on the Board of Supervisors in Warminster. The most applicable experience, I think today is is I had a little over 10 years experience as a police officer and as a police corporal and ran a township, the Radnor Township police department. And one of the things that I'm focused on that we're we're just starting to get off the ground recently is that I discovered that there is a you know, the Fraternal Order of Police, of which I'm a member, used to be, you know, a mishmash of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. And over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, you know, the F.O.P, at least outwardly, has appeared to really gone to the right.

Brian Munroe:
I mean, especially recently the Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police. And I believe there are Sixty four lodges. Sixty one voted to endorse Donald Trump. Zero voted to endorse Joe Biden and three voted for other leaders. So what I decided to do is create a more progressive liberal law enforcement group made up of progressives that have police and law enforcement experience. Right now, it's called the National Democratic Law Enforcement Association. We have a panel of five. In fact, we're going to be adding two more, I should say. An executive board right now consists of myself, sheriffs Milt Warrell, Sean Kilkenny, Warrington Supervisor Mark Lomax, who is a retired major of the state police and Joe Cohen, who is a homicide detective with the NYPD. And we all feel the same. We feel like the FOB is missing a phenomenal opportunity to grow closer to the community. Instead, they're kind of circling the wagons and getting defensive, and we understand that. But we think that we can fill a void. And there is a potential for a national article to be written up on this. The Washington Post is very interested in writing the story, so we'll see where that goes.

Jen Herring:
Wonderful, Kayma, would you like to introduce yourself?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
As Jen says, I am Kayma Sherman-Knuckles and I'm part of the NAACP Criminal Justice and Education Committee. This committee was called to look at criminal justice reform and to educate the public. So I think we have a singular interest in educating the public. And I'm also co-chair of the Reimagining Public Safety Subcommittee of this group. We basically try to look at basically where the police departments are in terms of oversight and how they interact with the public. ...there's so many different police departments and all of them are not the functioning the same because they have different like maybe budget issues. So whatever that costs them not to have the same data set or report the same data. So I think our goal is to make sure that we are collecting data centrally across Bucks County and we want to basically look at police departments and see what they're doing. And say bravo! to the ones that are doing well. And, you know, hopefully other police departments get a look at them and try to emulate what they're doing and basically also to let the police department assess themselves and see where they are in this. And then look for loopholes and gaps for things that they feel that they can do better. And that will make the community a better community and their department a better police department.

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
So so my interest in this is to try to talk about this and see how we can know what how we can make it better, how the police department and what information we need to help us provide to the police department how the police department came us, you know, what we need so that we can be able to have transparency with the police. And once we have that transparency, people will be more comfortable with their police department and our boys will have community policing. And I think that's one of the things that we can do about one of the things that we can do to help create like a really good community policing is transparency.

Jen Herring:
Thank you. So I guess I wanted to move on to what we were looking at as far as the direction we want to go with our policing, especially as it relates to the racial issues that we've been seeing in our country for a long time, and with the death of Brianna Taylor and George Floyd and others, I think we all know that there's some good policing that we need to do, that we need to be looking at policies that we need to be looking at. So I'm going to start with ... What are some policies that you have seen would be helpful for us to look into in our own police departments to help make sure that we have the best policies as far as the racial disparities?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
I believe training policies, hiring and promotion policies and the use of force are Three important ones that we should actually be looking at.

Jen Herring:
So for for training policies is there any any specific policies that you've seen that have been very helpful? I know there's standard policies that the police forces regarding training that they have to go through. But you're looking at all of that yes?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
Because you have the academy training, you know, all the state training, and then once they get hired into the local police, so they have additional training and then you have you have other training, like non-optional training. Depends on ... how long have been with the force and whether they have additional training. But I think what we need is what we actually need is to ensure that whatever training they do, you know, such as community policing is something that has to be part of the training, you know, on and making sure that they have these annual, I guess, their accreditation. I mean, let me go back a little bit. [Not all police departments have the accreditation training] And some of them are working towards it. So that's something that we need to make sure that they all are doing, because all the other training starts with the sensitivity. The non-lethal training. All those training, I guess, are required. But I think and they all start from the state. So we have to be looking at the police departments to see the additional training, because I don't think it's over everything. But I think Brain can speak to that more than I can on the various policies. And they just have to be consistent across the state.

