Recommendation to request that the Special Order issued on January 16, 2020 become a permanent policy change for the Long Beach Police Department.
District one, district two by district three i. District four. By District five. By District six. By District seven. By District eight, by district nine. High motion carries. Thank you very much. Item 18 you please with the item. Communication from Councilwoman Price Chair. Public Safety Committee recommendation to request that the special order issued on January 16, 2020 become a permanent policy change for the Long Beach Police Department. Yes. Councilman Price, would you like to make any comment on this item? Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I'll be very brief. I think the entire council received our update from the last Public Safety Committee meeting where we outlined a four phased approach to look at a comprehensive approach in our police department, including the peer support and bystander programs, practical application policies and procedures for use of force training and hiring standards and post action review procedures. We're hoping that we can conduct these different phases in parallel with council so that we can incorporate anything we discuss in council at public safety and vice versa. Thank you. What if I become an insider? Sir, as we and I expect that the Public Safety Committee will bring forth certain recommendations, tonight's recommendations is. Susie, you're cutting out. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that I had reached my five minute time limit. Can you hear me? Oh, no, you just started. Go ahead. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, I was I was laying out that the public safety committee is going to have a four step approach to look at things from hiring practices, use of force practices, post action or incident review procedures, and bystander ship and peer support programs. And at the end of every one of those seven. Solutions will bring forth some recommendations to the. You can read our full council. So for their consideration, tonight's recommendation is silly. Once all the procedures that the city has to undertake. You cut it out. This is private. You cut it out. Hello. Mrs. Price. Are you there? Which is why I mean, there. Was. Someone else from the public safety committee that could report. I'll do my best. I really wish that the special order was actually attached to this document because it's pretty meaningful. In January 2016, Long Beach Police Department put forth a number of special orders that that I think should be publicized. And unfortunately, that document isn't what this is. This particular this item I would like for this moment to actually come back, because I think it needs to have the sunshine that it deserves from the public and so forth. I'm not sure Councilman Price is listening, but. I would love to to to to continue this item so that we could. Could actually share that document and make sure that the council had, as they can understand and the public understand what those special orders were, because it's, I think, very important to add that transparency and sunshine on the policy. So. So, Mr. Austin, if I can just. I guess. I'm. Yeah, I apologize. I'm back. Okay, fine. You like to continue? I don't know what Councilman Austin said, but I agree with him. He's on the committee. I just want to thank the the police department's been really open to allowing us to have this process. And as we're doing this process, we're realizing that there's a lot of things that they had already proactively put into place that are part of the national conversation now. So we have to bring those forth in and go through whatever process the city needs to go through to make them permanent order such that they appear in the training and policy manuals, because right now the special orders don't appear in the manuals. They haven't been formalized to that level. And we're hoping that by this recommendation they get formalized. Councilmember Price can can just give a report on what those what the special orders were. Sure. Yes. So I'll start. This is Tom and we can have the chief jump in as well. We're also going to cover this partly in the budget presentation next week as well as we talk about what those special orders were that were implemented both in January and then the ones later with the carotid. So we fully understand the item of of wanting to make those permanent. As Councilmember Price mentions, there is a process that you go through to have police practices and policies put in place in accordance with all labor laws and poobah and and state bargaining and all those things. And so that is the process we will be following. But there are special orders in place right now, and then they'll become permanent as we complete that. So if Chief for Wali want to comment on just the major topics that were included back in January, because that was some very substantial change that P.D. put in place back in January. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Mr. City Manager and Vice Mayor and Council Member. So his comments in the special order specific to tonight is really about use of force in the January 2020 special order that we put in place to implement a lot of changes to our prior policy, which included de-escalation, duty to intervene, sanctity for human life , and outlined those in a pretty lengthy document. So the special order actually affects the entire department and it's implemented when we find an immediate need or need to make an adjustment policy or procedure while we're going through the formalized policy implementation process. And through that process, we can have revisions and adjustments to the special order language. We do a consultation with the city attorney on the policy meeting, confer with labor unions, and then that goes into once we're done with that, it will go into our CPD policy manual. In the meantime, know that special order access policy and as Councilmember Austin mentioned, is very robust. And there there are a lot more components to it that we can discuss at a later time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Cosmos Consequentialist, do you still want to delay this or. No? I think it was explained here, so I don't think we need to delay it. But I would request that the staff provide a memo with all of those special orders to the