Daniel, yes, you got people signed up for public comment at the moment, I moment okay for me to call a meeting to order three o'clock.
Let me make sure that the audio
would be numbers you And I don't fool around. Yeah, turn the phone
off. I gave her some you did, I'm gonna take some more. No,
okay, not on
our second leg. We'll give it to her. Ready. Commissioner, yes, okay, go ahead. Would you might as well, is that what you want me
to do? Because I can't read that. Well, I had eye surgery yesterday. You mind just calling me no order, we're just going and we'll adjourn it. When you say we adjourn it if we don't have a form after public comment,
I can't read it, recording, in progress.
Thank you. Afternoon. Good afternoon.
Mr. Willie Bell from District Four, I'm going to call the meeting to order at this time where we have with Apple and chapter and Mike exert via zoom, give us the open prayer.
Well, good afternoon, everyone and my My name is Commander Chaplain Mike Dexter, let us have a word of prayer. Well, Father, we thank you so much, and thank you for this opportunity to commune and fellowship and pray with our Board of police commissioners, Father, we pray for the commissioners, oh God that you just bless them, not only in this meeting, but in life in general. Oh God, we pray that You would bless our chief of police. Bless his hands and his mind and his heart as he makes decisions and build programs for the the police officers, and for the city of Detroit, we pray for the police officer, oh God that you give them the wisdom they need to do their job and thank you for their commitment, for doing their job and bring them all back home safely as once they get off their ship. Oh God, we pray for the city of Detroit, for you to keep her safe and keep her as a city that we all love okay. And we just pray now that you will just guide the commissioners as they go on with their meeting. Father, bless their agenda, and we pray that Your Will will be done throughout this day in their agenda and their decisions. We thank you so much. In Jesus name, we pray amen.
Amen. Thank you, chaplain. Do the fact we do not have a quorum. We're gonna move to public comment. That's on the wood.
Thank you, Commissioner. We're going to start with I
miss Bernice Smith, Lieutenant Mark young and then Miss Williams.
Good afternoon, commissioners, and to you, my dear, I just want to let you know those that don't know I'm a very happy woman today because I have a birthday that's coming up, which I will be 93 years old, that you know that is strictly, strictly good to me. I still have part of my mind. I do have a little forgiveness, which is normal for people my age. But anyway, what I really want to tell you this past Sunday, normally, after church, I go to my son's house and we have family dinner there. But this Sunday, we went to one of the relatives house that was located in a very beautiful neighborhood, I think call it Rosedale, or something that's off of Grand River, beautiful homes and everything to make a long story short, I just want to let you know, and the public to know, you can come together, and it was over 14 of us and have a beautiful dinner and a good time together. No one had a gun on them. No one had any dispute about anything. We all discussed things at the dining table, those that were sitting with me at the dining room table, but I just had to come and tell you that you can go together and have a family get together and not be aggravating you don't have and we had drinks too, believe it or not, and nobody had the tendency to want to drink and found and gone. And this is what's so disgusting to me. With our city, we have so much going on when you can't come and be together as a family. I don't understand it. If we can do it all, the rest of the Detroiters can do that, stop hearing guns and stop arguing at any kind of get together that you have. And that's what I want to tell everybody, not only here in the city of Detroit, wherever you can hear my voice, think before you do anything that's stupid by carrying gun. And we're having too much crime going on here in our city. And I hate to even look at my TV or watch my TV. My time is up. I can see it myself. Jones. Don't have to tell me anyway. Thanks and everyone. Have a beautiful and a safe holiday. I pray for all of you. Thank you. Thank
you. Next speaker, I
just want to thank mother Bernice for that, for that must message of love and community support. Thank you very much for reminding us all of our responsibility to not be violent, to not carry guns and and to like you do, and other God fearing people, thank you.
