HomeMy WebLinkAboutTRC Transcript - February 1, 2024[00:00:00] [00:00:08]
I think it's 6:03 and I'd love a roll call whenever you're ready, Stefanie. Thank you.
[00:00:15]
Commissioner Dillard.
[00:00:16]
Here.
[00:00:18]
Commissioner Simmons.
[00:00:20]
Here.
[00:00:22]
Commissioner Crabs.
[00:00:23]
Here.
[00:00:25]
Commissioner Gathua.
[00:00:26]
Here.
[00:00:27]
Commissioner Merritt.
[00:00:29]
Here.
[00:00:31]
Commissioner Nobis.
[00:00:33]
Here.
[00:00:34]
Thank you.
[00:00:35]
Thank you, everyone. Now we'll have the reading of the Native American Land Acknowledgement.
Commissioner Gathua. Thank you.
[00:00:43]
We're meeting today in the community of Iowa City, which now occupies the homelands of Native
American nations to whom we owe our commitment and dedication. The area of Iowa City was within
the homelands of [00:01:00] the Iowa Mesquakie and Sauk. Because history is complex and time goes
far back beyond memory, we also acknowledge the ancient connections of many other indigenous
peoples here. The history of broken treaties and forced removal that dispossessed indigenous peoples
of their homelands was and is an act of colonization and genocide that we cannot erase. We implore
the Iowa City community to commit to understanding and addressing these injustices as we work
towards equity, restoration, and reparations.
[00:01:40]
Thank you. Next. There are no past agenda items to approve, Stefanie?
[00:01:48]
No.
[00:01:51]
We'll go on to public comment of items not on the agenda. For anyone in the room, if you'd like to
speak on anything on our agenda, please come up to the [00:02:00] microphone, state your name,
and let us know what you have to say. Welcome.
[00:02:14]
Hi. I know have five minutes, so I have to read this. I apologize for my lack of eye contact. My name is
Kevin Perez. I live in Iowa City and I've been here for 30 years. I am a graduate of the University of
Iowa. I'm a third generation Hispanic resident of the state of Iowa. I've been attempting to get on the
agenda of this meeting for several months. My attorney made the initial request of Ms. Chastity Dillard
in October of 2023. The city of Iowa City wrote my attorney on October 25th of 2023 that Ms. Chastity
Dillard had responded that I cannot appear on the agenda because, this is a direct quote attributed to
Ms. Dillard by Elizabeth Craig, attorney for the city of Iowa City. I want to read the exact quote. "She
has asked us to convey that the Commission is still working with her consultants to construct the
[00:03:00] infrastructure through which they will bear witness to the truth of a racial injustice in Iowa
City and collect testimony." Last week, I saw part of your meeting and V Fixmer Oraiz, who identifies
as part of the LGBTQ and Filipino communities, was placed on the agenda and spoke and interacted
with the board for about 40 minutes. It is clear to me that this organization can and did hear a
grievance on January 25th of 2024. I will now get to my grievance. I operate a business called Short's
Burger & Shine at 18 South Clinton in Iowa City. I have been operating in this space since 2009. I
originally leased the space from a man named Haywood Bell. Mr. Bell was a third generation African-
American business owner in Iowa City. When Haywood died in 2016, he left care of the building to a
trust operated by MidWestOne Bank. Since at least 2018, MidWestOne Bank has allowed the building
to deteriorate and is now being demolished by neglect despite the fact that the building is part of the
Iowa City Downtown District and qualifies to be on the National Register [00:04:00] of Historic Places.
What should be of interest to you is my ongoing campaign to save Mr. Haywood Bell's building at
1820 South Clinton. I operate a website. I encourage you to go to this website and read the history of
the Short and Bell family and their three generations of ownership of this building. The website is
www.historicshortsiowacity.com. I had been embroiled in a battle with both the bank and the city to
try and get someone to save this building. In 2023, there were at least one federal grant of $24 million
available for historic preservation of buildings significant to the African-American community. The
building on Clinton Street qualified for a portion of that money. I asked the bank, the city, and its
Historic Preservation Commission, all to help me submit a request for some of the grant money to fix
the building, but none of them would even respond. The recording of history is an attempt to record
the truth. This Commission has the word truth in its title. There is no excuse for the bank or the city to
try [00:05:00] and alter the truth about Clinton Street and allow a piece of Iowa City history, a building
that is the cornerstone of an African-American real estate portfolio, to risk demolition. The number of
properties in this entire country that have been successfully passed down through three generations
of African-American ownership is statistically less than 1%. HD Short, and I want to show you a picture
of Mr. Short right now, that's him, started with a shoeshine kit in a barber shop at 18 South Clinton in
1920. He ended up owning the building by the time of his death in 1947. Haywood still owned it when
he died in 2016. This is a story of a remarkable accomplishment for the African-American community
in this city, this state, in this country. Haywood was a man of tremendous integrity and was proud of
his building. Haywood does not have any children, so he left the care of the building to MidWestOne
Bank, believing [00:06:00] the bank would be the proper steward for his life and family's work.
Unfortunately, the bank is not following the wishes of Haywood stated during his life. Haywood
understood that I am also a third generation Iowan. My grandfather came from Mexico to Iowa City in
the 1910s to work on the railroad. Haywood and I worked well together and both have a desire to
represent our ethnic communities authentically, even after we are no longer alive to control the
narrative. In order to do that, the city must recognize the accomplishments of our ethnic groups. The
building in 1820 South Clinton is one of a kind monument to a man and a family that achieved what
millions of immigrants can only dream of, generational wealth building. I have thousands of pages of
research and information that I have paid to compile about this property and its history and I just
want to ask any of you who understand why we need to get the word out about this before it's too late
to email me at kphistoricshortsiowacity.com or just stop by Shorts anytime. If I'm not there, ask
[00:07:00] my manager, Sam, to get me and I will do everything I can to get there. I would like to see
the African-American community in Iowa City get a landmark, and also showcase two minority groups
working together to advance the truth about our accomplishments as Haywood and I did while he was
alive instead of letting the lawyers at the city continue to control how the world sees Iowa City. I think
we need the full story and when the city will not let me get on any of the agendas to talk about what's
happening to the building, then no one knows the truth. Thank you.
[00:07:30]
Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak on items not on the agenda
tonight? Thank you very much. We're going to move forward on to the next agenda item, which is a
report from our Native partners. I'm going to invite, I believe Annie and V to come talk about that.
[00:08:00] [00:08:03]
V Fixmer Oraiz, Astig Planning, one of the consultants for the TRC. Annie had put together a report
that she emailed out, and so I can just go over the highlights. I also just put together a short
presentation on the survey results from that. We did do a survey to try and make sure we're
capturing some data and getting an understanding of how people are experiencing the circle. You can
see in the report that Annie put together, and I touched a little bit of this on my presentation, but we
did have three days, and we had several people show up, eight people the first evening, which was
last Friday, and then another eight people on Saturday, and then nine people on Sunday. We have
three Native partners; Manape Lemert, [00:09:00] Terry Medina, and Danielle Wannatte. They each
led their own healing circle, talking circle. Then actually on the third day, there was a combining, and I
would call it more of like a checking in and talking about the experiences that people had had the
previous two days. There were several folks who had been there all three days, so that was really
nice. That wasn't something that was required in any way. I will jump into the survey because I think
it shows the responses that people had better than I can articulate it in this moment. I do need to
share my screen though. If that's possible.
[00:09:53]
I believe there's still technical difficulties.
[00:09:56]
Are you not able to see the screen?
[00:09:59]
I believe they can see [00:10:00] it on Zoom. The problem is here in the room, and I'm working with
them to try to get that resolved. But as long as you can see on yours.
[00:10:08]
I don't see anything on Zoom.
[00:10:10]
Oh, you can't.
[00:10:13]
Now I do.
[00:10:46]
I don't think she could hear you. Try that again.
[00:10:50]
What can you see on your screen?
[00:10:54]
I did see the presentation that had disappeared. It's back.
[00:11:00]
I stopped. Sorry. Technical difficulties. Can you see it now?
[00:11:11]
It does, your screen sharing, but it's still black.
[00:11:16]
Zoom really hates us right now. Okay, let me try to disappeared it.
[00:11:19]
It was on there.
[00:11:20]
Yeah, it' stopped. Let's try this one more time.
[00:11:25]
You might be like clicking. You might have to click like on an actual, there you go. I see it now.
[00:11:36]
I know folks in the room can't see it. I'll spare you my charts. Like I said, we had three days. The
location was the East Side Recycling Center out in Iowa City, which was nice. It's very open, but there
were the fact that it was on the edge of Iowa City. We did offer transportation, we offered childcare,
[00:12:00] and nobody took us up on that. But I think there are always barriers, and I'm assuming that
those could potentially be some of them for folks that didn't make it. Survey results, we wanted to
know who was in the room. One of the questions was, was this your first time experiencing healing
circles? Three-quarters of the people that took the survey, which was about three quarters of the
people that attended said yes. In fact, it was the first time that they had ever experienced something
like this. Then we asked a question, how did you feel when you arrived at the event? People said,
hopeful, ready to take in the content. Nervous, skeptical, anxious, open, and curious. Excited for a
new experience. Unsure what to expect. A bit confused about who it was for, curious about how it
would go, ready to engage with others during a group experience, that was just one person. They
were experiencing a lot of things. Felt a little disorganized but fine. You skipped one. Then, how did
you feel after the [00:13:00] event? I felt that listening to others was the most important takeaway.
Calm, thoughtful and grateful. Glad I participated. Connected, raw and changed. Calm. I appreciated
meeting new people and also having the opportunity to remember the part loved ones living and dead
that play in my well being. More connected, more ready to hold space, supported and connected to
others who were there and others in the community, and enlightened. You can see the vast difference
when people were going in, feeling nervous and anxious and disorganized, and then coming out
feeling that connected the holding of the space and connected to others in the community. Then the
question we asked was, would you attend another TRC-sponsored healing/Talking Circle event? All of
them were on the range of yes, I would show up every time. The Likert scale is no, I don't enjoy this
experience all the way to, yes, I would show up every time [00:14:00] and everybody was on the tail
of I would show up every time, so that's fantastic. Then, are you interested in learning more?
Everybody said yes, and then there was some comments. Yes, since there was a lot of similarity
between my African healing talking ways with that of American indigenous peoples. Then the other
comment was there was certainly more to experience and to pay attention to as well. I think that does
speak to the experience of the circles being there's a lot of information that is shared, not even just
interpersonally but also culturally. As you can see that there was some similarities there that we
experienced and a lot of information. Also, fantastic. We also wanted to know some of the
demographics, so we had anywhere from about mid-20s. That person didn't fill out the survey, but I
know this person and she was there. She's recently graduated, so I know she's in her mid-20s. Then
we had one person in their 30s, we had [00:15:00] five people in their 40s, and then one person in the
late 60s. That filled out the survey. Then ethnicity wise, Asian American, Caucasian, European-
American, Latino, white, White Hispanic-Latine range. But also no black people of color, in terms of
immigrants we have some representation, we can always do more, right? But this at least gives us a
baseline of this experience. Then in terms of gender, pretty much everybody identified as gendered
male or female. We had two men, and then we had five women fill out the survey. This, I think is
really gets to the heart of it. These are just a few that I can share. But when asked to summarize their
experience, here's what some people said, and this is one quote. ''I thought this would be hokey,
instead it was spiritual. [00:16:00] I felt connected to all the people there, even though I didn't know
most of them, and I think we came from very different religious and cultural backgrounds. I was afraid
to open up, but seeing others be so vulnerable and real made it feel safer. The people leading talked
about cleansing tears. I felt that. We all cried together. Some was release, some was sadness. By the
end, it was gratitude as well.'' Another one is, "Listening to the stories of our circle lead and hearing
some humor, hearing the reasons people attended and learning about where they are from. I tried to
keep all this in mind when thinking about how this could all help gun violence survivors.'' Another
quote is, ''This experience is not easily summarized as it caused a kind of seismic shift in my sense of
connection, awareness and humility. It was an unexpected confronting and connecting to oneself, the
other members of the circle and everything, everyone, everywhere.'' Then another one just said,
"Humbling." Really powerful takeaways from the experience. [00:17:00] Then we do have some
upcoming talking circles happening. Saturday, February 10th, and Saturday, February 17th. We are
super fortunate to have the right house of fashion in our community. Saturday, February 10, from 1-4,
we'll be hosting a talking circle there at the Wright House of Fashion, really excited about that. Then
we're also hosting another one on Saturday, February 17th, from 1-4 in the South District. We're still
trying to just pin down where exactly that's going to be, but we know that that's a good place for
connecting and community. Maybe the Iowa gym maybe somewhere like that. That was the 10th and
the 17th, both at 1-4. It is up, sweet. It happened? You can see like my author. I'm like. Anyway, I'm
happy to answer any questions. I just wanted to put it's a very short survey. We wanted to make it
pretty accessible for folks, [00:18:00] but happy to go through any of this. We took a few pictures, but
not many.
[00:18:10]
Yeah. Thank you all for doing this, taking the lead as we've asked you to do so. Thank you so much.
My question is, what do you need from us as a Commission? What do you think is missing? How can
we work together to make sure that the next ones are showing, especially demographically, as we
want.
[00:18:28]
I think sharing the information out absolutely and attending. I think that a powerful aspect of this is
that as we're doing the experiences, you're able to connect our community members as well. I don't
know if any of the Commissioners who were there want to speak to that experience. But I think
attending would be great because it's TRC sponsored and then people get to see who [00:19:00] you
are. Also for the experience itself, but definitely helping us share it, it would be very helpful. We've
tried to get the word out in our, channels and city channels, but we know that that only goes so far.
We definitely, I will have a flyer ready by tomorrow. We're just trying to finalize some of the details
and paperwork, but we should be good to go. I can get that out to Stefanie so she can send it to you.
[00:19:29]
I wasn't able to make last weekend, but if any of us were able to want to just share what they felt
about this experience, I'd love to hear it.