entire council so that we know exactly what we're doing here tonight. I think the Public Safety Committee made a recommendation to bring it forward of the city council to support those those those special orders. Adding the weight of the city council behind these policy changes, I think is very, very important. So I would ask that you support what's before. Us this evening. Thank you very much. Contribution. Do you want to speak on the side? Yes. I'm just sorting through my book. I don't see any backup material, so I'm pretty sure these I think I have an idea of what we're talking about. What are we asking the council to do? I think you're talking about, you know, getting a report. On what? What changes city chief implemented? That's something we hear about. But what about what is what is this motion? I'm not clear what we're doing. I don't see any detail. So this is Tom. I'll jump in there. So this is a report coming back from public safety. In in in all fairness, we probably should have kind of, you know, put some of the staff reports behind it. I think this just kind of came as a report from Special Public Safety Committee. We can certainly provide a memo with the various reports of the various special orders. I liken this to kind of a resolution of support. You know, I wouldn't advise that the council change policy without knowing what it is and going through the all the bargaining process. But this is a sense of the council, essentially, that you'd like us to continue making those policies permanent so we can cover that next week. What those what those are in the budget presentation and then also give you actual copies of the policies that the police department is working to make permanent. Okay. I think it's not unfair to to know what I'm I'm sure they're positive, but I just don't have anything in front of me. So I'd like to see what we're endorsing or writing a resolution in support of. And I do remember I did get a memo from Public Safety Committee. I didn't I don't have it in front of me. Um, so is there an opportunity? We're doing a study session. What are we doing? A study session on what our PDAs are going to be working on? We're got a study session scheduled by way of the vote we just took on the reconciliation plan. Is that correct? Yes. It hasn't been scheduled yet. Honestly, our schedule is pretty full until we get through with the budget and then we can start looking at adding some additional study sessions in price. Is there some room to you know, I mean, I'm happy to support it because you have to look at it. But is there some room to do this next week when we deal with public safety? Was a question to Councilman Pryor. Yes can. You hear me? I think you were cutting out. I didn't hear what you said. Can you hear me now? I can hear you now. Okay. Yeah, that's fine with me to continue it till next week. The memo that I drafted for that council is an update of public safety. Did have an overview of some of the special orders, but I think that detailed overview would be fantastic. Okay, good. Thank you. I support that. Is that it in Richardson? Yes. Vice Mayor. Okay, Castle. Councilwoman Pierce. Thank you. Two questions for staff. One is I think that Councilmember Austin brought it up. But I just wanted to be clear, for community members that are engaging in this process, the Public Safety Committee is going through, as Councilmember Price also mentioned, a series of these reviews. What is the process for the city council and the city staff to change policy within the police department? So I'd have to ask the city attorney to help us with that. In general, you know, those types of policies and the operations of departments are delegated to the city manager who delegates them to the departments. We certainly listen to counsel and the council certainly sets overarching policy, but the implementation of specific practices of how things work in the city by charter, it tends to be, you know, under the city manager and under the department. So we can certainly have our city attorney weigh in more and give us a further understanding. I think I think specifically my question is it's not just the department, but the policies with our police officers. It's different from other departments. Right. Often some of these might require us to do a meet and confer. And I'm sure that there are lots of community members that are watching that don't know what a meet and confer is. So you could just talk about that briefly just as a transparency for community members. Yes. In general, under state labor law, any policy that affects the working conditions has to go through certain types of varying bargaining processes with the the labor unions, whether that's in fire police or anywhere else in police. There are additional standards related to state law and post and all of the different training requirements, you know, that they're governed by under the state as well as local policies. Thank you for that. And that can take anywhere from one meeting to 20 meetings some time. So I just want to be transparent with community members while we're doing the work right now and the public safety team is doing the work as well. It takes time to implement some of these because of that that process. The second question that I had. Was around the process for committees because I also just chaired two joint committees. And we just I just kind of assumed that the joint committee, the staff would put the detail in, but it's up to the chair to put those details into the agenda item if we're having a report back. Again, this is I'm assuming we're going to have a lot of key committee meetings through the end of the year with report backs. And just I think to council member Austin and Richardson's points want to make sure that those committee reports are included in the agenda item. So should that be on the council side or is that on the staff side? Now, in general, when the committee meets and has their discussion, when they make whatever motions they're going to make that all, we can't take direction from a committee. And appropriately so. The Chair put this on for the council to to take action. Where I think the breakdown was is normally it is the department's responsibility in the city to help, you know, put forward the the report that came out of the committee, which has been transmitted by the chair. So we will we will tighten that up