if you think about the events of 2016, just to take an example, not many members of the supposed world government planned that britain would vote to leave the european union, and that donald trump would become president of the united states. donald trump is definitely not somebody who gets invited to those meetings. so then for example, take the financial crisis. the events of 2008 and '09. nobody sat there at the build a need for the n 2018 i think world government is a massive financial crisis. >> q&a sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. next, the u.s. conference of mayors holds a discussion to examine public safety issues facing cities around america. mayors and police chiefs gathered here in washington to look at how they can address challenges, including gun violence, school safety, and the opioid epidemic. this is three hours, 20 minutes.

>> all right. well, thank you, mayor cranially. i am steve benjamin, the mayor of columbia, south carolina, and vice president of the u.s. conference of mayors. so glad to see so many of our mayors, our chiefs of police and all of our fantastic partners with us here today as we address these issues. some that we've been addressing for far too long. we're discussing critical issues for our cities and for our great country. and obviously while we're all around the table because we know we have to work together on these solutions now, and in the future. this session that we're about to begin deals with the issue of tremendous concern to all of us, the safety of our schools and our children. now i do remember being three months on the job as director of the southland department of probation and pardon services, just qualified on my weapon in 1999.

and i remember exactly where i was, just as many of you probably do as well, april of 1999 when the columbine shootings first occurred. i remember thinking at that time what a horrific event and praying that it would be an outlyer in american culture. regret regrettably, that has not been the case over the past two decades. 12 killed and students and teacher. 23 more wounded before the young men turned the guns on themselves. the nation's first major shooting, columbine was widely viewed as a defining moment in this country, an incident that would finally prompt the congress to act on the free throw flow of weapons in american society. did not happen, no matter how much data we present, how many narratives and painful stories we share, the congress still fails to act.

there have been numerous school shootings since then. we've already discussed here today virginia tech, sandy hook, marjory stoneman douglas high. every day i engage with my children, ages 13 and 10 in all their beautiful little friends. and see the fear in their faces sometimes when they talk about the challenges of going to school and just not knowing what waits for them that day. i know that for parents and for grandparents, and those who love all children, that they can be paralyzeding to us. those of us as policymakers, we recognize that we need to understand the issue. but more importantly, we need to act. even when congress fails to act, or state governments fail to act, or even in some states as they threaten us with laws that seek to jail us for acting, we need to have the courage to

still act. that's our responsibility. i know the mayors talk a lot more than police chiefs do, because police chiefs just act. you get the job done. but i will tell you that just as i interact with my chief, skip holbrooke and our deputy chief kelly, we need to hear from you. every time i have a conversation with him or some of his colleagues here in this room when they have the opportunity to interface, i learn something new. it arms me from my perspective with something else that we can do to try to make our communities safer. we want to be sure to force a strong dialogue here. we cannot expect our children to learn if they're too afraid to go to school. schools must be safe and nurturing environments. arming teachers is not the answer. for many different reasons, we do know that schools need more resources to help them identify students who may have problems or prone to violence. they help them get the help that they need by having available

mental health counsel lock, psychologist, and social workers. they must also have available trained school resource officers who can help build relationships with young people and be there to help diffuse potentially violent situations or respond to them as they occur, as happened just a few weeks ago a few miles away from here in st. mary's county, maryland. as we discuss this topic, there are a few issues we should keep in mind. what actions we should be taking to keep our children safe, most particularly while they're at school. where there are appropriate levels of protection in our schools. it's okay to be at 20,000 feet. it's also okay to be at 5 inches if you have some on-the-ground solutions, ideas you pilot, ideas you have. let's put them on the table. how should we plan to respond to emergencies in our schools, and what special roles can mayors play as leaders of our individual cities to help enhance school safety. we have with us today several people who are going to provide insight into this topic.

mikas e casserley executive director and long time partner of the conference of mayors. mack hardy is director of operations for the national association of school resource officers. and a retired school resource officer himself. the conference connected with after sandy hook. we have been working together ever since. in addition we're going to hear from west palm beach mayor geraldine rio. i gave it a shot, mayor. pretty good? >> very good. >> i was sixth grade spelling bee champion too. just so you know. and police chief sarah mooney about their city's approach and efforts to keeping schools safe. as we say in the church, protocol has been established. i'm going to allow you to go in that order without interrupting you and keep some time so we can have some good hard and fast q&a once we're done. mr. casserley? >> thank you very much, mr.

mayor. i'm mike casserley. i'm the executive director of the council of the schools which is a coalition of 70 of the nation's largest urban public school systems. my board of directors is on the superintendent and the president of the board of education of each one of those major city school districts. ly be brief because i know everybody wants to have a broader discussion about school safety. before i begin, however, i'd like to make just one additional kind of tactical remark on the conversation that we just had. and i completely agree with the observations that were made about the role of social media. and i agree with the observations that were made about issues of race and how that informs school violence and the like. one of the initial questions was what made the parkland situation a little bit different and what kind of galvanized those kids to

speak out in the way that they did. it's a small thing probably to be sure, but one of the things that that school system does -- this is the broward county district where stone man douglas high school is located that district mandates debate clubs in every single middle school and high school in that district, and it encourages every single kid to participate in one of those clubs. so all of those kids that were so well-known through the national media were actually participants in those debate clubses, knew how to make a case, how to lay out evidence to support that case, and they weren't afraid. so it's, again, a small kind of programic detail. but to the extent everybody is looking for tactical things you might put on the table, that is one of them that comes out of broward county.

a lot of times i think probably the mayors and the chiefs of police in major cities and big communities across the country aren't necessarily used to seeing the schools speak out on these school safety issues, even though these incidents really occur in our backyards. and that was really true after the parkland situation too. other than people speaking out periodically from the education community about arming teachers, by and large, you didn't see a whole lot of education and organizations speaking out about school safety. our organization is probably been closer to the u.s. conference of mayors over the years on this, and many other issues. but in years past, some of the mayors haven't necessarily encouraged us to speak out on gun safety issues. i think probably concluding that we ought to stick to our

knitting around the educational environment of our kids. but the wave of shootings over the years finally about two weeks ago prompted our board of directors, which, again, includes the superintendent and the board president from each one of these 70 major cities, to finally speak out and pass a resolution that i think was pretty hard-hitting. it was passed unanimously by our board of directors and called for banning the sale, the purchase, the possession, the use, and the manufacture of assault weapons and large capacity ammunition cartridges. it also required and strengthened all universal background checks for the possession of any other type of firearm in addition to assault weapons. it also opposed all conceal and carry laws that one of the

mayors spoke about earlier. it laid out a charge for all agencies at the federal government to be tasked with reducing the number of gun related injuries and deaths in the united states. it opposed the arming of teachers in our schools. it expanded the perimeter of gun-free school zones. it authorized or called for the provision of additional funds for planning, coordinating with our police forces, school safety across the country, more target hard hardening. the additional funds for school resource officers. additional funds for more mental health personnel, counselors, psychologist, social workers, and the like. and it called for the repeal of the dickey amendment and other various provisions in federal law that is one of the mayor's

indicated prohibited the use of federal data to get underneath what some of the causes are behind some of these various events. again, the resolution passed unanimously. and we went about the process then of turning that resolution into additional legislation. we have proposed a five-part piece of legislation around the banning of assault weapons, around the gun-free zones, around the targeting and planning and school resource officers, around bolstering of our mental health capacity to identify problem areas with individual kids. and provisions to improve the quality of data at the federal and state level to better understand these issues. now, we are as cognizant as everybody else is that our

legislation will have to stand in line behind everybody else's legislation. but we wanted to make sure that the -- at least the big city school districts across the country were on record as supporting the same things as the mayors and the chiefs of police all across the country. and we wanted to add our voice and the pressure that we could bring with the american public to congress as well. so we have now tried to make our voices clear and put legislation forward. and the last thing that we are doing, and maybe it's something that you are already doing as an organization. but one kind of tactical thing that we are doing as a group is reviewing each other's safety and security systems. we corral our directors of safety and security in our school districts, our facilities folks, our mental health directors and the like, and we

review each other's operations in our sister school systems in order to spread best practices and also challenge each other to do better in places where there are gaps in security systems. as a matter of fact, we were just in palm beach last week reviewing the safety and security systems in the palm beach schools. something that we actually now do quite a lot of. but it's something that you also might want to think about if you're not doing already and that is leaning on each other's expertise to bolster and strengthen your own safety and security systems. so with that, i will yield the floor to my colleague from the school resource officer, and happy to answer any questions. >> okay. please. >> first of all, thank you, mayor benjamin, for allowing me to be here. this is my first time to be here

with you. i know nasero has been here with few you've for quite some time i've heard community policing several times. i've also heard we don't want schools like prisons. i've heard that too. and i've often said sometimes when you get me at a place like this, you get very passionate about school policing or school safety and the safety of children and the safety of staff. i was in a former life a teacher. so i came out of college, and i was a middle school teacher for eight years before i moved to law enforcement where i spent 25 years and 22 of those years in school-based policing. i'd like to first of all ask -- we understand that these acts of violence, these massacres that occur in schools are horrific and devastating to communities and to children, not only in those communities, but it causes fear throughout our nation to

school children, which is a very sad thing. our most devastating school massacre that's ever occurred, does anybody know what year that occurred in? 1927 was our most devastating and largest school massacre. it happened in michigan. and i thought about that today. it wasn't on my list. but seeing all the mayors in here, the culprit of that was a school board member, the treasurer of a school board member who was upset because he didn't have a tax -- some taxes passed. and he firebombed his own house, his own farm, and then he killed 38 children and adults in a school in michigan. and that is sad, but it's not something that is just a phenomenon today. it's been going on for years. and i'm so thankful that we have an opportunity to talk about it in this forum and to discuss

things that we can help make our schools safer. as we've known over the years, police can't do this alone. schools don't need to do this alone. but when a partnership is formed between schools, police, and our community, where there is teachers in our community and it includes teachers, students and staff members, and they're all communicating together, these things work. we have a list of averted school violence acts that have occurred since the parkland incident. and if any of you would like to have that, i would like to share it with you. because what we get in the media a lot of times are the bad, the horrible, horrific things. but we know that every day we have people, staff members and we have administrators and we have police officers working in our schools. and these acts of violence are averted every day. nasero is a nonprofit organization that was formed in