[00:19:40]
I did attend the Friday one, but I'd say for Saturday and Sunday, I was too exhausted from the week
before to make those ones. You didn't ask on the survey on the question of the food? [00:20:00] Yeah,
it was good. It was to me, very healthy. I'm glad we have a repeat of that. That's my answer to that
question. I'm the type of student whom, if a question is not on the teachers questions, I add my own
an answer and expect credit. That's what I would add. You're talking about getting the information
out? This is always a challenge to me. How the city gets out information, one I did share on my social
media. But I project the pain I feel, trying to get to the info, even this particular flyer instead of the
flyer just being right there, like that picture that's there.
[00:20:57]
If you go to my page, what you see [00:21:00] is the Iowa City logo. A lot of the people, it's the whole
world when something is on I'm like if the picture was right there, especially the word healing and this
is me projecting others that I know. It's more capturing than just the logo of the city of Iowa City, I'm
sorry my city, but in this particular time, the healing word needed to be at the forefront and the flyer
is really good and the color. I know this is something we've struggled with, even others who are tech
survey who are like, can I do that? No, you can't, you've got to do it this way. Just making it get to it,
not to really have to go through and even getting to our city website. You really have to struggle even
getting to my meeting and my agenda. I supposedly tech survey. What about somebody? [00:22:00]
Then also not just that. How about getting that information to where the people we are trying to have
a tend are going to get it because we already know the usual ways we communicate, they don't work.
For example, I don't want to talk for a group but if I'm wanting to get to the African immigrants. Right
now, if I want something out in the next hour, I want maybe 100 people there. What I'm going to do,
I'm going to get my son De Arugo, I tell him can you talk to your friends then I'm going to talk to Mr.
Amos over there, so that way. Just trying to be sensitive. Whom are you reaching? Where are these
people? How [00:23:00] do I get them? I've just seen in the course of that we've said holding a circle
in the South district. We are getting there looking for people and where they are and not assume that
where I am and the ways that work for me are the ones that work for the next person. As I talk, I'm
also talking to myself to do these things that I'm talking about. But then there is also the flip side. I
liked that, for example, on Friday we were eight. The community members, so we were really able to
interact. And then even the circle, we go deeper because we were less. If we get more numbers, then
is that challenge? How do we go, because [00:24:00] I'm learning and I've barely even learned a lot
about indigenous people's circles. How big can a circle be. But I do run counseling groups and the
scientific number, you don't really want it to go more than 12. There is getting a lot of people. Then
that also means, even as the facilitators are doing it, more than that is also a lot, those are some of
the things to think about. But I did love that on Friday and the other circles that have been including
sometime back one ran by Annie and Angie and Manape the numbers were within recommended
numbers and they worked very well. [00:25:00] The other thing, and this is maybe just me really, I'm
thinking it would be good for our facilitators to, as we get into the healing circles and maybe it was
done and I missed it or it has been done connected to the TRC work. Also at some point just how does
it work with TRCs and also with oppression healing? How does that work? Maybe people already know,
but just let us hear it and the why question. I'm also going to connect this with, [00:26:00] as we go to
the week of March 18, whether it works, how does it work individually? Because somebody may be
triggered and they're alone in that. How do we do a healing? What do we do with that, or how does it
go? Probably this is me asking because I do not know what is called traditional, which is Western,
usually what we do is if we noticed we work with that person one on one but in the healing circles,
how is that going to work? I will stop. You can see I had a lot and your survey wasn't going to capture.
Wasn't intended for all that.
[00:26:52]
Yeah, but thank you.
[00:26:54]
I yield.
[00:26:57]
I will definitely take that feedback back to the team.
[00:27:00] [00:27:04]
Wangui, question, are you saying that as you were doing the healing circle, that you didn't feel like
there was a concept that this was for racial issues that wasn't specifically explained or we could dive a
little bit more into that?
[00:27:27]
I just wondered whether for me as a commissioner and as I've been doing, I know therefore they're
part of the TRC work and they fit in reconciliation. But even for myself, [00:28:00] even as I used the
word reconciliation, it's not really reconciliation because reconciliation there was some relationship, it
was broken and now it's being brought back. But in this case, was there, I guess, some clarity. But I
can also do some homework and for myself, find out how healing circles work with racism.
[00:28:33]
I would love to jump in there too if I can, if that's okay.
[00:28:36]
Thank you.
[00:28:38]
I think what Wangui is saying is very legitimate. It's a concern that I've had myself. I have been
concerned about the process from beginning to end with this work that the facilitators have put
together. I feel like it has been put together, [00:29:00] it's not flowing the way I imagined it would
go. Not saying that what I imagined is the way it should be, I'm just giving you my perspective. I'm not
trying to say that what's being done is wrong, I'm just saying that from my experience or from my
world view. I always imagined that these circles would happen in conjunction with truth telling
testimony events and/or afterwards they're a part of healing and places for people to get together and
share stories so that when you're in these spaces like the truth and reconciliation is part of it because
it happens right around the truth telling or within it or like, you know, it's part of the whole thing. I've
just been very confused as to [00:30:00] these strategic doings and getting your input from mostly
white folks and people with status and honestly, like I said, when I thought of these circles initially, I
thought they would just be part of our community events that we would be hosting. I imagined a lot
more testimony going on so that we would be hearing the actual voices of people in our communities.
These circles would be a part of that whole process and part of the healing part of it as well because I
know that healing is not in the term truth and reconciliation but I definitely feel like healing is like a
huge aspect of that. By the sounds of it, these circles are exceedingly successful in the way that
they're being done right now.
[00:30:58]
The fact that they're being run by indigenous [00:31:00] peoples is paramount because it's not like
we have a place in very many spaces allowing indigenous people this one part of the truth and
reconciliation process is fantastic. Then I also wanted to note, just because you're asking for people to
provide input about these circles. I couldn't make it because my daughter had COVID and now I have
COVID. Also I couldn't imagine being at 14 hours of this over the weekend. Like I know that we could
just go to one. But even that just seems like a lot to ask right. These days for myself anyways, also
because I trust the native people that I helped put into these spaces to do a great job. But I guess
what bothers me is like the fact that these circles were put way out on the perimeter of the city, you
can't go any further. Like B and Iowa City, basically, [00:32:00] they're very much out of the way and
there was very little advertising done. I guess those are the constraints we have by the city perhaps.
Then we can pay facilitators, a lot of money like Kearns and West and whoever, to do this work and to
fly in and to pay all this money for them to do these things. But we can't pay for a nice space
downtown. I just get confused sometimes as to what the money is being spent on, because I don't feel
like it's being spent in the way it should be. I just gave up a lot here, but I am very happy with the
outcome of the circles. But it would be nice if the circles were more a part of actual testimony or a
place that people could go afterwards, and then where people could heal and come to terms with
things regarding testimony. Thank you.
[00:32:56]
I'll still follow you. I'll follow up that Commissioner Nobis, [00:33:00] usually, how are they done
healing circles in relation to racism? I know you said about that they go together with truth telling.
[00:33:19]
I'm not saying usually how they're done. I don't think there's a usual way that they're done, like
healing circles for indigenous peoples are used in a variety of contexts. But I was imagining here
because they're called healing circles or talking circles, that they would be used in the context of
healing and reconciliation. But before you do that, you need to have some truth telling. You need to
have testimony, you need to have people have an ability to get that testimony out there and to talk
about what the issues are and then provide a space for people to get together and reconcile
[00:34:00] and heal. That's what I think is missing, is they're just randomly out there right now out of
context is what my opinion is. They're very successful, but they're out of context and they're random.
They're not accessible to a lot of people.
[00:34:21]
Thank you. If what I'm hearing is if it comes on the heels of a truth telling, like we'll do in March, then
the content in the circle will be coming out of that.
[00:34:40]
We can specifically ask our healers, our facilitators, or native facilitators if you like, please provide a
prompt for folks to speak about these things if that's what they want. Also the actual act of the circles
bringing community together is doing that job already. [00:35:00] But if it's on the heels of an actual
truth telling event, that definitely is what I would imagine the circles being more efficient or more
effective, I guess, in terms of the work that we're trying to carry out.
[00:35:17]
Yes what you said is correct?
[00:35:20]
Thank you for answering my question when I was saying the connection. Thank you for answering that
and you've taken me back to another circle that we did. It wasn't they were actually two, but they
were not they didn't feel to me and they were not disconnected because there was context and it
answers my question to the ones that we just got done here, why they're not in context. But then I
remind myself that they were training. [00:36:00] I guess that is why I was saying they should be
explained what's going on. I guess for myself, I also forgot as a community member that like the
Friday one was experiential and there is also training going on. Thank you. Commissioner Nobis?
[00:36:19]
This is Commissioner Dillard. I was really asking initially because I think we've all heard from
Commissioner Nobis and Gathua that it is very important that people know why we're doing this and if
it's disconnected in the community. I know that there's lots of different ways to do healing circles. It's
not what we're tasked to do. In my opinion, and I think we should find a way to make sure that that is
clear. If it is, I don't know what the right word is. Weird to do these one off so I guess we have to
emphasize that a little bit more. Just thoughts.
[00:36:56]
No, I appreciate the feedback. I guess I would say these initial [00:37:00] circle experiences were
really to bring the experience to the community so that people when the first time they experienced
them, weren't in a trauma response and they may very well be. But the opportunity for our native
partners to come and be in the community also was very helpful to them was what I heard was that
they were, they learned a lot about our community too. That when we do the truth telling events that
they will be more prepared. I think the reason why we're doing the talking circle experiences ahead of
that culminating events where we have like the truth telling and the healing circles together is also to
see if there are other people in the community that want to do more types of work like this so that we
can expand the ability of our community maybe not host these exact ones. Because I understand that
there are, of course, [00:38:00] very powerful, like native medicines that come through. But that
maybe expose people to opening up to these types of experiences ahead of the truth telling
experiences. That way we expand our ability as a community to hold those types of spaces, have
those conversations. Feel that connection, I guess that was the thinking behind it from the native
partners and our healing team was that just to get people used to it but also for [inaudible 00:38:33]
and Daniel to understand our community a little bit better. In terms of the TRC connection, I couldn't
attend Friday night, but I was there Saturday and Sunday. Both times the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission had come up and the ideas of reconciliation were discussed. But I did write down to make
sure that we flush out a little bit more how we want that connection. We'll [00:39:00] probably just
come back with some suggestions, or thoughts, or questions really as to what that could look like,
because we definitely want that to be very clear. These are just the first ones. It's almost like you
want to do some to figure out how is this going to run, what's it going to look like. I agree, 100%
having it at the East side Recycling Center was not ideal. We did get some folks there, but I'm very
much looking forward to having these the right house of fashion and in the South district and if we
can get in other areas, Pheasant Ridge, places like that, then we're just starting. But all of this is really
good feedback. I really appreciate it and I've taken lots of notes.
[00:39:42]
For me the clarification. It's not really for us who are the Commissioners and who've been engaging
with this. It's more to the community. Especially, I think this is the first time we're bringing we brought
community [00:40:00] members to the experiencing circles. I was asking myself, it looks like we
should have done some explanation or let people know connect and really I do know that we
introduced ourselves. But then it was like, okay, these are Commissioners, this TRC.
[00:40:30]
I think I wrote that down. We need to have a connection for sure.
[00:40:36]
Are the things we were doing right now then, they're just like for fun. I'm not trying to say like, I'm
trying to say like they're just to see I'm so confused. I don't know what is going on here.
[00:40:53]
For fun, I think I would say that they are definitely.
[00:40:55]
I didn't mean to use the word for fun. I couldn't think of the word because of COVID. [00:41:00] Look
to see if it that seems like a lot of money to spend on something like that. I'm glad we're spending the
money on particularly needed partners. Paying them to come here and do that work. But what I'm
saying is like, I don't understand all these phases and bureaucracy in a way. Like I mean, why aren't
we just having like events like we could have been having events with our communities now for
months and months, like why can't we just be doing that and then having the circles be a part of
these things?
[00:41:44]
What are we trying to achieve by the end of your guys term with us?
[00:41:52]
I think from the healing circles and the talking circles perspective, it's really to [00:42:00] engage with
community members in this fashion to provide that platform and that process and holding those
spaces are very different than one on one conversations or hosting events. It's just another tool to
have in our community and I think that we've tried to be as thoughtful as possible in terms of how
those are run, so making sure that we have the native representation to lead, that has been
paramount, and wanting them to dictate what that looks like and so I know that, Daniel, there's just
some complications with getting some folks on tonight but I think that the purpose of this is to really
bring these types of spaces into our community so that we can have things like the truth telling that
happens and have the circles, but even beyond that. In fact, when I was talking to Andre Right today,
he was like, wouldn't it be amazing if we just had four or six times [00:43:00] a year where people just
knew that this was going to happen and so they could just come.
[00:43:06]
That's the kind of thing that we've been trying to build already as the commission. Yes.
[00:43:13]
What I'm saying. We're just starting and that's okay. We're just learning to get this off the ground. I
guess that's my answer.
[00:43:26]
This is Commissioner Matt here. One thing I want to talk about also looking back at what contractually
Phase 1, Phase 2 and granted at the end of Phase 1, we only had I think one meeting that even talked
about circles and whatever, and ultimately we are to provide recommendations to the city and we
talked about this briefly, the last meeting that it's pretty clear as we're scheduling for the culminating
week, whatever that [00:44:00] people are going to be doing truth telling they're going to be needing
some of those healing circles because of the trauma and working in conjunction so that is something
that it can be part of the recommendation at the end when we listen. Granted, I cannot attend these
particular events that you just had, but I've had experience with them in previous jobs and that kind
of stuff, so I knew the expectation. But like I said, these examples provided to the community what
they look like and you got some feedback from the people who attended and basically being able to
incorporate that into, like I said, what the recommendation is. If somebody talked about having
several of these throughout the year, that's part of the recommendation that we can provide that
these are the kind of healing circles that we can have in conjunction with the truth telling events and
it might seem as if it's random because that's just how our schedule with this Phase [00:45:00] 2
ramping up and everything is but it's given an example of what we're going to be able to put into the
final report and also giving some experience to the community. Yes, we need to do better about
communicating with our community and getting things up but unfortunately, this was also under very
short notice of the scheduling.
[00:45:25]
I think I understand now. All of this is being done so we can provide examples for the city so that we
can move forward and ask for more funding to do these things that we think are going to work like
long term or over the next six months after the facilitators are done?