and provide some more of that assistance. We've already had some of those discussions. Awesome. Thank you. And with that, I support moving this forward to next week. So we're voting today and having a fuller discussion next week during such a conversation. Yeah. Back. You comes home first. I do have any problem coming inside of. Yes. We have Dave Shukla. Time starts now. Hello? Very briefly. I'd like to see this come back in a couple of weeks as we've heard these processes. Are public processes that have pretty well-established norms. I. Don't want to impugn anyone's intentions here. I just I just don't think this is the appropriate way to kind of implement a lot of the changes that we've been talking about. We need to be a lot more careful and deliberate, especially when it comes to California labor laws. Yeah. I mean, I think that that that this work really is the meat of what a lot of the community members have been talking about. And it's really for them to tell me their process. Not from me, but. But just. One last point. I, I really think it's important that this committee, the agenda items that are brought forward by council members, that we will really be intentional about how this is actually supposed to work with the committee. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speakers and control. Good evening. Um, this is an Cantrell. And, uh. I'm glad that some of the council people were as confused as I was about this item, which says. It refers to a special order that was issued on January six, 2020, and that become permanent policy change for the police department. It sounds like tonight. You were saying that this is going to be discussed next week. Um. But the Council is being asked to. O prove this. Without seeing what the policy changes are going to be. I would think since January six, maybe there's been a change in what you were going to ask. The policies of the police department be changed to. So. I will look forward to a list of this in writing which was not included in the staff report and. Hope that when this comes back next week that it'll be more clear and it be things that. Everybody agrees needs to be changed. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Oh. Thank you. Councilwoman Fries, are you okay? I would like to just comment on that on that. Obviously, the Public Safety Committee meetings are open to the public. We actually have public comment at them. And what happened at the last public safety committee meeting was there was a report provided on the special orders. And so we did inquire as a council, I mean, as a committee to the city clerk, what the process for was to get the recommendation before council. So so we did what we were, we were told we were supposed to do, but obviously the special orders aren't included. However, they were discussed at the public meeting that is is preserved and can be viewed. But but I agree would be would have been very helpful to have the special orders. In front of us. I do want to ask the chief, is there somewhere that's publicly accessible where people can access the special orders and policies that's available on a public facing website? Yes, ma'am. Councilmember Price and the rest of the council members. I know a couple of times in different items that have come up. The question has come up about transparency for the police department. And I want everybody to know that's listening out there that all of our policies and the special orders that everybody's asking about are all available online for anybody and everybody to see. We're an open book so you can get on there. You can research with a topic you want and everything our officers are allowed to do or not allowed to do. Our is on our website. So please, when you get an opportunity, please read those. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. And I did do something that I've done as a practice for several years is I do provide a summary of every public safety meeting to the council, the city manager, the city prosecutor, the city attorney, the the public safety chiefs. Just so they understand what we covered in the Public Safety Committee meetings in case they didn't have an opportunity to watch those. And I did do that in the situation so that the council members, at least for tonight, would have that information. Because I knew that the the materials are available online. But if we could, Mr. City Manager, if we could please get a copy of the actual special orders for next week's meeting. That would be very helpful. And I think in the future, if we bring something forward from the Public Safety Committee, we would ask that city staff assist us in augmenting our recommendations so that we're not providing inaccurate information. Certainly so, yes. The way we we like to support our council commissions, we we have somebody assigned to each one in the case of public safety and the police department. And we will work a little bit closer with you to when those reports come out. They really should be the city staff that helps to write that and then work with you to have that formally transmitted as the chair to the committee so that there's a record that we we provide all the all the backup documentation. So we're already changing that process for this particular committee, and we'll provide more support. I appreciate that. And we'll take note of that process for the future. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. The original motion was by Mrs. Brice in the second. Oh, excuse me, Councilman Richardson. I'm sorry. Vice mayor. Okay. So I understand this was this was a business staff didn't presented and it completely understood that it's going to you know, I understand Tom's response. That's going to make sure that, you know, all the committees when it comes to council, there's, you know, the legal review staff review it. It comes back under the title of the chair, but it's been vetted through staff and all the documents are there so that I completely understand. And so what we're voting on tonight, to be clear, that's to continue with our week. Yes. That's what we're voting on. Correct? Right. Thank you. And so we have a first and second phase in the second by Austin Architecture Place Crawfordsville. District one. I. District two. I. District three. I. District four. I. District five. I District six. II. District seven I. District eight. II. District nine.