good evening welcome to our quarterly
town hall with
the city of bexley and the bexley
minority parents alliance
this is the second quarterly town hall
we've done with this format
um but even prior to this over time the
city of bexley has partnered with the
bmpa
and and uh cocky with the mayors and
different
uh events that we've done together and
so it's been a pleasure to continue that
partnership
we're holding these town hall meetings
because we believe that everyone
in our community should feel safe and
welcome in bexley
and in the wake of all of the national
events and local events around
issues of race equity and justice we
want to reaffirm our commitment
we want to reestablish our commitment
and we want to make it clear to all
residents all visitors of the city
how integral that commitment is to all
of our
our day-to-day operations the city and
the ways that we work to shape our
community
and help to lead it so tonight we have a
great
so we have a great program put together
and to kick that off
i would like to turn this over to dr
jonathan baker
thank you ben thank you mayor kessler
that is and good evening everyone
so tonight we're going to have a variety
a a
jam-packed event with a variety of
activities
first of all we're going to kick things
off with updates from our community
groups
those who've been doing excellent work
in the last few minutes uh months
are some grassroots organizations
working together
in the areas of diversity equity
inclusion and of course
uh justice then we're going to move on
to
some more updates locally here uh
what was going on with the city of
bexley
and then we have a little surprise here
with what we're doing with our police
and community
listening sessions that's on the horizon
we have a town hall uh q a with our
panelists and we'll wrap things up
as close to 8 30 as possible
and now you may think to yourself what
are some of the discrete
purposes and expectations for this
meeting monika
go ahead and tell us a little more about
that
monika i think that you are muted on the
loudly i'm here to provide the comic
relief like anyway
um thank you ben the purpose of this
town hall is an opportunity to have a
virtual community
conversation about equity and inclusion
in bexley
and to highlight how we as a community
in partnership with the city can focus
on results-oriented change
this is an important way to listen learn
and grow together
we all must be committed to listening
and learning from each other
after the last town hall meeting we
collaborated with the city to create a
listening sessions
program in order to gather input and
hear the voices of community members in
a meaningful way
the expectations this evening of panel
participants and for those participating
in the question and answer portion
is that people are treated with respect
empathy
and the understanding that everyone
involved this evening is seriously
invested
in a unified community and is operating
in good faith towards the betterment of
all becksy residents
thank you so much in advance for
attending for participating and learning
something new
about the good work that is taking place
in our beloved city
as jonathan mentioned earlier we have a
very very ambitious agenda
so i'll end with a friendly reminder
that everyone is just trying to ensure
bexley residents feel respected
and included now um
turning it over to
thank you monica uh for that overview
and we're gonna do is have each of our
seven or so
community groups give a short brief and
yet powerful
summary of what they've been up to the
last few months now with
they're going to each kind of go with
their uh
their few minutes of time and then when
your slide comes on
then it's going to be on to the next
group starting off with
the bexley anti-racism project with kai
woofer
hello my name is kai woodford i am
i graduated from bexley in 2019 and i
currently study political science with
minors in african american and african
studies
as well as spanish at ohio state um so
at the start of the summer
around early june we formed the bexley
anti-racism project
and as all of you i'm sure aware we
hosted a march on the sixth
we've had community events led by black
yoga host and we did a panel
we've done a ton of stuff and currently
we are working with the district as part
of the equity task force to reform
procedure and policy to do with the
school district and hopefully implement
policy anti-racist policy with the
school district
and further we have been working with
brayer as well
to reform with the police department so
essentially our platform is to educate
mobile mobilize and amplify black voices
in order to create a more equitable
reality for black students in the
district
if there are there any other specific
updates that we've presented
our list of demands if you you can
look at all of our work on the
bexleyarp.org website
everything we've done has been published
there and we've also presented
the district a set of demands um
we've been meeting with the superint
superintendent
and members of the school board and
working on those demands more
specifically but it was a longer list so
we do anticipate it will take time
and we'll also bring our concerns to the
equity task force as well
hopefully we'll work within the task
force to
see the change we hope to enact on a
broader scale
um that's the hope as of present it's
subject to change
as the reality for black students in the
school district does
with time so essentially our purpose is
to serve the interest of the students
thank you so much guy i think dr baker
is your audio working okay
we're having some issues on muting at
the oh oh yeah i'm fine great
thank you so much kai of course
all right next we have
baxter minority alumni association
good evening uh thank you all for
joining us tonight uh
my name is sam marcelino and i'm here to
introduce you
to the bexley minority alumni
association
and i say introduce because uh this is a
relatively new group
but certainly as i'm sure we all agree
it's a very
important one for the community
as a 2005 graduate of bexley high school
it became very clear to me that this was
a type of group that
you know should be supported through our
community that was important moving
forward
uh as we as we look to the future so
when mr brian drury reached out to me
about joining this group it was a
no-brainer the bexley minority alumni
association was
recently organized to help bring
minority alumni together
to help support each other really as we
move forward
in our current careers whether that be
something that we
are looking for in the future in terms
of something that we aspire to achieve
or something that we've already achieved
and we want to
help provide information about to the
younger members or
other people just looking to maybe make
a lateral change in their career
so far we've had a couple meetings to
try and basically organize
everything and get our mission statement
uh
running and organized as a whole
the biggest thing that i think we strive
to achieve is creating a network of
alumni to support each other
and also the community this is going to
include a couple different
aspects including mentoring current
students
hopefully providing some scholarship
opportunities but also
helping the parents you know we want to
be a resource for the
for the bmpa members for their children
but not only their children but for the
parents as well
um as all of us being minorities uh in
in the group itself we've been through
this we've been through bachelor we know
what goes on and so we are always here
if you have an issue that you want to
reach out about
discuss and perhaps get some guidance on
but hopefully
through the work i know kai is a member
as well she's
been a great help in getting everything
organized including mr jury but
certainly if any of you ever have any
questions or would like us to connect
with one of
your children please reach out because
we have
a a lot of people from a lot of
different backgrounds and
we have a great group that's always
there to help you if you need us so as
we get organized here please let us know
how we can be of assistance to you
in the community thanks sam
and now let's go on to spencer from the
bexley races residence against
institutional racism spencer yes thank
you
good evening bexley my name is spencer
cahoon and i'm here speaking on behalf
of brayer
bexley residents against institutional
racism
our mission is to identify and eliminate
structural racism in the city of bexley
and while structural racism exists in
many areas we are currently focused on
police reform
and expect to remain focused on that
area for some time
since our inception early this summer
we've been busy
we've organized a number of public
meetings to educate bexley about the
experiences that our neighbors of color
are having with bexley police
that includes collecting and sharing
experiences of our residents
and slowly converting the audio from the
live events to youtube
so that they can be shared more easily
for people who are not able to attend
additionally we've proposed charter
amendments to the charter review
committee
and discuss them with various members of
city government this includes
anti-racism anti-discrimination and
civil rights commitments
strategic planning around racism and
discrimination elimination
chief of police requirements regarding
hiring contract and annual reviews
a civilian police and guidance police
guidance and review board
that's more extensive than the current
board created by executive order
and changes to the initiative and
referendum process to mirror the process
for the state of ohio
we've also published data showing the
apparent discrimination in police
traffic stops in bexley compared to
nearby communities
we've developed a list of relevant
police reform proposals for
implementation in bexley
we've been collaborating with other
like-minded groups to help get the
message out
as you've already heard and i'm sure
you'll be hearing from more of those
groups tonight
we've been engaging with city council to
support and inform residents
about proposals that reduce or eliminate
discriminatory barriers for people of
color
we've been working to hold our elected
leaders accountable for championing
and enacting meaningful reform that
addresses the structural racism in our
community
and that includes requesting records for
review
after the city's release of the law
enforcement services manual thank you
for that transparency
to see that the police department is
following its stated policies regarding
community relations
we currently have multiple unanswered
requests in this area
we're also reviewing budget and
financial information to look at the
real cost of our current level of
policing services
which has been expanded dramatically
over the last few years
currently more than one in three city
dollars are paid for policing
finally we're fact checking some of the
city's claims in its recent reports
including the city's claim that we're
compliant with the eight can't wait
recommendations for reducing the risk of
police killings
comparing the recently published law
enforcement services manual
to the recommendations shows that we're
not yet compliant with most of them
now we aim to improve life in bexley by
enhancing our community's solidarity
around identifying and eliminating
institutional racism
that impacts our neighbors of color to
make sure that everyone can enjoy the