Good afternoon. The City of Detroit needs a pride campaign. If, if everybody saw how far the city has came, based on this police department, they would look at it different. I look at my city as prayers, progress and praise. City has came a long way, and the police department has done a fabulous job in doing that, not always getting the progress, not always getting the praise for doing that. I'm concerned about the men and women that I represent as the summer starts this the hazards, the challenges and the sacrifice they will make throughout the summer, working literally seven days a week, including details I'm concerned about their health, safety and welfare, because it does have a total now. I'm also very proud to stand before you today in 2024 we did not have a line of duty death. That's also a testament to the heroism, the courage and the dedication and the commitment of the men and women that's out there on the streets protecting each other while they protect the citizens. And I salute them and take my hat off to them, other cities model after us. I go to several meetings, sit on several boards, and they say, I want to hear what y'all doing, because we're starting to do it, from the community violence intervention to our community relations to our real time crime center to everything, Detroit needs a pride campaign, because many of the young people in this city don't realize how far we came. They sacrifice and risk their freedom, their lives, their health. They should be protectors of the city, not destroyers of it. And I take my hat off to the men and women of the Detroit Police Department, not only the people that I represent, but the people that sacrifice that we're blue and first responders.
Thank you very kindly. Next speaker,
Miss Williams, so
two minutes, and I got to, oh, Lord, Sam, I got rubber. You got four? Oh,
she says, Hey, give it up. He's sure. All
right, good evening, board and everyone. I'm Minister Eric blunt from Sacred Heart Catholic church right here in Detroit, sometimes you could know when you're onto something. We didn't get to fully develop my thoughts and concerns about what I consider to be these fake law enforcement badges last week, but Commissioner woods, Chairperson woods, please recognize that chairperson Bell is a grown man. You should not have interrupted him last week when he wanted to explain these looking like law enforcement badges. But no, it's easy to see I'm on to something because you could have easily just let him explain whatever it is he thought he could explain. But no one has ever explained what real benefit there is to a commissioner having what looks like a law enforcement badge. Now other professions do, and they do have a license. You guys don't have a license. You're not required to have a license. Um, Mother Bernice, the last time we were here, we were in agreement in the misbehavior of Commissioner Bernard. So I just want to make sure everyone knows that at least once, brother, mother, Bernice and I both agreed I yield my time. Mr.
Chair, yes, the good minister asking for explanation of these badges that we carry. I've been around since 1974 with the first commissioner, and notwithstanding Commissioner are either appointed or elected. In my case, I'm elected by the people, and we all take an oath of office by the city clerk, by city charter. So we entitled to that I think we earned that and completely identify ourselves to the citizen, also to dp personnel as a commissioner and we have oversight as you well. Know, it's a very meaningful role that we serve in this community. Thank you. Thank
you. And I welcome anybody to come sign up for this job. You know, to come do it, you know. You know, get in line. You know, obviously it's not a lie out there in the city of Detroit. And I think that's disheartening when these men and women are sacrificing their time and their service. And I stand by my words as of last week, you know, I don't you know, you know, but go ahead. Sorry, Miss Williams, you going to take his 30 and,
yeah, you can do it like that. Hello, everyone through the chair. Last week, I was speaking about integrity and building character, and I don't care how you dress it up when you disrespect your badge and disrespect the laws and disrespect my constitutional rights. So yesterday, I'm on the bus. I was in the shelter for 14 months in the system. Make a long story short, it was a, I don't know if he was an officer or he was facilitating the officers that were going to work on the Woodward bus. I got off the bus go into the pizzeria Hopper Johns next to the third now, these two men and women got off the bus before me on Woodward and Seward, and they came into the pizzeria and they asked about any extra food. The woman replied and said, It's too early for that. So I'm a human. I have empathy for that. I asked them, are you hungry? They said, Yes. I said, we can I purchase you a pizza? So turned out the officers that I purchased the pizza for Detroit police officers, and I have an issue with that, when they get paid for being a police officer, that $3,000 signing bonus, and they was getting paid for being in the academy. So at the end of the day, when I'm saying character, integrity and honesty, you can dress it up any type of way you want to, but if you are violating laws and not complying to them and disrespecting your badge, it's consequences and continuing to violate my constitutional rights. So with that being said, I see it every day, and I only got 15 minutes. I mean, 15 seconds left, you get his 30 seconds. Okay, so I've been talking here, complaining about officers living in these shelters, taking up bed spaces for over a year. And if I had your job, would President, seat, chair, however you want me to label
however you want to call it okay. So
I say to myself, Okay. Miss Williams been speaking about this for quite some time. So in the way you guys comply, internal or external, facilitate to the person, the legal team were internal affairs, if they can't handle it, another agency outside of the Detroit Police Department, because from Michelle Hall, Lashonda will Houston, Rogers, Jennifer Jody, Jay Kennedy. What's her name, Kenny. I could go down the list, even a six, five trans called Cleo. Identify all these people. Show me these pictures. They on the Detroit website, graduating, getting badges. I'm not talking about the old schools. I'm talking about the ones that they recruited inside of these shelters. So I could not make this up. If I win, are we
looking on time? Thank you. Thank you.