Jen Herring:
Brian, would you like to add some to that?

Brian Munroe:
Yeah. So, you know, Kayma and I talked about this prior and it actually I'm glad that you talked about training. That's one of the biggest things ... In order to become a police officer, you have to go through Act 120. So I'm going to start from the very beginning. Act 120 is a police academy. And that right now probably sounds like a six months school. And they basically give you the foundations of vehicle code, criminal code, criminal procedure, things of that nature. And for the most part, people, you know, go out of there and then start from scratch, because let's face it, most of that stuff you're not going to remember, it's real life experiences that you get. So when you when you get hired by a police department now this the annual state training, which is in addition to the ACT 120, ... And that basically amounts to two days of training a year. That's it. At least at least when I was a police officer, it's what it was two days of training for you. So really, you know, you know, use of force training. You know, I was just talking to a detective the other day that there is a national standardized use of force, training, use of force continuum that is standard across the country. The question is, do the police department have policies on the books? Right. So not police contracts, but policies on the books for all of these things, use of force, vehicle pursuit, ... I mean, do you have a policy for everything, but it's where the training and that is the key. I'm going to give you an example. Not going single out any police department, but I actually work for two separate departments, I was hired by several. But I eventually went to Radnor Police. Before that, I was with the police department and I was hired as a part timer, which which I think is not a good direction to go for police departments. But I can talk about that one. But when I went to this police department, I was put with an officer, I think for three days where I was working. I learned absolutely nothing. There was no standard training, there's no introductory training. And then one day I walked into work and I they were shorthanded. They gave me the keys to the car and he said, you know, go out there. And, you know, I I was so terrified to stop a car, you know, I've never done it before. I mean, I actually saw someone blow through a stop sign and I thought about going to get it. But I you know, I had no experience. I had zero training. But when I got hired by Radnor Police, you do not go out on the street. You go through what's called an FTO program. And this is probably one of the first places that you're going to start when you go look at training. It's called Field Training Officer Program. Radnor put you through all classroom in the first several weeks. And then after that, you go through three years of training, the first tier training you're going out there and you are in a car with a training officer where you're watching and you're observing. After that training period, you go into phase two and phase two is where you are in the driving seat. And the FTO officer, your training officer helps you so they can intervene. They can course correct you during an actual real incident. And meanwhile, they're not notating everything. It is highly documented. And then phase three is where you're just shadow. You're the officers in the car with you, but you are on your own. And all they are is observing an grading. So that's where you start is is the FTO program. There are programs we went through program called Red Gear Training, where there was a person in Red Gear, who's nice and buffered up and you got all this stuff and you they put you into real life life calls, scenarios that you would see on the street. And it gets physical. I mean, I actually got put with a professional boxer. ... But they put you through that. I mean, that was done on purpose. I hated it at the time - I was going to get killed by this professional boxer and I survived it. You know, I got some bruises and bumps. But if you're going to make a mistake, you want to make the mistake and go over it during training course. Correct. Any policy that you may done correctly, so and so forth. We did basically it's called sim training ... Basically, they're real bullets. But instead of in actually having a real lead at the end of it, it's basically a peep hole. We use an abandoned house. And we would go in and, you know, we would go through these experiences. So, I mean, that's just some of it. Firearms training. You talk about training. A lot of the high profile incidents are directly related to shootings, firearms training. That is a huge, huge thing in firearms policy. I would be another one, but that's just touching touching the surface in some of those. But those are those are some of the biggest ones. So I couldn't emphasize training enough.