1991. and we work to train school resource officers to go in our schools. as a young police officer quite a long time ago going to school, i had the opportunity to be a teacher before, but i had no train when i entered a school, and i didn't know what a law enforcement officer was supposed to do. i knew what i was supposed to do, but i didn't know what a law enforcement officer was supposed to do in a school until i received training, which was very important to me. when we send our police officers into school, it's important that they're well-trained. that they're well-trained, that they understand that the most important thing they were doing, you know, is we're protecting kids and we're creating a safe learning environment with -- when we're talking to kids, this community policing that is being built, this bridging the gap with a well-trained properly selected law enforcement officer is important. because we know that if one day they have to react, they may go from talking to an

administrator, talking to a student. one second to the next, moving towards a violent situation, which pro occurred in maryland. at 7:44, who knows what that sro was doing. i haven't heard him say. but i know at 7:45 he was encountering a young person in a violent situation. so you have to have a person that is open, that is approachable, that is out there going to open himself up so students can approach him and talk to him. but also hassed to have the ability to act. and that's what we think it needs to be a law enforcement officer that has some experience when we put them into the schools. so with that being said, what is an sro? it's a sworn law enforcement officer carefully and properly selected and specifically trained. because we know that 1% of the time they may have to act to save lives, that the other 99% of the time they're bridging the gap between youth and law enforcement. they're visible. they're active law enforcement

figures in their community. they're classroom resources. they're community resources. and they are not a school disciplinarian. they are a positive role model. with that being said, one of the things that's really important when we put police officers properly selected, well-trained police officers in a school, not only those things i mention, we also hope to reduce juvenile delinquency. we want to reduce juvenile crime. we're not going to schools to put kids behind bars. we go in to bridge the gap, give them an avenue to discuss problems they're having before it ever reaches that point, to promote a harder environment, a harder target. then we want to train them on how to do that, and that comes through some crime prevention, through some environmental design. training that is offered that they can go in a low cost, which is always good to our leaders'

ears. but ways to make our school environment safer by using the vision and the sight and the ears of our community around us, our teachers in the schools, along with our law enforcement partners. benefits of this program are great. they're long-term law enforcement school commitments. and they're networking skills that are built through these programs are very important to our communities. sro programs and community policing is community policing as we believe at its best when it's done correctly with the right people, with the properly trained people in our communities. with that being said, we send law enforcement officers into school, yes, we are there to create that safe learning environment. but when we do it right, they're teachers. they're mentors. and they're law enforcement officers.

so with that being said, i know quite passionately, i'm sorry, but that's something i live mid entire life at. i ask this one question. when you select officers to go into your school, i hope you're selecting the officer to go into the school where you want your child or grandchild to go to school. because that's the person of mayors, and thank you for the stand that we have taken for a while about what we expect to

see. i also am a member of the mayors against illegal guns and have found that a great resource for myself and our communities. so thank you for that as well. i come to this in sort of a different way. i've been mayor for seven years of west palm beach. but before even moving to florida, i worked in schools for 25 years. and started out my school career as school psychologist and then went into school administration. so as i think about this, i think about certainly what we need to do to keep our schools safe and our students safe and the horrible tragedies that have occurred. but what can we be doing in prevention and intervention and what should we be doing in prevention and intervention. we're talking about having more resources in schools, although those resources obviously need to also be school counselors,

school psychologists, school social workers. so that we can intervene and prevent children from slipping into mental illness, if that's possible, or identify those children or young people who need additional help, who need the kind of support that's going to keep them on track. so what i thought i would do also today is just tell you a little bit about the palm beach county schools. chief mooney will talk more about the public safety piece of it. but palm beach county schools is the tenth largest school district in the country, with 174,000 children and 160 schools, i think. they cover -- it's a countywide school district. so they cover 39 municipalities, and all of the unincorporated areas of palm beach county. so immediately i'm sure you're saying to yourself oh, that means there has to be really

good coordination among the municipalities and of course the county sheriff's department. i think that's what you'll hear from our chief is about the coordination and collaboration that has to occur if we're going to keep our young people safe. we talked a little bit about marjory stoneman -- marjory stoneman douglas and what's the difference. certainly those students have been very clear about stating enough is enough. i've lived in florida for 16 years, and florida is a state with very few gun laws. we never met a gun we didn't like, we floridians. there are about five or six years ago, the state legislature passed a law that allows people to bring guns into city hall and other city properties.

so if you're coming into our city library or our city hall, you're allowed to bring a gun. mayors were threatened with removal from their positions if they didn't uphold this law. the interesting part about it is that they banned guns in the state legislature. right? so what we did in west palm beach was that we -- if you come into our city buildings, you go through a metal detector. if you have a gun, we ask you to voluntarily leave it behind. if you choose not to leave it behind, we escort you. while we have to -- while we're preempted from making any decisions locally about gun laws, we do our best to keep our people safe. the students in west palm beach, students in palm beach county

have been very active, just like those at marjory stoneman douglas in parkland. we had a group of students march to city hall very -- probably about 500 kids would you say? 500 young people standing in front of our city hall demanding action. i'm afraid i'm not as optimistic about what's going to happen as a result of this movement. i will be optimistic when we see those kids voting, because until our representatives realize they're going to lose their job unless they take a stand, a proactive stand on gun control, then i'm not sure what kind of impact is going to occur. we know that the vast majority of people who live in the united states believe that common sense gun laws should be in place. and yes our representatives, our legislators are not listening to those people. so hopefully those young people

will have registered to vote and will be out there voting. and at which pointly be very optimistic. so i'm going to turn it over to our chief, chief sarah mooney. >> good afternoon. finally you have a chief that's talking. i appreciate the opportunity. >> you're not from st. louis either. >> absolutely. but i did go to school. i did go to school out there. so i will say that. i'd like to thank you all for the opportunity to take a few minutes to hear what we're doing in palm beach county and in the city of west palm beach in regard to increasing our school safety and opportunity there's. the main thing i can tell you is that collaboration is the key. it's not all a law enforcement effort by any means. mr. hardy was mentioning about putting officers into the schools to make sure that you have the right people and the right place. that's the key. if you have an officer that is not into what's going on in the schools, if they're not worried

about being a mentor, if they're all running and gunning and all they want to do is the criminal aspect of things, that's not the person you want in the school. recently after the parkland incident, our legislation was still in session, and they actually acted pretty quickly to change a few things in regard to the safety of the schools in our county and in our state. one of the things they did is they allocated $40 million to palm beach county to address some of the safety issues in the schools. thought with that being said, it sounds like a lot of money, but that's supposed to include target hardening, increasing school officers, our school police department by at least 75 officers in addition to hiring social workers and mental health counselors. so $40 million for 187,000 students to me when you're talking about the actual schools themselves also, that some are a lot older than others that are going to need a lot of revamping to harden, there is going to be more resources down the road. now i will tell you that in

regard to the police force itself, we do have -- palm beach county is kind of unique. we have our own police force for the district. right now they have about 150 sworn officers. as the mayor said, we have about 180 schools. i'm sure you can do the math. that's not even one officer per school. and one of the common themes that i would imagine that most of the chiefs in here would agree with is visibility is the key. and if you have a uniformed officer at a school that's seen by somebody that is thinking about coming into the campus to do something wrong, they're going to go to the next school down the street so they don't have to confront anybody. so the key is visibility as a first step. but again, the target hardening is crucial in order to make sure that we increase the safety of our schools. the second thing that we've done recently is in the county itself. we've done some external evaluation of our current status, and what we do and how

we do it. obviously everybody is monday morning quarterback at what happened at parkland, and you pick apart all the things that went wrong. there are a lot of things that went right also after the fact. but the things that went wrong seem to be in the forefront. so our sheriff actually, ric bradshaw for palm beach county sheriff's office, he is a former chief at west palm, we have a very good connection with him. he went and said they'd like to see how we do things in palm beach county and get an assessment. perf has grid to come in. and literally they're meeting with subject experts in responding to mass casualty or mass shooting events. not just at the schools, but overall. because the reality of it is it's not just the schools. this discussion right here is targeted towards schools. but it could happen anywhere. it could happen at a mall. it could be at a government building. it could be at a doctor's office, a hospital. we all have to be prepared in order to address those different issues. school is a little bit more specific, and that's what we're geared towards now.