same benefits of living in bexley
if you'd like to get involved you can
find and like our facebook page to get
updates as we post them
you can also join our facebook group to
join your voice to the conversation
and let us know what's on your mind and
if you like you can share your email
and we'll be happy to add you to our
mailing list regarding upcoming
opportunities to get involved
and please reach out to us if you or
someone you know
has received discriminatory treatment
from our police department
so that we can learn from your
experience and speak with you about
potentially sharing your story
to raise awareness of the problems we
still need to address
so thank you for everyone in attendance
tonight or listening to this after the
fact
for your attention and your commitment
to making our community a better place
for us all
thank you spencer on behalf of bray i
appreciate that
a reminder to our participants that you
can ask questions
by using the q a function in the chat or
the q a function
and we will definitely have a q a
session uh toward this
latter half of this program here
and on to our next community group we're
going to have marguerite j
from darn and in case you didn't know
what darn stood for
developmental assets resource network
uh marguerite hey how are you this is
marguerite with darn darn's been around
in bexley for over 15 years
our um our mission is to
use community assets to meet community
needs
um we started as uh with a conversation
over winter jackets
for uh when my son was a
fresh or a kindergartner at montrose and
it's evolved
into an equity-centered initiative
supporting bexley youth and families
um we run completely confidential so we
get we offer emergency assistance to
families around food
utilities clothing um generally what
happens is school counselors send a
confidential request
that's generally improved and filled
within 48 hours so by the time they
might request a family needs help with
food
needs utilities need sporting equipment
something like that and we can
general only turn it around in about
48 hours and we've done some things
recently we do glasses we've done lice
treatments
we've done tutoring we do some
school-based stuff tutoring
college application and standardized
test fees athletic gear spirit we have a
spirit wear initiative
to make sure that every uh young person
who engages in a sport in bexley gets at
least one piece of spirit wear
we used to do school supplies but that's
mostly been taken over by the ptos
and we also used to make sure that
students had musical instruments
available
but that's been taken over by the music
department
so when we first started about 15 years
ago there were a lot of unmet needs
with community members or the school
district weren't really
um aware of or attuned to
and as we've been able to sort of impact
policy and impact
uh raise an awareness there's been a lot
of community members and city officials
who have stepped up and sort of taken
a lead in some of those things we also
offer holiday help where families can
adopt other families and provide
holiday gift cards and gifts um
about we've given away bikes for
probably 10 years we started probably i
think about eight years ago
the southwest bexley block party as a
way to
more efficiently redistribute recycled
bikes to community members
it's become a full-blown event with food
game
games book giveaways the city of bexley
and the beckett recreation department
have partnered with us from the very
beginning of that event
and over the years our partnership has
expanded to include local organizations
connecting the under resources and
underserved bexley families the bexley
police
come and help us with uh licensing bikes
bexley schools has come come and help
support families
and been part of the book gave away
bexley library impact community action
columbus fire department
comes um so that's a annual event this
year
we didn't you know compove it we didn't
have the big event so we've done
um we did just a more
uh specific bike giveaway and we were
able to do that in both
uh south bexley and north bexley we have
on several occasions
probably two or three times a year
outfitted entire apartments in a
single weekend so one of the things that
back to we have
uh basically darns three old women in a
truck and
families who are in crisis who are
moving to a new location for multiple
reasons
we can post up on darn's website um
the needs and pretty much within a
weekend we can fill
all um
furniture and um housing bedding
kitchen supplies resources in a weekend
so
one of the things about bexley that
makes darn
really um
able to meet needs of under resources
communities there is an enormous amount
of resources investing and
a smaller proportion of families in need
what is also true is from a community
perspective
the families in need in our community
are often unseen
unheard and underserved and so what darn
tries to do is sort of bridge that gap
during the summer we offer access to
summer programming and pool passes
um from we've moved in addition to
responding to
immediate needs to also working with the
district
and the city to change policy so that
we're disrupting sort of the systems
that are in place that keep
those families unheard unseen and under
resourced
um since covet started we've been
providing gift cards an essential
food kroger gift cards for food and
cleaning supplies
we started that in march uh we went
through august
we're on hold right now until we can
replenish our funds we didn't quite plan
like most of us for covid covington
right good point
marguerite now we can also reach you at
darncares.org is that correct yeah i'll
put it in the chat
um but i'll so i'll put our website in
the chat we have a
an upcoming um our hope is to to
start the food program again or the food
gift card program again
because we've had enormous amount of
need now that the unemployment and all
the other
eviction notices are no longer on hold
and we partnered with the city to try to
find a way to make sure that all
families have access
to um high-speed internet so
that's a long but i will put the website
in there and if you have any questions
feel free to reach out to me
thank you margaret i appreciate that
very much and
let's go on to the bexley dei
uh three letters that are very common
these days diversity equity
inclusion and now let's talk with our
dear friend stacy grossman
stacy
hi my name is stacey grossman
and i am a co-chair of the vaccinated ei
or diversity equity and inclusion
organization
our other co-chair is jessica willis and
we have an executive committee
who is includes larry diatley kate mazar
kathy levine and akisa fukuzawa
we wanted to thank you all for inviting
us to speak at tonight's town hall
we are a group of bexley residents who
came together as a grassroots
organization
after the city's diversity and inclusion
initiative disbanded
we after disbanding we regrouped and
became a local grassroots organization
we're comprised of community members
advocating advocating for policies
and practices that eliminate racism in
all forms of inequities in bexley our
vision is that everyone in our community
feels safe
and is treated with respect and dignity
in all contexts
we respect and value diverse life
experiences and work to create an
environment that is inclusive of all
our committees research the problems in
our community and identify best
practices to address them
we seek to engage community members in
understanding those problems
and to build public support for policy
changes
over the summer we worked with members
of council matt klingler
monique lampke and john robinson as well
as the mayor
to craft amendments on diversity equity
and inclusion to the city's strategic
plan
they were adopted in council's meeting
august 11th
we also co-hosted a community discussion
in august via zoom
called an honest dialogue about race it
provided the community an opportunity to
have an open
open and honest discussion with one
another about race and discrimination
we submitted revisions to the charter
review committee in the hopes of
following
a more diverse equitable and inclusive
method of city governance
and we're currently advocating for
reforms to the bexley police department
and collaborating with community members
to strategize
efforts to expand affordable housing our
goal as an organization
is to work towards eliminating bias and
discrimination
within our community so that all who
visit or live here feel welcome
and i can go ahead and add to the chat
our email our website
and how to get in touch with us on
facebook if any of you have any
questions after this event
but thank you thank you to the bmpa and
to the city
for inviting us to speak at tonight's
town hall
thank you stacey very much for that
summary of activities you guys have been
quite busy this summer
and now let's go on to our next group
the bexley
lgbtqia
family a lie ally task force
where is larry at thank you dr baker
yeah there he is hello hi everyone so
um just wanted to introduce our group
the lgbtqia family ally task force and
um you know and i know there are a lot
of letters in there and that's really an
umbrella term used to refer
to many of the diverse numbers within
our community as a whole um
this particular group was brought
together in early may
around a specific situation that
involved a member of our community
during the protests that were happening
in front of dr acton's house
um that included um homophobic language
and we uh actually
and that pulled the group together and a
great
support of many people came together and
we quickly pulled together an agenda
um to address that particular situation
what city
hall at the may 12th meeting and um
we were encouraged by the response of
the city to listen to our requests which
included
um starting the de ni
group back up issuing an apology to the
family that was involved who felt that
the situation was not handled
well um hosting a town hall meeting
which um we're happy to be a part of
tonight
as well as implementing an independent
um committee or
commissioned oversea policies and
practices of our
bexley police department many of these
are the same issues that are being
sought by
other uh the other minority communities
represented here tonight so we are
grateful to be allied with um
pretty much everybody in uh that's
presenting tonight
to rally around our community to make
sure that it isn't
as as inclu inclusive as possible
for our group um aside from that
from what we accomplished in early may
um i know jessica has been talking with
city
council and i have been
thinking about it over the last couple
of months that
our vision um really needs to be focused
around two things
first is advocacy to ensure that our
city and our schools
are following policies that support
include and are sensitive
to our lgbtqia members of the bexley
community
and then the second thing is have more
of a social focus that provides
this community opportunities to get
together share experiences
um enjoy one another's company raise the
visibility of
our community within bexley and meet and
interact with our neighbors and allies
because i know there are a lot of allies
within bexley
we are new so we are just
formulating our agenda and so anyone
that would be
interested in um joining us
we do have a facebook page available um
that's on the slide here i'm happy to
answer questions during q
a um we do have uh the start of an
agenda