Ron Strouse:
And actually, to Brian's point, you know what you what you inherit when you hire someone out of the Police Academy is something very basic in terms of the training we have. So what you really, I think want to look for in police departments is is the level of these other kinds of trainings and then also how often the police receive refreshments in terms of a refreshing course in terms of that training. For instance de-escalation training, which is not something that all departments engage in. But, you know, we engage in de-escalation training. But just as important as providing for that is how often that's provided and how quickly it is provided when you have a new hire. To a certain extent we've been following what's known as the 21st Century Policing Initiatives, which were part of the Obama administration and I think 2015 provides some progressive guidance in terms of what modern policing should look like. It's not the whole answer, but it's a little bit a little bit of the answer. Because of the decentralized and nature of police departments in Bucks County, we look to working with them in a cooperative way to acquire the kind of training and equipment that we think meets our needs and might also meet the needs of other departments. So, for instance, our regional department acted as the head applicant on behalf of nine other departments for body cameras. And this is actually now probably four or five years old in terms of doing that. So so we actually applied for a grant DOJ grant for body cameras, which was successfully funded on behalf of ourselves, but also, you know, eight other departments and the sheriff's as well. So that's the kind of thing that we're engaged in to provide for what we think is a an appropriate level of policing in this day and age. It's not where we should be, but it tries to move in that direction. Some of that, frankly, requires funding above and beyond what we might expect from a taxpayer based police department. So we've actually also created a foundation, a 501c#, that fund some of those initiatives that go above and beyond what you might think Tax-based Police Department might provide and the 501c3 has funded, in our case, the first two dogs of our canine corps. Then once once it's established, then it becomes part of the the regular budgeting for a police department.

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
...I think that once that I guess that impacts training, too, is, you know, like de-escalation and I think a duty to intervene when you have, you know, one-on-one cop incident. And then the reporting instructor, too, has to be dealt with. And, you know, it goes from you know, this is a supervisor... So those are all things have to be. I don't know if that will go with training or guidelines, but that has to be all, including the training.

Ron Strouse:
I think that's absolutely true. And and it may sound a little trite, but as I said before, the culture eats policy for lunch. You have to have at the core of your department a culture that respects these kinds of of community demands. So, for instance, I think some departments might call them differently. We call them directives. So we have a whole host of directives. I would be guessing, but there might be as many as 40 or 50 which which outline conduct on the part of our members in the police department. So we will have a directive on the use of force, will have a directive on our canine corps. We'll have a directive on our body cameras in terms of how how they're operating and how the information is secured and so forth and so on. Those directives are reviewed by the police commission. If you don't have a police commission, they should be reviewed by elected officials to make sure that they meet the demands of the community and the current environment that we find ourselves in in so many of our communities. So we passed these are directives, I'll say, four or five years ago, and we review them. We're reviewing them right now. And we'll review them on an ongoing basis. From a publicly elected person's point of view to make sure they're appropriate and appropriate to the times and appropriate to modern policing.

Jen Herring:
So it looks like we've got a couple questions. I don't know what your panelists see, the questions in the chat. There's a couple of questions regarding developing some sort of consistency between the municipalities and how as far as being able to measure them against each other as they perform on racial and social equity. So I guess we would have to be looking at different data to make sure our data can be collected and apples to apples comparisons when it comes to that information. And the second question was kind of similar, where it asked if we are going to be developing a county wide best practices for police departments. So I don't know who wants to take the lead on those questions.

Ron Strouse:
I don't know if those best practices, but I do know, for instance, there is a county organization of the Bucks County Chiefs of Police. So the Bucks County Chiefs of Police is actively right now - and frankly, our chief is is part of that process, part of the leadership of that process - is trying to to engage in a common use of force directive that could be embraced by all the departments in Bucks County. I gather that it's a bit of a challenging, if not daunting process to to accomplish. But but they are attempting to do that. And that represents the fact that we do have departments of every size and every level of sophistication, frankly, and every level of responsiveness, as well.