but this overall look that perf is doing with the county itself is going to kind of give us a scorecard on how we're doing things. whether it's preparation, training, how our communications works, what we do after the fact, the wellness of the officers and the people involved in the situations. it may not be a week or two weeks down the road, but the impact that comes out, the ptsd, things like that that occur after the fact, they're going to take a look at all of that and see how we're doing. and i think that's going to be very important that when that report comes out that that's going to be shared nationwide in regard to what best practices are and suggestions on how things can go a little bit better. another thing that we're doing proactively in the county is our state attorney, dave aronberg has convened the grand jury to do an overview in june in regard to how we handle school safety in palm beach county. not just in the city of west palm beach, but countywide. they've also been having meetings with local leaders in

law enforcement to include the sheriff on that also, to see how we respond and what our suggestions would be for making things a little bit better in the school communities. they're going to present their findings and information on how we do things now to a panel of citizens. and get recommendations from them to see if we are doing things the right way. and if they have recommendations. so that's part of your collaboration from the community itself, not just the legislators or the law enforcement professionals, but the people in the community that have some insight into what they think would be more beneficial for us, how we can conduct business. finally, the third point that we're focusing on is information sharing. just the collaborative effort when you do find out that you have somebody kind of on your radar that potentially is going to do something wrong, whether it's going to be to themselves or a group, you want to be able to reach out and touch that person. you want to see if you can get them some services. you want to see 23 you can intervene in that. one of the things that literally about a week or two after the parkland shooting, our county came out with -- in conjunction

with the sheriff's office and our school police an app on the phones. we keep talking about social media. every kid has a phone. they all have a phone. and they literally were in the works of developing an app prior to the shootings that's called student protect. and every student can download that. the employees in the school can download it, parents, civilian, law enforcement. and basically it's a form where people can anonymously leave tips in regard to potential threats, whether it's a kid that saw another friend on facebook out thing that they're going to come up and shoot up a school and what not. that information gets routed to our school board police and to our sheriff's office. the important thing than is our sheriff is also in charge of basically the homeland security efforts and information sharing for the south end of florida. so we have a fusion center right there in west palm beach also. they have a fusion center where if that information comes in that's in the north end of the county but it's about somebody

in the south end of the county, they can divert that information directly to the jurisdiction that it belongs to and allow that particular jurisdiction to intervene. so whether it's a school that is going to intervene or whether it's going to be a local jurisdiction or a county office or a deputy that is going to go out, they have an opportunity to intervene before something happens and at least put that kid on the radar in regard to letting his parent nose what is going on, letting the school know what's going on and to really sitting down and talking with him. once you have those people identified, that's where the crucial piece comes. the backup. what's the follow-through? we've got to have more social worry. we've got to have more mental counselors. we've got to have more people talk to these kids. they're not necessarily criminal. they've got other things going on. and just dealing with the police isn't the way to go. so some of the resources really need to go to 245, and that's what we're looking at. our sheriff's office also recently developed a behavioral health unit where they actually pair social workers or mental health counselors with sworn deputies and/or police officers to actually do those followup

when they get an alert on that application that comes to the kids. or from the kids. additionally, on that app, there is a gps code on it. so if you vu have an active shor situation in a school, you could have the kid locked in a closet on the third wing behind a water fountain putting the 911 alert out immediately. and his gps coordinates is available. so the officers that are responding will know exactly where that person. and they can get information through those phone systems to go directly to where that person is or know where they're at to be able to tell them to stay put. it's a huge undertaking, especially if it's an active situation. unfortuna unfortunately, we haven't had that available during the situation yet, but it's a work in progress. you have something out that there that the kids can communicate to the adults and ask for help has been huge. i tell you, literally the day after it went live, they got an anonymous tip about a kid threatening to shoot up a school

on a facebook post with a gun in the picture. they ended up tracking the kid down at the school, actually tracked down what school he went to. he wasn't in school that day. they went to the house, met with the parents, found the kid and found the gun. the gun ended up being an airsoft, but they got it. now the kid has a little more time to get some resources and to figure out why he was planning that in the first place and whether it was a true threat. it's information we can share with everybody and anyone in a timely fashion. so those are some of the steps we've done. more locally, in order to help enhance what our school police do, our jurisdiction has made a concentrated effort to get involved in some of the studies at the schools that are local. our officers go out and meet with the prince pam -- prince p. we have absolutes of the schools. if an event happens at one of the schools, that information is readily available to the officers responding on the computer in the car. when they get there, they know if you can identify where the threat on the campus is, they can have a blueprint of that

campus right in front of them before they arrive so they know where they need to go and where they can direct others coming in behind them. it's things like that that are imperative to address the school situations. but, again, it's not all law enforcement. it's a collaborative effort between everybody. and not only on the front end, but the back end too. i think the back end is where we're missing things. if you've read enough about the parkland shooting, the shooter was on the radar for quite some time. and we missed a lot of opportunities to intervene. so in palm beach county right now and in west palm, we're making a concentrated effort to not let those types of things slip through the cracks so that when you have an opportunity to intervene we have an opportunity to interact and we have the resources available to do that. >> thank you, chief. >> sure. >> mike? >> yeah, i'd just like to associate myself with my fellow panelists here and underscore something that i think all three of them indicated. and that was around the issue of collaboration and communications.

i think when we went into palm beach schools last week, we saw exactly what it is that was described. and frankly, palm beach and the palm beach schools do a really terrific job in protecting and providing security for their students. but as we go around and take a look at the safety and security systems in a number of our other big city school districts, we don't always see the same level of collaboration and cooperation that we saw in palm beach. and it's something that we all as a group of police chiefs and mayors and school officials could probably work on together. because one of the things we've noticed is we looked at the safety and security systems in our own school systems is that, you know, some of our school systems have our own police forces. some of them don't. sometimes the local police forces in the school, sometimes it's not. sometimes we have sros.

sometimes we don't. sometimes there is sworn police officers in the schools. how it is the local county or city or school district configures its own security system can really be vastly different from place to place. and we often see gaps in how it is we communicate with each other, what agreements we've come to about who has responsibility for doing x, y, or z during a situation, and how it is we -- what the protocols are for communicating with one another in an active shooter situation. so while we're waiting for the federal government to get their act together if they ever do, one thing that we might want to think about is doing some more active collaboration with our safety and security folks and your chiefs of police and mayors

and the like to see if we can strengthen some of the gaps that we continuously witness. >> a great idea. >> thank you. thank you all of you. mayor? >> yeah, i just have been sitting here thinking about something mayor fischer said about the wealth disparity and the gaps. and that's probably not too many other places in this country where that's more evident than in palm beach county. we have 33 billionaires who live in the county, 75,000 millionaires. and then we have farm workers and people who live in the western part of the county who are generationally poor. and the gap is just extraordinary. i think it sort of goes back to that prevention/intervention piece. how do we address that? how do we make education great

for all of the kids in our county. how do we make sure that all of our young people feel valued and worthwhile. i've just been thinking about what mayor fischer said. >> sure. >> i think it's an important, important conversation. >> the value of having a school psychologist as a mayor as well. so thank you. >> and a social worker as a police chief. >> absolutely. any questions or discussions? let's get chief down here then mayor sagland. >> good afternoon. i'm the chief of police of the west land police department in michigan. and i wanted to talk about a concept that is a little different, but it's been building some momentum in our community. and after the parkland tragedy, we've kind of have a whole new challenge in law enforcement. and it's the increase in social media threats that we're now getting. some of these social media threats or all of these social media threats -- >> closer to the microphone,

please? >> my apologies. so obviously all social media threats need to be investigated, whether they come in from your snapchat you facebooks or instagrams. but it's challenging for law enforcement. and it's -- in regards to that, what i think we need to take a look at is we've been looking at not only protecting our schools from the outside in, which would be with your camera systems and your key scans and all of that, but trying to protect our schools from the inside out. what i mean by that, we're taking the approach in westland as we're actually teaching our parents how to use the snapchats and how to use the facebooks and how to use the instagrams. and i think if we went around this room, the majority of us probably really wouldn't know how to access our children's social media accounts. so the idea behind us doing that is and reaching out with our school board is these parents are the desire to learn, and we're putting the movement back on them to be a part of the prevention and intervention. it's been building momentum in our community.

i kind of wanted to share that concept with the other police chiefs that i think taking that step back and kind of sharing it through our press information officer, through your city websites, and really just giving some education to the parents on how you set a date, whether it's once a week you're going to go through your children's social media sites, it's going to help. i wanted to share that. it's building momentum with our city. >> thank you. thank you. mayor sagland? >> one of the most challenging problems we had several years ago had to do with the role of the educational resource officers in our school relative to the relationship with the vast number of teenagers. and it was something that at first we didn't anticipate, but then the challenge made all the sense in the world. what had happened is we started looking at arrests of juveniles. and one of the things that we saw which probably everybody has

the same results is teenagers get arrested where teenagers hang out. and so the prime places where kids were getting arrested were the shopping centers, the bus transfer points, and the high schools. our school board had had a zero tolerance policy when it came to violence. so that meant an automatic arrest of any teenager. and that created great disparities and great challenges and was affecting the relationship of the young people to our police department in regards to larger community issues. so then the school board wanted to go in a different direction, realizing the responsibility that they had undertaken and the problems they had created with zero tolerance.

and they wanted to go to a position where the school administration would determine should the child be arrested or not. which we found unacceptable. at that point, we said the officers have to make the decision. and this became a considerable challenge that undermined the relationship of not just the school district to the city and the police department, but also the relationship to the teens. and i just want to put that out as a caution in regards to those who do not either have an active program or have not yet hit that wall. >> thank you, mr. mayor. please. >> mr. kass i haddy i have a couple questions one is about the resolution and i appreciate that the multifacetted. >> pull your microphone introduce yourself please.