and uh we'll be meeting with city
council soon to talk about some of the
things that they're thinking about as
well
so um we look forward to
all the community engagement and all the
good work that all the
our fellow groups are doing here tonight
so um
we thank the city and bmpa for putting
this town hall on thank you
thank you very much larry now this next
trio
is quite uh a group here
they are like the liaisons between the
city council and the community groups so
we have here
the bexley trio of matt
jenn and monique
great thanks so much dr baker my name is
monique lamke and i am one of your betsy
city council members
um we have now for several years had
established council liaisons between
a certain member of city council and
different advocacy
groups the point of having a council
liaison
is just to really have an additional
point of contact so that if there's an
advocacy group
that we are assigned to that we reach
out to them perhaps they have not
interacted with city council before but
it's really an opportunity to have
increased
discussions um and contact with them
as larry uh just mentioned uh he and i
were exchanging some emails this morning
because i am one of the council liaisons
to the lgbtqia group so i look forward
to working with him
i am the council liaison to not only
lgbtqia but also to the bexley
anti-racist
project and i'm very excited to work
with them
all right matt you snooze you lose i'm
going to jump in hi oh
i'm uh jen robinson um i won't repeat
what monique just said but
um i will say that um i i am a city
council member
i am also the chair of the safety and
health committee for city councils so
there's a lot going on
right now and i am really really um
honored to quite frankly to be liaisons
to both the
bexley minority parent alliance group
and the dei and have had opportunities
over
the summer to do some really great work
with both of those groups and
i look forward to continuing that work
and
and to continuing to build relationships
between the city and all of the really
wonderful advocacy groups that have
grown
up in our community over the over the
the last
six to nine months so thanks for having
me and uh
matt you're up
thanks jen uh i'm matt klingler i'm also
a city council member
i first want to say that i was proud to
be a part of the dei group that amended
the city's strategic
plan and we set some defined and
measurable goals with action
items for for the city
and uh and the diversity and advocacy
groups um that i'm proud of and that
that i look forward to
to meeting those goals um i'm also
looking forward to continuing to work
with stephen francis
um and and mayor kessler uh to explore
new ways to diversify our city's
purchasing
um and operating procedures um i am the
council concierge to the darn group so i
look forward to
uh meeting marguerite and the other
folks over there
and helping in any way that i can
thank you for your time and i will
listen
great so i just want to give a big thank
you to all our community groups for
uh participating and giving us updates
you can find
uh their contact information emails
websites etc
in the pdf file
that will be distributed at the end um
so be sure to get in contact and to
you know ask all your questions of them
and get involved
i think now we are going to transition
to
from from what the community was doing
to what bexley
um city hall has been doing in terms of
diversity equity and justice initiatives
both with uh the mayor and with the
police
i'll kick it off to you mr mayor thank
you courtney um
so we're going to cover several things
we've been working on uh over the past
years and months
in the areas of equity and justice and
inclusion and diversity in the city
um we'll start with something that matt
just
alluded to and i'm going to ask monique
lamke who was
also heavily involved in that to kind of
pitch in and talking about this but
several years ago we partnered with
other organizations in the city and
residents
to work on a strategic plan amendment
around diversity and inclusion and that
draft document was
was finalized in i believe the end of
last year
and then went to city council to review
and
through this past six months has really
benefited from
input and feedback from our grassroots
community groups especially the dni
d e and i group so monique if you want
to talk a little bit about what is in
that strategy and what that process
looked like
thank you mayor i would be happy to as
chair of the strategic and judiciary
committee
the resolution 620 to adopt our
strategic plan
came to me and i reached out to council
members robinson
and klingler to assist me with that
throughout the summer we had a series of
meetings with the leadership of
the dei that stacy grossman just alluded
to a few minutes ago
and we really came up with a
collaborative
document which really set four
priorities for
how we wanted to increase diversity
equity and inclusion here in bexley
the first goal was really trying to
welcome new residents and being
proactive
to not only ensure safety and security
but also
to create opportunities for engagement
and sharing and our diverse experiences
here
in the community a second goal was
focusing on police and community
relations and trying to expand ways that
we
could encourage forward-thinking
community engagement between our
residents our police
and increasing our focus on transparency
and reaching those segments of the
community that have been historically
vulnerable to bias the third goal that
we collectively came up with was to
create a great
greater inclusive inclusive
bexley community we wanted to
make sure that we were making every
effort to combat racism and
discrimination
and that we were treating everyone with
compassion
and reasonable reasonableness and also
trying to keep in an open mind as much
as possible
and then the fourth goal uh was really
focused on reforming
internal city policies and operations
as council member klingler just
mentioned a few minutes ago
um one of the things that we've talked
about with respect to that fourth goal
was
trying to not only increase the
diversity of
city staff and individuals who
volunteered their precious time to serve
on our boards commissions and committees
also requiring annual training of
city staff and elected officials but
also
performing a purchasing audit and
creating policies
so that we can expand the scope of
purchasing from
minority-owned businesses and then we
also thought as part of goal 4 that we
wanted to
ensure transparency and
objective fat findings for any incidence
of reported police bias
with those four goals and with the
collective input
of the leadership of dei which i believe
was comprised of other leadership of
other
advocacy groups we came up with a
meaningful substantive document and i'm
proud to say that your city council
unanimously uh voted to pass that um as
many williams mentioned at the
august 11th city council meeting
we'll continue to make every effort to
put that plan into place and to continue
to listen
thank you monique um so
we're going to cover several other
things we've been working on and one of
the things that's really been at the
center of a lot of the work over the
past several months
has been a reform in the way that the
city processes complaints
and this is complaints across the board
for any department of the city but it
does include the police department
the reason it's important to us to be
able to hear complaints
and to be able to investigate incidents
of
bias or discrimination or or really any
improper
incidents in the part of city employees
is because in doing so not only can we
get to the root of issues that are
occurring
but we can also hold our staff
accountable it's important to us
that um as we as we learn about any
instances occur
that we are able to follow up with those
incidents both to the victims
but also to employees that may have been
involved in that
and so for many years of course we've
had a complaint process
um but we uh we modernized it into the
1990s
by putting it online back in 2018
and then this year we made the forum
easier to fill out
we made sure that it was ubiquitous
across our website so it's
it shows up in all sorts of sidebars
throughout the website
and then we wanted to make sure that
anyone filling that form out would
understand
that it was going to be received and
that there was an accountability matrix
in place for that
and so the first thing that we did was
we announced
the creation of the bexley citizen
review
advisory board the way this functions
is that if the complaint has been filed
with the city
and the city reviews it and then
provides a response to the complaint
and the complainant doesn't feel
satisfied with that response feels that
that response is inadequate
or that they're not being heard or or
that there's been there needs to be
further investigation and follow-up they
have the right to appeal that decision
uh the the format that we have in place
is that
that appeal would go from the department
to
to me as the administrator of the city
and so what i did was i created a
citizens review advisory board via
executive order on june 9
and the reason for that was instead of
just going straight
to my office where i would review
something i wanted to create a
third-party
transparent mechanism where we would
have a review board of citizens
that would review the complaint they
would have full access to all of the
records
that we had access to internally and
their findings and their report are a
matter of public record
to be published on our website i chose
a diverse group of residents
with a diverse skill set and with
diverse experiences
to serve on that review advisory board
and
it went into effect immediately on june
9. now this is a process that
i had been thinking about for a while we
put together
some thoughts on it and some notes and
started socializing it internally a
year or two ago and um in the wake of
everything that's been going on in our
country um
we had a moment where we were able to
move forward with this and
and push forward with something that in
the past have been uh difficult to
achieve
so i'm proud of this this board um and i
want to introduce you to
its members um first off i'd like to
introduce you to brian drewery
um brian are you with us yes i am
thank you ben uh my name is brian drury
i'm a longtime
uh resident of bexley i live on grandin
avenue
i'm currently the president of the
bexley minority parent alliance i'm a
trustee with the historical society
and former uh president of the
uh bexley athletic boosters uh
one of the things from there is that i
am a concerned citizen who
has done a lot of different things for
the community
and uh one of the things i really uh
believe is i'm a servant of the
community and so i was uh
blessed to take on this responsibility
and and definitely
spent the time to research and uh and
be involved with the city so we turned
over to becky
thank you um so i'm becky guzman
and um my day job i've been with the
franklin county public defender
for about 20 years now law clerk and
attorney
time there so i really enjoy advocating
for others
um i'm a member of the supreme court
of ohio's language services committee
i've i'm raising third generation bexley
residents
um and my 30 seconds is over
thank you
and we also have with us tonight lee
nathan
you're on mute right now
there we go i'm lee nathan's i live on
south remington road i've been a bexley
resident since 1984.