Next speaker that's the last that's the last big in the
room, go to zoom.
First speaker will be Peggy Goodwin. Miss Goodwin will go to Lucius Conway.
You may be heard
Good afternoon. This is Peggy Goodwin. I represent the Detroit towing Association. I'm also a member of the tow rate commission, and I wanted to commend the board of police commissioners for an excellent tow workshop toe committee meeting last night. It was very informative, and a lot of that information really needs to get out to the broader community. The staff, I want to commend Commissioner banks and Commissioner Liberty Smith and Captain Adams and the staff, bopc staff, were doing an excellent job. I do believe the Detroit Police do excellent work. However, I think there is a system error, if you will. At your last meeting, I noticed that one of the commissioners rightfully asked, you know, why is why are your expenses so much higher than your revenue when they presented their budget and the CFO replied, Because Detroit police are not a revenue generating organization, which was the correct answer. Totally agree with that, and was glad to hear that. However, if you look at what they're doing with towing, it does look as if they are trying to generate revenue. They are hiring tow truck drivers when you have professionally trained police authorized tours in the city and on contract, they are spending a lot of money trying to improve the grinil and Grand River impound lots when you have acres of zoning compliant impound lots in the city. So I don't criticize the police for doing that. I know they're part of a larger system, but I do say I think that's the wrong use of their expertise, especially when you have the talent, the ethical towers that you have on contract. So I just would take a look at that. You think we can talk about that further as we go along? I want to thank Good luck healing with your eye surgery. Commissioner,
please
keep her online. Do not hang up. Keep her online. Can you hear me now?
I'll allow her to talk just a second. Sir, okay, oh, she,
we can reach out to her. We'll make sure she get a good time, but I want to have her to come still here. Are you? Are you still there? Now,
Miss Goodwin, I I'm here. Okay. Can you hear me? I certainly can. Yes.
Okay, all right, thank you for attending that meeting. It was very important for us to be able to get that done, and I want to work with you in the chair of the tow committee so that we can have you come do a presentation, and have some of your people come do a presentation before the full board, because I think it's vitally important that the citizens of the city, Detroit, understand and hear some of the things your concerns and whatever we can do to try to mediate any type of situations that's within our powers, we would Do any and everything to be able to make that happen. So I think you had a few more seconds left. Give her 3040, more seconds so that she could finish her comments before I interrupt her. Okay. You there, miss. Good. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now. Thank
you, Chairperson woods, I appreciate that, and we would love to make a presentation. And I just want to add, you know, I know a lot of the confusion in the community is why private towers charge what they do, because there's no law to say they can. So they can charge what they you know, private towers, I'm not talking about police authorized tours. One of the things I suggested, I don't even know if it can be done, but maybe one of the committees or or the city as a whole, can kind of put out there what the police authorized tow rates are as a way to educate other towers on maybe what they should be charging. Because we as a tow rate commission with the Auditor General, Captain Adams was on that commission as well, and others did a lot of research nationally and locally to come up with those rates. So it wasn't a haphazard decision by any stretch. We had several meetings like you as volunteers, and so we did a lot of work to come up with those rates. So I just wanted to mention that, okay,
we look forward to working with you so that we can educate the community and so that we can make sure that citizens of the city of Detroit are not being gouged. Very kindly, and look forward to having you present or members of your team to present before the full board and for the for the for the community. All right,