Brian Munroe:
If I can just touch on a couple of these ... The first one that I see there is with respect to the road map for municipalities to assess how the PDs are performing on racial and social equality. Just in my experience, this is another situation here where not every department is equal. In fact, when I started with Radnor, they were not keeping track of race and sex. And to be honest really looking back at it, it wasn't the most efficient process when they did. The only reason that Radnor started keeping track of stops or pedestrian stops, traffic stops, was because there was a lawsuit. Somebody was claiming that, you know, the police department stops minorities at a higher percentage than white. Of course, you think that also matches population, but, you know, how many people are going through a township and so on and so forth. And what they started out having us do is they started having us issue a citation there's like four copies .... And of course, you don't put the race and sex on the copy you have to be individual because in that scenario they're going to say, what on earth is that about? But what we do is for our internal copies that would go back, we would be required to write, you know, white, male, white, female, Asian, male, so on and so forth. And that's the big reason why they wanted to issue warnings, so for everyone, it didn't matter if you weren't going to issue a citation, they wanted you to issue a warning. So those are all things like, you know, are those questions, you know, first of all, are you required to call out every minute stop? Probably for the most part, I think maybe this is what the mayor was kind of referring to is directives. They're not necessarily written policies, but it's a directive that's put out by the chief or by a lieutenant. So there's nothing really on paper. But, hey, look, I want you guys to document every stop, pedestrian stop, everything like that. So I definitely see a benefit for uniformity because then you're setting a minimum standard, you know, at least through the county or so on and so forth.

Jen Herring:
I see that there's something about shooting.

Brian Munroe:
Let me read that one real quick. We've been informed our police are taught to shoot for center body. Is there a conversation about changing, expanding that approach? So the number one thing that you're supposed to be taught through your firearms training and again, this is about uniformity. I don't know if every department is trained this way, but what we were taught this in the police academy. We were certainly thought at Radnor, you know, the basic training. If you pull that weapon out, you know, first of all, most people don't realize it. You know, we see things on television and we think that's kind of reality because that's what we're used to. But police officers number one a weapon that a police officer carries should not as far as I'm aware have a safety. There is supposed to be around in the chamber ready to go. So the training comes in is again use of force. When are you pulling that weapon? If you are pulling that weapon out, your finger is not supposed to be on the trigger. It's supposed to be along the side. If you are going to shoot, that is because you are at a level where you should be allowed to use lethal force. There is no training and nor would I ever support this where you pull a weapon out because you want to put a round in someone's leg. That's just not going to happen because there's other use of force as should be applied prior to getting to pulling a lethal weapon out. Our police departments have Tasers, police department have OC spray police departments as they call assets, which are the expandable batons. You're supposed to be using any of those before you get your weapon. If you're pulling a weapon, it is because you have an imminent fear of major bodily injury, life threatening injuries, an immediate threat to your life or someone else's life. And if you get to the point where you're going to actually point that weapon at somebody and we have an old training phrase on the line, it would basically say if if your line of sight crosses the person, then your intent should be to destroy them. Meaning your weapon is always facing down with your finger on the side of the weapon. Unless you got to put somebody down because that person's about to kill you. It all happens very quickly. And then when you fire that round, you're firing that round because it's life or death. You're not firing the rounds to slow somebody down, to scare them or anything of that nature. I do want to say this. There is a there is a saying that you're taught very early on law enforcement about the three rules of shootings. And that's it's sounds biblical. It's not six, six and six. And that's based off of statistics. Most shootings, police shootings happen with within six feet within six seconds and with six rounds. So you have four officers on the scene and you have an incident, six, six, six and six, that's twenty four rounds. So when you hear a lot of these rounds, I just want to put that in perspective.

Ron Strouse:
So to a certain extent, what I understand is that our directive with regard to the use of force has a continuum of intervention on the part of the individual police member of the police department. Yes, they have to make a judgment as to where to enter that continuum. But if their training is proper, they enter that continuum at the lowest level. The lowest level actually could be a conversation. And lethal use of force is at the very end of that continuum. So that is where, from my perspective, the training is absolutely essential so that they know that under all possible circumstances, they pick the lowest level of continuum to engage this person who may be committing a crime or whatever.

Jen Herring:
Mayor, one of the memes that rolls around a lot when it comes to the use of force is when they say we need to have more training or better training. I've seen, at least on social media, people saying things like the training worked for all the white people, but it didn't seem to work for anybody of color. So they knew not to shoot somebody that was white, but people of color don't get that same sort of benefit from training. Do you feel that's fair?