but before that i earned a master's
degree in police administration
i worked in teaching school in inner
city cleveland
for the cleveland police department and
was also on the staff of the howard
university medical school
so i'm aware of disparities faced by
minorities
in education health care and the
administration of justice
since 2007 i've been a member of the
bexley civil service commission
and as such have been tasked with
responsibilities
of selecting police officers with
character and ability um
i'm delighted to be a member of the
citizen review
advisory board um i am
committed to having uh our bexley
city employees accountable and
treating every citizen with respect and
dignity
thanks thank you i i want to say
you know something that all of the
members of the
crb have in common is and and that i've
appreciated in
them over the years is their commitment
to um impartiality their commitment to
listening and learning and i've seen it
exhibited every single one of the
members of the
of the citizen review advisory board um
brian jury over the years has been
somebody who's always sought me out and
and shared experiences that he's heard
about and look to
to try to figure out how we can work
together in in
improving city processes and
relationships with the community
becky guzman has been a great advisor on
mayor's court reforms that we're going
to
talk about here in a little bit and has
has shown herself to be
a fair and open-minded and
incredibly intelligent of course like
all of our of all these members
throughout that process and lee nathan's
while
you heard his background and admitted
law enforcement administration um his
consistent
um support for the concept of law
enforcement
lee has also been very quick to always
talk about if there's a problem we need
to fix it if there's something that
needs to be adjusted we have to adjust
it
we need to be on the cutting edge of
best practices we need to be seeking to
constantly improve
and so that's a that's a consistent
message among all of these board members
and um i'm grateful to have them serving
in this capacity
so creating a crb um
was a step in the race but another
another piece of the complaint uh
process that
we kept hearing about was the difficulty
of anyone who's obviously been
a victim of any improper
abuse of power discrimination bias is
going to be reticent to complain
especially to the department
that um that was the initiator of that
issue
and so we needed to be fair to
employees to get a fair hearing on any
complaint
but also we wanted to create a system
where complainants felt that they had
security
that they had even the potential for
confidentiality
and that they had the ability to
understand the process and make informed
decisions
from a third party that could give them
good solid advice
and so we created something that we sort
of
dreamt up as we talked through how to
solve that problem
and that is we created our complaint
liaison program um
started to brainstorm that right
alongside the creation of the citizen
review advisory board
took a month or two to interview several
different candidates to the position
we were initially thinking we would have
one complaint liaison
and we ended up with two so uh i want to
introduce you this evening to sam
marcelina
and mary younger and ask you guys to
just talk a little bit about your
background and
and what makes you interested in this
program
well sam you want me to start go ahead
all right um so my name is mary younger
and um i've just retired from the
franklin county public defender's office
after spending my entire career there
doing criminal defense work
so i've done indigent work for my whole
career
and my husband was a law enforcement
officer
for his and for pretty much his entire
career he was
34 years as a law enforcement officer so
my family basically is in
has been criminal defense and law
enforcement
and uh but even and
my present family lives in bexley
they live on north remington and uh
more importantly my 18 month
granddaughter will be going to maryland
so i have um much interest
in what happens in bexley at this
particular time
because the people who i love the most
right now live there
but i've always that aside
my interest in individual rights
through my criminal defense are very
important to me and that's what's caused
me to
uh to want to be involved in this
particular position
and hopefully i can do something thank
you
sam as i said earlier i am a graduate of
bexley high school and i currently
reside in
bexley with my wife down the street from
uh from mr jury
uh professionally i'm an attorney at the
law firm of bark and mises in columbus
ohio where
i represent individuals um in various
matters throughout the state and country
you know my interest in this position as
i've said before it came from a personal
experience but it wasn't one that i had
in bexley it was another city after
interaction with police
i truly felt discriminated against and
when i went to file a complaint with
that
uh city against the police department i
essentially got a call from the police
chief who
completely ignored my concerns and that
interaction alone was enough to ensure
that i never returned
you know i'll never return to that city
and personally i never want anyone to
have that same experience here in bexley
so therefore this program really means a
lot to me is i find it integral to
ensuring that
bexley is a welcoming place for each and
every person that enters
its city limits so please for those of
you who have joined us tonight if you
have any
questions any issues any concerns please
please please reach out to mary or
myself um
our position really can only be
successful if we hear from you
uh this is kind of nobody's this is a
a little ad-lib so to speak but please
stay out the buzz and
make something happen by reaching out to
the people that can truly help you
we really are here to help and nothing
can get done
by complaining on facebook we want to be
here and be your
liaison through the process so please we
look forward to hearing from you if you
need us
thank you thank you sam thank you mary
um
i want to share with anyone who's on the
call uh the the complaint process is
outlined on the city website
under uh backstage.org slash complaint
or you could just find it in the drop
down in the about menu
um we are about to redo our website so
that might be slightly different in the
coming months but uh
on on that website it goes through how
to file a complaint
it goes through the complaint liaison
program along with the information sheet
associated that
it has the complaint form and uh
how to handle it if you're unsighted
satisfied with that complaint
on the com on the information sheet for
our complete liaison program our contact
information phone numbers emails
for the complaint liaison members that
you just met this evening
so again our hope in having created this
program
both the citizen review advisory board
and the complaint liaison program
is to have created an environment where
we're systemically
getting rid of barriers to getting to
the root of issues that occur in the
city and making sure that
everyone is accountable no matter their
position it's
incredibly important to us and so we'll
continue to
to to work on that we'll continue to
pursue that that mission and that goal
and i'm going to pass this uh back to
you courtney thank you so much
um and thank you everybody for sharing
too i think
it is um exciting and um exhilarating to
see
how many things can come out of you know
being able to put our heads together be
able to work to move forward
uh the first town hall that we had was
seems like forever ago back in june june
11th
and one of the things that came out of
it was just that the community was so
um concerned about what bexley would be
doing as far as uh
community policing and keeping um
us fair and equitable for all of our
citizens and
people that um live in and around bexley
as well
um you know so much has happened
since the george floyd um
since his death there have been protests
uh
probably thousands upon thousands of
protests
and that's great because people are
getting um
to voice their opinions but the thing
that we really want to see
is what kinds of effectual changes will
be made so now we're going to kind of
transition into
letting the both of the mayor and the
chief of police speak
about the the concrete solid things that
they've been doing to make changes here
within bexley i'll start off with the
mayor
i'm actually going to pass it over to
the chief we're going to talk about
one of our commitments at the last uh a
town hall was to
to provide a report to the community and
also to publish our
police policies online uh chief you want
to talk about that
yes sir thank you i am chief reinhardt
if you don't know me
the community group that i have the
honor of representing tonight
are the professional dedicated men and
women of the bexley police department
the people that have delivered
incredible service to our community for
more years than i have been there
i'm excited to talk about the police
report to the community
titled the 2020 community policing
report
it's a four-part report three parts are
on
are on the website now the city website
now and i believe the fourth will be up
there very soon
it is packed full of information
that explains a lot of questions people
have had a lot of misinformation
that's been in our community about the
police department and and how we do
business and if you haven't if you're
concerned about any of those issues you
haven't had a chance to look at
this document i sure hope you do uh
just a few of the highlights from the
table of contents
uh are it speaks about the training of
our police department
our hiring and training of our officers
is second to none
anywhere that information doesn't often
get out and it's detailed in this report
demographic data that explains why
some of our traffic stops and some of
our activity don't mirror
don't appear to fairly mirror uh the