Good afternoon, commissioners and Detroit, I'm revolutionist. Conway a long time. SSD, advocate, and you're right in candidate for District Two for the November 4 election, I come before you as a neighbor, a pastor and someone who believes deeply in the power of community to reshape policing in our city. On May 23 you received two ground breaking blueprints, the Detroit mobile community empowerment workshop proposal and the Office of the Chief investigators written investigative Protocol Manual. These aren't dusty reports gathering cobwebs. They're living guides to transparency, accountability and true partnership between Detroiters and those sworn to protect us. But right now, our system is straining under its own delays. The citizen complaints data set shows hundreds of open investigations, some stretching years with no public status updates. The Detroiters often wait months just for basic acknowledgement of their complaints. The despite drafting an OCI manual, there is still no published timeline or dashboard showing how and how quickly cases move from intake to resolution without clear protocols. Trust erodes requests for dash cam video and incident reports routinely receive repeated 30 to 60 day extension beyond the 10 business day statutory deadline having families in the dark and threatening due process violations as we edge closer to November, we've got to remember that your legacy, commissioners isn't measured in re election or titles, but in the groundwork you lay now. Will you leave behind an office hallowed by indecision or a platform brimming with clear, community driven policies, published timelines and accountability metrics, it is time to get to work.
Well, chief investigator, I beg you to respond to that, because that is totally off basis, and I was saying absolutely wrong information. And so speak to that Chief Investigator, sure
through the chair and certainly to Mr. Conway, we've reported at least for the last three or four weeks where we are as relates to closing cases in the Office of the Chief Investigator. For the first four months of this year, we've closed over 910 cases, which almost equals to everything that we did last year. For the first time this year, we have a fully staffed investigative staff, which is allowing us to close as many cases. Just today alone, we brought 60 cases to the board of police commissioners for them to be signed off on that our investigators have completed. Our process is projected by the end of the year, we will be completely done with all backlog cases as relates to prior, prior cases that were filed with our office. This honorable board voted last week to allow us to expedite our investigations through the SOP process. We've stringently followed the SOP the standard operating procedures of the Office of the Chief Investigator. We dare not got in front of the the horse, but with the changes that were just made, we although, again, we just completed 910 cases up through April, we are projecting an additional 1600 cases to be closed by the end of November of this year, taking us again out of the backlog. So our staff, the investigators and the admin staff are working diligently. We're also bringing on two additional task workers that will start Monday to help eliminate those back law cases, and we may bring on a couple of other staff members as well to work as task workers for that and this honorable board, through the Detroit City Council, allowed us to bring on two additional demands to help process these cases, because it is a tremendous work on behalf of our administrative staff, but the Office of the Chief Investigator is working very diligently and within the confines of The SOP to make sure these cases are resolved. Yes,
Commissioner Bernard,
can you be kind enough to share the SOP with the board secretary so that it can be posted on our website, so that Miss Mr. Connelly, I believe it was and others can see what the process is for investigating complaints. Sure,
I sent out an email yesterday in response to a request to the SOP. The second the board secretary has the SOP, I emailed it another copy to the office, to the secretary's office yesterday so they absolutely have it. However, I would hope that the SOP not to be published at this point. Here's why. The FOP was written back in 2013
it was updated, I think, back in 2022
maybe 2122 there are some significant punctuation errors, there are some significant grammatical errors, there are some outlining errors on the SOP, and there are some things that were valid at the time. The SOP was originally written back in 2011 to 2013 when it was initially approved by the federal consent decree. That we won't do anymore because it just doesn't apply anymore. Those things need to be adjusted. I would not want to post a document that is less than perfect to represent this board and represent what we do. We do have a plan in doing that, in revising that plan, and being able to ship it over to them right now, all of our efforts, and I mean all of our efforts, are focused on 100% eliminating the backlog, and I promise you, if you'll give us an opportunity to eliminate the backlog, the SOP, which we follow, will be the new SOP, the revised SOP that your policy committee and the board will have to approve whatever changes we make, obviously, then it could be posted in a correct manner, where all mistakes will be taken out of that of that document.