>> jeff bly master lincoln nesh rowe nebraska one of the questions i have on the rufrlgs is that it's specific in certain terms but no mention of school resource officers within the confines of the document that term isn't specifically used. but yet when speaking our speaking about school resource officers to a degree, is that correct. >> and the legislation we put together even though they're not specifically mentioned in the revolution, in the -- in the legislation that we drafted up, part of the money would go to support additional school resource officers in our schools. >> i appreciate that clarification. and this goes to mayor soglin's point nebraska is a very similar size community to madison, wisconsin. we have many similar conversations going on. in fact the ongoing add vehiclecy for additional school resource officers in the schools has created a narrative of the

school to prison pipeline that we are trying to combat, trying to educate on. and mr. hardy, i can't -- do you have -- do you have any comment on that particular research where there are bodies -- bodies of work that say that there is a direct nexus to a causation to more officers in the schools leading to towards incarceration especially of miernlt populations. >> well in our website that we have the protect and educate -- it's a free download. it's factual based, produced by doctor bernhard james, pepper dine university. and he is in the midst right now to renew that dsh that's a 2012 publication. and we have a white paper out on it right now. and he is going to have a rewrite coming up we're waiting

on it to hit our doorstep right now. anxiously to see what the new findings are. and the findings from 2012 which were presented a congressional hearing were this when you look at it, the juvenile arrest records in the united states went down as the number of resource officers went up. not saying that, you know, it was -- whatever but we know juvenile arrests went down as those went up. >> um-hum. >> yeah, i think this is one of those areas where we have got to really work together and be careful about this. because this is not -- how do we balance school security and disproportionate dplin it's a tricky thing to do we in the school community need to work

harder on. the reern has been clear in some cases that the school to prison pipeline does begin to -- in too many situations with how it is we discipline kids disproportionally in schools, the reasons we suspend them, both in school suspensions and out of school suspensions and what the role of police and sros in that process is. training obviously as mack mentioned plays a very, very important role in this. but so do the specific protocols that we use for disciplining kids. so it's not necessarily the call of an individual school resource officer about whether somebody gets suspended or not. we need to have a more kind of all-encompassing process where the protocols are very clear, and not any one entity in a

school making a decision like that. because it's the recipe for disproportionate suspension and expulsion rates in schools. and i know in our own schools while suspension rates have been going down, i could not claim to you that our suspension rates are for the disproportionate by race and the like. they are. >> also one other thing is a clear understanding between the law enforcement agency and the school system and the mou is imperative so that both the schools and police departments understand where the lines are being drawn and what the roles are of the schools and the roles of the police department. >> the separation of the discipline versus the criminal law act. >> right. >> and how it is they collaborate with each other so there is a seamlessness how we do the work. >> mayor well whily and chief

ram sfwlie mr. castle. i wanted to thank you. i don't think it should go without notice from the commitment of the great city schools the recognition about what needs to happen with our gun laws to change in order to change what's going on inside our schools. and your all's recognition of that i think is something that's really important. we could have all the conversations about school safety but if we have lack less takz to access to guns for citizens. >> we had strong backing from your superintendent and board president. thank you for that. >> keefe. >> i want to add something around this issue of school resource officers officers abincreased arrests if we have more security in schools. because i think it's an important topic. when i was the police commissioner in philadelphia one day one of my deputies came to the office and said we got a problem. he had been going over data what he saw was we were making a lot of arrests in schools. and -- and he also had a solution.

and he actually had worked on a diversion program. i gave him permission to move forward with it. and he got the school superintendent involved, got the district attorney's office involved. he got the courts involved. and it was a very comprehensive strategy. in a year we cut in half the number of arrests we made in schools. and kids coming in with a small amount of marijuana. we were locking kids up that had a pair of scissors in there back pack forth to take them out and they're getting arrested for having a weapon in school. stuff like that. minor argument between kids, no one is hurt. you know, inof being a school discipline problem they were airtimed for assault and we're giving kids criminal records for relatively minor things. and we have -- we have to be very, very sensitive to that when you say school safety and security, in the mind of many people that means more cops and more arrests to make schools safe. and that's just a wrng way to

approach this. we can have safe schools without making a lot of arrests. i mean. >> absolutely. >> there aren't many people sitting around this room didn't do something stupid when they were young and lucky enough not to get caught. with the exception of me of course. i was always perfect. but we do that. and you know, and a lot of this falls on the schools because a lot of things that used to be handled internally in schools just a school discipline matter now they're calling police. and -- and getting a kid arrested. and so i think we need to think about that as we move forward. and the other comment i would make around sros, if you are in a jurisdiction like philadelphia where we supply the school resource officers, i mean parkland was a wake up call, you better pay attention to who the hell it is you are putting in schools and make sure you have people that are, one, they have

the right personality. they can work with kids. and we all know we have some policeman that cannot work with children. that is just not where you want to put them. you got to make sure they have the right personality but also the ability to take action if something happens in the school. you know, it's a dog gone shame but kids now not only have fire drills but they have active shooter drills. think about that and think about the climate that creates in the minds of young people, the fear where schools used to be a safe haven. and now it's place where you have to practice active shooter drills? i'm old enough -- and there is only one or two in the room -- i won't mention names may be old enough to remember this in school where in the early 60s we were having drills on what td if there was a nuclear explosion because of the cuban missile crisis and all the stuff going on. and i remember as an elementary school kid one die i literally started crying i was afraid we

were all going to die. because they had us crawling up under desks holding our heads as if that was going to do anything. but it was just a threat. you know the threat and the impact psychologically had has on young people. that's the collateral damage of what's going on now. even though the likelihood of it happening in their school is remote, in today's world with the communication and the way in which we just show the scenes over and over again, it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter whether you are in parkland, florida, whether you were in columbine. it doesn't matter nerm. we need to think about safety for all children. every time budgets come out every time people want to cut, counselors, cut social workers, cut school psychologyists. that make a difference in the

schoolless. we have to make sure we go beyond school safety from the very narrow framework of law enforcement but look at it who willistically and take the appropriate actions. >> thank you, cleave. >> mayor. mihalik and. >> lydia from finally be ohio within recently we had a community meeting where we talked about the school district about the per issues and factual issues around school issues what we could do to be better. it was interesting to hear not only from the parents but the students themselves. and interesting to me is that a lot of the students didn't talk about the need for additional school resource officers, which we have them in our school system. they talked about the need for more counselors and psychologists and social workers to help identify those who need the assistance before it gets to a point where we have an act of

violence. i'm wondering as you know we continually ask law enforcement officers to be everything to everyone, we're asking them not only to be peace keepers but asks them to be social workers, asking them to be psychologists, they are supermen and women but they can't fix it all. it seems as though there is the thought that school resource officers are the be all, end all, in this conversation. are our larger school districts across the country having conversations around the need for emphasis around counseling and is that where we should be potentially be weaving up funding as opposed to asking the brave men and women in those school resource officer positions to fill the gaps for us? >> yeah, they are. and while i mentioned a number of things in the revolution that we passed and also in the legislation that we proposed, but i think all of the school

people in my coalition would agree wholeheartedly that if we had more counselors, more support staff, more social workers, that it would go a long way to addressing some of the issues that our kids bring to the school with them every day. i don't think it's any particular mystery that our kids are bringing challenges to the schoolhouse door they never brought before. in the nuclear age or before. and our teachers are often asked to do the same kind of thing as our sros are. and that is be all things to the kids at one time. and they can't address all of the social, emotional, behavioral issues that -- and family issues that -- that our kids bring to the schools. so i think we're all in agreement that if additional

resources were to be had, it's where we would pump a lot of it. and that is into the social support systems and the social and emotional learning for all of our kids. >> and i'm going to ask everyone keep it tight if we can. i'm getting the hook back here. i'm sure every point we make we can flf integrate into several parts of the discussion as we move along. chief and keefe. >> as an introduction that's not my strong point i'll do my best. one thing i would suggest is that we really need to approach the issue of school standpoint from the standpoint of problemcephalic process. i had incidence to do that as police chief in the cincinnati whether a school over the ryan and the superintendent expressed the with educational quality was affected by the external virmt, the neighborhood had a high level of crime. i worked it as a young police

officer. i knew the area very, very well. but i did something probably unusual. and i said we need to ask the kids. and so we partnered up with the university of cincinnati and some early childhood development professors and we designed a survey to actually survey the children and ask them about their perception of safety. not what we thought about their safety. we also did data analysis too process. because we look at children -- or traveling back and forth to school during -- right before an hour before and hour after school. saying what does the data tell us? literally there were certain streets and lengths of streets that had no event at all the entire school year. so it wasn't necessarily external issue. but the biggest ah-ha is when we asked the children about the experience, if they were threatened or felt unsafe, it was more often in school, not externally in the environment. and more often it involved another student were it was in the school or externally. so really it wasn't an issue of

the school culture environment needs to be addressed not more cops in the neighborhood. that's the direction we would have went if we didn't do the analysis. we didn't do the homework. fast forward to date. we had a rather significant fight on a school bus back in 2010, 2011 involving one of the high schools on the east side of dayton. we approached it as a problem solving process also. got all the partners to the table including the school, neighbors business association, neighbors association. juvenile probation, our police officers. we developed it was called high school disorder reduction project, not a great fancy name. but that initiative garnered the- dsh basically received the iacp community policing award in 30u7. we needed additional patrol or presence that was part of it but we needed to do something about the internal school environment.

