President and Board of Trustees

123 Madison Street Village of Oak Park Oak Park, Illinois 60302 www.oak-park.us Meeting Minutes President and Board of Trustees Monday, November 14, 2022 6:30 PM Village Hall I. Call to Order Village President Scaman called the Special Meeting to order at 6:30 P.M. II. Roll Call Present: 7- Village President Scaman, Village Trustee Buchanan, Village Trustee Enyia, Village Trustee Parakkat, Village Trustee Robinson, Village Trustee Taglia, and Village Trustee Wesley Absent: 0 III. Agenda Approval It was moved by Village Trustee Taglia, seconded by Village Trustee Parakkat to approve the Agenda. IV. Non-Agenda Public Comment Pamela Tate: Reviewed the proposal that the consultant presented to the Village Board for banning the gas-powered leaf blowers. Disappointed in the phase-in time. Oak Park needs to contribute as much as possible in lowering emissions. Urging the Village Board to move this timeline up and make the ban effective Spring 2023. Yoyo from Colourstar Printing & Packaging: Paper packaging factory in China. Offers reliable paper packaging with a large production capacity of 10M bags per month. V. Regular Agenda A. ID 22-378 Presentation and Discussion on the Village of Oak Park’s Community Safety Project Report Village Manager Jackson said the final community safety project report includes a comprehensive set of recommendations and stated financial implications, of which some are prioritized in the proposed FY23 budget. Another stage may be needed to develop a plan and schedule implementation. He introduced Deputy Village Manager Ahmad Zayyad, Assistant Village Attorney Rasheda Jackson, and BerryDunn Consultant and Principal Agent Michele Weinzetl. Village of Oak Park Page 1 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 Deputy Manager Zayyad said the operational assessment of the Oak Park Police Department (OPPD) includes full management and operational assessments study; audit of the race equity issues, internal and external; recommendations and research for alternative response in traditional police services; and a presentation of successful measures to contribute to fair and impartial policy accomplished in similar communities. Attorney Jackson provided a brief history. In May 2020 after George Floyd's murder, residents pushed to examine OPPD's use of force policies, police training, technologies such as body cameras, and determine ways to improve how police can support the community. In June 2020 the Village Board passed a resolution in support of the Obama Foundation's pledge to address police violence and systemic racism. In August 2020 Attorney Jackson moderated community listening sessions. In October 2020 an RFP was issued for an independent assessment of policing, training, accountability, and community engagement of the OPPD. In October 2021 BerryDunn was selected to help achieve the Village Board's community safety goals. Consultant Weinzetl collected data and interviews, conducted site visits, interviewed stakeholders, and analyzed the data. This last phase of the project is report development. Previous reports presented include an emergent issue memo, calls for services report, and now the final operational assessment report. Deputy Manager Zayyad introduced Consultant Weinzetl as a leader of BerryDunn's public safety practice with a 27-year policing career, 17 as a Chief of Police. They are former president of the IACP Minnesota Chapter, former instructor for St. Cloud State University in Public Safety Leadership, and an expert in 21st century policing and industry best practices. Consultant Weinzetl presented the operational assessment report included in the agenda packets. The Village Board took a recess from 7:49 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. and then entered into discussion. Trustee Robinson asked about the Freedom to Thrive (FTT) comparison and how race/ethnicity is determined for those numbers. Consultant Weinzetl said that is perceived race based on what the officer perceives at the time. Trustee Robinson asked why there are no Hispanic numbers for 2019 through 2021. Consultant Weinzetl said it is due to the way the system was set up so Hispanic may not have been an option. Trustee Robinson asked if it will remain as a permanent gap in our data. Consultant Weinzetl confirmed. Village of Oak Park Page 2 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 Trustee Robinson asked about replacing the RMS system for $2M-$4M rather than upgrading it. Consultant Weinzetl said an upgrade is not recommended because business processes should drive technology needs, not the other way around. The first thing to do is to set the system requirements and include them in the RFP. An upgrade is just the next thing available, which may not meet the requirements and usually requires a system replacement anyway. Trustee Robinson asked about the cost of upgrades and ongoing costs. Consultant Weinzetl responded that there is always a maintenance fee and sometimes vendors stop doing upgrades. A new system will provide the upgrades for a significant period. Trustee Robinson asked how upgrading technology can work in conjunction with training to use that technology and other issues like preparing police to investigate Internet-based crimes. Consultant Weinzetl responded that BerryDunn works with vendors to ensure the right level of training in close proximity to the go-live date. The system needs to be configured correctly in the first place. The $2M-$4M includes preliminary training. The technology requirements to pull cell phone or hard drive data are separate from the RMS. BerryDunn did not create a separate recommendation because most police departments have an outlet for doing that. Trustee Robinson asked about the recommendation to have 4 CSOs that can partially manage the telephone reporting unit responsibilities. Consultant Weinzetl said OPPD has 6 CSOs who staff the desk and monitor arrestees. They may be also able to multi-task incoming call for service telephone responses. The additional 4 recommended would be to staff non-sworn field response. The 6 CSOs number may need to be revisited depending on volume. Trustee Parakkat said this analysis is what is needed to make fact-based decisions around community safety. He asked about graph showing the ability for officers to do additional work. Consultant Weinzetl responded that the current staffing model adds resources during peak volume, which