Task Force to Reimagine the Public Safety Advisory Commission Meeting - October 16, 2025

Okay.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Task Force to Reimagine the Public Safety Advisory Commission. My name is Denali. And my team at Denali Danielson Associates is providing facilitation support to the task force. We're pretty excited about today's session, which is the second of like a two-part series of information sessions to help inform the task force as it considers Public Safety Advisory Commission for Anchorage.

Last month we heard from key leaders responsible for public safety systems in Anchorage, and today we're gonna get into some of the important functions that we'll need to consider in the task force recommendations. And we've got 3 guests joining us to help us understand what those functions might be, and those will eventually become decision points before we know it, as we have some in-person meetings coming up in November. But specifically, we're really We're going to start narrowing our focus on what are the membership questions, what are some of the authority decisions, and even some of those questions around sustainability. So I'll talk in just a moment about this process and review the agenda, but just a few housekeeping notes before we begin. Just really want to welcome members of the public, of course our task force members and speakers.

Thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to get straight to the session, so we're going to skip official introductions. Today's meeting is being recorded, and that recording will be posted on the project webpage after the session. So if you missed the last session, you can find that recording on that page as well. Please, everyone, keep your devices muted unless you're speaking to avoid any background noise, and just remember that this is a a meeting that'll be recorded and we hope people will actually be watching it.

So we've got kind of two parts to our agenda today. We have a special guest who's a speaker that is on behalf of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. That's Tina Barr. So it'll be kind of like the first half of our session. She has the PowerPoint.

We'll hold questions. It looks like it's kind of a smaller group, so it might be okay to stop, but we'll see how it goes. Let's go ahead and try and hold questions until she's done with her presentation, but we will have time set aside for Q&A. And then we have actually— and Tina, you're on a different time zone. I forgot to ask, you have a hard stop.

Can you remind me when that is?

Yeah, I need to jump off at 3:45. Okay, so It's 11:45 for you. Okay, 12:45. I think you're 4— where there's a 4-hour difference. Yes.

Okay, perfect. We've got plenty of time then. Thank you, Tina, for making this a priority. So the second part of our program will be with 2 speakers that are local and with commissions, entities that aren't necessarily the public safety focus, but have some of those functions that are questions that we're going to need to answer as part of our process. And so we're excited about that.

We'll kind of handle that part similar to the panel. So we'll have some questions that we'll ask them. So let's see, let's go ahead and just ground ourselves in the timeline. So I think, Jasmine, let's go to the next slide. Let's see what that one is.

Perfect. This is for the role. She's an Olympic athlete. All right, so let's go ahead and mute ourselves if somebody could help with that. Great.

All right, so let's just ground ourselves in why we're here. I think most of us know the task force was established last spring to develop recommendations on a new Public Safety Advisory Commission in Anchorage. Over the summary, there was a discovery and during that time a kickoff meeting was held in June, heard some feedback in that meeting about format and participation and how we actually hear from folks in the community, how, what our definition of public safety is in Anchorage. We had an in-person meeting, we had a feedback form, had over 70 submissions, and really just took all of that information, which is summarized into what we're calling an information paper. I think somebody is going to put that link in the— if you haven't looked at the information paper, please take a look.

It's really a summary of that discovery phase. And so in our last meeting, we kicked off the next phase of that process, which really is— we're in meeting 2 of 4 of that process. And so let's go ahead and go to the next slide.

Um, so over the course of 4 meetings, um, this is the second of 4. We're kind of doing some information gathering. We're going to be looking at models and functions today. After today, our hope is that we have a clear sense of some of the decisions. That need to be made because we've got two sessions at the end of November, and our job as your facilitators is to put together an agenda to help y'all make some decisions about those recommendations based on all of the information that we've gathered so far.

This is important. So after today, there— early next week, there's going to be a public feedback form that's gonna be released and it's gonna be open until November 3rd. And this is an opportunity for community members, task force members to share input on what we've heard so far and what you would like to see included in recommendations. And that will help inform our agendas for those in-person meetings. So keep an eye out for that.

And we're pretty excited about this process. We're pretty excited to get in the room with everybody. So just in summary, let's look at the next slide. So here's how to participate. Number 1, here you are here today.

If you know people that weren't able to participate, encourage them to take a look at the recordings on their own time. And then submit your comments through that feedback form so that we can help tee up that agenda in the most the most efficient way that makes sense so we can use the best, the time the best way possible. And then come to those sessions. Hopefully there was enough lead time for everyone to plan ahead. They are November 13th, November 20th in person, 10:30 to noon, and everyone is welcome at these meetings.

These are public meetings, but members of the public who actually have been participating in this this last phase, so you either watch one of the recordings or you're here today, will actually be invited to vote on the recommendations in that decision-making process. So that should be pretty, pretty fun for everybody. So all of this information is on the landing page, and if you have any questions, you can contact our team or the Assembly office directly. And so that brings us to what we're going to do today. So our next slide, I think, has the agenda, if I have that right.

And so I think we'll go ahead and move forward. Our first speaker is Tina Barr, and then we've got some panelists. So thank you, Jasmine. You did lovely. I guess we'll unshare this one and go ahead and move on to Tina.

So Tina, thank you so much for joining us. Tina is with the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, and she's based in Washington, D.C. We have about 20 minutes set aside for a presentation, and so write your questions down. Once she's finished with her presentation, we will go ahead and open it up and allow everyone to ask their questions. So I see some transcribing happening, so that's cool. I think that That works.

This is a public meeting, so Tina, why don't I just go ahead and turn it over to you and you can do your presentation and then we'll open it up for Q&A. Okay, thank you so much. And just so you know, when I use Microsoft Teams and share my screen, I cannot see anybody and all I see is my PowerPoint, which is fine, but if anybody— I'll turn it off at the end of my prepared remarks. Okay. Yeah, but I'll just turn it off and then you'll hopefully be able to see everyone and I'll help on calling on people when we get to Q&A.