[00:45:46]
I would say yes and no. As far as our hiring of the facilitators, we said we wanted to learn in the first
Phase 1 it means to run a traditional TRC and we were shown [00:46:00] different ways and asked to
have different aspects. Then in the second phase, I would like to say testing. I used the word pilot
before. I know that's not the greatest word, but we're trying to perfect the process and I feel like right
now we're process making, so that we keep saying culminating event but I know that it's not
culminating. It's really our first time out to showcase how our process could look in conjunction with
the community, get their feedback and so I think everything that we have done has been a test.
[00:46:42]
It's an expensive test.
[00:46:44]
Others and some loved it more than others, some loved it a lot. I'm sorry, Commissioner Nobis. Did
you say something?
[00:46:54]
I said that's an expensive test.
[00:46:57]
What's an expensive test?
[00:46:59]
How much money did [00:47:00] we pay the facilitators?
[00:47:02]
We were paying the facilitators, I don't know, about $400,000 but without the facilitators, we learned
from the city, we could not do any of the work that we're doing now.
[00:47:20]
That's not the way I understood it initially. I thought the facilitators were actually supposed to help us
get our report written and help us do these events. I don't feel like we're getting much for this
amount of money. But I'm going to stop talking now. I want it on record that I'm quite disappointed.
I'm not disappointed with the circles. I'm happy with those, but I'm disappointed with how much
money we're spending to test some stuff out when this could be used to actually be facilitating a lot of
events within our communities [00:48:00] like grassroots, like on the ground with food and just
getting straight up testimony from our people.
[00:48:10]
Thank you for putting that on the record.
[00:48:13]
I'm thinking Commissioner Nobis when I saw Commissioner Dillard look at me when she mentioned
the word pilot because I was struggling with that. I remember from the very beginning, one of the
things that we have repeated many times is a recommendation at the end. We would want to
recommend for the commission to continue then putting back because I'm thinking some of it is a
matter of semantics and use of words test pilot but V has [00:49:00] talked of starting. Because I'm
comparing with all the other TRCs and racism task forces that have been there, especially thinking of
Greensboro.
[00:49:18]
They were long, so we had just used the word start because people here who have that experience is
people like Dr. Schooler and then we have some of the facilitator team, David and Gonzalez. The rest
of us are starting, so whichever word we pick, piloting, starting, and then continuing with the work
and [00:50:00] even for them, they are starting in Iowa City. It's new because each of those TRC's and
those places, they are unique in their ways. Yeah, when I got my fellow commissioners and some
community members like Amos O Kiche was explaining, because especially the word piloting and
testing seem to creep on November. It came in November.
[00:50:27]
Yeah, that's not something I heard of because I've been on this for 2.5 years and I'm seeing
something completely different from what we had initially imagined. I just want to say one last thing,
sorry, that from my experience with the TRC in Canada, and what my relatives have talked to me
about, and social workers, and indigenous peoples, in the end, ridiculous amounts of money went to
facilitators, to therapists, to lawyers, to all these people and the money didn't actually get to where it
should be going [00:51:00] to because you always have to have those people taking their cut and
coming in, and I'm not happy with how this is turning out. If this is just a test or a pilot, this should be
the actual work. That's why I keep saying I'm confused. I said, again, I'm happy with these healing
circles and how they're going, but they're being done out of context and if they're just a test, well,
that makes no sense and where's the testimony and none of this is how I imagined it unfolding. Again,
I'm going to just follow Wangui Gathua and say I yield.
[00:51:43]
I did want to make one comment because I understand having the talking circles and healing circles
after testimony is super important. I also want to respect and bring in the people that were there
during those circles, that there was testimony and sharing and healing [00:52:00] happening in those
circles too, and just not discount that because I think that while it seems really small scale, I did have
somebody when they were leaving, say that they felt this was a drop and they wanted to be part of
the ripple. I thought that was a really good analogy for, we think these things are too small and scale,
and I think that it shouldn't be underestimated the power of these types of smaller gatherings as well.
Not to say that the big gatherings aren't great, and of course we'll be there for the truth telling, that's
very important. But also just want to add that there is some value in community building that does
happen. I know we can probably agree on that. It just may not be to the scale that people are thinking
of, but just having been there for those couple days I feel like there was some really incredible things
that were happening within those spaces, [00:53:00] and I just wanted to bring that forth too to not
lose that part of it.
[00:53:06]
I know that we have some other agenda items to move on, but I do want to say I know the word
testing and pilot is not correct because is not right because we are doing the work with all of these
instances in my opinion, like this is part of us doing the work right. How can we know what to do if we
don't try something? That's how I view it. But I do hear Commissioner Nobis that, this is not how you
imagine it, that you're not happy and I'd love to just talk more about that and how we can all work
together to make sure that everyone, every commissioner is seeing this the way they want to see it
because we're supposed to be working on this as a team. I just want to say I hear you.
[00:53:53]
Thank you. I want to figure back on this last remark [00:54:00] about the weekend did bring 25
community members. If you do events in the community, we know it's really difficult to get
community members to really come and stay for really long events that are really deep. Yeah, not to
forget to count the small successes and we are beginning and I said I wasn't there on Saturday and
Sunday, but on Friday, one community member did say that she is very happy because that is
[00:55:00] part of what wanting to be connecting with other community members. We cannot
discount that. Others also said learning and learning even about because we have many cultures in
our city, even when we do get an opportunity to learn about the ways of other people. Yeah, I won't
discount that bringing out and getting 25 members of the community in a sitting and sitting through
for very many hours and sitting very deeply.
[00:55:53]
If there's no other comment, I'd love to encourage all of us to make sure that we're putting it out on
our own personal media, sending [00:56:00] out emails, text, talking to people in person, social media
so that we can make sure that these next two events get the best group of people that we want to
experience this.
[00:56:19]
I was confused about what the healing circle would be about. I thought it would be like more tailored
to racial issues. I invited people along those lines. If I had known it was more open in general, I
probably would have been included more, I would have changed I was in fighting or added more
people. It would've affected who I was inviting because I know there are some people who really need
some healing but I thought it would be like racial sub matters. With these next two, will they be
[00:57:00] similar or?
[00:57:02]
Yeah. I think that's a really good question. I think that Manopen, Daniel and Tee, on Sunday were
asking what is the best configuration of what they've been doing because every day was a little bit
different. I will bring that question to them because they're the ones that are really running it, and I
guess the question I would have is obviously I've written down having more of a connection to the
TRC and reconciliation and race. I'll definitely add that, but I think they're still trying to understand
how to run these in a way that is reflective of what you all want and also honoring the traditions that
they're steeped in, is there's usually rounds of questions [00:58:00] and I think that's probably where
they were headed.
[00:58:03]
I think we could very easily tailor it to more to a certain subject matter like asking the questions with
that subject matter in the front.
[00:58:21]
The other thing I was thinking about is how do we tailor these to the general larger community
without appropriating native circle? How are we going to make this? I've been thinking actually of a
lot of things in my head on how we can do that or were they just going to keep doing this forever?
[00:58:47]
It's a great question. I think it's one we still continue to ask. I think at this point, they are very much
so interested in running as many as the city wants them to run forever, I guess. I don't want
[00:59:00] to say forever and ever, but I think that they could see themselves having a role. I can't
really answer the other part in terms of how to expand that because I feel that's really in their
purview. I know they've expressed bridge building and trying to extend, what would that look like, but
my sense on Sunday was that I'm not sure if they've landed on what that is. But I know that there's a
desire, but especially if you have ideas, I think that there's definitely a desire. I know that they said it
many times, but just how logistically do you do that?
[00:59:35]
I think it's good to do, I don't know if I want to say tester, but it's good to feel it out because when
we're dealing with the healing component of this, we do want to come with something that's been
thought out. We don't want to just throw some stuff at people who have been harmed in experiencing
trauma. [01:00:00] Now that I'm thinking in that way, 'm like, I can see why we want to check this out,
make sure this solid, not that I don't trust the name part. But we want to have something solid for our
community members. I was there on Sunday and I did get to experience how it was really powerful for
the people in our community to experience. It was great.
[01:00:25]
Awesome. Is there any other comments?
[01:00:30]
Just right, and then there were more comments. I just want to respond to a couple of things. One
thing, Marie, is that tomorrow, they'll be a beginning of the native partners being able to talk with
Eduardo and maybe Dave at a Zoom meeting about how to have the circles come after the truth
telling. What is their experience? That's new for them too. We're creating [01:01:00] something that
doesn't exactly exist yet, but we have access to people who have experienced the truth telling and
different kinds of reconciliation processes just to let you know that's happening. Another idea is I think
I really appreciate you saying that there should be something said at the beginning about the work of
the TRC. It makes me wonder if there would always be one of you there to welcome people to the
circle and the people there and let them know the context and then hand it off to the native partners.
That's one thing I'm thinking of, but I think just as I'm riffing on that idea. Anyway, that's all. Thanks.
[01:01:47]
Thank you. I'm curious to hear Commissioner Louis dot on the, Louis, we are talking about the circles
[01:02:00] that happened over the weekend and you attended the Friday one with me and I've given
my take. That's what we've been doing so far since. You did too. You did Friday and Sunday.
[01:02:15]
Sunday you have given time.
[01:02:23]
I did attend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
[01:02:26]
You might need to get a little closer to the mic. I'm sorry.
[01:02:28]
I did attend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and got to experience the differences in the way they were
presented and held. I never felt excluded. I never felt like anyone there felt like they couldn't talk or
express. I thought they did a really good job of making it clear that this was a safe space. [01:03:00] I
forget who mentioned this, but someone said in some ways, calling it talking or healing is a bit of a
misnomer. It's more a listening circle. It's really about having to sit there, be quiet, and listen to
somebody else's discussion, feelings, beliefs, and then move on so that we all were learning from
that. I did have some similar feelings. Marie was getting at that we never experienced how a conflict
would be handled in a circle, and the native partners agreed that that's something that usually
doesn't happen. But I would anticipate it happening at some point if we're going to have a number of
these things. That's the only thing I'm a little bit really concerned about. I think it'll all be handled
well, but I don't see how the structure or the protocols that are embedded in the circle [01:04:00]
explicitly deal with that conflict, direct head to head conflict, except for saying, well you need to lead
the circle and maybe that's the best way to do it, I don't know. But that's the only piece that I felt a
slight tingle of concern about. Overall, I thought that it really went well and I thought there was a
reasonably diverse group of people there in terms of their beliefs and opinions.
[01:04:25]
We've had conflict in circle. Wangui, weren't you there?
[01:04:33]
Yeah, I was there too.
[01:04:37]
Cliff, you were there. Now we've had conflict. It's up to the facilitator to deal with that. I feel like it was
dealt with well, but that's just my opinion. Other people chime in.
[01:04:53]
We have. It had been said [01:05:00] at the beginning that those ones were the other circles, there
was one run by Annie then by Manape, those on the context that we're talking about, they were given
and at the very beginning we're told it may not end the way you are thinking, but conflict did really
happen. It has also led me to try and think back when we were talking and being and looking at all
those other TRCs, what they do with conflict, because we were prepared that it does happen.
[01:05:46]
Commissioner Krebs here. I just want to point out too.
[01:05:50]
You want to put the mic closer to you?
[01:05:52]
Yeah.
[01:05:53]
I just wanted to point out like I mean, it's great and I think we [01:06:00] should hope for everything
to go well and for everyone to connect and have this feel good moment, or at least feel peaceful or
something. We want all these good things, but there are going to be times where it's not going to
happen. There's going to be conflict. People are going to be mad, they're going to leave, and they're
going to just be mad and that's their business. They can be mad. As long as we've done our best,
people are going to feel how they feel sometimes.
[01:06:36]
TRC, the truth and reconciliation, it's about racism. The Iowa City Ad Hoc TRC came to Iowa City via
George Floyd's death and racism itself.
[01:06:57]
It's violence, [01:07:00] it's negative, so I never thought, and I do not think healing circles or truth
telling or fact finding or reconciliation is combined. If we forget for a minute or we don't know, we
keep reminding ourselves that it's something that we have in our city, and historically I've been here
for a minute, we've really moved far. We are actually sitting here today because we are facing that
easy. Of course not. I can speak for a lot of us here because we've said it, it's not easy. Difficult? Of
course not. But making it better, yes. No. [01:08:00] If it ends up being combined, let's hold hands.
We are friends today. Best friends forever. We're not doing our work.
[01:08:12]
Thank you Wangui. If there's no one else, I'd like to move to public comments on this agenda item. If
there's anyone actually on line that would like to comment on this agenda item, specifically, please
raise your hand in the chat and if there's anyone in the room, please come to the microphone. I'm not
seeing anyone, so I'm going to move on to the next agenda item, which is legislative update from our
Deputy City Manager.
[01:08:40]
Thank you, Chair. I'm going to actually ask the Chair and the Commission if it might be better for me
to come back and do it another time, because I'm confident that you get me free. But we have our
consultant here on a limited time that I think it's been [01:09:00] stated earlier that you're making a
pretty good investment in and so I can certainly if it's okay with the Commission rescheduled.
[01:09:09]
If everyone's okay with that. Thank you very much. The next one is updates for Phase 2. I'm not sure
if there is anything that needed to be touched on that. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Larry.
Thank you.
[01:09:34]
Well, good evening. That wasn't rhetorical. Good evening.
[01:09:37]
Hello.
[01:09:40]
I was sitting here thinking how lucky I feel, and I want to tell you why. First of all, I was lucky enough
to enjoy sugar peach for lunch, not him. I didn't eat sugar peach I ate at his restaurant. I'm [01:10:00]
also lucky for reasons that I think are pretty obvious. I'm married to love of my life. I have wonderful
children. I'm lucky that I get to do this work with y'all. I'm lucky that you're all here. We have perfect
attendance tonight, which makes me feel very fortunate. But I'm also lucky because, to a degree, the
part of this work that I'm most intimately associated with, the fact finding is underway and I get to
facilitate about that with you now. The conversation that we've just been having around preparing for
and getting ready for some experiences that are going to happen in March. This leg of the stool, so to
speak. The fact finding leg, we're in it now. That's what tonight is going to be. That's a fortunate
thing. It was just happenstance, I think that I got the straw that was fact finding. That doesn't mean
that it will be straightforward or easy, but it means that we're not rehearsing anything. We're starting
now, so [01:11:00] with great respect for all of the work that happened over last weekend. Here we
are tonight to dive a little bit more deeply into this critical aspect of your work. Thanks to Vianane and
the native partners for incredible work on the reconciliation leg. I know truth telling will be coming
relatively soon as well. Here we go with fact finding. Let me lay out a quick agenda for what I intend
to cover with you tonight. Very mindful of the hour, I just realized I need to share my screen.