creates more opportunities for officers to do more work. The blue bar in the graph is volume and calls for service, not staffing levels. Ideally staffing should correspond to volume, which is the case with OPPD. Trustee Parakkat asked for the total strength of the department, the number of positions filled, and the duration of vacancies. Consultant Weinzetl said OPPD's allocation is 118 and current staffing is at 99. Police Chief Shatonya Johnson said it has been a steady decline, a lot of which is retirement and some are officers with less than 5 years on the job. Trustee Parakkat asked about the tables showing crime levels and what the theft from motor vehicles is attributable to. Consultant Weinzetl said Village of Oak Park Page 3 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 those are the cases referred to investigations and do not represent the total number of crimes. In actuality the theft from motor vehicles is more like 500. Trustee Parakkat said the trajectory looks alarming. Consultant Weinzetl said investigation units determine case assignments based on solvability and available resources. The theft numbers have theft from motor vehicle embedded in them. Trustee Parakkat liked the zip code-based analysis. He asked if the FTT report addresses the what but not the why. Consultant Weinzetl said the data BerryDunn found was similar to the data FTT found but they came to different conclusions. Drawing a conclusion from data is difficult. BerryDunn did not want to impose a conclusion they could not support and they will keep monitoring the data. Trustee Taglia asked Manager Jackson what items he recommends that can be reasonably addressed next year. Manager Jackson responded that the priorities for FY23 have been articulated. The Village has set aside funding in the CIP budget to update the space planning assumptions for the police department with the next steps of schematic facility design to be selected by the Village Board and then engineering design. The RMS and CAD system is also an emergent issue and the $2M-$4M has been included in the ARPA discussions. The CIP budget also has funding set aside to hire a consultant to help the Village examine its needs and business processes in relation to the study's findings. The operational budget also accounts for the potential need to procure consulting services to continue to respond to all of the recommendations in the BerryDunn report and create an implementation plan for this multi-year project. Trustee Parakkat asked if the RMS system is in the main budget and not ARPA. Manager Jackson confirmed. Trustee Taglia said the consultant piece is important because it will take a large effort that has not been undertaken at the Village previously. He asked if any of this will impact crime and make Oak Park safer. Consultant Weinzetl responded that the goal is to efficiently address the community needs and if the organization is making adjustments, it is expected that improvements will be made in those areas as well. Trustee Wesley said the FTT data issued reports on motor vehicle stops and field stops. He asked which set of data BerryDunn was referring to when it determined it could not come to the same conclusions as FTT. Consultant Weinzetl responded that they saw the same patterns in the data but they interpreted them differently. BerryDunn only received the field data from FTT, not the traffic data. Village of Oak Park Page 4 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 Trustee Wesley asked if BerryDunn has framework for determining the why or if they are leaving that part to the Village. Consultant Weinzetl said determining the why would take a longitudinal study. The question of what is causing the data is an elusive question that they have not seen answered by this kind of data. That's not to say it's not something to be mindful of and seek to understand, like how implicit bias filters into decisions people make about each other. Trustee Wesley asked what the Village can do next to try to reduce the bias using new implementations, policies, training, etc. Consultant Weinzetl said they would be careful to attach bias to these patterns in data. Discussions can be had about what is thought to be happening, but more important is to put a solution in place that adds a control to reduce opportunities for bias. Trustee Wesley asked if the pretextual stops were set as high rather than critical in the report. Consultant Weinzetl replied that the critical items were the ones that came out in the emergent issues report and were identified early in the project. The next step in this process is a reprioritization based on the information in this report. Trustee Wesley asked if a lot of the deficiencies noted in the report were technological and administrative. Consultant Weinzetl responded that the OPPD records system is not meeting its operational needs. Trustee Wesley asked if there recommendations to improve how data is measured short of replacing the RMS system next year. Consultant Weinzetl said throughout the report are recommended interim solutions for system configuration pieces, specifically impartial policing data. Trustee Wesley said the FTT data was released in August 2020. He asked what the Village can do to be more responsive to answering that data. Consultant Weinzetl said they think the report does that and recommends the Village be collecting data better and monitoring it on an ongoing basis. Trustee Wesley asked if any recommendations were included on data that the Village should be disclosing to the public as a matter of transparency instead of requiring them to FOIA it. Consultant Weinzetl responded that many organizations proactively and routinely release the number of investigations, whether there was a sustained outcome, whether there was discipline associated with a sustained violation. If an organization is going to collect impartial policing data, it should publish it, have conversations, and monitor resulting outputs. There are reasons why marginalized communities have trust issues with the government and police. Doing things more proactively may help move that needle and make police departments more successful. Village of Oak Park Page 5 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 President Scaman said she agreed with the trust building. Trustee Buchanan said that the selection of BerryDunn was the will of the previous Village Board. This report confirms to her that