and that was something the school owned if you will and ht analyst to influence. they had basically a lot of conflict occurred during class exchange after class was out had to go no another class. people bumped into each other i'll see you after school. so there was conflict built basically on the structure of the school itself. that was a addressed. there were students poorly matched in those educational environments. placed in better environments. the bottom line is that we had 80% reduction in assaults in a year. and academic performance increased that year and each subsequent year. we need to approach these in a comprehensive way getting all the partners to the table and basically engage in a problem solving process. my recommendations >> thank you chief. last word to chief harrison. >> chief harrison to the kmeefr's point about the coralation about more officer and increase in arrests, the chief touched itten briefly and

ramsey touched tennessee on it the number one it lie in the selection of the offers. the trapg of the officer number three the clear and defined roles of the school resource officers as defined by the community policing model, not necessarily the public safety model but the community policing model. as long as the selection and training fall under the community policing model what we have found is that incidents likely to occur or planned to occur within the school students were given that information to the school resource officers who was able to then communicate that more broadly to the rest of the department. because relationships were built where students were able to learn the trust that officer but that followed in the community policing model where it's problem solving and information flows freely to the officers and from the officer because the officer is viewed as part of faculty not necessarily as part of the police department solely. and i think -- but if it stay in the confines of the commune

policing model the school can embrace the officer and size versa as a member of the faculty and the students can look at the officer as faculty who happens to be a member of the police department. i believe you don't have that problem with more officers and increasing arrests. we have seen dngzs in arrests but we have seen better relationships between youth and police as long as we stay with school resource being housed, trained and selected by community policing ideals. >> thank you, chief. i'm going to wrap up and save my summation for tomorrow. quickly we did learn the importance of collaboration making sure we are working across the various dplins. the importance of acting actually doing something and not waiting. and then sharing information there is some incredible best practices that i think some of us just learned about here today. sharing that information. i do want to make sure we don't get out of here by tomorrow and

not really discuss prefrpgs as well. the mayor mentioned the incredible challenges they face in florida. but it's not unique to florida. they have unique issues their laws. but cross the entire country. you look around 2007, but certainly before then and since then we have had the incredibly onerous laws preempted local policy makers and law enforcement and peace officers from protecting our community. and no longer playing checkers while others play chess we have to go on the offense put some eyed ideas and policy on the table for the state lirpgts to say no to, to say no to and then they own some of the major challenges as we expect that they should. our chief holbrook sent a letter to the state legislators laying out clear issues they ought to act on if they want to make columbia and the rest of our state a safer. we have to get on offense and

deal effectively with peremptorien. thank you all for presentation. >> announcer: to stay on time we're going to keep moving. and we're going to talk about the issue that is km up in every one of our sessions so far. and that is strength strengthenen police community releases and turn the floor back over again to mayor freeman wilson who has been a leader in this area as in so many others. mayor freenman wilson. >> thank you mayor cranley. and at this time we are going to talk about strengthening police and community relations, a subject that has been at the forefront of the media in many of our communities. of course in some more than others. as there have been police involved shootings, and other

forms of violence that has involved the community and the police. everybody understands the importance of having an effective and responsible police force. i think likewise people also understand the desire of the community to be policed and to be policed constitutionally. about three years ago -- and we talked about it earlier -- the conference of mayors authored a publication that really did sort of distill the issues around

police/community trust. we actually beat chuck ramsey to the gun, and because he chaired a task force, cochaired a task force for president obama that was called the 21st century policing task force. and around the same time black lives matter came up with the campaign zero report that talked about some of the concerns that they had in -- on a national level. if you look at these three

documents, you will see many, many common issues that were raised. some of those issues involved the way that police officers are supported in their work. and i'm not just talking about pay and equipment, but i'm talking about what type of mental health support do they get? how do you monitor the stress level on their jobs? some of the other areas that these reports saw -- or had in common was the importance of

building trust between the police and the community. we saw improving practices in police departments, and not just discipline or those issues after a police officer was hired, but how do you determine who makes a good police officer? once upon a time, it was a given that as mp from the military forces would be the ideal police officers. i dare say that many of our chiefs around the table were former military. but is that really the type of police officer that we need in modern days? we talked about ensuring timely and accurate communications. and that is in the instance that

there is a police-involved shooting. how do you communicate to the community? who does the communication to the community? what do you release? when do you release it? and what is the balance between ensuring that you have accurate information and ensuring that you have as much information as quickly as possible? when do you conduct an independent investigation, and who is the best entity to conduct that investigation? and what role -- and we have talked about it throughout the day -- do income disparities and racial disparities play in the issues of developing and

strengthening police and community trust? and how do we as mayors and police chiefs provide leadership in a national dialogue, understanding that this area is probably one of the most important areas where local sentiments, local communication, the demographics and the tenor of your community are so, so important? we presented the findings from our joint task force -- and many of you -- mayor stotila, chief buckner, mayor andrew, commissioner ramsey, many of you

were on that joint task force that came up with the strengthening police/community relationships -- or relations in american cities. and we took those recommendations and actually were honored to present them to the task force on 21st century policing. at this time we have the great privilege of hearing from one of those cochairs of the task force. and that is our very own chuck ramsey, who as you know was the commissioner of police and in washington, d.c. and philadelphia, but who is now serving as a special adviser to the u.s. conference of mayors. following commissioner ramsey's

remarks, we'll ha hear from baton rouge mayor, sharon westin broom and police chief murphy paul about their efforts to strengthen relationships between the police and the community. and we know that they are been very thoughtful about this issue, as thifb at the front -- forefront of what is going on at a national level. we'll then go to clarksville, tennessee, where mayor kim mcill millin and police chief alonzo ansley will bring us up to date on the cutting edge efforts in their city. after that we will open it up for what we know will be a lively discussion between our mayors and police chiefs and

certainly questions. i want to close with something that i saw friday. i know that none of you have a whole lot of time to watch television. but i will confess that for me it is a guilty pleasure. and blue bloods is one of of my favorite programs. so friday there was an episode of "blue bloods" involving a shooting where an officer was killed by a gang member, or in this case a want to be gang member. and there was a joint press conference with the mayor on this television, a woman of new york city, and the police

commission commissioner, aptly played by tom selleck can be commissioner regan. during the course of the press conference that was really focussed on the death of the officer and the apprehension of the suspect, the mayor spoke, i would say, out of turn. and she went on in a press conference that was really focused on the death of the officer to talk about how the suspect might have been in fear for his life. and that resulted in an eruption among police officers throughout the city, on "blue bloods," of new york in this case. the point of me bringing that up is to really indicate two

things. one is that in this area more than any other, it is imperative that the police chief and the mayor sing from the same song book, that we be on the same page. the other point is that it is probably one of the areas that we will find as mayors that is most fraught with perils, because even though we understand the importance of having the 30,000-foot view of seeing everything at all times, we also understand that there is a level of sensitivity from so many perspectives in this area that we need to be very, very

careful and understand at the time that we address these issues how important it is to communicate thoughtfully and clearly. with that, please receive commissioner ramsey. >> thank you, mayor. believe it or not i have never seen "blue bloods." . i haven't. but i do have the honor of sitting next to the two-time real police commissioner of new york city bill bratten, who is our dinner speaker tonight. thank you, bill, for agreeing to be here with us today. i'm going to be brief because i really want to hear from baton rouge and clarksville. i think it's very important that we save enough time for questions and comments afterwards. so i'll try to be as brief as possible. as the mayor mentioned, i had

the honor of serving as cochair of the president obama's task force on 21st century policing. we were given very specific instructions and given a very tight time line. we had about 45 days to get a draft on the president's desk. so that didn't give us a lot of time to address many issues for an example i think it was mentioned by the mayor, one area that we -- in hindsight i wish we had time to cover would have been recruit many hiring and retention, for example, very important in our business. but we chose six specific areas. they were in no particular order except number one and that was building trust and legislate macy. we felt strongly that without that the rest of it didn't really matter all that much because if you don't have the trust of the community that you serve then the rest of it will never be as effective as perhaps

it could be. we -- we are still in a period even though we had a slight uptick in some cities of crime -- we are still at historically low levels of crime in this country. i mean, i was around in the 70s, 80s, the 90s when we had the crack epidemic, late arrest, early 90s, so forth. there is very little comparison to the kind of challenges we face in terms of crime fighting. that we do today. so why is it then with these historically low numbers are we seeing the kind of tension that we have seen between police and community, particularly challenged communities and communities of color? and that's because there's never really been trust in many of these communities with police and what trust was established was very fragile. and i think we underestimated just how fragile that is in many

of our communities. now, we reach these low levels -- and there were a lot of things that played a role. but i'll use one thing that i think played a significant role. that helped us focus more strategically on crime and get crime down to the levels where we see it today. and it started in new york with bill and the late jack maple with comstat. everyone tried to copy it and we got our different variations of it, right? they're not the same. but it was a model that really used data, that used ways in which we could target specific areas and put cops on the dots, as it's said, right? also, one of the things that bill is noted for, as his time as commissioner of the new york transit police, dealing with some of the lower level crimes,

that sometimes lead to larger crimes. so these are all strategies that worked. there is no question about it. but here is where i think at least in the cities that i worked in, here and philadelphia -- and i could use chicago as an example too i guess. is that we got in some cases -- not in all -- but in some cases so focused on the dots that we forgot that every dot represents a human being, a person whose life has been forever changed because of crime. this job is about people. i think we also in implementing strategies -- and i'm certainly guilty of this -- you know, and i think it was scott thompson that mentioned, you know, fishing with a spear as opposed to a net, that we didn't think about the collateral damage that's sometime caused in communities when we go in with strategies to address a specific crime and disorder problem, but what happens in the community that is left behind, you know. it's one thing to have a gang

problem. not every kid in the neighborhood is part of a gang. not every gang member is violent. a lot of kid are in gangs for a lot of different reasons. you got some that are very violent but that's a mall percentage. but because we sometimes did not know the area and the people that we were policing to the extent that we should -- which community policing in some cases got kind of -- not tossed aside but wasn't as emphasized as much perhaps as some other strategies. we were just stopping a lot of folks. and one of the biggest complaints that i got as a police chief -- it wasn't about just being stopped. it was about how they were treated during the stop. officers being disrespectful, being rude, not explaining what they're doing and why they're doing it. and that sort of thing. and so we kind of lost touch in that regard. and again, that trust in many communities, it's very, very fragile to quinn with and didn't take much. you add on top of that social

media, 24-hour cable news networks, where it no longer matters where an incident took place. it may as well have happened in your backyard. after ferguson i had protests in philadelphia. i used to go to strus all the time i grew up in chicago had relatives in st. louis. i didn't know where the hell ferguson was, never heard of it. who would have believed that a police force of about 50 officers with about 50,000 residents would have changed policing in america? yet it did. because that's the power of communication that we have to deal with now. so whether we're large, small, medium, it doesn't matter. as a profession it's in our collective best interests to build that trust, to build that legislate macy. think about it. if you saw something on the news however bad it might be, and the public's watching it from your town, your city, and people

looked and said, boy that's terrible. but our cops would never do anything like that. we got a long way to go before that conversation takes place in a lot of our cities. but why can't that be a goal? because that's how strong our relationships need to be. because we're going to be challenged constantly whether it happens in your backyard or somebody else's. i guarantee you you are going to be challenged. and so that's why having relationships building trust, legitimacy. how do we treat our own people, internal justice. you know we are punishment driveren as police organizations. right we got rules and regulations. you do this, you get this much time off. you do that, this much time oh off. you get fired if you do so and son. i'm not saying that's all bad. but what i'm saying we were talking about alternative to

incarceration of juveniles there is diversion that can be done in a sense within our own departments where education and training may be the remedy as opposed to three days off. and so we have to look at this in a very holistic way fept if we want to the right mindset for the ofrsds as they get out and interact and deal with the public. the other area that we -- we used as a closing was officer safety and wellness. and we thought they would make good book ends. but we weren't talk o talking with officers getting shot or stabbed so much process because we do a gootd job of taking care of cops that get hurt like that. good insurance all that. but what about the psychological trauma that exists from doing this jb and the thingts you are exposed to that aren't normal? i mean, i can't tell you how many homicide scenes i've been to in career. but it's not normal to be at a murder scene. that's not something everybody experiences.