Commissioners, can you see the slide?
[01:11:50]
Yes.
[01:11:51]
I want to wish Commissioner Nobis a speedy and complete recovery and also for you, I think she said
daughter? Did she say daughter that has Commissioner Nobis, hope there's full and [01:12:00]
complete healing in your home.
[01:12:02]
Thank you.
[01:12:05]
I want to share with you what I was thinking about for tonight, and then ask if you'd like to shift things
at all. We're going to, for the public and your benefit, go through some preliminary information that
our team has worked to assemble on the topic, specifically of public safety. In regards to that
information, we want to facilitate a discussion amongst you all about the conclusions, if any, that you
think you can draw from the data we've found so far, what questions you have about that data, and
probably most importantly, what else do you want us to look for on this topic in the spirit of fact
finding? That's what I'm anticipating for our work. I'm just wondering if that is okay with folks, if that
feels like a good agenda. Anybody want to make any amendments or anything? I wanted to just
remind folks of the pre existing discussion agreements. They are [01:13:00] extensive and lengthy, so
I'm not going to read them all verbatim as we have before, but certainly want to hear from everyone,
we want to encourage folks to learn from one another. We want people to use inclusive and non
gendered language and people's pronouns, trust in each other and know that we move at the speed
of trust and honor what others say with discretion and integrity. These were the considerations that I
talked with you about at the very beginning of the fact finding process back, I want to say in
September when I was here. It may seem a little bit intuitive in a way, but I think it's really important,
especially in the age that we live in where so many people question what others consider factual, to
think about what fact finding means to us, what makes something factual? What standards should this
particular TRC used to identify something as fact? And how should we define the facts that need to be
found [01:14:00] to fulfill your standards? Before I move on, those are some of the questions I
encourage you to ask as you receive this data. What makes something a fact that should be
enshrined in the TRC's recommendations? What should be a fact that is a hypothesis and tested
against what the truth may be told to you about that topic, and so on and so forth.
[01:14:27]
These were the key questions that we wanted to start asking ourselves when we first began this work.
When it came to topics we came up with as a group, I think about seven or eight. We decided as part
of this planning process that it would be most appropriate in terms of how much time we have to
focus for tonight in our session in March on one topic, that being public safety. But there are several
others that are of interest to you all that I think are important to your mission and to your charter. It'll
be important for you to think through how you might want to go about this work [01:15:00] after we
finish with the first one. We need to think about the sources of information, depictions of that
information and context. Hopefully that will all come through as I continue with this conversation.
These were some of the topics that emerged as we were discussing them with you all in September.
As I mentioned, tonight we're going to focus primarily on public safety. The first thing that we wanted
to share with you is something that doesn't directly relate to race or to racial inequity or
discrimination, but our team found this to be interesting. This is a table that is drawn directly from
federal data. This source of this particular table is an organization known as Defund Police.org. It is
important to consider the source. The name of the source is Defund Police.org which is a collaboration
with movement for black lives, critical resistance, interrupting [01:16:00] criminalization, policy link,
law for black lives and a number of other related and allied organizations. As you can see, Iowa City,
which is the city represented on the left, has 85 officers, which are sworn personnel, and 23 civilian
employees for a total of 108. Then they evaluate that on the basis of what that amounts to in terms of
officers per 1,000 people in the community. The Iowa City police department has 63% of the officers
per capita as the state average. It's hard for me to get the cursor over there, there it is I think. As you
can see, Iowa City is about 63% of the state average. It is 47% of the national average and it's 60% of
the officers per capita as similar sized cities across the country. To match state, [01:17:00] national
on peer department sizes, Iowa City police should have between 135 and 179 total officers. Now, this
isn't explicitly about the race of those officers, the racial composition of the department of recruits or
anything like that. But I thought it was an interesting statistic because there are certainly a lot of
schools of thought about what the right number of police is in a particular place. When someone feels
over policed or under policed, so I thought this was an important piece of data or set of data for you
all to orient yourselves around. Then we go to funding, this is not broken out in a racial way, but I
thought it was also an important set of data for you all to consider. This looks specifically at data from
state and federal databases, public records requests to local police departments, and media reports.
It's compiled in something called [01:18:00] the police scorecard, which is an independent 501C3
organization that is compiling this data and analyzing it. But as you can see, the actual data here
comes from the federal government, partly supplied by the local agency. What this is here to tell us is
that of the funding for the Iowa City police department, there is more police funding in Iowa City per
capita, which means per resident, than just about 10% of departments. Then if you look at the officers
per 1,000 population that we were talking about a little earlier, there are more officers per population
than only 11% of departments. Both of these come along to show you that in comparison to other
departments, the ICPD is a little bit smaller. But that doesn't necessarily have anything directly to do
with race or racial inequities or discrimination, [01:19:00] it's just a data point. Here's where we get
into some information that's broken out by race. As you can see on the table, what we've done is
we've listed the number of arrests made by the race of the person arrested, and you'll notice that
there's going to be a distinction between arrests and crimes. Meaning an arrest is just that it's a
person being placed under arrest, but they could be released, they may never see the light of a court
room. A crime is when they are formally charged and perhaps put on trial. What you can see from this
table is that over this period, and I know that it may seem like dated data, we do have more recent
data for some of our other the types of findings. But what you see here is that a Black or African
Americans
[01:19:50]
are somewhat disproportionately
[01:19:51]
represented in the number of arrests as are American Indians or Alaskan natives. Asians are not
native Hawaiians [01:20:00] are not. Whites are arrested at approximately the same level as they are
in the population according to the 2020 census. But of all of the arrests made during that five year
period, 19% were listed as Black or African-American, which is different than the proportion that they
are of the population as a whole. Then I mentioned the distinction between arresting crimes. This is
data, from the federal government, but these are recorded offenses. This is where the police has said,
we are charging you with a crime. In this case, you can see it a little bit more starkly that of all of the
offenses reported by ICPD to the federal government, 52% of them involved Black or African-American
offenders, if you will, which is in far excess of the percentage of population that they are. Now,
[01:21:00] it's important to decide what that means to you. It may mean nothing to you, it may be
coincidental, it may not indicate anything that is truly a miss, or it may be a sign of something that is
a miss. But those are the data that we found relative to the proportionality of who is being charged
with crimes in this community by the local police department, and then a comparison to their
percentage of the population.
[01:21:30]
Larry, can I ask a question?
[01:21:31]
Of course you may.
[01:21:33]
I know this is race. Did you find anything on ethnicity for the Latino population?
[01:21:38]
We haven't yet. We're still looking. It's interesting because there is a dataset that lists every single
incident. If you look at the data, not one of the incidents is listed Hispanic or Latino, and we don't
know what to make of that. Obviously, it's highly unlikely [01:22:00] that none of them were
committed by, it would be statistically almost impossible. But they are listed as either one of these or
unknown or not specified. We need to understand why that we don't know, but that's what the
dataset that we have showed us. Still to come to be continued on.
[01:22:17]
That makes me curious. How do they? Because we do have people of middle eastern origin or Arab
origin. How is it captured?
[01:22:29]
Well, it, it's captured by, we think, the arresting officers as they produce paperwork. I don't know if
they ask the person to identify themselves by a particular race or if they simply make a judgment
based on surface appearances or something else. But as far as we know, it is completed by the
arresting officer or officers involved in the incident. There may be some faulty assumptions being
made about someone's background, we don't [01:23:00] know. Certainly there is not a distinction in
the data that we can see between African-American and African, for example, or nationality or
anything of that sort so, that's of interest to us as well. The interesting thing about this compilation of
data, the scorecard, is that they, as you can see, grade out different elements of a police
department's performance as a percentile. When it comes to these indicators that you see here on
the screen, where it says excessive force complaints upheld. This category captures, I'm reading here
just so I'm fully accurate. This category captures what percentage of complaints were upheld when
civilians alleged that police [01:24:00] officers used excessive force. There were 28 complaints made
over this nine year period that was examined, of which 4% or 1-2 of them, were ruled in favor of
civilians. The measure of 4% listed refers only to the percentage upheld. Unlike the measure of force
used per arrest, for example, the measure of excessive force complaints upheld doesn't compare
ICPD to other police departments. When it comes to discrimination, complaints upheld, it's the same
thing. In this case, there were 10 complaints made over a nine year period of which none of them
were ruled in favor of civilians. Now, these aren't the only complaints that people could make against
officers. These are specific to excessive force and discrimination. As you can see, when you look at
misconduct complaints as a whole, a much larger percentage of them were upheld, which is of note, if
that's of interest. But [01:25:00] it was interesting to us to see how low the rates were, both of the
total number of complaints, that's not a large number of complaints, when you think about a nine
year period, for there only to have been 28, and also for so few of them to have been upheld, which
means validated, verified, and so forth. As you know here in the city, there are community members
that are on the community police review board who evaluate those, as well as the chief and the
administration.
[01:25:34]
This is pertaining to the way in which the PD goes about its work, less from a matter of force and
more from a matter of the arrests they make and the work they do to solve the most heinous of
crimes in terms of homicide. This category at the top where it says arrest rate for low level offenses
examines how often perpetrators [01:26:00] of low level offenses were arrested for those crimes. I'm
sorry, I don't have right in front of me. I'll get it here in just a minute, the definition of low level
offenses, but it's probably what you would imagine in terms of misdemeanors and things of that
nature. The measure of 24% means that the ICPD arrested people at a higher rate for lower level
offenses than 76% of departments with about 18 or 19,000 arrests for low level offenses out of 25,000
total arrests. In other words, they're comparing the percentage of total arrests that were made by
ICPD for low level offenses, and then comparing that to other departments. Sometimes the way that
this works out is that, of course, if someone is arrested for a low level offense and they're convicted,
that can obviously jeopardize any number of different future prospects. Some departments have
chosen to [01:27:00] make fewer arrests for some of those so called low level offenses. But in this
case, this is what the data revealed. Then on racial disparities in drug arrests, this explores whether
the perpetrators of low level offenses are arrested at different rates depending on race and ethnicity.
The measure of 15% listed for ICPD comes from the fact that black people were 7.7 times more likely,
and Latina Hispanic people were 1.9 times more likely to be arrested for low level non-violent offenses
than a white person. Again, 7.7 times more likely for a black person to be arrested for low level non
violent offense, and 1.9 times more likely for Latin and Hispanic. I'm sorry, I don't have the Native
American or Asian American numbers handy.
[01:27:51]
Larry, can I ask?
[01:27:52]
Absolutely.
[01:27:54]
The way you described that, I'm confused because it sounded like the 24% [01:28:00] is good not
bad, and the 15% is bad, not good.
[01:28:06]
I appreciate the question and I'm chuckling only because I'm doing my best to characterize some of
the judgments made by a researcher besides me. I'm doing my best there. But I think what they are
in an awkward way, Commissioner Tessera, what they're trying to say is, they believe that if the
percentage of arrests that are for low level offenses are high, that is negative. They are assigning a
lower score to that based on the fact that it is a higher percentage in Iowa City than it is in
comparable departments. That's the top line. You follow what I'm saying. In other words, what they
want to see is that let's say there are 100 arrests. They would rather 90 of them before [01:29:00]
God forbid, homicide, armed robbery, and so forth and 10 of them be for, let's say drug use or
something non-violent. But they're saying that in Iowa City, when they looked at 25,000 arrests, great
many of them were for the so called low level offenses and a much higher percentage than most of
the rest of the departments that they examined. That's what that top one means. Then the bottom
one is a reflection of the fact that, again, like some of the other tables I was showing earlier, black
and Latina communities were being arrested in these drug circumstances at higher rates than whites
by significant margin. They view that as problematic.
[01:29:46]
I guess what I'm still struggling a bit is that especially for the top one. If you're in an area where
there's only two homicides a year, it's got to turn out that way.
[01:29:59]
No. [01:30:00] That's again why I want to make sure that this is continuously a conversation about
interpretation and value judgment that you all place on it as compared to just taking at face value
what someone else may have done. Go ahead, Vice Chair.
[01:30:16]
We also I was wondering with the comparisons like, let me think about the low level offenses, arrest
rate and how many of the communities that are compared were college communities. If you look at
the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever else, ones that are picked up arrested, that thing or public
toxin that was like. Are they comparing Iowa City type community, big 10 college with other similar
types of communities with that college preference?
[01:30:49]
I think that's a very reasonable question. It would seem to me that they, in this case, are comparing
them to all, which may be an unfair comparison. [01:31:00] In the next time we talk try to parse the
data a little bit more to say like let's look at, as you say, maybe Urbana, Champagne or State College,
or the other big 10 cities of similar size, or look at it on that basis. I think that's relevant. I think, a
particularly important couple of graphics. I want to make sure you are tracking the fact that this
comes from a study that is being commissioned by Iowa City and conducted independently, but it's
being underwritten by ICPD, it's not from another source outside of this community. But again, this
breaks down percentages of both stops and arrests by race. Now, one of the things that it is important
to consider, is [01:32:00] some of the stops that are made by police department or what they would
consider to be non-discretionary. Now, what does that mean? Well, it certainly could mean different
things to different people, but if I see someone driving a car at 90 miles an hour, you might say, well, I
have the discretion to decide that I'm not going to focus on speeding cars this evening because I'm
focused on something else. But obviously, in most cases, that is in violation of the law. But in the data
that we reviewed, the vast majority of stops were classified as non discretionary as opposed to I had a
choice about whether to stop someone that looks suspicious and I chose to or I chose not to. We can
share more of that with you later on, but this takes all of the stops in total. Obviously, arrests can also
be, to some degree, discretionary, But the Department, [01:33:00] I think, would also say that in
many cases, if they are witnessing someone in the commission of a crime or what they believe to be a
crime, they don't have a choice. Here as you can see, again, the percentage of stops by race is
somewhat in disproportion to the percentage of people in our community. Obviously, it's important to
keep in mind that just because someone is stopped or arrested in this community, that doesn't mean
they live here. Just because 18% of those stopped in Iowa City are black, and only 8.5% of the
community identifies as black. Someone could be stopped in this community who doesn't live here, if
that makes sense. The same thing, of course, goes for arrests, but it's certainly noteworthy that 30%
of those arrested are identified as black, while 11% are identified as Hispanic. This is again conducted
as independent research, I believe by someone at the University of [01:34:00] Iowa at the behest of
the Iowa City Police Department. Then this data, I think comes from 2019 and 2020. It's in the process
of being updated as we speak.