demographics of our community
they include a lot of other information
the ohio collaborative
our organization was one of the first to
meet the certification requirements of
the high collaborative
that information is in this report talks
about our detective bureau
some of the things that they do property
crime statistics arrests
officer recruitment and officer
diversity our police
department and i'm very proud of this
and i hope you are too
we have over 16 percent of our sworn
officers
are are not white uh we're a very
diverse agency and that happened
because we attract some of the top tier
finest candidates anywhere even from out
of state
calls for service use of force
statistics we don't have
we have a minimal amount of use of force
and i'll speak about that a little bit
later tonight
uh vehicular pedestrian bicycle safety
and accident data
citizens complaints our actual
complaints
are minimal uh the stories that are told
in the community
never made it to us by complaints uh
but i'm telling you our complaints the
actual where somebody steps up and
complains are
are minimal community engagement 2020
initiatives some of the things we're
doing
our participation in the bexley white
house narcotics partnership
the effects of that there's just great
information in the report uh the mayor's
court report organizational structure
and our organization
organizational profile and i do have to
say
we're a small police department we're
leaned
by design and the majority of our budget
dollars
go to police services on the street
we don't have a lot of people in the
building we don't have a large
administrative staff
so actually when it came when it came to
compiling uh this incredible document
i owe i owe great kudos to our mayor
who who took from his time and spent a
ton of time
packaging all this good information into
a
format that's accessible and
understandable
and as i said critically critically it
explains
and and some of the misinformation that
has been floating around in our
community so i really
would urge you to take time read this
report
especially when you hear stories about
us that don't sound quite right
read the report i think you'll really be
enlightened
uh police policies one of the
commitments we made were to post our
police policies online
we partnered with a national company
called lexapool
uh several years ago to help us ensure
that our policies uh meet state and
federal guidelines
and that our policies aren't biased and
do not promote any type of
discriminatory activity
and and that's been a great partnership
with us it's still a very much a work in
process
but in progress and we are working hard
to adapt some of the best policies that
were that were recommended us by
lexapool the uh those policies i think
it's like 545 pages of policy
are now posted online you can access
those at the uh
on the whitney city website so again i
need to thank the mayor
uh for all of his hard work and
dedication he took a vacation and worked
about 60 hours a week during his
vacation helping us put this together
and i'm incredibly appreciative of that
uh your honor
uh thank you chief i'm gonna actually
i'm gonna put you on the spot here and
i'm gonna push back on something you
said
so uh uh one of one of the things you
you mentioned was and it is true that we
have a very
small number of formal complaints and
that is detailed in the report
uh but you also mentioned uh informal
complaints or i think you might have
said facebook and
and i think you and i both know that
there are complaints that we hear
through the grapevine or through
facebook
that um you know sometimes it's really
hard for us to figure out
what occurred or when it occurred uh
sometimes it's maybe a little bit easier
but there's a
larger number of complaints that don't
show up in the formal process would you
agree with that chief
oh yes sir and and as you know and
many uh members of our community and our
council know even when we hear a rumor
of a complaint
we do everything we can to find out the
facts surrounding that
incident uh we we've had body cameras
for more than a year
we've had in-car digital cameras with
audio recording
for a lot of years that those two items
themselves
have dispelled some of the rumors in our
community
they've helped clarify and and and
and actually exonerate police officers
on incidents that never rose to be a
complaint you know we're very fact
driven
and whenever i hear anything and
whenever the mayor or city council
members hear anything a complaint
and and how especially if it is
race-based i mean that's that's our
biggest concern
and we look for body camera footage
and we look for car camera footage and
we keep that footage for a while
so we have been able to dispel some
rumors
uh in our community and i'm very glad
that we have those cameras
have served us very well and i think
chief
you know one of the reasons for the
complaint process uh honing and the the
expansion with
the citizen revisory board and with the
complaint liaisons is
i think it's important that when any
resident any citizen feels that they
have not been treated fairly
that uh that they the the the best way
for us to address that is through that
formal process so that we can
you know if there has been an issue so
that we can go and we can go through a
disciplinary process
and the accountability uh that is so
needed
uh would be able to be put in place and
so i guess i just wanted to
to point that out that there's a
difference in a formal complaint and an
informal complaint while we will when we
do
a look into anything we hear about uh
going through a formal process allows us
through
our collective bargaining negotiated
agreements to go through
a formal discipline if indicated so i
just wanted to to
point to that and i know uh courtney's
probably about to tell me i'm running
out of time on this topic
so you know we just talked about
um obviously uh we talked about
enforcement
we talked about the complaint process uh
but there's a whole other branch
of um of this entire process that often
does not go
discussed or addressed and that is our
mayor's court
now mayor's court is a little bit of a
misnomer i just want to make that clear
it is not presided over by the mayor we
have a professional pit magistrate thank
goodness
who sits in mayor's court we have our
own
prosecuting attorney and we've made a
couple changes so that our mayor's court
is coming in line with some real
cutting-edge practices in order to make
sure that it's a just
a maximally just and equitable court so
the difference between mayor's court and
going downtown to franklin county is
that basically
most misdemeanors go through our local
courts
and they don't go down to the county so
misdemeanors can include
vehicular accidents speeding tickets
theft
certain types of even domestic violence
fall under the misdemeanor
code as opposed to felony and so we've
over the past several years been
enacting reforms that are
truly putting us uh above other mayor
courts mayor's courts in ohio
and in fact providing a higher level of
service than
uh the county court system uh two major
reforms that i want to talk about is
is the first one that we put in place
last year is we began to staff a public
defender
we're the only court in central ohio
that does this i actually don't know of
any others in ohio but there certainly
could be um our public defender
is on site during mayor's court hours if
any defendant comes in and passes the
same income test that they would pass at
the county
under a felony charge to get a public
defender they're given access to a
public defender
and our public defender works with them
and for them um i believe that this is
an incredibly important piece
of our justice puzzle and it's one that
i'm really happy we put this piece in
place
so that everybody has access to legal
assistance
even for charges that might not seem
large at the face of it
the reality is that there is a a
circular
um imprisonment of debt that occurs
in our judicial system with indigent
defendants who can't pay for court fees
and costs and end up trapped
by a cycle of inability to get a license
and ability to pay bench warrants and
we are doing everything we can on our
part to make sure that we're not
perpetuating that environment in bexley
the public defender is a big piece of
that the next thing we've been we've
been working on since last year and
we're
currently incorporating into our court
rules is a fee and fine free court in
bexley
and what this is is not that nobody ever
has to pay a fee
but if you can't afford fees if you are
within the
indigent population or you pass the same
income threshold that you would pass for
a public defender
eligibility what we're doing is we're
giving you as the defendant the right
the express right not just maybe an
option of the magistrate but you have
the right
to in lieu of payment to serve public
service
at a living wage not a minimum wage but
at a calculated living wage
you would be able to serve public
service in lieu of court fees and fines
again an incredibly important piece of
getting defendants
away from the debt prison that is
currently occurring in our judicial
system
it's not just a local phenomenon this
has happened in the county level uh
probably more so but even though we are
small jurisdiction even though we have a
small footprint
we wanted to make sure that we're doing
our part not to perpetuate that
we've made other reforms in mayor's
court for behind a new prosecutor
working to expand victims advocacy
services to victims
and we'll continue to do that just this
week i learned
from talking to a prosecutor about
several other
items for us to explore and we'll
continue to do that
thank you mayor oh sorry brian yes
uh so we just kind of want to talk about
um our
our police listening sessions so
i didn't know if you had anything else
okay yes i do i do think it's really
important brian that we cover this uh
this last slide uh and chief i'm gonna
back over to you if we can talk about a