other than watching it on "blue bloods" or whatever tv program you happen to watch. what about situations where you had colleagues murdered? shot and killed? what's the psychological impact that has over time? it's the mental health of our police officers is very important and we need to pay attention to it. because we wonder sometimes they're rude, use of force, all these kinds of things, shootings where she shoot a little too quick. many are hypervigilant. they're in the areas on a daily basis. you listen to the radio. man shot, robbery in progress, you got all these kinds of things going on. now you're in a dark alley somewhere behind a suspect that someone may have said might have had a gone make the wrong move and boom, all of a sudden, you know, you have a shooting. i'm not trying to make excuses. but what i'm trying to say is that we need to think about the

mental health and the trauma that police get exposed to. and we wonder why we have high rates of alcoholism, suicide, domestic violence, all those things and we don't talk a lot about. but i'll guarantee you we have a higher percentage of it in policing than anywhere else. some of that is a direct result of the kinds of things that officers are exposed to. ptsd isn't limited to soldiers coming back from iraq and afghanistan. it happens anywhere. how do we identify it treat it deal with it keep them safe and healthy so they can enjoy a 20, 30 career without all these things that our profession can move forward. and we are not looking at some of these viral videos we see and make you skrafrp or your head and you just say why? again it's not to make excuses. it's to deal with the real issues. those are the kind of things we tried to tackle in the report. and i think it has a direct bearing and building strong relationships because how you interact with your community

matters. and so it's not just about feel good stuff. it's about the real things that really make a difference out there when it comes to one person interacting with another. and the last thing i'll say before i turn it over to the mayors and chiefs, how does it happen? it happens one interaction at a time. one cop, one citizen. one -- a story, the current commissioner of philadelphia richard ross tells the story when we -- he put all of the rookie cops on foot patrol the first six, nine months. and some of the most challenged neighborhoods that have a lot of crime occurring in open pace. it does two things. one, it is an effective crime fighting strategy. it does have an impact on crime that occurs in those areas. but number two, it teaches them a valuable lesson hopefully will stay with them throughout the careers. in the most challenged neighborhoods we have in the city they're more decent law-abiding people living there

than criminals. you don't know driving 40 miles an hour down the street in a crown vk. you learn it in interacting with folks in communities. he was out one day and sees a rookie. and he is on his smartphone. and it's this little girl standing next to him. he assumed right away that the kid standing there he is ignoring the kid on his smartphone. so he got out of the car and stops say, officer how you doing? what's going on? and he said oh she had a question. she had a homework assignment didn't know the answer to it i was doing a google search to get the information. you think that would have happened if he was in a car driving down the street past that little girl? no. do you think that is something that will stay with that girl the rest of her life? yeah. i would certainly hope so. we have an obligation to build the relationships one interaction at a time. we'll have enough negative one that is we got to deal with just by virtue of what we do.

let's build as many positive ones as we can. >> thank you so much commissioner for comments. but more importantly, thank you for your leadership in this space. before we hear from mayor broom and chief paul, i want to yield to our chair, who has a comment he would like to make. >> commissioner, thank you so much. i want to -- there's a theme that has been running throughout everything that was said today. and one of them has been we have to create trust. we have to do that because it doesn't exist right now. which is worth just speaking to in a very blunt and open way. it seems to me from the comments, especially that commissioner ramsey made, that we are out of order, that we're fighting ourselves. this is where we politicians and police chiefs sometimes get

influenced by the argument of of the day that we have to be tough on crime. and of course everybody here knows that in order to be tough on crime you have to be smart on crime. we've been all trying to figure that out. a couple of brief comments because i know that mayor broom and chief paul have some compelling information to give us. but i would just like to state something simply something that should be obvious. in order for communities to be safe, are the police and communities have to be on the same side. fi fighting against crime. rather than opposite sides fighting each other. some of the examples today are we going to have where we have gotten today people think it's zero-sum game either on the law enforcement side or the community side. all of us know we can't win the fight against the small number of individuals causing havoc in the neighborhoods if we're not on the same side. one of the things that we get overwhelmed by is how difficult it is.

but it's absolutely clear as chief ramsey indicated that we're not at a our highest level of crime. there have been other times in the united states of america wove had problems more difficult. even though this is hard, i just want everybody to stay focused on the notion that this is a very solvable problem. it's clearly not simple. it's complex. it's absolutely not easy. it's hard. but this is not the most complex or hard problem that the united states of america has faced which is why it's all the more curious that we can't seem to get the body politic focused on actually what td and who is supposed to do it when it getting done how, who is going td it and we it's getting done by. the worst thing we can do in country is something we are doing right now. trying to make the answers simple and the fix easy when we know that it's not. and i just want to call us into

purpose on making sure that we acknowledge how complex it is. how hard it is but that we know the answer because some of us are doing a really good job of fine going in your communities as well. and as hard as the discussion that we're getting into a minute is complicated we ought to be able to speak to it in truth so that we can make sure the police and community are one. but because the community runs away from the police we they are afraid when they think the police are there to hurt not help. i think finally we can be in favor of better community police relationship relations and at the same time support the law enforcement officers. chief ramsey gave us an example about the wellness and the mental health of officers. and there was one poignant moment in the city when both the chief and i were at the scene where a mother had driven her three beautiful little children -- i think they were under three years old. three and a half down to the bottom and killed them and killed herself.

and the police officers attended to the scene -- i've been to a lot of difficult scenes like many many of you have. but that's the one at a broke our officers down to their knees. where it became so immediately apparent to me the incredible continued devastation that our officers see. and that sometimes the officers don't feel comfortable seeking the kind of help they need and we're maybe not as attuned to that as well. and not too far after that going to a scene of a murder in a pretty intense neighborhood where there was a body on the street. and then watching all the little three, four, five-year-olds having to witness that as well. and that trauma, that collateral damage, as the commissioner tells us about spreads itself out like a virus in our community and then folds back in on itself we are on the same side. and i just think it's important for us to not let us get ripped apart ever between the police and the community. because it's only when we find

out how to be one we can do that. i just commend that to you. because it's sometimes that goes without saying clearly and it's critical that we stay on the same side relating to that. with that. >> i just want to add maryland droe, i found chief ramsey's comments to resonate with our experience in cincinnati i'm sure every other city, you know, the -- the impact on officer stress, emotional and just the sense with the heightened scrutiny that cops face with body cameras et cetera. there is increasingly this sense what can i do? you know? i remember after we went through unrest in the early twouss cops routinely said, you know, the red tape, my hands are tied behind my back. this viewpoint which i don't think is accurate is real, though. it's a genuine perception that many cops have around the country. and i think one of the goals of

in task force and i know in our city chief isaac with david kennedy and others helped train officers what they can do. they're told all the time what they can't do, can't do, they are desperate to be told what they can do. that's a breakthrough and something that would be of real value if the task force could help communities that haven't been through that or going through the transition to talk about how we really treat police officers as humans and tell them not just what they can't do but what they can do. >> thank you. mayor westin broom. >> thank you very much. and i will say that mayor, landrieu, i agree with you that the issue of closing gap between law enforcement and the citizens

of our community is certainly a solvable problem. but it's not a simple one. my best friend who was a -- an elected official once said that public service is not forethe faint of heart. i would say coming up with a slugs to what we are discussing today is certainly not for the faint of heart. i have been the mayor of baton rouge for 15 months. but who is counting? when i came in office i inherited a community that was in great need of healing from three tragedies that took place in the year of 2016. the first was an officer-involved shooting surrounding the alton sterling case. the second was the ambush and murder of three law enforcement

officers. the third was the great flood of 2016 that took place in baton rouge and surrounding areas. when i took the oath of office in -- on january 1st, 2017, those issues didn't stay in 2016. they came right with me as mayor. and so my platform and running for mayor and talking about public safety was integrating the pillars of the 21st century policing plan as an excellent model what we could do as a community and city and to close the gap between law enforcement and the citizens of our community. the first thing i did, recognizing the challenge that we had first with the officer-involved shooting was to bring individuals from the community, all walks of life together, law enforcement,

faith-based community, non-profit leaders, in a collaborative experience where we talked about what we can do from a policy point of view, something tangible that shows the community we are moving in the right direction. as a result of that collaboration we came up with some use of force policies that were best practices and that would now become part of our police policy, not just something that is taught in the police academy as i'm told, but something put in the police policy. secondly, i asked the council to support my efforts in purchasing body cameras for our police officers, which of course certainly protect the officers