[01:34:15]
One other piece of data I would share, I was talking about non-discretionary offenses. The
percentages of non-discretionary offenses behind these stops and arrest numbers range from 91.6%
for contact with blacks to 100% for contacts with Native Americans. What does that mean? That
means that of all of the stops made of a black person, this data indicates that 91.6% of those were
considered non-discretionary for one reason or another. While the contacts with natives, which show
as a very negligibly small number, were nevertheless considered all non-discretionary by their
[01:35:00] finding. This looks at police violence, and it does not break it down by race. But it shows
that ICPD, according to this data set, used more force per arrest than 72% of departments. This refers
to non-lethal tactics like a taser, chemical spray, baton, canine police dog, so 28%, that score listed
for ICPD means that the ICPD used more force per arrest than 72% of departments. On the other
hand, there was only one documented killing by police within ICPD from 2013 to 2021. That puts
them, of course, at a higher end of a spectrum in terms of how infrequently that takes place.
[01:36:00] Greater instance of force according to this data, but much less frequent use of deadly force
as they're defining it. This just breaks it out a little bit further by type of force that is used. You can
see that chemical spray is a little bit more predominant, especially in some of the later years, as is
the use of a taser. I know that this is a tremendous amount of information to throw at you, and I know
that it may be hard for you to draw conclusions just based on hearing it now but I want to encourage
you, after I take some additional questions, if there are any, to take a moment to consider what this
data tells you and what you still want to know about what's here and then what else you want us to
seek out. Because it's only going to be fruitful for you to conduct this work [01:37:00] if it's going to
help with your charter of identifying instances of racial inequity or systemic racism or discrimination.
We want to do our part to provide you with whatever data you need to come to those conclusions, one
way or the other. Commissioner.
[01:37:16]
Yes. In this particular case, is it possible to drill down farther to look at the types of arrests?
[01:37:25]
What type of force was used?
[01:37:26]
Right.
[01:37:27]
We can check. I don't recall whether we have an incident by incident finding with the offense listed,
but I will certainly look, sir.
[01:37:40]
Then also two slides back, you mentioned the 90% for black and 100% for native. What's the data for
Asian, Hispanic?
[01:37:55]
I'll need to take my screen off display just so that I can cycle through and look for that. [01:38:00] I
want to give you the definition that was given to us for non-discretionary offenses. These are offenses
that due to state law or departmental policy, leave officers with very little or no choice in deciding
whether or not to make an arrest. Officers are, in essence required to arrest and would in fact be
subject to departmental discipline if they chose not to arrest. These types of charges include offenses
like bench warrants, driving while barred, and operating while intoxicated. Analyses show that in the
overwhelming majority instances where an arrest was made, officers had little choice in the matter
that's aggregate. But then to your question, I'll just need to look at the data here in just a minute.
Other questions?
[01:38:43]
I'm curious, what was really difficult to find? What are you still trying to find that you think is
important? You know what is out there, but what's should be out there that you can't discover?
[01:38:59]
That's a terrific [01:39:00] question, Chair. Just take the slides down here for just a moment. I think
one of the things that will probably be harder for us to find are data related to just police civilian
interactions that don't necessarily involve a formal documentation, if you will in other words, an
arrest, of course, is a very documented incident. A stop is different. The data that I was sharing with
you about stops, that's partly from researchers direct observation. You don't have to, necessarily, as
an officer, say, well, I pulled over a, sorry to pick on you. I pulled over so and so and nothing came of
it. But she was [01:40:00] African-American. There's very little reason I can see for someone to record
that. There's a whole universe of interaction that police officers have with the community that may
not be as clearly documented as arrest and offense numbers. I think one of the things that's of
interest to me that I was told about here just earlier today is that the way we think about police
officer action may be typically that someone calls or flags an officer down. What I'm told, and I need
to verify this information, is that something like 45% of the stops are actually initiated by officers.
That's something I want to understand a little bit more. How many of those if I were to just break out
those, because if it's a call, that's one thing. Someone is saying I need police intervention here. But if
it's a judgment [01:41:00] call on the officer's part as to whether or not to get involved, what can we
find about that subset, if you understand what I'm saying. It's partly just understanding more about
those informal interactions. Frankly, some of that may just come from truth telling. Some of that may
just be a product of anecdotal, hey, I was stopped by an officer, here's what my experienced. It was
good, bad, or indifferent. This happened more than once or whatever, as opposed to a data set. But I
think it's important that we try to get as much information about who is getting stopped or interacted
with without having initiated that and what that experience resulted in as best we can.
[01:41:40]
Thank you. I had several other thoughts. I see that you've done it. It's been more of the last decade.
I'd love to see more historical data may be.
[01:41:50]
Beyond.
[01:41:50]
Beyond. To look at that maybe. Iowa City has a history of a growing population of [01:42:00] BIPOC,
people here. Looking at that correlation, I know off the top of my head, I like to look at the Iowa City
Community School District data, to look at the diversity of the kids on that, and maybe correlate what
that looks like alongside.
[01:42:18]
We can do our best with that. The data does go back beyond what we've shown tonight. There was
one other thing you just said. We were thinking we might be able to produce some heat map where
the city of Iowa City and then the darker the color or the redder or whatever, the more calls for service
or the more responses, the more police activities.
[01:42:40]
Could be awesome.
[01:42:42]
That'll take some effort, but we'll see what we can develop.
[01:42:46]
I know that we are in Iowa City Commission, but seeing other areas might be interesting to our
surrounding cities.
[01:42:56]
I think what you're saying is what's the percentage in Coralville or [01:43:00] Liberty and so on, and
I'll see what we can do on that. I think it's fairly possible. These are readily available by department of
the things that I was showing you. It's just a matter of how further we can dig, but absolutely.
[01:43:13]
Then, when you've been gathering information since there have been instances in trying to gather
this data in this community before, what of this do you think is new information?
[01:43:25]
That's a good question. I'm tempted to say that we may not have found a lot of brand-new
information yet if I'm being honest. I was having another thought, well, two things. One, Vice Chair,
Merritt and I were talking about data related to trainings that have been introduced within either the
last few years or maybe over the last several that deal specifically with racial diversity and more
effective ways to interact with people of different races. That's data we haven't seen and may want to
try to collect and display. I'm also interested in looking [01:44:00] at not just the racial composition of
a particular department, but something about the recruitment data. Because obviously, you could
have dozens of people in a given year take a test or apply, and then, of course, a subset of that be
selected, and how does that break down? I guess I would say to your question that maybe the only
newish thing would be an updated version of the stops study for ICPD. But even that, again, that data
that I showed you tonight is 2019, 2020. I think we are partly dealing with the time lag that it takes for
this data to become available and be reported, but we're also dealing with shortage of time just to
deliver for you all. We're going to have to do some quick digging to get further.
[01:44:54]
I'm interested to know across any information regarding [01:45:00] any training for officers that deal
with maybe bias or really any training. If there's any information out there on [inaudible 01:45:08]
[01:45:10]
We haven't seen a data set Commissioner about that. But there certainly is information that we can
glean about trainings that are taking place, whether it be in Iowa City or elsewhere. But to what Vice
Chair Merritt was saying, I think I would like to bring back to you some comparison of all the
departments in Iowa that we looked at, here are the numbers that we think do that training or
something equivalent. That's not an existing data set. We'd have to do that ourselves. I would want to
do that the next round.
[01:45:41]
I just wanted to add that I've provided you with an example of a city. There's a city in Iowa that's
already, I'm sorry.
[01:45:51]
You did, actually. I'm sorry. I didn't note that.
[01:45:54]
There's a city in Iowa that's already, I would say, way ahead of the curve [01:46:00] in even probably
the country, that is Sioux City where work with the police force has been going on for a long time.
[01:46:14]
The relationship building is ongoing. Our particular organization, Great Plains Action Society, has
actually provided decolonization trainings for some of the departments. Let's just say when our native
community goes to protest or march, there's actually support from this police department. I'm not
saying they are perfect, they are far from perfect, but that there has been years and years of work
that have been put in from the native community. It's a great example that I hope that we can follow.
I'm happy to get speakers from that community, our representatives, to come and talk [01:47:00]
about the work that's being done there.
[01:47:02]
Thank you Commissioner.
[01:47:03]
Luckily enough, two of our native partners are from there and one of them, Frank Lemere, Manape's
father, was one of the people that did a lot of that work. I'm pretty sure that Terrance has been
involved in some way, but the work that's going on right now is being done by women in the
community. I think that's pretty amazing too.
[01:47:35]
Agreed, it's great to have that resource, and I think it would be useful to dive into that further the
next time we talk about it, but I will do what we can on our end to collect some of that additional
training data. Commissioner.
[01:47:48]
I wonder if it's possible to dig deeper into the discretionary, non-discretionary stops because that one
seems to me to be really a troublesome area [01:48:00] because I think it's relatively easy for it to be
played one way or another. You could either be the case that it's non-discretionary according to the
book or it's discretionary according to the book. But then there's also the culture of the police force
deciding what's discretionary, not discretionary. Then there's also something that I experienced which
is really very trivial and silly, but it struck me rather hard is being stopped once on a college campus
by a local cop, or rolling through a stop sign at 4:00 in the morning on my bicycle, and was required to
give my license. I was, this makes no sense. What he revealed to me was, [01:49:00] we were under
some pressure to make sure we're being fair, I had to stop you from my number. That's not
addressing the issue. That's a funny way to address the issue that's like we can still consider to be as
racist as we want, as long as we do a few of these other things. I just think if it's possible to somehow
get information from the how are they dealing with this? How is it trickling down to the officer on the
street?
[01:49:33]
Yes.
[01:49:34]
To make those decisions.
[01:49:37]
I've heard it said many times, not just in policing, but in other spheres culture eats policy for
breakfast or lunch, whatever the meal, there is a need for understanding how something that may be
policy is translating into action. I do also think in what I'm hearing you say, that there's something to
evaluate in [01:50:00] this whole notion of pre-textual stops, this idea of broken tail lights and things
of that nature. There was policy, as I'm told at the ICPD, essentially not to engage in that. Then there
was state law that restricted what policies can be put in place to stop those stops from happening, if
that makes sense. Assessing that further at the local level is something, I think we should do, and
we'll try to do that.
[01:50:26]
I have so many thoughts, but the other thing I know there's a lot of numbers and that's what it is
when it's fact finding. But I also want to see a story, I guess just told about how we got here. When I
think of fact finding it is the data but it's also sometimes that data is anecdotal.
[01:50:49]
This is something that I've struggled with Chair. Of course everyone knows that my colleagues that
think police are doing our truth telling you part of this work. Bless you. [01:51:00] Where that
metaphorical line should be. Where should our work as fact finding start and end, and where should
theirs as truth telling start and end. I would just say that my working assumption is for anecdotal to
fall into truth telling and data to fall into fact finding. But that doesn't have to be the case. It's just the
way that I've organized this work in my mind, so as to not feel as if I'm taking on too much or
trespassing into what others of our colleagues are working on. But it's tricky because we could
certainly conduct interviews, for example, to get more facts about these interactions. Maybe that is
fact finding, but is that also giving testimony? It's hard to parse that.
[01:51:50]
My point of view is that you can't do too much. If there is overlap, I don't see a problem with that,
that's just me. [01:52:00] But again, if there is an article in the newspaper from 2014 that has a quote
from someone, that's a fact. Someone said that.
[01:52:10]
I see what you're saying. That helps me. Because that's different than our going and asking people for
their experiences. I certainly think we could do some of additional that. I think that makes sense.
Commissioner.
[01:52:30]
I'm saying these things for discussion purposes. The data that we have shows me that, there are
some disparities that may exist. I don't have enough data to be able to say if they're based with it
being in the system or if it's just primarily within the individual. [01:53:00] I don't have enough data
that says that it's because of the individual, because of the culture that has been created. That's why
Lewis was stopped to create a perceived case of fairness. Lewis does look like he rides his bike pretty
fast. It's a possibility.
[01:53:26]
Hair on fire and all that.
[01:53:27]
I've seen him a couple of times, so listen. When he wants to move, I think he can move.
[01:53:35]
What I struggle and I believe this is a very good case that we should carry through. You provide this
information to individuals. Individuals will then tell you about their story, about how they dealt with
the police and the challenges that they've had with the police, and some of the good stuff and some
of the bad stuff. This is my hypothesis or maybe it's just a rant. Then I believe that [01:54:00] then
we're going to find out that in some ways people are using their ability to have access to the
community in ways that may not necessarily be favorable to certain cultures.
[01:54:19]
Can you explain that, I think I'm not understanding.
[01:54:22]
Well again, a person from the city came to visit me on Tuesday and she will stop by the police, 10
miles over the speed limit, so she'll stop by the police. Her feeling was look, I would come all the way
to North Liberty to get stopped by the police. I'm trying to think of it from a structural perspective is
what is it that I would want to have done to be able to change [01:55:00] the issue? If it is within the
system, I can do things around policies. If it's within the culture, then I'm not quite sure what I can do
around policies that's going to change the culture. I could then focus on the issue of changing the
people. I'm thinking about us and as we're having this conversation, I may be able to say the police
do not treat me well. They're always watching me. They always follow my wife. I can say whatever I
want. Let's say I'm making up this stuff. I can say that and I'm painful because I want my wife to be
safe. I don't want her to have a problem and my important thing is she gets home. She tells her truth.
I tell my truth, I share my truth. I then go to the place where I am given the chance to deal with my
trauma in such a way that is healthier than more destructive. I'm not going to break things,
[01:56:00] I'm going to cry. Someone's going to tell me, it's fine. What you're going through is normal,
in that sense, the way that we cope with it. My question then gets into is, what is the solution for
success there? We've talked a little bit about this. Other than hearing that story, what is the solution
for success? The reason why I asked the question is once I go through this experience, I want to go to
the City Council and say, this is what I heard. Here's the solutions for what you should do to be able to
resolve this issue. When we find that it is more in the people than it is in the system. What is the
solutions for success that I'm willing or I'm able to share to solve the problem.