uh
the review of our police policy and our
practice
i'm trying to get this to work again
mayor uh the review of our
police policy and our practice sir is
that what you said yes sir
is my is my mute on our uh
our review of our p uh of our policy
certainly is has partnered us with again
i said lexapol
we have changed uh we've changed all of
our use of force
to mir eight can't wait and we train
to that standard uh
i mean and of course we train on all of
our policy
every day through questions lex what's
another service that lexical
provides to us uh every officer has to
answer a series of questions every day
on the policies we highlight
and in most recent times uh of course
it's been anti-bias
uh diverse policing those type issues
that we're continually reminding our
police officers of
you know i'm quick to say there are some
of the finest people in law enforcement
anywhere
and and and that's because of our
training our hiring and our training
program but
they're not perfect people none of us
are perfect people and they need to
remind it they need reminded
in how we communicate with the diverse
elements of our community
how that impacts somebody we do that
through policy training
does that make any sense to you mayor
yeah so uh
through policy training and then i think
we talked about um
you know we've been talking over this
we've been talking for years but over
the past several months about
some other policies and practices that
we're looking at
you just talked about communication um i
think we've been talking about field
interview
uh practice and understanding and
empathy um
we've even been looking at uh maybe in
lieu of
enforced static speed enforcement
looking at traffic cameras
as a way to take uh officer discretion
away from that particular field
and uh to um to go
uh kind of beyond and and and focus
not so much on those main and broad
corridors but focus on
more traditional community policing and
then um i think
i don't know if you want to add anything
that chief uh you know one of the things
you were about to say i think you were
talking about uh culture and about
um uh you moving culture through
through training and to practice and
policy yeah i'm sorry sir i was on the
wrong slide but you've got to you've had
the correct slide right in front of me
i was looking at another computer uh
sorry about that
but you know i said uh speaking about
police culture
from our last town hall i said you can't
change
culture and i said that in a casual
moment i don't know who i was speaking
to
that's not the point i meant to convey
the the
the point i tried to make and failed
miserably at during our last town hall
meeting was
culture organizational culture is
incredibly hard to change
yes it can be changed it's incredibly
hard and
i was speaking of my good fortune when i
came to the bexley police department in
07
i was speaking of my good fortune that
the culture there was that of a
community
policing organization i mean this
organization was
burrowed into the tactics of community
policing before it was even a buzzword
and now it's
certainly an overused buzzword in law
enforcement but what i mean by community
policing was
our officers have always made it uh
their mainstay to know our residents to
know who they are to be friendly with
them
to wave at our residents to help them in
any way we can
well beyond the standard elements of law
enforcement
and and i think anybody watching this
from our community knows anybody who's
been at bexley for a long period of time
knows
we have been able to hire and retain
some of the finest individuals
in law enforcement anywhere so that was
my point that i was so fortunate
to inherit that here already uh yes
culture can be changed
but our basic culture of community
policing in the bexley police department
is just incredible uh when the world
blew up over over uh george floyd and
incidents before and after
i thought we have a police department
that can be held up as a model
of how loving and caring and being
empathetic in your community should look
we haven't been able to make that happen
but the men and women of our of our
organization are certainly
worthy of that now i i know in my heart
i know the police officer discretion
when it comes to traffic citations and
traffic enforcement
police officer discretion by good
professional non-biased police officers
is
is the most the very best tool for
everybody but i understand
there are some parts of our community
that that think we're not unbiased and
they question
who we write tickets to and who we and
the cars that we stop the drivers that
we stop
and that's why we're looking we're
researching
static traffic cameras speed cameras
that do that work without any officer
interaction
i i have mixed emotions about it but
i know mayor you and i and many others
are committed
to to making certain our community knows
that that we're committed to a non-bias
environment for our residents
thank you chief and and knowing that
we've run out we're running along on
time here
i think the last thing we wanted to
cover was uh listening sessions that
we've been developing now for
several months and here with us today uh
we have
um some of our organizers facilitators
of session and brian jury
is going to kick us up on that thank you
ben
uh so the uh bmpa has been working with
the
uh bexley police department and our
facilitators over the past two months
uh this kind of established guidelines
and uh you know
what should go into that so we want to
make certain that
you know when people come to these
sessions they feel comfortable
they don't feel uh that you know they
are going to be grilled by
the officers about a specific situation
and and be
listened to and so we wanted to develop
a program
that would uh so allow the people to
listen and be heard
but also take some of those actions and
plans from that process
and share that back with the police from
there so that we establish so
uh we are very very fortunate from there
that you know and i had the opportunity
to work with both of them
uh sean carter and diane strasser for
their who have
uh you know been able to bring us to
this whole process so i'm going to
introduce them and let them take over
diane you want to start kind of talking
about what you've been working on and
then i'll talk about kind of where we're
our next steps sure so uh
first of all i'd like to say what an
honor and a privilege it is
to be with all of you this evening and
um
i'm quite delighted that i'm with a
group of people who are truly
dedicated to getting themselves in some
good trouble to make a difference in the
world
so these lessening listening sessions
um were a dream child of our
mayor who's quite the visionary to
include a therapist in this whole
movement he called me one day after a
meeting and he said
diane i've just gotten out of a meeting
and nobody was listening to each other
and i'm wondering if you can help us
with that
and so i've been a psychotherapist for
many years
the name of my business is successful
relationships
and i've worked with groups all over the
country on
establishing and maintaining good
relationships even in the face of
conflict
and so i'm going to read to you the goal
of our listening sessions and it is the
goal of the listening session
is to build bridges of understanding and
trust
between the police department and
members of bexley minority community
to inform future police policy and
practice
to have discussions that will result in
healing and change at the individual
and collective level and to move past
hurt and towards creating a new dynamic
between our police department and all of
our citizens
so as brian mentioned there's been
a lot of work behind the scenes we met
with the bmpa
i think uh two or three times this
summer
trying to come up with a program that
would make sense for our community
to participate in i've personally met
with
um i believe 22
police officers to just talk to them and
tell them a little bit about what we're
doing
and get their input
mayor kessler asked us initially to
focus
on a theme of listening
that leads to understanding that leads
to empathizing
and so we have come up with a program
sean and i where we are
ready to launch on monday
our sessions will be held at the bexley
public library
in the auditorium we're asking people to
commit to
three sessions three sessions in the
series
and our hope is
to help people to really listen to each
other
even when there might be conflict or a
diverse opinion
to really just sit and be able to listen
and we want to
ask questions that lead to answers
that the whole community can use in
order to build
the bridge that we want to build between
our minority citizens
and the police department and we think
it's
vitally important that community members
have as much input as possible
so we're hoping that we're going to have
representatives from all socioeconomic
groups
come to these meetings
i think it's important that we can have
these
different groups represented it's so
easy to get middle
and upper middle class people involved
and it's harder sometimes
when people are struggling in their own
life to get them involved in things like
this but that's our goal
to have a real representative
group from the community
i'm in the process of creating a
handbook that i would like to
give our citizens that have resources in
them
and so i would ask if you have anything
that you think
would be beneficial to include in the
handbook
i would really love to receive that from
you our first session is going to be
monday
this coming monday and we are fully
aware that this is going to be
a program that gets developed over time
it's going to take a while any change
takes a while and developing any program
takes a while
and so um i would really welcome
any input from you on what you'd like to
see
included in this program so thank you
again for
the honor of being included in this
wonderful group
okay sean thank you
yeah i um i'll be really really really
brief i