and certainly coincide with information for citizens in the community. lastly i would say i had a very open selection process that took place that was involved -- involving members of our community in select agnew police chief. the chief that was there when i came in office retired in october. i then implemented a process in which we have a very different process in baton rouge of selecting a police chief involving civil service -- that's a whole another conversation for another day and time. but at any rate we had a very open and transparent process of select agnew police chief. and i believe that those initiatives have helped us turn the page, although we are still working on the healing process of our community. and with that being said i'm very proud that our new police chief has really worked hand in

hand with the officers, but more importantly with the people in the community in terms of closing the gap. i will let him take it from here. but i will tell you that right now his -- he is probably more popular than the mayor of baton rouge in that everywhere he goes he gets a standing oinnovation when he speaks. and i hear young people who talk to me about the chief. people send me emails who want to meet with the chief. for me that's a great thing for our commune. chief. >> well for me i can't go anywhere that's not a good thing. but i'm nervous because i'm sitting next to commissioner ramsey and bratten. i don't know if i want a autograph and take pictures now. we are at a ewe took neek place in the city of baton rouge process. i've been a sponge the last few months. i took over january 1st. and there are some cultural issue that is we are working on

within the department. but, you know, one of the reasons that i'm excited is because when i went around the to the districts, the brunl police department and i talked to the men and women, boots on the ground, that's where i heard a lot of the solutions from. the men and women of the baton rouge police department. so i'm excited to see this energy that i believe we have in the police department and this thirst for change by many police officers who recognize that we can become better at our craft. sometimes we set the bar high we achieve those goals. and i think we have right now in the police department, you know, community policing as commissioner ramsey talked about, it's really a shared possibility between the citizens and the police department.

and that's why it's important that the communities be afforded the opportunity to have direct, meaningful and a constructive voice and aspects of the way that their neighborhoods are being policed. that's what we are doing right now. we are meeting with any and everybody. we want to talk to everybody and we're listening. listening to learn. and through our prrnship with the department of justice as part of the national public safety partnership we have some of the community policing experts that are going to come in and help put a strategy in place, long-term for the baton rouge police department. and we are excited about that as well. but, you know, the -- the leadership in the police department, you know they buy in pretty fast. but it's the boots on the ground that we got to get. we got to make sure they understand the importance of community policing.

it's starts in the academy. that's not having a little box to say you met a certain block of community policing. it doesn't. it doesn't mean you have one or three guys assigned to a community policing section and now you have met this community policing check box. it's the understanding that what commissioner ramsey talks about in the 21st century policing model. that we are guardians of the kplunt first. every man and woman wearing the uniform understands that should be the foundation of every academy when we start. that's what we're doing at the baton rouge police department. you know, we are excited about it. i wanted to talk a little bit about what was -- what we talked and stress. one of the things we have to understand is that this is a hard job. and mental health in our police officers is important but we

have to create an environment as leaders where our police officers feel safe. to say i need a break. where they feel safe to say you know something is going on. you know historically we have not done that as leaders in law enforcement. a lot of these police a lot of our officers we have pride. it's looked at as weakness. we have to be mindful of that when we look at employee assistance programs helping our police officers. relieve the stress. it starts from the top creating an environment where the officers feel saech pef i want to touch on the media responsibility and community/police relations. we have err responsible journalism that has a role in community/police recommendations. it's important to have a relationship with the local media because the good deeds, all the grate things we do every

day, that doesn't make headlineses. we don't hear the stories. we have to do a better job of tell our story as law enforcement officers. bus the reality is the majority of the men and women wearing the uniform, they understand the values of loyalty, duty, respect, horn, integrity, personal coverage and do it every day. but when we have a few that don't deserve to wear the badge, sometimes we get painted with the broad brush. and i can tell you as an african-american, i have seen what paining a certain part of our community with a broad brush can do to our african-american males. so let's be careful with that. thank you. >> thank you, mayor and chief. mayor mcmillon and chief ansley.

>> thank you so much. i am -- to follow all of what we have heard thus far is kind of hard, because i agree with all of it, and i think that all of us strive to present the best case that we can. we in clarksville -- it's the fifth largest city in the state. but we have the -- sometimes we call it the fortune and misfortune of being 49 miles from the largest city in tennessee, which is nashville. so we have a very large population in our community. we are also home to the seventh largest military installation in the nation in ft. campbell which sits right in the middle of our community and has approximately 25 to 30,000 active duty military forces who all live primarily in our community with all of their dependents.

that adds another role to our police department. but when i became mayor eight years ago in clarksville, i was streamly fortunate because the man sitting next to me, the chief was already the police chief. i didn't have to go out and look for somebody that could take on this role. but we had some issues we had to deal with in clarksville. we a number of lawsuits that had been filed against the police department, racial type lawsuits. we had issues with the basic diversity that existed within our police department. and basically not a good community relationship with our community. and i sat down with chief ansley and we embarked on a mission to change the whole reality. and i can say now that we have

no lawsuits that are presently filed against -- we resolved all of the lawsuits. so we now have one of the most diverse police departments in the entire southeast. we have the lowest crime rate for a city of our size in the entire southeast. and those things don't come just because somebody is not doing their job. it's because of the man sitting next to me and his entire police force, which is 300 sworn officers strong. and works every day to make sure that we build knows community relationships. you know, when i first became mayor i said what can we do to make sure that we are making sure that the plofolice officern the community and the young people in the community and the old people in our community everyone respects them? we started a program of the mayor summer night lights

program where we actually went into all of the areas of our city and allowed the police department to interact with everybody in our city in order to give the young people something to do but to also show them that the police officers are people who they can respect and who are there to help them. i think that has been so helpful to our community and to the relationships. i'm going to let the chief tell you about all of the great things that we have been doing in our community to strengthen those police/community relationships. but i think that is the absolute key in what we do. if the public doesn't respect the police they can't solve crimes. they have to have that interaction and that relationship with the community to be able to get the tips, to be able to find out they they can solve the crimes.

and because we do that we also have one of the top, you know, case solving records again in all of the southeast. i think that what we have seen in our community is is when you saw the marchs, when you saw the riots, when you saw the public go out and actually try to rally for what they think is happening, that doesn't happen in our community. and i think it's because people know that we're not doing that. they don't need to have a march and a rally and a protest in our community. but we still go out. we have regular meetings where we go out with the entire community to address the issues that are happening in other parts of the country just to show the public that we are just not going to stand for that in our community. and i think it works so well. and i just want to say that, you know when you live in the state of tennessee, i think i know my

fellow mayor from kentucky over here probably has the same issues. but you know, guns are so prevailant in the state of tennessee. i don't know if anybody realizes that. but we have guns in bars, guns in church, guns in parks, both state and federal parks. we have guns in every city building. we cannot prohibit people from carrying guns anywhere, including all of our parks and everywhere else, the state legislature continues to overall our ability to control the guns. so our police department is under some serious strain sometimes to deal with these guns that are everywhere and prevailant throughout our community. but they're doing a great job. and i just want to publicly in front of everybody here tell you -- and i like to tell them this, i go to every swearing in, every promotion, everything that i can go to to show all of those

police officers that the mayor supports them in everything they do. and i tell everybody that they're so fortunate to come to work because they have the best police chief in america. now i don't mean to say that -- i know there is a lot of police chiefs. but that's what i think about my chief. he has been the chief the entire time i've been mayor. i'm getting ready to run again i'm eu hope he is staying as we go because we make a great team. it takes team work and cooperation between the mayors and their police chiefs and police departments to make our communities work. and chief i'm turning it over to you and let you brag on everything you're doing in the police department. >> thank you, mayor. i maim is chief alonzo anley. i'm life with the police department. i'm keeping it brief because we're a little over. but we are -- i've been chief of police 11 year.

we're famous for stealing. i expect we've stolen ideas from several of you in room. and probably this will be a learning experience for me going back to clarks vietnam. the mayor mentioned something about our reputation building trust that we had to build thap. that's why i've been chief so long 11 years. because i do care about the community. and i do care about the police department. i got tired of seeing us on the front page when we lost several -- not just had discrimination lawsuits. we lost them. and that can cause quite a bit of damage to your police department. one thing. >> i wasn't mayor then. >> she was not the mayor. i had the privilege of sitting -- had an invite from a nashville police chief anderson to sit on the major cities round table. and chief -- commissioner ramsey was there. and he said something that stuck with me to this day. i don't know if he remembers it.