[01:56:55]
If I may, a couple of thoughts to consider here. Because I've worked with other police departments
recently that have thought [01:57:00] about this. First thing I want to tell you from a process
perspective is how critically important I think it is for this Commission to hear from officers and from
the department about their work. It is next to impossible to judge anyone on the basis of data or on
the basis of accounts, just from people who have interacted with officers without talking to the officers
or to the chief. Now that may come in a public setting and it may not, you may have officers who only
want to speak anonymously or in private. But in my opinion, it's important for you to understand, it's
not a defense of any behavior. It's simply a process matter for me in terms of trying to understand
where they're coming from. I also think that some departments, when it comes to changes in culture,
have looked at criteria for selecting officers, for hiring officers and priority of those criteria. [01:58:00]
Is lived experience important, is a certain level of education important, is a certain work experience
important? What tests are we doing for their, I don't want to say personality, of course, that's
ridiculous. But I mean their mental fitness or what have you, or their physical fitness. There could be
things on the recruitment and evaluation stage, if you will, of hiring officers and or training them that
are worth your scrutinizing to understand. Not just policy in terms of what they're being told they
must do, but culture in terms of from the moment that they see an advertisement or the moment
they talk to a recruiter, to the time that they on board. What are the messages that they're receiving?
Because I think departments are really scrutinizing that in this day and age. I hope that's helpful in
terms of other threads to consider. Again, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not intending to
evaluate anyone's behavior [01:59:00] here. I'm simply telling you from a process perspective, a TRC
perspective. If you're evaluating public safety and law enforcement, it's helpful to hear from law
enforcement.
[01:59:11]
When he's talking about a process, he's saying make sure it's well rounded and you're getting as
much information as you can for people. Culture is never set by the people that come in. Culture is
set by the people who are already there. If you come into a culture and it is what it is, very rarely are
you going to be able to change the culture without getting fired. It just doesn't happen that way. The
culture pretty much is set and the set over long periods of time. It is that smell in that room that has
just been there forever and it doesn't matter how much you clean it, it's been there so long. It stays.
Eventually you can get that lemony, fresh smell, but eventually it fades away. You know what I'm
saying? I'm bringing this just more up just as I start thinking through our process of when we pull
these people [02:00:00] together, they're going to be expecting something. They've been expecting
people like us to be level headed, but eventually the city is going to expect for people like us to
provide recommendations. I want to just be careful about not putting ourselves in situations where
we're in a trap, where there is no solution. Because of some of the challenges, other than the things
that have been traditionally done or said, which have traditionally never worked. I do it more so of
saying that we have to identify like a Supreme Court, we really have to identify whether this is
something that we can handle or whether this is something that the Human Rights Commissioner can
handle. Is this an individual based situation or is it a broader situation where you need a team that's
specifically working on something related to police, some topic.
[02:00:58]
Will we have also [02:01:00] the courage to say, hey, this is important. This is not something that
we're going to be able to help and solve.
[02:01:07]
I just want to note before Commissioner Tassinary speaks that if you'd like to share anything at this
stage, is the only commissioner I haven't heard from. I normally don't put people on spots and you
can step away from spot, but I just wanted to make sure you're heard if you'd like to be. Go ahead,
Commissioner Tassinary if you want.
[02:01:24]
Just to make a suggestion. It seems to me that the fact finding you've done gives us a broad brush,
30,000 foot perspective on disparities that are important. I wonder if we can use those for and maybe
you can help to go back to what Chastity had mentioned with creating a story framing those in a way
that it provides us with the prompts or a set of prompts that we might use in the truth telling.
[02:01:58]
That would be great.
[02:02:00]
People are going to tell their stories however they want to tell them but if we can help just like in the
previous circles, there were two or three things that said, focus on this focus on. We can use that data
to say, have you experienced this? What about this? I don't know exactly how to frame it, but I think
your team would be able to put that together and that would help, I think.
[02:02:25]
Certainly would be honored to help you with that. I would say it will be interesting to hear what
Eduardo Gonzalez and his team say about the relative merit of those prompts, as opposed to please
come and talk, meaning more of an open mic. There are different schools of thought on that in the
TRC world. I personally think that accommodation is meaningful because some people will be too
afraid of an open mic to just say I'm going to just talk. Other people won't want to be hamstrung by, I
must answer such and such questions. Maybe something where you offer [02:03:00] the questions,
but they don't have to be answered in that fashion or something.
[02:03:04]
Just to follow up with that. That's exactly what happened in the circles. There was a prompt, but that
was literally just the impetus to start. Some people were very narrow and some people were very
broad but it helped just to get something going.
[02:03:23]
No question.
[02:03:27]
I do a lot of listening. I like to listen because you learn a lot more when you listen to how people think.
Then you assess it and then you add to it. That's the reason why I'm usually quiet. There's a lot to
learn from a lot of different minds. This reminds me of a conversation that we had the other day, me
and a friend over at the gym, I don't know if you've heard of chimpanzees with the ladder, [02:04:00]
it's experiment where they had food on top of the ladder, and they had chimpanzees down. It was
about culture because the chimpanzees they had it so if somebody went up to the top of the ladder,
they would electrocute all the rest of the chimpanzees or something along those lines like that.
Eventually they start transferring one chimpanzee out and bringing new and new chimpanzees would
follow. I'm sorry, once they get to the top of the ladder, the other chimpanzees would beat up one
chimp that would go up to the very top of the ladder to go for food that was up there. Over time, they
didn't even know why they were beating up that one chimp, they had no idea. It was just whoever
went up that ladder, it was just the thing to do. That's what we learned, that's how it is. In that
conversation, we basically, at the end, came across like you have to have sacrifices [02:05:00] to a
certain level and degree. It's going to be painful, but you have to have people who step in and
basically say, we're going to have to take these hard blows, take these hard shots in order to make a
true change. It's difficult to get people to step up to do that. When I hear what you're saying over
there, changing the culture and how dangerous it could be, I get that and I understand that. I'm
thinking on how and what would be good solutions to help facilitate that change. That's all. I'm just
trying to contemplate it, how do we make the right moves, how do we set things up where there is no
real sacrifice but at the same time, we still get everybody to change that feeling around. You know
what I mean or do you?
[02:05:56]
No, I know exactly what you mean. I think that was to me, one [02:06:00] of the challenges when we
were talking about this whole issue around immunity and cops having a certain level of protection.
Then we say, we want to take away the protection. You're going to be just as much risk as everyone
else. It was our way of trying to even the playing field. I think that's challenging. Normally, if you want
to change the culture, you change it at the top. Traditionally, I think when you think about the police
department, you think about the police department but the police department is one department
that's a part of the city. I think the whole culture is primarily within the city and the way the city is
managed. We have one of our leaders, I won't mention his name, but he has been sitting out emails
and he said, look, this is the way we pretty much have done budgeting forever. We do budgeting in
such a certain way that it's not necessarily healthy for us overall as a community, we need to change
the way we do budgeting because that [02:07:00] becomes important. I know it's going to be difficult
to do but if we don't do this now and change the way we do budgeting, then we're going to keep
getting, in essence, what we need to get. We need to put the money where things are important and
then we can get more of the stuff that we need to get. I remember I had a conversation earlier this
week with one of the senior leaders and I said, housing is not really a problem, you just have to build
more houses but if the system doesn't allow you to build houses, that's a problem. But here's what's
bigger, there's no way that you're taught how to be a developer. You can buy a house and you know
how to renovate it, but no one teaches you how to build a house. You can't solve the housing issue if
you don't bring in brand new stock in the house. My question to him was, how do you do it? Where do
I go? I got an MBA from Iowa. They never taught me that in Iowa. [02:08:00] Where do I go? I think
just a part of it is what you're saying is, when you talk about doing things around culture, it's really
about taking information that you really don't have, finding that information, and then trying to bring
it into the system in ways that, in essence, can create some disruption. That's what I think happens. I
just wanted it so that I agree that there's a balance between it being structured and it being open in
the conversation because I believe just like what you're saying and just actually like what you're doing
is that when you start listening to people have these conversations, something that's going to click
and you're going to then go back to that person and start talking to them more about that one
specific thing that you know that you can solve or it's solvable. You don't know how it's solvable or
you know of the person that talked to you [02:09:00] three years ago about something that could
actually solve that problem. I think it is finding those nuggets and then being able to implement those
nuggets of success, but also being able to say this is beyond the scope of what we can do, in essence,
to achieve success.
[02:09:21]
One quick point, and that is just to Commissioner Simmons, that sometimes budgets are the least
attended to by the public, by the media in terms of controversy, in terms of debate. There's nothing
that is more explicit in terms of a statement about what matters to whoever the budget is, than their
budget. I think it's important for us to work to provide more detailed breakdown of the way the money
is being spent on this particular topic and perhaps some trends to your point, over a substantial
period of time, so that there can be some understanding of where [02:10:00] money and mouths are
being put at this point and then whether that should shift in some way. You certainly have done what
I've asked of you in terms of the items before us. I want to respect how long we've been here, but I
also want to see what else you'd like us to pursue between now and when we return, which is likely to
be in middle March right before the events.
[02:10:25]
Were you going to say something, Kiche?
[02:10:28]
You can go and I'll go by.
[02:10:30]
I'm just thinking, we live in, some people say progressive Iowa City, a town that thinks they're
progressive but we're not as progressive. Some people might see some of the data that you pull and
be like, well, that's not that bad. I'm wondering what we can show data wise, what would happen if we
don't make any changes what that could look like? Does that make sense?
[02:10:56]
Is there a trend going?
[02:10:58]
What is our trend? [02:11:00] Yes, we may look better than this other city that people perceive as
more racist, but that doesn't mean that there's not issues here.
[02:11:10]
Let me ask you first, just I do want to respond to your suggestion, but what does progressive mean to
you?
[02:11:18]
I said that as quotation marks.
[02:11:21]
What does progressive mean to you?
[02:11:24]
We live in a state that is not as progressive. I don't know how to answer that. More forward thinking,
more willing to make change, more willing to look at diversity and try to adjust accordingly to make
sure that there are equitable, I can't say the word equitable, things being implemented to help
everyone. Iowa City does do that more so than other places in the state, but we have a lot of work to
do.
[02:11:59]
I guess what came to mind when [02:12:00] I was listening to you is to challenge you as a group. You
don't have to do this now. Just think about the ideal end state for this. I'm just rightfully speculating, is
it that no force is used by officers unless very few exceptions? That number that may be better in
terms of other departments should yet be better in terms of absolute zero, like vision zero for car
crashes.
[02:12:32]
That offender and stop data aligns with our proportions of census data population numbers. I just
think that you kind of have to begin with the end in mind in terms of that evaluation process, and if
you can agree on what you ideally would like to see, then it's possible, I think, for us to say, well,
here's the progress along that spectrum. Otherwise, it's really a comparative. [02:13:00] There's
comparisons for the size of police for, the budget for the stops, it's all being done in a relative fashion,
and so I think it's partly your challenge to say, well, not in Iowa City. In Iowa City, we want X
standards, and then see how far we're doing on that. That could be a recommendation as well.
Commissioner Johnson, I think maybe you were going to speak.
[02:13:26]
I'm kind of still thinking on it.
[02:13:28]
Take your time. The question on the floor is just, what additional avenues of inquiry, what other parts
of this topic do you want us to explore between now and when we return? Yes, ma'am.
[02:13:45]
I'm wondering whether there is a way that, or maybe it's there in what you presented [02:14:00] and I
haven't seen it. As I always remind myself, the TRC came to Iowa City because of the protests that
resulted from George Floyd's death. So, a lot has been said by the Iowa City communities and the fact
find on public safety. A lot was also said in the listening posts. When you went up there in the field to
fact find, what has been said? Was it also captured?
[02:15:00]
No. I think that was the point that was made by the chair earlier that, if we can find quotations, if we
can find things that people on the record as saying that, that would be legitimate data, and I agree.
We just haven't gone down that path yet.
[02:15:16]
My other question is, since we are talking about ICPD, and I know public safety in Iowa City also
includes the U of I public safety and the sheriff's department, the Johnson County, because we are
part of that, and maybe I've missed it, but when you are in the field, if that wasn't looked into, if
possible, I'd want some of those facts found because [02:16:00] I remember you also mentioned
historical or how far back we're going, I'm thinking of 2008 when a young refugee Den on Gilbert
Street was shot by a 24-year-old sheriff, that was in June, in a month, it was an open and shut case,
and this is me just talking. I thinking, if that was today, that wouldn't have been the case, but this is
just me and my own opinion and the other anecdotal information. I think you already said no.
[02:16:43]
The information about Johnson County Sheriff is easy for us to access?
[02:16:50]
Because also we do interact with the sheriff's, and a lot of the stories shared [02:17:00] are not that it
should be in opinions, and some people have also made complaints. That would be its data that I
would be interested in and the U of I public safety.
[02:17:15]
I'm sure this would go without saying, but I'll just caveat that, obviously. Johnson County data will
include incidents outside of the city limits, and so as long as you take that with a grain of salt, I don't
know that I'll be able to parse and say, these are the Johnson County Sheriff's incidents inside Iowa
City. It might just be an aggregate, but, certainly, we can have that information.
[02:17:41]
The other thing, I do know that I did notice the complaints from the police review board, and I do
remember somebody at one of the Iowa City Council meeting, as somebody [02:18:00] pointing out
that, a lot of the complaints brought before the board from people of color were not addressed.
Probably I wasn't paying attention and maybe didn't see that but, for me, it would be something
interesting to look at.
[02:18:24]
The complaint of colors, which you mean in other words, the person filing the complaint?
[02:18:28]
If they file complaints, they're not addressed.
[02:18:31]
There are more data that we can bring you on civilian complaints, including qualitative data around
notes made by the board. They may not uphold a complaint, but they may still say, essentially we're
not happy or not comfortable or whatever, with this incident, so we should bring that to you, and we
can try to find the information you referenced about any disparities on the race of complainant and
the way it's handled.