Well, you
can have someone proofread a document and certainly correct mistakes, but I think that the urgency that the community feels, and that obviously the board feels on this issue, is it's important that that SOP be published, so it needs to be a priority for someone of your 30 people over there to sit down and get it together so that it can be posted.
I will say, I would say, we get it posted as soon as we possibly can. So, yeah, absolutely, as soon as possible we can,
in the spirit of excellence, you know, so that the first
request we've got, we've gotten requests in writing for it to be posted as well. Because we are changing, as you know, we
get a ton of requests in writing. I don't mean that we respond saying
to the policy committee, because we have changed the citizen complaint policy, and it's a big deal. It's going to be a big deal this meeting that we're having next Tuesday. And of course, so much of the old policy has been cut out. As you know, about eight pages of it have been cut out so and we refer to this to this standard operating procedure. So the SOP now is the backup to the policy, and that's the other reason that we need to publish it. We
certainly can post it as is.
I'm sorry, no, not
going to post it as is. Not we go. We'll vote for that. What the board pleasure is. We want it done in the spirit of excellence, and we want it done correctly, you know. So, you know, so we can have a vote on it when we have a quorum on how we need to proceed on that, you know so, but I would say we need to act expeditiously to be able to get it done to the commissioners point and so whatever we need to do to overhaul it. I know that the main thing has been these citizen complaints and things of that nature. And we have plans in place, and we need to pull it out. Let's work with the policy I mean, the policy chair to break over to the policy committee. What need to be wet, need to be corrected and stuff like that. Get it correct and get it done. Yes, Chairman,
could we indicate how many complaints we have see so far this year?
This year we have received, and I'm giving you a ballpark figure through the chair, this year I know we've received over 500 complaints this year, so we're not just dealing with the old complaints, but we're also dealing with the new ones as well.
Yeah, yeah. And then we will have more administrative staff on board. In July, we will be hiring two more full time workers over there. The administrative staff over there is burnt out to the umpteenth power, you know, and that's why we had to fight hard with the City Council and the mayor's office to bring in the two additional people. If, you know, get in line, sign up and do the job, you know, if you want to work for us, you know, we put it out there, we post it and stuff. You think you can get the job done. Sign up for the job, you know. But we will work expeditiously to get this stuff done. Yeah, Mr.
Chairman, proofreading is something I can do, and most of the people in this room can do effectively. So I mean, and if there's things that the department wants to, wants to add, that's great too, right? That can also be proof read, but the kicking the can down the down the road is creating too many problems in the community. It really, really is
what problems it is creating in the community. The problem with
this gentleman just stated in others. I mean, we don't look like we're our most important thing, of course, is citizen complaints and dealing with police officers. And those complaints are against officers, and we have to address this situation as if it's a priority. You can just keep kicking it down the road.
Well, those are two different issues, though, madam, they
aren't. The complaints are against officers, and most of them, of course, we are able to resolve. But that's not the point. The point is, is that is, is that the complaints need to be timely handled. I mean, this three months, six months, nine months a year, whatever it is, it makes no sense. It makes us look like we're totally incompetent.
These folders come to me, Commissioner Bell, and if there's a few of us on this board that handle these folders, and we worked tirelessly to respond to the staff over there to get this stuff done. If every last one of the commissioners take these folders and stuff like that, I'm sure that'd be very, very helpful, you know, and get them turned in in a timely manner, you know. So, but the that don't negate the investigations that's going on over there. They are pushing them out in record number and we expect that they will continue to do that with some of the decisions we just made. Is going to expedite it even more. We look to get out of this backlog by the end of the year, which is miraculous, you know, as a powerful Yeah, and through the chair
to to Madam Chairperson of the policy committee, we emailed the current SOP to the policy staff at the vopc office, so it's there and we will certainly weigh in on it, and we'll see if we can get some some supervisors to look over the SOP and suggest changes that we can also email over to the Policy Director, but but we have sent that information Over.