Ron Strouse:
I don't know whether that's a complete answer. So some of the training that I know that that we provide, some of which is perhaps a little unusual, not I don't think any of it unique. So we provide our officers the training on how to deal with people who are on the spectrum of autism so that they understand what they're encountering when they're dealing with a person who is autistic, either a child or an adult. We through the Lenapy Valley Foundation provide 40 hours of training for every policeman and woman to deal with those who suffer from some form of mental illness so they can identify that and respond to it appropriately. Recently, we were one of six departments nationwide that took advantage of a grant to evaluate how we deal with the victims of assault and then at the end of that, obviously improve the way we deal with the victims of assault. So so I don't know that any of these are specific to race. I can't answer that. And frankly, I'm inclined to say no, but but I'm not totally comfortable saying no.

Jen Herring:
Kayma, have you anything to add about that?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
Yes, because, again, race is something that nobody wants to talk about and no one that you sometimes you want to be, you know, fair for lack of a better word to use within with this situation. But, of course, the officers I do believe they have racial bias. I don't know how much of the training is or the cultural sensitivity training. I don't know how much of it they have. But when you see over and over again, the fact is that the cops who deal with white people differently than they do with black and brown bodies. So what leads them to do that? I don't know if they said the same thing I will come back on. Is bias or the unknown, are you? And so when you don't know me as a black person is you have preconceived notions about me as a black person. Of course, you encounter me in the street, you going to react to me based on those biases. So I think most of the time the reason why they are quick to trigger is because of the bias. It could be, you know, unconscious biases that are using. And that's what I do because it's unconscious. That to me is not true, but it is the fact that your race makes a difference. So if that's the case, let's now let's look at some statistics of the police department and how they used force and how to deal with black and brown people. So if it's not true, then we can look at the data and the data cannot lie. So I think what one of the things that we need to make sure of what's happening is that across the county, so-called United States of America with our Bucks County, is so make sure that, you know, the police department collected arrest data traffic violations, whether it's traffic stops, you know, any any police encounter with residents of people that you need to collect that data, maybe system data, you know, if they can provide it and complete records. Those are things that if it works for everybody, again, will be able to see it. Because if you talk to police chiefs the first thing they will tell you that, oh, no, we don't target black and brown people. We don't treat them differently. But then when you get the data in, they can see it and see that, oh, you know, maybe it is true now looking at the data, let's do something about it. So, yes. So that's a radical way to say yes, because unconscious bias, I do believe that white people are treated differently in terms of "quick to shoot" than black and brown bodies.

Brian Munroe:
So in my experience with law enforcement together, including the other department, I I've never heard any, you know, clear cut racist comments, racist. You know, I will tell you if I did and I have not. Are there racist officers that are out there? I'm positive there are. I think the vast majority of them think that they are not biased. That's when you talk about, you know, the unconscious biases. So I do agree. I think that a from a racial sensitivity, I can tell you is for the best of my recollection, I had not of all the trainings that that I cited out earlier, we do not have I'm glad that the mayor was talking about de-escalation, because to the best of my memory, we didn't have de-escalation. And, you know and by the way, Mayor, I'm also when we talk about redman, it's easy to forget that most people don't know exactly what that is. Right. The very first level of the force continuum, its presence is your uniform. I was at an incident and a lot of this is just, you know, and I think the de-escalation hits the nail on the head.