[02:18:58]
You're talking about the [02:19:00] contact with the police, the traffic stops. Unless I'm an observer,
but I'm thinking of some of the complaints that end up in court. Some of those information coming
back here, because some of those stops people feel that this is racist and they take it to court, some
of the traffic stops.
[02:19:33]
You mean as opposed to the Civilian Review Board? Is that what you mean?
[02:19:36]
No. Now I'm talking about now going to court.
[02:19:39]
But distinguishing, some people may take it to the Community Police Review Board to court. I'll see
what I can find on the court side. Yes, ma'am.
[02:19:48]
The two things, one is I just want to remind people about the whole story I told you about; going down
rabbit holes, be careful you may find a rabbit. But the second thing [02:20:00] is Chair Dillard, maybe
you can give us some guidance on, now that we have this bit of information, when within our current
timeline, we use this to practice truth telling?
[02:20:24]
You mean next month during the events that we have planned for?
[02:20:28]
No, I'm not talking about in March. To me, March is when we were supposed to gather the
information, figure out how to put the ''show on'', and that's next that happens in March, the show.
I'm talking about where we start gathering the information, figuring out the type of people that would
have this as an interest of sharing that story, and then identifying who has the better story to be able
to present.
[02:20:55]
You're talking about the truth telling side of things to go alongside the fact finding. Is that what I'm
hearing?
[02:21:00]
Well, yeah. What you're hearing is that, we're talking about the concept of what the process is. We're
going to go and do some fact finding, then we're going to link that into truth telling, and then we're
going to link that into how that links into healing circles if necessary, and then we're going to identify
what story we wanted to tell. That's where we would come up with the story and say, this is the story
we want to tell, and here are the people that are going to tell the story, just like the House of
Representatives would then do, and then we get into hear the ways of helping resolve some of those
issues that we are trying to address.
[02:21:53]
Greensboro's TRC is helpful in this way. Because essentially, I think what Commissioner Simmons is
talking about is, there [02:22:00] is truth telling that can happen in private prior to your events in
March. There's testimony that you may want to collect, particularly from officers, but also from people
with direct lived experience, negative, positive, and otherwise, with law enforcement. What
Greensboro did was they collected a lot of that testimony, and then just as Commissioner Simmons
just said, they decided, we want to hear these testimonies publicly. We want to talk about this aspect
of the story on day 1, this aspect on day 2, this aspect on day 3. What that might look like is again,
each commissioner seeking out people's stories, hearing those stories, and then bring it to the group
to say, well, these are the stories that really resonated with me, I think we should ask them to speak
about it publicly, and then you all would collectively decide whom to invite and how to structure it.
That's a paradigm. It doesn't have to be the way that you do it, it can be more of an open call, and
whoever comes and so on, or it could [02:23:00] be both. But I do think there's a precedent for what I
hear you describe.
[02:23:07]
My colleague is raising her hand, Melinda Salazar.
[02:23:09]
Before Melinda speaks, I wanted to just point out like that Greensboro suggestion is great, but we
don't have the same. We are a governmental entity which is different than Greensboro; is that
correct?
[02:23:23]
That's correct.
[02:23:24]
We would not be able to meet.
[02:23:27]
There's not a whole lot of in my mind, and Melinda will speak to this, but that doesn't really change
the extent to which you can invite people to participate.
[02:23:38]
If we want to bring all that testimony, once it comes to the public, is always public. They have the
opportunity to have things in private. We wouldn't have that luxury as a group.
[02:23:48]
We do.
[02:23:50]
I don't want to be the attorney in the room, there is an attorney in the room. But I mean, you're
having a one on one conversation with someone doesn't make a public record per se, that's what I'm
[02:24:00] describing. Is you have a conversation with someone, they share something with you, and
then if they want to put it on the record, they put it on the record.
[02:24:09]
I guess I'm talking about the notion of us discussing which ones that we want.
[02:24:12]
I understand. You may want to do something where it's anonymized so that people wouldn't be. I hear
what you're saying. I'm sorry. Melinda Salazar.
[02:24:21]
Go ahead, Melinda. Thank you.
[02:24:23]
Hi guys. This is not Melinda. Sorry, I don't know what happened exactly, what they ended up sharing.
[02:24:29]
Yes, I know. I ended up sharing Melinda's link. This is Eduardo.
[02:24:35]
Hi, Eduardo.
[02:24:36]
Hi there. Just a couple of things about the very useful question posed by Commissioner Simmons. Yes,
you're right. The key right now is to know how to link up what we are learning in terms of the data
that we are accessing to and the experiences that people want to present. That is a linkage [02:25:00]
between fact-finding and truth-telling. Another question that is important and significant is how truth-
telling, which is anecdotal in nature, which is based in memory, which is based in emotions, is going
to be linked to healing to reconciliation. These are the linkages we need to work on right now.
According to the road-map that we presented to you, I pretty sure a week or a couple of weeks ago,
what we need to do is to present to you a proposal with the facilitators about how will the integrated
final event look like. Hopefully, in that proposal, we will aim at indicating how are those relationships
finding total reconciliation. It will be for you to give us guidance [02:26:00] on whether this is correct
and this is how you want to do it. What I think is that one first relationship exists because there is a
thematic alignment. The idea is that this first integrated event will be about what you are discussing
now, that is whether there is evidence and what the evidence says on the questions of safety,
policing, rule of law, and rates. That's first aligning thematic. The other one is that we want testimony,
information, experiences to go into the specific topics that we are looking at that Larry has presented
so ably. Questions such as form of treatment by police, discretionary power by police, whether police
is acting in a manner that is disproportionate regarding [02:27:00] racial communities, whether there
is violence in the interventions by police, et cetera. Those are the questions we need to decide. I also
want to say that I agree with Larry that the discussions on the truth-telling are not just to present
testimony, but as the resolution says, to encourage dialogue, which means that it would be very
useful for the commission to locate persons who have had experiences in the relationship with police,
but also members of the law enforcement community, for example, retired police officers who have
experiences who want to share and to invite discussion and conversation between those persons. I
think that would be the most productive way to deal with this and it would really inform the
discussions in the community and the discussions in the Trust Commission, just like you are doing
right now. [02:28:00] Regarding how to invite and when to invite, I think that as soon as the
commission has a vision for that final integrated event, you should start doing outreach to community
organizations, to social workers, to professional unions, et cetera, so that people can decide whether
they want to participate and prepare testimony or present testimony. In principle, I think that is a bit
better than just opening the doors and be completely spontaneous because if you're completely
spontaneous is basically public comment section which usually doesn't have any structure and
doesn't help the discussion. The other thing is, if there are people who have information that is
sensitive in nature, in that case, I am convinced and I have said this before when the by-laws of the
[02:29:00] commission were discussed, that Iowa legislation allows for public institutions, such as the
commission, to decide that there are elements areas that can be heard in a private or closed-door
session. For example, there may be issues that have to do with privileged relationships between a
defendant and legal counsel, issues that have to do with health conditions that belong to the realm of
the relationship between the person and her doctor, and so on. There are things that are protected by
law and that the commission simply can decide to hear in private now but I do think that that is really
not the central question here, because what we are discussing is what needs to be public. What needs
to be public is discussion of this particular topic informed [02:30:00] by evidence and contrasted with
personal experience. That I think is the most probably constructive way to look at the task.
[02:30:18]
Thank you, Eduardo. Go ahead.
[02:30:21]
Thank you, Eduardo. I've been arguing with myself about this question too. Is there a whistleblower?
The reason why I ask is because I know the likelihood of that is slim to none about whistleblowers.
Once you have a community of people that are working together, they usually have a tendency of
looking out for each other all the time. Is there any statistics on that, on who's whistleblower is in the
department or anything like that, and how many times they might say there's these issues and
they've seen it, they felt it and it might have been unnecessary but things happened but you don't
want to say anything, but I think that's going [02:31:00] to be impossible.
[02:31:02]
What I think we could collect, commissioner, there are certainly instances. I don't know if it's true for
this department or not, but an officer her or himself can file a complaint about an officer not with the
civilian PRB but just up the command, I think. I'm not sure of all the ways that it's evaluated or
arbitrated, but that I think we probably can document. We can't necessarily go to the place of
knowing, well, I saw something I didn't like, but I didn't say anything that would require a lot more
interviewing and legwork but the actual creation of a complaint, we might be able to find that.
[02:31:39]
But between one time period to another, how much that's happened? That's what I mean because if
we're thinking about the whole change of the culture, it needs to be safe for people to feel
comfortable.
[02:31:52]
Understood. Absolutely.
[02:31:54]
Stepping up and saying, that was disproportionate, but it goes back to the [02:32:00] latter. Just like if
you join in and you join in and you already see it's just going a certain way, you'll just blend into it a
little bit more rather than saying, you know what? I'm joining in but I see this is wrong and I'm going
to say something about it if we were to be able to bring that out a little bit more to find a way of
making it more comfortable, I would say but that is a very difficult task. I'm a Marine and I know one
thing as a Marine is we look out for each other no matter what. I know every single police department
is going to do the same thing because when you risk your life with somebody, you go through
different things with somebody, you're like, even if he's doing the wrong thing, I'm not really thinking
that twice about, I'm not going to do that. I've seen corruption in multiple different places with that
and I think it's so ugly, but it is something that's where you get to, I think about the source when you
start getting to the root of things and start breaking up with the issue is at the root. It starts to solve a
lot of other issues too. But I know that is also [02:33:00] very difficult to do. That's why I've been
sitting back and just like, where do you go with.
[02:33:03]
No, it's a difficult question. We'll do our best to answer it with some data which you'll help me do.
Sorry.
[02:33:10]
I was just going to say that each community is probably different but I served on the Civil Service
Commission for Qaravel. That was supposed to be the Department that if community wanted to have
a complaint about an officer, that's where they were supposed to and those meetings or minutes are
public. There's a record, that thing granted, in the eight years that I was serving, we never had a
complaint but that doesn't mean that there were not complaints to be made but none were was
formal.
[02:33:46]
The other sources of complaints to look at.
[02:33:48]
Exactly.
[02:33:53]
Eduardo aka, Melinda. This is what I heard you say. [02:34:00] Please make all corrections to my
statement. What I heard you say is that yes, there's something that we ultimately need to do is that
we need to figure out the story and we need to do that by soliciting the community to be involved and
to be able to tell us these stories. We need to do that in advance of what we're trying to do in March.
That you're willing to give us some guidance, but we ultimately have to do that work in advance
before our March event.
[02:34:37]
If this is a question, I think that you are the persons with the legal mandate by the city to do that. I
think that the facilitators can do all the legwork for that, but the actual call needs to be a call by the
commission.
[02:35:00]
Has the MLK event been rescheduled yet?
[02:35:09]
February the 29th.
[02:35:18]
I don't know the details. There are certain things that may be that replicate what would occur on MLK
day, but I'm not sure it is the itinerary that was set for the original date, because as I understand it
now, the reschedule is a dinner, so I I'm not quite sure it's the same structure.
[02:35:43]
I'm sorry. Did you say a dinner? No breakfast, eh? [LAUGHTER]
[02:35:52]
But it's the 23rd is what V just said?
[02:35:55]
That's [02:36:00] all I know is the date and the location [inaudible 02:36:06] I don't know enough
about to speak on, so there's like the platform that we had were there actually was talking post. I
can't remember whatever the term was.
[02:36:18]
Listening post. [LAUGHTER]
[02:36:21]
So that platform but that would have been the perfect if that could have been rescheduled we had a
date and then that could have been the event where we were doing what we're just talking about, but
if the platform is totally different then that pine scratches that.
[02:36:39]
I want to ask you a couple more questions. Is there a public relations or communications person on
the part of the city?
[02:36:49]
Yes.
[02:36:49]
Are they willing to work with us on the communications? Can they reach out to the radio stations and
the TV stations? Can they help set up interviews? [02:37:00] I mean interviews with the newscasters
they can allow us to get on the news and let's talk about this work?
[02:37:12]
Yes.
[02:37:14]
If the county can do it the city should be able to do it.
[02:37:16]
Yeah.
[02:37:18]
I don't think we can, like there's always the public information spots that they have which are show at
hours that are probably not what everyone's thinking. You have to pay for spots if you want to do like
prime time, so that's why I was like it depends.
[02:37:38]
How much you think it could possibly be?
[02:37:41]
That is a little bit out of my communications will know. We could find that out.
[02:37:46]
You're saying like maybe it's different for a non-profit we go on the radio twice a month with KCJJ. You
think that would cost because we're through the city?
[02:37:58]
I don't know. I don't want to speak.
[02:38:00]
I did work for a radio station once and public service announcements are often treated as free of
charge if you can prove that they are public service announcements. That doesn't mean that they
would determine this is one. Each station might look at that differently, but we certainly had plenty of
unpaid announcements of this type on our station.
[02:38:22]
Public service? That sounds fantastic. That sounds like exactly what we are public service. That is
exactly where we are. We are trying to help our public and service.
[02:38:31]
Press release.
[02:38:32]
I think that is.
[02:38:33]
In essence they can do a press release for us?
[02:38:36]
Oh, yeah.
[02:38:36]
They can also communicate to who the people to talk to on our commission and phone numbers and
email addresses, so they can get in contact with us and then they can help us put together our
messaging will that be accurate?
[02:38:50]
It's better than a billboard.
[02:38:53]
We can communicate from a broader perspective, leveraging the system that we're part of which is
the city of Iowa [02:39:00] City to communicate to the community that we need their help when it
comes to gathering certain bits of information. We're done with that?
[02:39:08]
Absolutely.
[02:39:10]
I'm going to recommend that we work with an organization. We can work with them as many as we
want and as many as you all recommend, but I'm going to recommend we work with the NAACP,
specifically around their ability to do investigations and the reason I'm going to recommend that we
work with them and we work with them that they work for us or we work for them it is is that we're
able to gather information and then they're able to help us package the information in such a way
that we can then protect people. It's not public record in essence is a part of their system. They can
help us protect the people, but it could be any organization. That in essence the work that's outside of
us we can work with them, but it's not us, so it's not a creating a public record.
[02:39:56]
I like that idea. I just want to understand the logistics of it like what?
[02:40:00]
Logistics service that we have just identified the hole in our process. We've planned a beautiful event
in March and we have no way of being able to get there. That's what we've identified. We've identified
that we're going to spend more time on healing circles and we don't need to. What we need to do is
be able to put pieces together and then go from there, not continuously repeat.