but he said, cops do not like the way things are. and cops do not like the way things are when you change them. and that is a fact. so as i mentioned before, some of the things we have done of recent program program we started -- a recent program we started was we call it cutting the chat where we walk into a local bar. we stole that from north carolina by the way. we walk into a local barber shop sit down have a conversation. supposed to last 30 minutes lasts hour and a half. they ask us tough questions. we answer touch questions. i don't shy away from them. but we want to show them we are people with families. just like they do. and that program has -- has worked very well. some of the things that we have done to change our reputation. we went back to the basic

principles of commune policing positive relationships. people don't want to see the cruiser down the stroo et. they want to see the officer out in the neighborhood talking to them. and one thing i will see -- i'm going to say this and it may not abpopular thing to say. but one thing that i have noticed in my year and i have noticed what the public expects at least at public forums i have attended is they expect accountability. and that is one thing that we have -- i have embraced is accountability chief -- commissioner ramsey mentioned it. it's not about punishing an officer for making a mistake because i never do that. you own your mistake. you may get a slap on the wrist whatever but if you life to me, if you -- if your integrate is in check i will fire you. and what frustrates me the most -- this may not be popular is i have fired people from our

department and i have seen them end up elsewhere. that frustrates me. i have seen it on many occasions. because in my opinion we do not as a police culture do a good enough job to -- to check people's backgrounds. if you're hiring a police officer that i fire for lying, which is his ability to testify as a witness in open court has been compromised the rest of his career. then i got a problem with it. but this -- once again it's my honor to be here it's a learning experience for me. and it's a pleasure meeting all of you. thank you very much. >> thank you mayor mcmillon and chief ansley. so, we have heard a number of issue that is have come up consistently. the interdependency between the police and the community, the

impact of ptsd and stress, the importance of accountability, and the solutions that come from boots on the ground. we are representative of leadership in our cities. but we certainly know that patrol officers, line officers have been have a lot of insight. and the impact of preemption, which is something that continues to inform our conversations, because we understand that the state legislatures in each of our states have a direct impact on our ability to govern locally. so with that, i'm going to open it up for questions and comments. at this time. and we'll go to mayor kennedy. >> good afternoon. you know, we were talking about community relations with the

police department. i'm proud to say in freeport we are very diverse community opinion 30 persing barak 30% hispanic mixed no unrest. i contribute to a couple of things. one is the police department starts at about 9 years old in the fourth grate. we have a program called adopt a cop. all the police officers going to fourth grade class all year long and start the relationship young with the children. so at 4 years old the children each had have a police officer every month come in at the big party give ou pizza bring in the police, the horses, the skuba teams, the helicopters and really entertain them and develop a relationship. instead of waiting until 5 or 16. our chief started a number of years ago. we are the first police department in new york state to

mandate the use of body cameras and every officer give and taster indiana trained to use them we don't have deadly force when not needed. and it's been really working fine and the chief that put in program together how many here's years have you had that. >> 24 years. >> it's a great program 4 graders expanding to to sixth and 8th grade. each class adopts a police officer and they're there every month. they come in on days off. they may be doing a 7 to 7 come in next day at 11:00 just to see the class and go with the clirn. it's prove. skefrl five and six years down the ryan. some child walks up i remember you you were my adopt a cop. >> go ahead. >> what's interesting about in program, is through the years, nine of the current officers remember when they were adopted by police officer and brought them around. and it works out great. if i'm a store they'll come up

and say chief do you remember me and of course i'll say yes i do. and we'll have a conversation about what happened in the school that day or at home. that's how you build legitimacy. hand those how you build trust. spending the time with them at an early age and start growing the seeds. by the time they become older they can trust you and thaefl a lot better about you. the questions change. and they'll remind you chief i remember when you met you five years ago or ten years ago or one i hired last week 15 years ago who said you made a difference when you came to the classroom and spoke to me. i always remember that. to this day that's the day i decided i want to become a police officer. because i saw the opportunity that was available. and wove been very successful with the program. i encourage all to try these programs. and building the legitimacy isn't just in the schools we build with the churches. when there was a talk about a

march on washington one of our local pastors, very famous gospel winner reverend donnie mcclarken invited me to his church. he had 800 parishioners there da da that day he was there to sing the praise of the police department. we may disagree with what happened in other parts of the country. but we support our freeport police officers they're there and we are part of the community and we're all a team. and without piece in the community there is peace no where. and that's why the community trust that we receive, in fact i'm sure commissioner bratten will speak about it tonight, the nine rules of reform is you get the legitimacy, you get your power from the community. and it goes a long long way to making the community and the police department better. >> mayor broom and a then mayor

buttigieg. >> i just wanted to add something that's real prevalent on my mind and it's a transition from what the chief that just spoke said. that is the issue we face as leaders, as mayors within o and i believe as police chiefs. and that is trying to dismantle this us against them mentality and culture that exists not only in our community but throughout the united states. and i believe those of us here in this room today can be a part of changing that culture. i know for me, as a mayor, and i believe it's the same goal for any police chief in in room is that we want the best police department that we can absolutely have. and we want to do whatever we can to make sure that the police

and the community become one. but with these constant narratives that exist when you talk about -- as i've often said, police reform does not mean police rejection. it just means that we all, whether we are the mayor, whether we are the chief of police we have room for improvement. everyone should want a stellar police department that serves their community. and builds a great relationship. so i'm throwing that out there, because i certainly would like to hear about perhaps some additional action steps that can take place to help us get closer to closing that and dismantling that narrative. >> thank you where mayor. mayor buttigieg. >> thank you. as i come to a gathering on this theme and i als always feel i'm tlerning between feeling good

and dpondent. feeling good because there is no -- it seems all of us agree on what to do and all of us are doing it. there doesn't seem to be a fierce controversy over what steps should be taken. or some big idea that we have totally missed. but then despondent because we are doing those things but then still here because we're talking about the issue and hasn't been involved. the south bend the chief and command staff are doing all the same thing. going to community events, lots of foot patrols, recruiting from neighborhoods and communities affected. we have a civilian board that makes -- actually it's an unusually powerful one in that the chief makes a recommendation to them on discipline. and they make the final decision instead of the other way around. although some in the community doesn't feel like it counts because they're appointed by the mayor. we're doing the group violence

have sbrengs with the vienlts network and david kennedy which to me is valuable not just because of the actual impact is has on gun finals because you can't do it unless you pull together a community coalition to make it happen which means all the folks have each other on speed dial for when something else oh goes on. we have a career procedure for what to do with officer involved shooting. i like going as many years as possible without one of those we madding to have two in two weeks. both of them were ruled justified in one case one very good data point i had in the community pools rice lakes was that a witness from the neighborhood was one of the ones who established that the officer did the right thing. but the other part of me is looking at cases like one where we had a 6 people shot at a party, miraculously none were killed. and infuturingly not one of them will tell us what happened. and so tells us that even though

the chief and his team are doing great things we are still not where we need to to be. the question i was hoping to put to the group is do we have any concrete actionable ways of just measuring where police-community replace relations would stand. we thought of one which is to take shot spotter data and compare to 911 data checks at the when there is a shooting check when they call us about it. our theory is the more confident they are in the police department the greater share of the time they will let us know when it happen. that data is noisy. the quicker we are on the scene the less likely. >> we don't have a polling bunlt that could help us measure month by month or year by year on top of all the anecdotes we get and how we are doing on the question of legitimacy in ways we track

and follow and act on. >> chief hair zblies i want to address mayor broom's pinpoint. to his point there are citizen satisfaction surveys that we used to do twice a year we now do once a year. put on a commission made up of professors from local universities. that do that for us. and that will give us an indication of how we are doing with police community relations but how people have -- their perception of crime police per perceptions of police community releases but to her point about the us against them, and we talked about the word accountability. i think the thing we left out was the word transparency. and a lot of times the accountability doesn't really work without full transparency to the community. so accountability through like for example strong policy strong training, strong supervision and

management and strong discipline internally but messaging that externally, that only works internally. but people really need to know that you have that externally. so we are decided to put just about everything we do online and make it available to the citizens. every use of force, every discipline, call for service, response times, citizen complaints, everything that can be measured we make available to the community. over time that -- that relieves some of the questions that citizens would tend to ask. then when there are critical incidents or police involved shooting or critical incident i make it a point of meeting with the immediate family member within the first 12 hours. 12 to 13 hours i'm with them. so at the first press conference or second press conference my opening statement is i just met with the family. and to the extent that i can i'll have them standing there with me.

those -- those things help over time. but i believe we're paeg to internal police culture whereby owe only measure police chief pormds and chuck certainly taut me this. we evaluate police chiefs and departments by the crime fighting strategies, the number of arrests, clearance rates, not necessarily by citizen satisfaction and community perception of our performance. and so i think those citizen satisfaction surveys will go a very long way. and it takes a little bit of work to begin the change internal culture, starting with chiefs all the way down to the newest officer, to not put so much emphasis on just crime fighting strategies but on community policing strategies and building relationships and changing citizen's perceptions how we do it. i often say we always wanted to deliver police services in a way we thought they should be delivered rather than agreeing to deliver the police community services you think you need.

that's where we kind of need to be. >> i've got a question. how many of you have civilian review boards in your communities? by a show of hands. okay. we're going to take two more comments. we're going to go to david kennedy i'm going to go to my chief. three comments and then i'm going to go to our mayor here. so on my right side. >> mayor, there is -- there is a new player in in community sentiment area. and so i'm not endorsing this. i've heard about this. it's interesting. i pass it online on only for informational value. but there is a firm called alucid which believes it can mri with you a smartphone app that as it perk lates out through the

community can bring in more or less realtime kind of community sentiment and legitimacy information. and there are cases that that's statistically meaningful and relatively low overhead eye. >> how is it spelled. >> e-l-u-c-e-d. >> informational only. no interest. can't verify process. but i think things like this coming and may lower the cost of social science research. having said that, we know what the answers are. and this is to thes -- the us versus them question. we are administering for the justice department the national initiative for building community trust in justice. and some people here are involved in that. the urban institute through that did -- this kind of expensive

formal research in the highest crime areas of six american cities. what they found across the country was in -- in the troubled minority crime hot spots -- these are the places where shot spotter says they don't call 911 -- you got very high levels of respect for the law, very high interest in safety and security, a high willingness theoretically to work with the police, a high willingness to do voluntary public safety work, and a very low believe that the police hold themselves accountable or were like them or shared values. and would be respectful. that's not an immediate phenomenon. all right. that -- that set of believes did

not begin with ferguson or the crack epidemic. that attitude is deeply historical. i've been saying a long time -- and i've said this to you -- when white folks talk about the issues and incidents they talk about the issue and incident when black folks talk about them they talk about history. we get the same thing for the lgbtq i community. every people that has been oppressed internalizes and continues as a collective narrative that oppression. and the really big move in this i think is what terry cunningham did 18 months ago now what chief allen is doing in gary, which is to take on the historical reality