Brian Munroe:
A lot of this is you as an individual because you're a person, even though you're in a uniform and you're a police officer, you show up and you're a human being. All right. So when someone calls you fat slob, fat pig, from every person. I'm thinking of an incident right now where I was in charge and I had three officers underneath me was a domestic and they wanted to go up and they were they were Caucasian, but they wanted to go up and they wanted to drag this guy out of the house, something fierce because the guy's got all three fat pigs and yelling and screaming. And I told them, I said, you know, no one, what are you going to arrest them for? Or you don't have anything? Like you wear a uniform. They're not insulting you, John Doe or Jane Doe, they're insulting the you John Doe - let the uniform absorb it. So I did my own little de-escalation, but that didn't come from training. These officers didn't go through any type of training. When you talk about race, I think that it's what people you know, when you deal with somebody with a slight difference in the cultural background, maybe they grew up in a different type of neighborhood. That person is different. And I think a lot of it, what we see in media and so on, so forth, I think police officers, they're not going in there and they're saying, I'm going to pull my weapon out, I'm going to shoot this person dead. But I do think and I really do mean this from my own experience. I do think that when a white officer is dealing with an agitated African-American compared to an agitated Caucasian, I do think that the officer might give the Caucasian maybe about a half a second more patience, maybe a second more patience. They don't realize you're doing it, but not one second A lot can happen and it can be lethal. And I think that's what we're seeing in, you know, all over the news today.

Jen Herring:
So just to shift the conversation back a little bit, we were talking about police force and the police, when they pull people over, some police forces are documenting race and gender. And and that was a change that we had that that was implemented. How would we, as elected officials, municipal councils, kind of steer our police department into collecting that type of information?

Ron Strouse:
Well, I'm going to weigh in and say that the level of supervision coming from elected officials of police departments is all over the lot. I hope I don't get anyone angry on this, but I think by and large, it's a relatively low level supervision. And definitely, given our experiences over the last few years, let alone the last few months is inadequate to the task. I think probably it represents a different time in terms of the relationship between elected officials and the police departments that they are obliged to supervise. So I think I think there needs to be some dramatic change there. We get into a conversation about public supervision of police departments or even having a task force to do that kind of thing. But but even before we get there, it should begin with the elected officials. I mean we're all elected to provide primarily, first and foremost public safety. So this is this is where it begins. And probably without exception, it is the largest budget item of any municipal budget in terms of expenditures in public safety is our police department. So so there's a there's a lot of argument that the public should be more engaged in this process.

Jen Herring:
Ok, Kayma I have a question for you? You have had conversations with different municipalities and police departments in your role with the Bucks County NAACP. What areas do you wish you had less pushback on as far as as what they're willing to listen to and maybe implement?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
Let me start with Warrington. I love my chief. He's a great guy. And he's everything I think, like police chiefs should be when in terms of wanting a police force to be the best it can be, because he's willing he's willing to look and look at the area and look at his his data and say, you know, maybe we need to do better here and there. So let me start with that. And I think the chief of police to that person, he feels the same way, wanting to make changes that, you know, that were the police force, you know, to help would be better.

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
But I'm telling you, I think at this point, we getting the pushback is more from the solicitor than the police. So and so it's like so that's a challenge we have because, for example, you've got to like a certain police department and they give you all the data you want, like Solebury. Give us, like, everything, you know, as nice as the policy that we didn't get data because he got pushed back. And I honestly believe that he would provide the information, but it's like it is with the solicitor. So it's the township. So we have to that's one that's one thing we have to work on to get better. And because I think people misunderstand that the police and the community, especially in a community that includes black and brown people, can coexist. You don't have to love the police and hate blacks or love blacks and hate the police. And so a lot of you I use by you knowing that you're black and brown neighbor is safe, you know, doesn't mean that you don't like the police. So we need to know that we all want the same thing, you know, all a safe public, you know.

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
And so that's one thing we need to get back on some of the data we need like this. Solicitors are not going to give it for one reason or the other. And what I don't understand is why one police department can give it and the other wouldn't. So that's something we're still working on. Hopefully we can get that straightened out because we do have to go back and ask certain questions, a certain way to get more details. But so far, I think almost like especially I just want to give Solebury a shout out, because this is we've got all the information we got from that police department.

Ron Strouse:
Kayma, I have a question, actually, and I don't know the experience here. So has there been any experience using right-to-know legislation to get this information?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
Yes, I have to go through right-to-know for Warrington to get that information.

Jen Herring:
Ok, so the other municipality was willing to give it to you without having to go through the right to know process, right?

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
You know what? I'm not sure but I think I think Solebury didn't.