[02:40:29]
But what I think Chad D. is asking is if the NAACP or any organization were in the role that you're
describing. I think what you're saying correct me if I'm wrong is let's say I'm in the NAACP Vice
President. I go to talk to random citizen Mr. Jones. He has something to share with me. He shares it
with me I document the conversation, but maybe I redact the personal information and then I
transmit that to the TRC for review and if [02:41:00] you all say well, whoever this is I want this
person to talk publicly. They could do so. Am I tracking?
[02:41:09]
You're tracking.
[02:41:11]
In other words the partner organization would function like Canvassers field organizers except that
they could keep the information about who told them what so that they could have a contact, but
they don't have to transmit it to you with the name on it in such a way that then that name is
immediately publicized.
[02:41:31]
Yeah, I think I understand that. I know we've talked about something like that. A few times just never
decided how we're going to do it and when I say logistics I just want to I guess understand if we're like
this is essentially trusting another entity, whoever that could be just what that looks like do we need
to have a contract like what does that mean for them to do that?
[02:41:55]
I think you're wanting to know the specifics. I think it makes a lot of sense. [02:42:00] I can't share
with you what the specifics are because I didn't really. I just really show that.
[02:42:04]
We don't have to decide it now. I just wanted to put that out there we can decide it afterwards just I
think that that question has to be asked if we're all on the same page.
[02:42:13]
I think it would be helpful to memorialize it in something like a memorandum of understanding, not a
contract with money attached necessarily, but just here's what we're all agreeing to do. Commission
do you want to?
[02:42:23]
Yeah. I think that is an absolutely great idea. What I don't understand is why that precludes healing
circles. I didn't understand why that precludes healing circles.
[02:42:36]
I don't think that does.
[02:42:38]
Well, I was just simply saying this I said if we've gained all the knowledge we need from healing
circles, we don't need to do more healing circles. We need to invest our time in making sure that the
model works, so I think what I heard through the conversation is healing circles would have been
really interesting if it was specifically targeted around a specific [02:43:00] area, so we did healing
circles as a part of this process of gathering information. We did the fact finding, we then do the truth
telling and then the healing circles is linked to that. Then we can start seeing that everything starts to
flow and it makes sense and we better understand how it fits in.
[02:43:19]
Because right now for March we have slots for truth telling, but we don't have what the truth that's
being told.
[02:43:28]
No. I understand. I just want to be sure that healing circles is still a part of this.
[02:43:32]
I don't so. I think that the concept of what we did this past weekend was due to what was missed in
October.
[02:43:46]
We had to go through the quote, "Development" so we could understand it, which we now have gone
through. That was really phase 1 of healing circles work. I'm saying in phase 2, [02:44:00] let's put it
in its place to see if it really works. Well, not see if it really works so I think it really works. I don't think
we have to see if it really works. Let's see how we want to leverage it, the strength of the tool with the
people.
[02:44:17]
Now I can understand. Larry you asked us, and I don't know if you said it exactly this way, but what's
the end game? How do we know we've succeeded? That's obviously, really difficult question. But one
thought that came to mind is that the data that you've collected, the way you frame it is relative to
cities of comparable sizes, or it's relative to the national average. To go back to what Chastity was
getting at earlier, what if we [02:45:00] instead framed it relative to a progressive city, US, Canada, I
don't care where, that by all metrics is doing it right. How does Iowa City compare to them? That'll
give us, I think, a better sense of what success would look like.
[02:45:25]
Happy to help. All I need is some concrete definitions of how to filter those cities. I can have my own
print elections tell you, "Such and such state capital with a flagship university", but it needs to be in
the eye of these beholders. You all need to tell me the peers that you'd like to evaluate in that way.
[02:45:47]
But it might even be like you were suggesting earlier when you were framing the nature of the data,
where it was coming from. I'm just going to pick a random group, a Black Lives Matter national
organization [02:46:00] said, "Dime Box, Texas knows exactly what they're doing." It's Cambridge,
Massachusetts or it's Sioux City, Iowa, whichever one it is. That's what we use as a benchmark to be
able to help us to operationalize what we mean by the quote "Progressive" and what the end goal is.
[02:46:22]
We can certainly look at what each of these organizations have held up as models, and look at it that
way. Commissioner.
[02:46:30]
I was just thinking, what are our most progressive cities that we can brainstorm about, to think which
ones are just like you're saying, what we see as a progressive city in order to set us next to it and
measure it out? Do you have any thoughts on any?
[02:46:52]
It has all sorts. Part of my head goes to the stereotypes. For me, it's like Portland, Oregon. [02:47:00]
But there are all sorts of things wrong with Portland. But that's where I go sometimes. I think that
Cambridge, Massachusetts, because I know it a little bit, is another one I would. But those are just off
the cuff ideas. I'd rather have an organization that has looked deeply into safety issues, policing
issues, and goes, "This place really seems to have done the right sorts of things."
[02:47:26]
There are certainly organizations we can turn to for that, so we'll provide a larger than you need list,
and then you sort through and check out to see which cities are bringing everybody together. In
theory, not just one group to another, but literally everybody and progressively the city is getting
better in general. That's what I think the best measurement is right there.
[02:47:49]
Maybe people you know, who've been someplace that made a comment. This actually is cool.
[02:47:53]
This is nice. Bits and pieces from each one of these different cities that bring it right here to Iowa.
[02:47:59]
Somebody said they've been [02:48:00] someplace. Let's go check it out.
[02:48:03]
Kiche.
[02:48:05]
Dr. Schooler, going back to some other area and again, maybe I didn't heard it. You talked about the
police contact with community members. The majority of them were initiated, for example, the traffic
stops were initiated by the police officers. I would be interested in getting facts on contacts that came
about, because a call was made to the police. I would really be interested in the race of the collar and
call the race of the person being called on.
[02:49:00]
Whom they're complaining about or concerned about?
[02:49:03]
Yeah, whom they are. That's something I'll be interested in because anecdotal evidence and from
listening, it's usually a white person calling on a person of color. Sometimes, I'm thinking of a letter
that was written some time back about massage parlor. The way it was written, it was in the school
district to the police. The way it was written, the person was convinced that sex trafficking is going on
there. Upon investigation, it didn't happen and all of us would be able to give some examples like
that. I'd be curious and I'd be interested, in fact, in that area.
[02:50:00] [02:50:03]
I will. Commissioner Johnson's facial expression, for the record. But yes, just to close that book, I'll do
what I can to find that information. I don't know how much of it is recorded in terms of the race of the
person who makes the call.
[02:50:16]
Yeah. I'll respond to what Commissioner Lou, what you're saying about the end game and comparing
with maybe series. I'm thinking of end game for the TRC. I'm following the resolution that constituted
the TRC and carrying out the three charges, so ending up with the recommendations to the city of
Iowa City. I've been thinking, a comparison of success with other TRC's.
[02:51:00] [02:51:01]
That's worth considering as well.
[02:51:05]
The most successful, highly populated African-American cities. That's one way you're going about it.
Because if you give opportunities and you give things the right way, you can change the system, that
does just off the top.
[02:51:19]
Appreciate. Chair, I'm going to recommend that we table discussion for now with deepest thanks. This
is the level of engagement you all have at the hour that we're having it after so much time is
remarkable. Thank you very much.
[02:51:36]
We'll table it. But were there some action steps or anything that we needed to talk about for the next
week meeting or?
[02:51:44]
Lauren who is listening remotely is compiling all of the different requests that were made of us in
terms of fact findings. We'll furnish that to you, and if there are corrections or amendments, we
certainly will ask ask you for them. But you'll hear us present again most likely March [02:52:00] 14th
virtually and then March 18th in person.
[02:52:04]
Thank you, Lauren. If there's no other further discussion, I'm going to move on to.
[02:52:10]
[inaudible 02:52:10] around at the end of that.
[02:52:15]
I'm not done yet, but are you wanting to do public comment? That's what I was just about to say. I
was going to open it up for public comment for this discussion first is there's anyone on line and then
I'll turn it over to you Amos for five minutes. If you want to come to the microphone because I don't
see anyone on line that would like to speak, go ahead. Do you want to state your name and then tell
us what you thought about this?
[02:52:45]
My name is Amos Kachie. Thank you very much, Larry for the information you've given us. I opened
up different areas that we're going to poke into a little bit. [02:53:00] When you come to talk the last
end of everything, usually most of your ideas are gone at the end, because we are all really good in
here, we have been talking about these things for a long time. I do not want to repeat most of the
things that have been said here, but I want to point out something that is useful that can help us as
we are going to be compiling the report or looking into additional information. I see a problem area
that has been mentioned and that is on data systems at the police department. We have a lot of holes
there. Limitations that has been pointed out by most people. I've not seen any data on calls made by
the community like Commissioner Wangui was talking about. Those are not there. Also in the report I
saw that looks like the police department or somebody there, chooses which ones to report and which
ones not to report [02:54:00] for convenience. I could see that in a lot of gaps. If you're able to report
arrest for drugs and other things but you don't report the rest of the people or you don't report the
areas where those things are happening, that one is missing on that chart. Information system is a
big area I have a problem with. I also have a problem with the studies they're conducting. There are
two studies that you quoted here from Banham and the University of Iowa Public Policy Center. They
seem to be contradicting in a way, but I think that we can live for another day, we don't have time for
that. In these studies, usually one wonders who commissions them? Who is sitting in the board? Who
decides which questions to be asked? For example, the purchase you presented there is not telling us
anything about a lot of things. Right now, I think they're in the process of compiling their data.
[02:55:00] Later when the report comes might find, they didn't do this, they didn't do this and this.
This is because we have a problem of either the university, or the scholars or the professors thinking
that they know everything. Or once it is commissioned, sorry professors, all of you are professors, I'm
not one. They always believe that they have the solutions to everything and they even know what's
bothering me. At the end of the day, the reports are not helping us very much. They do the same
same thing over and over and over again. This is an area I would really want us to work on very
seriously as the commissioners in data systems. Who does the studies? Who sits in that board? Is
there input from the community? My brother here might have an issue, he wants to be put in a study.
But when the study was being commissioned, nobody cared to talk to him about that. Nobody cared to
talk about maybe his spouse or his [02:56:00] children impact studies. That's an area want to. The
second area apart from that is non compliance. This is compliance with the federal laws, regulations,
things happening out there, and finally, compliance with the Police Commission Board. I think we have
one in here that has been sitting for, I don't know, since when. They've been making
recommendations. We can look at history. Is the board really helping us or they're not effective? I
think a lot of commissions have been there. If you go to the city, you'll see a lot of recommendations
put in there. We do not know whether those things are being followed or not, at what extent. That is
how we judge our projects. We have to evaluate what we're doing, what they're doing. The third area
after compliance is on behavior. This is behavior of the system, the police system, behavior of the
community, [02:57:00] the other community, non-bipo community. This comes to the question the
commissioner Wangui talked about, the community seeing somebody that looks suspicious, they call
on you, that is not on the police. I've been called on many times, I have a night business. I've been
called on many times. It is not the problem with the police, but somebody somewhere thinks that.
You're not going to solve that by telling the police don't go there, now they have to go. But maybe the
neighbors are not well aware, they're not informed, they just have this bad idea that they need to be
told that this is the data, these are the number of calls you made on this person at this place over this
number of years. This is the number of calls you make on this kind of people. That information sits
there that needs to be pulled out. We have behavior on the police, behavior on me, how I behave. Am
I doing stupid stuff because I think I have to do it or not? [02:58:00] We have a three areas of
behavior. The police, me as an individual, and the larger community that we're working on. We need
data on that. If we don't need, then we have to recommend studies that look into stuff like that. The
last area, Number 4, maybe there are five, Number 4 are data on impacts. You talked a lot of that
homicides, injuries, we need a lot of that. There was no doubt on mental health, things happening to
children. How maybe my interface with the police or somebody affect me, my life? I might be sitting
here, walking here, but maybe I'm depressed, suffering anxiety because of things that I go through or
maybe somebody never goes through. We are not collecting those, I don't know who's supposed to do
that. Maybe we leave like the same professors again. But in this area, I recommend that a community
like ours here need to have a community researcher. They are things that the people at the university
don't [02:59:00] do. They do the things they're interested in. Their intellectual curiosities are not
always the same as our curiosities. They want to publish a journal, they want to publish an article, and
they want to publish where money is. Like in here, do you see any local professor here working with
us or helping us? None, but they're here, because they're not getting paid. Impact studies, how are
we going to collect information in the future on impact studies? That's Number 5. Number 6, this is
about our interface in the commission. You guys, are you going to talk to the Police Commission? Do
you want to hear from me? What questions do you have about some things? It's different when Larry
talks to you. Larry doesn't live in this community. We are the ones who live in here. [03:00:00] Those
six areas of five areas of the things. But I have a lot of questions in the details a little data in areas
that I don't want to get into. This is an area we really need to dig and dig and talk for it. I don't know
whether we'll get time, but at the moment I believe that's how much I can help. Thank you.
[03:00:19]
Thank you.
[03:00:19]
Thank you. If there's no other public comment, I'm going to move to announcements from
Commissioners. Anyone, go ahead.
[03:00:30]
I would like to apologize that I had to leave at our last meeting, I tried to stay longer, I said two
minutes and then I have obligations that I had to go to, I got to just do. My apologies, I didn't mean to
disrupt the meeting or anything along those lines, but there's life outside here for me and that's just
what it is. But once again, sorry about that. Other than that, at the end of this [03:01:00] month, I'll be
fighting in Vegas representing Iowa City. Hopefully, I'll do well. I'll do my best for that. But other than
that, that's all I have for right now.
[03:01:09]
As anyone else? You talk on the mic.
[03:01:18]
Those of you who will be at the black history ball this Saturday, see you there.
[03:01:25]
Can you give more details about that? I forgot about it. Do you have any? If not, then maybe we can
be sent out.
[03:01:34]
It's already out there, no email. I'm sure, Stefanie is, I just know it's about four hours and it's here and
I'm ready.
[03:01:47]
Anyone else? Otherwise, I'm going to turn it over to our city staff for any announcements. Is there a
motion to adjourn?
[03:02:00]
Second.
[03:02:01]
Thank you all.