recognize that we're on a short timeline
so um one
there's a really quickly what i'll say
is that there's this tension
between talking and doing and what
um my intent for this process is to be
uh kind of threading the needle between
those two tensions and recognizing
that in order for us to actually develop
a plan that's actionable
that can hold folks accountable and can
be mindful of the lived experiences
of your citizenry you have to first
create the conditions
that will provide that information and
so uh
what what my goal is is to foster
the environment where folks can be two
things one safe
but then also brave and the only way
that you can do that is if you
put structure into the environment and
that that structure
allows for the thoughtful dialogue and
engagement that will kind of uncover
unearth some of those things that have
been buried for quite a long time
um i've heard us talk about the murder
of george floyd
and i've heard of talk about how it kind
of uh compelled
these various agencies or these
organizations to come together
to rally around the the citizens of
bexley
but the one thing that's true is that
the individual citizen needs voice too
an individual citizen needs a platform
to to amplify their voice and their
concerns
and then taking that information and
turning it into something real
and so that's the hope for the listening
sessions is how do you go about doing
that
um diane did a good job of kind of
laying out how that goes
and or how that process will look um so
i won't go
down that road again but i'll say that
um my expertise in this space
has has evolved over time and and i've
had the fortune uh
the good fortune of working in um
complex environments
uh both in my professional world of
child welfare
but also as a consultant in the
educational arena and also serving as a
uh
community safety commission commissioner
for the city of columbus
as well as serving on the chief of
police for the city of columbus advisory
board
and so um bringing that uh perspective
and that understanding of not only what
it means to to
to hear what your constituents are
saying but then apply that to
complex environments is going to be an
important aspect
to to develop the nuance needed in order
to
create a plan that is one actionable but
then also sustainable over time
and so that's the goal that i have for
this work and i think uh
uh you you it the the reality is is that
the the quality of that process is only
reliant on the participation of the
citizens
and so whatever we need to do to make
that true for those who
don't often get heard uh we have to make
those uh
concessions possible so you know whether
these locations change or whether we
change ours all those things are on the
table for us to to make sure that we're
reaching the constituents that um need
amplified and need access to these
conversations
so that we can really unearth the things
that are important to our citiz
our city as we move forward so thanks
brian
that over to from there uh monika with
q a yes thank you brian we do have a
number of questions that have been
posted
some of which i think have been answered
um
during the course of the evening so um i
will just jump right in
and direct the first question
to the mayor and to the police chief
thank you greg we appreciate you um
participating and posting a question
the question is what changes have been
made
as a result of investigations into
complaints that were turned
that were determined to be valid i'll
repeat the question
what changes have been made as a result
of
investigations into complaints that were
determined
to be valid i will say that our time is
kind of limited
so we'll try to get a quick answer
chief mayor i was deferring to the mayor
but i'll go ahead and speak to that
manika thank you you know
the biggest change that has been made to
complaints that were concerned to be
valid
were in how we communicate with people
of color
people of minority status in our
community sometimes some of the things
that we
say in the routine practice of police
business
uh aren't received the way that we
intended for them to be received
so we've had to relook and rethink
our empathy how we speak to people how
some of the phrases that we use could be
could be offensive to people that's one
of the biggest most immediate changes
that we talk about
every day
thank you chief mayor is there anything
else that you would like to add or do
you think the chief covered it
no i think the chief covered i'd like to
again state that like if you look at the
complaint stats from our police report
we've had
um we've had a very few formal
complaints and so
um we do feel it important to get
complaints that are formal so that we
can go through the
through a full investigation process in
that but i i think that communication
empathy has been has been a
a continuous learning lesson i think um
as we look at
practice and we look at the ways that we
interact with different segments of our
community and
different ways that we're we're
communicating and
um and and uh to spin of
of our policing uh duties i think that
the more
we understand the concerns the more that
we see
and observe interactions that cause
that cause trauma that cause
[Music]
a rift between us and our minority
community the more that we can learn as
an agency and the more that we can
develop and continue to own our
practices
thank you mayor the next question um
comes from carmen and we she would like
to know
how are incidents that are perceived as
being
racially biased differentiated from
incidents
that are actually racially biased
uh is that for me yes sir that question
i believe is directed to the police
department
gosh well we look at them all the same
way uh because
you never know whether it was really
racially biased
or just perceived to be that way and
it's one thing for me to feel confident
that something's not biased because i
know the men and women of the ages i
work by their side
but we know that's not good enough
my residence need to know was not
intentionally biased
so i think whenever there's a story in
the community that we hear
or there's a complaint we approach it
and treat it as though
it's the real thing until we have
evidence
or recordings that prove otherwise so we
treat them the same way
thank you chief thank you very much the
next question
i will direct to
the coordinators of the listening
sessions
and it is what happened to the first
round
of listening sessions that question has
come from an anonymous attendee
so um the question is what happened with
the first
round of listening sessions um
diane and um mayor
i think i think this was maybe alluding
to there was a comment
i read or somebody forwarded me on
facebook that the listening sessions had
uh
had already had already uh stopped or
something and
we were still in the process of monika
playing with with you and other members
of bmpa
so we hadn't yet started them so and as
diane and sean talked about
they haven't the the first round the
first
group of i think six or seven
participants is uh beginning next week
diane and sean you want to talk about
that yeah this is
the first round is beginning um this
monday at six o'clock
there was no other first round we have
been
trying to plan these uh sessions all
summer long
so we are very happy that we're now
ready to take the
uh sessions to the community at last so
this will be the first round so for
people who are listening
please contact me and sign up i would be
very happy to meet you and have you be
uh a participant the only thing i'll add
is that
in order for a process to be sustained
it must be intentional
and so the planning that goes into
putting listening sessions together
has to be thoughtful and it has to be
compelling but it also has to be
organized in order for it to be
sustained
and so i think the the role that i want
to play in this is to ensure
that it's sustainable because we're
putting together a thoughtful process
so that uh when you come you are one
welcome
but then also feel like you're a part of
something that's going to go somewhere
and it's not just um another opportunity
for you to vent it's really
uh expressing and getting involved in
dialogue that will lead to some change
thank you thank you very much for your
responses um
a time for the listening sessions yeah
so i just wanted to point out that
on the uh on the front page of our
website at the top and we'll
keep this at the top and we'll continue
to advertise it through the newsletter
and some various
resources is how to get involved in the
listening session so there's an online
form
this is right at the front page of
vexa.org you would go to that form
and and fill out information about what
you hope to accomplish and then diane or
sean will contact you
and so uh that is how to get involved
and the times are are set with different
people have different
schedules and so one of the things that
sean and diane are doing is
is is working around schedules to make
sure that we can get groups together
right times for different groups um so
they're part of that as well
thank you sir um we're going to try to
clip
we do have a couple more questions i
know we want to respect everyone's time
and end promptly but i do want to get
through
a couple more questions the next
question is uh
for the sheriff from an anonymous
attendee
and the question is sheriff
do you feel the racial reform issues
that other groups are stating on this
call
or are an issue or are not
an issue and are more of a
misunderstanding
you know if somebody in our community
thinks they're an issue
then they're an issue and as i said
earlier uh
while i know the men and women of the
agency and i may think
it's a misunderstanding it's it's an
issue
as long as our community thinks it is
and it's my goal
my job to try and explain and give
information
whether it be recordings or whatever we
have to
to show to people in our community that
uh
what it really is whether it's valid or
whether it's not so yes it's an issue
thank you sir uh two i think i'm gonna