Thank you. Yeah, that's good. And you know, you're doing a record job as it relates to DPD policies this they say, haven't they haven't received this, this many upgrades to the policies in years and years, and so that is vitally important for the citizens of the city of Detroit that the police department is operating on a policies that are updated and our current and morally sound. So it will get done. Madam Commissioner,
I'll tell you what a woman of certain many people in this room may know her. Her name was Nelly Collier. She started an organization called the National Association of people who are black and aged she was 93, or four. I think when she died, she started the association. And she would tell me when I say I'm gonna do so she said, Linda, gonna ain't, never done nothing, so don't.
Often, office, you know, saying, so we were looking for the recommendations. We looking for the recommendations. How much till next week, you know, I'll be ready to vote on them, so you have it in your shop. And so we looking for the recommendation. City's changing, yeah. Any more speakers? Have two more. Okay, I'm sorry. I thought we was done. I was trying to kill some time for us. You know, that's why I was talking. He said, The Rev said it would have been us, and said, No, go ahead. Next
two speakers are CAC Scotty Bowman and former Commissioner William Davis.
All right, you may be heard.
Yeah, hi. I would just like to say that there's been some interesting developments in the past week. I understand there's a bill in Lansing now that is going to, potentially, if it passes would would serve to ban chokeholds. It would, I'm turning Oh, it would also limit, it would define that as a use of deadly force. It would limit no knock raids. And I think a lot, oh, and I think it would also have some additional training regarding alternative ways of de escalating conflicts. And I think this is a positive development. I thank my senator, Stephanie Chang, for taking the lead on this. There is, apparently is, a bipartisan group, though, of lawmakers involved, so, um, they were getting some progress at the state level, and hopefully, um, some of that will also be, um, you know, part of our policy at the local level. And to some extent it is, but hopefully we can do better. Um, so I just wanted to share that and also comment on the fact that it's kind of unfortunate when you don't have a quorum that you don't get to carry out the rest of your business. And I plan on helping you keep a quorum and be attending meetings in the next year. So I'm hoping to see a full group of commissioners at those meetings in 2026 be nice if people could conclude this year with improved attendance as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let the record reflect that all of those bills that that's been in Senator chain package in which I'm on her committee for the bills, and the chief Todd Bettison did testify on behalf for those bills. The Detroit police department already has implemented those two years ago bills. Yeah, two years ago, yep. So next speaker? Do? Former
Commissioner William Davis, Yeah,
hello, you may be heard, good sir.
Okay, I like to echo the fact that I'm pleased that we have progress on those bills, because I'm part of the metro Detroit all pack, and we have been advocating and pushing for that for some time. Also, I think that, yes, SOPs should be published. But also, I think that it should be make sure that they are done in a professional manner. We do not want people to look badly upon the city of Detroit. Also, I think it probably should be more people that should be running to be police commissioners that should be wanting to do that, because I've had hundreds of people asking me to run again because I'm not interested in running again. I've never missed a meeting before. I got election throughout the time I served in afterwards. But to me, personally, you know, I think that if you're going to be a board that meets every week, you probably should get more of a stipend than what you do get. Also, I hope that there's a greater effort to do something about we have a lot of people that are running red lights. We have a lot of people that are coming up to the light stopping, and then might be going around from the people that's waiting for the red light to change. I think boys should be advocating for a stronger language and stronger penalties for people to keep running red lights. Because I see it all the time over here in district seven, and I hear about it from all over the city, because I have people that I represent in various capacities all over the city that complain about that. So y'all have a good day.
Thank you very kindly.
That was the last speaker chair, okay? Mr.
Chairman, yes, sir. We do not anticipate a quorum this evening, so I'll move for a German second locker.