OPPD is highly functioning and competent. She wanted to clarify that this report is not a paradigm shift in community safety which would transfer funds from policing to social services. She emphasized seven recommendations that give the opportunity to address systemic racism and bias: discontinuing pretext stops; changing the responses to suspicious activity; broadening CPOC's scope; changing response to suspicious incidents; examining the impartial policing data to identify and remedy bias; changing the ordinance for citation in lieu over arrest for retail theft; and implementing the alternative police response. Consultant Weinzetl responded that those are specific interventions to reduce the opportunity for bias, but the report is a broader totality of the system. Another one is there are significant challenges with getting data out of OPPD's record system. It is best practice for all non-consensual information to be entered into in-house records in addition to CAD. Trustee Enyia thanked OPPD for being open and responsive and helping the Village move forward. He agreed with Trustee Robinson that having some classifications issues can add to the problem. He wondered how the Village can maintain a best practice with officers in the field. He said the first step was getting body cams and asked if this is something that can be addressed now. Consultant Weinzetl responded that it is an imperative and why the emergent issues were determined. It also starts within the organizational culture and the academy and field training. Expectations need to be set clearly and there needs to be monitoring. It starts at the base level with having people in the organization understand the culture of accountability and the reasons why. Trustee Enyia asked if the increase of crimes of theft, burglary, robbery was seen in correlation with what was happening nationally or was it more localized. Consultant Weinzetl said Oak Park is adjacent to a large urban area. Crime doesn't know boundaries. BerryDunn didn't see anything alarming in the crime data. The Village's response to the drive-by shooting was remarkable and what ought to happen. Trustee Enyia asked about OPPD's appropriate responsiveness given the force's low numbers. Consultant Weinzetl said the report talks about multiple unit response and whether there is an over-response issue. BerryDunn regularly recommends that it is up to the sergeant to monitor multiple units responding to a scene. Village of Oak Park Page 6 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 Trustee Enyia asked what the appropriate training for a CSO and how long does the training take. He asked if OPPD can train its officers or will it have to recruit professionals. Consultant Weinzetl said CSOs are already doing some external response. The Village needs to determine what additional calls it wants to send them to and what training will be required. Send a CSO and a police officer and let the CSO do that work while shadowed by a police officer until there is a level of confidence. Trustee Enyia asked how can the community be educated and trained to not always assume something is suspicious. Consultant Weinzetl said police officers are trained all the time on specific articulatable facts and circumstances. Part of it is creating an atmosphere where that has to be documented in every case. Trustee Wesley asked if any data pattern that screamed bias to BerryDunn. Consultant Weinzetl responded that the OPPD search data jumps out at them. Generally traffic stops tend to be random, though what happens after the stop is based on decisional factors. When data shows that a larger proportion of persons of color are searched, that is a decision that is being made and that data is flagged. That is why BerryDunn looked at pretext stops and suspicion and consent to search requirements because those should help reduce the opportunity for bias to enter into those scenarios. Trustee Wesley said FTT data showed 102 stops of people under age 18, only one of which was white. He asked if BerryDunn would say that was random or unbiased. Consultant Weinzetl said that is certainly a very disparate set of numbers. Trustee Enyia wondered if categories can be added to account for instances where a certain type of stop is being sought, like a sting operation. Consultant Weinzetl responded by asking how can data be used in a way to put resources where the challenges are expected to occur. BerryDunn often recommends creating an additional field so it is known if a contact is a result of a directed patrol or intelligence-led policing activity so this subset can be pulled out from the larger data set. President Scaman said she sees this as a beginning to the Village continuing to work with the community for what might be transformational policing in our community. Manager Jackson continues to put people in the right places like Chief Johnson and Interim Deputy Chief Jacobson. The Village can invest in our social service community and provide OPPD the resources they need to be successful, reduce those opportunities for bias and serve all people in our community, and continue to evaluate the data. Trust-building is going to be an ongoing venture. Village of Oak Park Page 7 Printed on 1/18/2023 President and Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes November 14, 2022 Manager Jackson said the Village staff will take a closer look at the interim solutions, particularly related to RMS, to ensure opportunities exist in the budget process for the Village Board to make choices. This effort revolves around technology, infrastructure, and the capacity to respond and is an example of how the Village wants to look at everything organizationally to be more agile and responsive. The goals of safety, sustainability, equity, neighborhoods, and affordability are bold commitments as is the exercise of reviewing an entire police department. There is an opportunity here for the new police chief, Village Board, and staff to really move things forward and emerge better and stronger. President Scaman acknowledged meeting attendees Fire Chief Ron Kobyleski, Deputy Village Manager Lisa Shelley who has worked closely with the Health Department, and DEI Officer Dr. Danielle Walker. VI. Adjourn It was moved by Village Trustee Parakkat, seconded by Village Trustee Enyia to adjourn. Meeting adjourned at 9:17 P.M. Respectfully Submitted, Deputy Clerk Hansen Village of Oak Park Page 8 Printed on 1/18/2023