ask two more questions very quickly
another from an anonymous attendee and
i'm going to direct this question to our
city council member
miss jen robinson um
the the person says i've been a resident
for 15 years
and have never heard of a police officer
going
and meeting my kids at a school i don't
know
any of their names yeah
um well i can say that there's not in my
time in council in my time in being
in bexley there's not been a formal
program and chief maybe you can
um you know give me some more
information on this if there is more to
give
there's not been a a formal program
where officers will go
to particular schools and interact with
kids at particular times but i do know
uh that there has been times um
over the past how years when
a uh when officers will go to
particularly like montrose and
they'll be playing basketball with the
kids on the playground or and i believe
that there actually was a program with
uh montrose elementary where
the students would um do field trips to
the bexley police department
um and that is something that we've
actually been discussing in in kind of
the planning phases
uh building more educational
opportunities for our police officers
and the youth of our community so that
we don't have
people who live in our community who
aren't familiar with
the the police that are there to serve
and protect so
um i think it is the answer to that
question is it really depends on where
you live and what programs each of the
individual schools may have
have organized and it's something that's
certainly on the radar and something
that we would like to continue doing as
we move forward
thank you ma'am i appreciate it the next
question is from
miss amber tony and this question
is specifically directed towards the
police department
and it is how can we trust there will be
there will not be a shooting of a black
individual in our community
you know that's a good question we trust
there will not be a shooting of a black
individual in our community that's a
good question and
and i appreciate that question because i
know it's near dear to the heart of many
of our residents
they say past performance is the is the
most
the strongest indicator of future
performance
uh this police this police department
has never shot
in fact we've only had one shooting
incident in its history
and it was not a person of color we
train very hard
we train quarterly on we train more with
our firearms in any surrounding agency
and we train to not use that level of
force
unless an officer has to do to save his
life or somebody else's life
that's a top training issue with us we
have
never shot a black resident or a black
person coming to town and i can tell you
right now that will
never happen in this agency unless the
officer
has to use that level of force to save
somebody's life
as i said past performance we've never
done it
thank you sir um in the interest of time
and respecting everyone's time
i really appreciate everyone um putting
forth their questions
and everyone getting um responding as
quickly as possible
we really appreciate that um so thank
you very much for your questions and
thank you for your commitment to the
community
and now i'm going to turn the floor over
to miss courtney baker she's going to
close us out all right
okay great so thank you um
everyone for participating i just want
to say thank you so much
um to all of our panelists for showing
up for telling us about all the things
that are going on
um i wanted to thank all of our um
presenters guests chief reinhardt
of course uh the mayor um
i wanted to just quickly um
talk about the things that are going on
with bmpa and the ways that you can
get involved um
so on monday there will be a meeting
on zoom um there we go
um it will be at 6 30 to 8.
it's the monthly zoom meeting you can
find more information about
the bmpa meeting on um
bexleyminorityparents.org
um and then some more exciting things uh
next thursday at
uh next thursday evening there will be a
zoom
discussion about racism in criminal
justice system
monterey moderated by both monika and
becky who are on this call i mean you
can find more information on the city of
bexley facebook page or the city of
bexley
or bexley.org and then next friday
i'm really excited about this one
since it is now hispanic heritage month
there will be a food truck celebration
on main street
um and there will be a live five piece
mariachi band
starting at five um you can order from
a number of different restaurants and
get well fed
um i think are we allowing everybody to
give like one
last closing call or are we
not no i think we we have time for that
if we have panelists that want to have
some closing thoughts
panelists with closing we don't that's
okay
so i just um mayor do you want me to
to wrap up a little bit and i'll throw
it back to you one one
quick thing if you don't mind if i jump
in this
script here i just did see a question
from miss levine
in regards to the assurances and
protections that
the mayor and the chief police can
provide that a person of color who
submits a formal complaint to the
bpd will not be a victim of retaliation
and uh
mayor please jump in but mary and i
um can work in our
capacity in in pursuing
your interests on an anonymous basis and
and a bit more in terms of mayor kessler
if you want to touch on that i just want
to point it out because i think it is
important towards our discussion tonight
yeah sam that's exactly right i mean i
think that's exactly why we created that
program
we've heard that concern before i can
tell you from having been in the room
whenever
uh any sort of complaint has been
investigated whether formal or informal
that there's never any talk of
retaliation there's never uh
you know the the earnest the earnest
position of different departments and
you understand police department's not
the only department that has uh
has received complaints but the earnest
desire of every department is to
be responsive and to
uh you know try to get back to anybody
who feels that they have been wrong
wrongfully treated and so um i have
never heard
any sentiment and in the in the i guess
now
13 years that i have served as an
elected official of the city of bexley
that
attracts with retaliation but
nonetheless i understand why there's a
trust gap
and that's why we created the complaint
liaison program
and the citizen review advisory board in
order to help alleviate those concerns
and
those liaisons are there expressly for
the purpose of people who feel
intimidated by that system
thank you sam
so if there are no other comments um i
just want to
thank everybody again for being a part
of this quarterly town hall
um the next uh quarterly town hall will
be
december 3rd um so details are still
coming forth with that be sure to look
you know keep looking on bexley.org and
the best city of actually
facebook page um i just again
you know 2020 has proved that
we have a desperate need for change and
we have
done so much but we have so much further
to go
sometimes doing the work can be
um encouraging sometimes it can be
exhilarating sometimes it can be
downright frustrating it takes a lot and
it really does take the community and i
i'm so grateful that everybody has been
um looking for ways to how to make this
community that we love so much better
so with that i'm just going to leave you
with one quote from uh teddy roosevelt
he says
do what you can with what you have
with where you are on that i'll throw it
back to the mayor
thank you so much courtney um you know
tonight's tonight's meeting uh reminds
me and anytime we talk about these
issues
um that are burning issues that are
urgent issues that
are issues that demand attention and
response
um that while we continue to earnestly
work
on what we've worked on there is much
more work to do and you know we're not
always going to agree on how to do that
work
we're not always going to believe that
um the same path is the right path
but you are in bexley i can
assure you that you are surrounded by
elected officials that
earnestly and authentically care in this
space
and will continue to work in this space
as long as we're in these positions
and i urge you to if you feel passionate
about this
bring up issues to city council bring up
issues to me consider
joining a board or commission consider
running for city council or for mayor or
for any public office
um our community benefits from a
diversity of voices
um and this is something that no none of
us can do alone uh no
no single person can show
or effectuate change in a silo so while
we talked about specific initiatives
tonight
i guarantee you there are other specific
initiatives to come
things we're working on things we don't
even know yet that we will be pursuing
and we'll be pursuing them because of
the common voice
and the collective wisdom of our
community so thank you for participating
tonight
please continue to participate and those
these public forums the public forum of
city council
um the different ones that courtney just
talked about coming up this weekend and
weeks to follow
are all invaluable ways to contribute
and to add your voice
uh to the dialogue so thank you so much
i want to thank you the bexley minority
parents alliance
for all of uh your support in putting
this together uh you know the bmpa and
all the groups that we heard from
tonight
have consistently advocated for keeping
these conversations going
moving that ball forward um not just
resting on
sound bites and on aspirations but
rather
pointing to very specific actions and uh
metrics
so thank you so much i don't want to i
don't want to end
a uh webinar on saying metrics
uh so um courtney i am
i am actually going to pass it right
back to you for the actual end
close and then we will see you guys up
next uh
at our next uh at our next event well
the only thing
mr mayor that i can add is if you have
not filled out your senses be sure to do
that
and don't forget to vote everyone please
stay well stay healthy take care have a
great evening
bye