Jen Herring:
So I just want to one point of the whole process. I'm seeing some tap on the tap box that are going to all panelists. If you want to chat with everybody, you can switch it to all panelists and attendees for everybody to see. But if you just want us to see it, unless you could just leave it as as is, OK, I want to address so we we engage in diversity training.

Ron Strouse:
Diversity training in our case is a partnership with the Pearl Buck Foundation. So often this kind of training is a partnership. I'm going to go out on a limb here. And if we could find the appropriate partner for bias training, I think that's something that we should be doing and something that we would welcome. And often it has to come that kind of training that we've engaged in to build what I think is a pretty good police department has to come from the outside. We can figure out a way to fund it. And as I mentioned, that might be the foundation rather than the taxpayer based funding that. But I guess I'm suggesting this is some of that could be very useful, just finding the right partner and then finding ways to make it happen.

Jen Herring:
Is there a way that we can get together, maybe up some resources that you have used Mr. Mayor or for your police force as far as partnering with these trainings so that we can share them with the other people?

Ron Strouse:
Know generally those partnerships have involved - not always, but generally - have involved nonprofits. As we know, nonprofits are struggling these days. So I appreciate that. And I would love to find a way to make that partnership work and fund it.

Jen Herring:
So we have one one comment that was put in the chat that said that specifically tiny all volunteer borough councils with part time police force. I don't feel like I have any input into what the police are doing. And oversight is not welcome. As the only Democrat on the council and the only one asking questions, I get stonewalled. I need to I understand that I feel kind of the same way in my situation that it isn't as open as you would expect. Seeing is that we're responsible for oversight. It's kind of their own little entity out there. So especially Mayor or Brian, Do you have any recommendations as far as how we can break through that stone wall that comes up when you try and stick your nose in the police business as an elected official?

Ron Strouse:
Well, I find that stonewall a very old fashioned attitude, frankly. And I guess to a certain extent, it starts with making a lot of noise. I mean, elected officials in part are elected to do their job. And and if if you're being stonewalled, you're being prohibited from doing the job. So I guess it starts with making a lot of noise. But then it you know, it has to get down to the nitty gritty of actually doing the work, some of which might have to be in committee or executive session even of, you know, but but I guess it begins with a lot of noise and maybe maybe Kayma has a thought about that.

Kayma Sherman-Knuckles:
As a citizen, you have the right to know certain things. So you just have to if you go and ask it. And as far as the thing is this, they don't have like a checklist what you can say, you have to ask questions. It has to be done specifically to a certain things, because I go back to the question that requested the data. And you can see like because he didn't ask you a certain way to tell you, you know, they can't give this sample. And when I said, give me your compliants records. You know, be like, oh, that's somebody's file on. You know, I'm not talking about naming somebody, but to see how many complaints that you have. You know what? What are those complaints? So we have to go back and replace it. And they got you know, you have to right to look at these contract. You have the right to know, you know, the budget, what the police are spending money on you. You know, you have to be involved with your township supervisors, you know, the obligation to give you that information. You if you can't get somebody to the police, you have to try your supervisors. Go to the meetings and ask questions there. And somebody has to get back to you if they want to do well.

Brian Munroe:
But just just to add, because you guys both answered only I want to add that. I mean, just to reiterate, you're a you know, if you're a city supervisor, you're you're you're on the top of the organization chart. She's down here. So you ask, you know, like maybe some of that stuff, maybe, you know, a citizen would have to do a right-to-know to the best mayor. You can correct me on that. But I'm pretty sure there is no need for a city supervisor. ...

Ron Strouse:
And generally speaking, your chief of police is part of a public meeting involving the supervisors or the borough council or whoever is involved. So, I mean, there's the opportunity to ask in a public session as an elected official, someone had asked the question in the Q&A about accreditation. And and by way of explanation, relatively few departments in Pennsylvania are actually accredited, although it is something that that departments, if they focus on it, aspire to. And in our case, we are not accredited yet. And that is because we don't have the physical space at the moment of that would be mandated for the size of our police department. We're actively engaged as we speak in correcting that. We're building a new facility for police, which will we'll we'll fill in that last part of the accreditation.

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