Okay, thank you so much. And just, yeah, the transcriptions, I do a lot of virtual trainings and there are folks with different accessibility issues and so I just keep it on because that's been the feedback. People appreciate it. Okay, so thank you for having me here today. I am going to give you a very brief overview of civilian oversight of law enforcement.

Law enforcement in this country. I could spend an hour on a lot, just individually, on a lot of the topics that I'm going to be talking about today. So just keep in mind this is a very brief overview. But for those of you who may not be familiar with the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, we are a nonprofit association and our membership is comprised primarily of professionals who are working in the field of civilian oversight of law enforcement. As well as volunteers in the community who serve on oversight boards and commissions.

Here's what I'm gonna be covering today in the next 20 minutes or so. I know there will be times for a little bit of time for Q&A afterwards, but I'm gonna give you a broad overview of civilian oversight, and then I'm going to talk specifically about the different models of civilian oversight and the typical responsibilities or authorities that they have.

I want to start off with this slide, which has 3 definitions in 3 different resources of what civilian oversight is. I'm not going to read each of these, but I did highlight or use green font to highlight the independence, the external component of civilian oversight of law enforcement. That is one of the primary Primary things about civilian oversight of law enforcement is that it calls for individuals or agencies and groups outside of the formal structure, the policing structure, to provide some level of oversight. And so that level varies greatly, and I'll get into that when I talk about the approaches to civilian oversight. But essentially accountability and external civilian civilian involvement is— are two of the things that you'll see in any definition that you might encounter when it comes to civilian oversight of law enforcement.

And in a nutshell, if we had to give like a one-pager or very simple definition combining everything that civilian oversight of law enforcement does, it would be what you see on this slide. Okay? So essentially The primary roles of civilian oversight of law enforcement include reviewing, investigating, and auditing internal law enforcement investigations or processes. And those can include community complaints regarding police misconduct, and they can also include use of force incidents, even if no one filed a complaint about those things, and everything in between those two categories. Civilian oversight also involves people who conduct ongoing monitoring of law enforcement agencies, their policies, their procedures, their practices, their training, management, their supervision practices.

And there's a wide range of what each individual oversight body is allowed to do, again, which I'll go more into when I get to the different approaches to oversight and the corresponding authorities or responsibilities that they have. And of course, this includes agencies or procedures that involve active participation by individuals who are not sworn law enforcement officers. That's the independence. Okay. So just graphically, visually, there are a lot of benefits to civilian oversight of law enforcement, and there are benefits to both anybody in the community as well as law enforcement.

In the world of civilian oversight, people use the word stakeholders a lot. And so that means anybody and everybody in the community who has a vested interest in public safety, who is interested in community wellbeing, who is interested in transparency and accountability of governmental practices. And so this graphic shows some of the benefits of civilian oversight of law enforcement. Of course, it protects rights, individuals' civil rights, constitutional rights, and human rights. And then ensuring accountability and supporting effective policing, those actually go hand in hand.

And so sometimes there's a misperception that people have who are not familiar with civilian oversight of law enforcement that that civilian oversight bodies are anti-police or alternatively that they're too cozy with the police. And so those are the extreme misunderstandings of civilian oversight of law enforcement. The reality is that civilian oversight bodies are objective as possible in the work they do and neutral as possible in the work they do. As far as carrying out the work, being objective and neutral, for example, if If an oversight body is tasked with investigating a case, absolutely, objectivity and neutrality is important when conducting an investigation. Similarly, if an oversight body is tasked with reviewing completed misconduct investigations that were done by the local police department, that requires objectivity and neutrality when reviewing those cases.

Having said that, there is a very, very clear that any oversight body encourages and promotes and works toward accountability and transparency when it comes to policing issues, and in many growing number of cities, jails and prisons as well. But of course, ensuring greater accountability is— you saw accountability in a lot of the definitions on a previous slide, but then oversight bodies also support effective policing. And so when Through the course of a case review or through the course of an investigation, if it is found that an officer upheld the policies and practiced within policies, then that is in essence supporting that effective policing. Also, civilian oversight bodies can accept commendations as well as misconduct complaints. So there is a balance there.

And then building bridges between the public and law enforcement and increasing public trust and confidence in police kind of go hand in hand. If civilian oversight of law enforcement is working effectively and has built good relationships, or there are effective working relationships between the oversight body and the police department, then that is a huge first step in getting the level of legitimacy for both bodies in the eyes of the various stakeholders in the community, and also key in building trust between the community and law enforcement agencies. And then of course, helping to manage risk in the most apparent way that we see the cost of, of not having oversight is there's a financial component. There are lots of cities that pay out multimillion-dollar awards as a result of lawsuits. They could range anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands, but definitely into the multimillion-dollar range.

And so with the existence of oversight, that is another avenue or a means for people to take their concerns and their grievances regarding something they believe the police have done that is not in line with policy or that is misconduct in some form. And so it is a way, the existence of it, to help manage risk in that regard. Also, for the oversight bodies that are more proactive in their approach, the whole goal is to prevent any misconduct from happening in the first place through a variety of, of strategies, which I'll go over shortly. Just so you have the context, civilian oversight of law enforcement has been around since the '50s. However, in 1980, there were only about 13 codified entities, and then in 2000 there were over 100, and then in 2023 there were about 250 that we know of.

We're in the process of getting a better count, and so hopefully we'll have that early next year. I want to point out codified, that is important. So codified essentially means that civilian oversight exists by ordinance, by charter, and so there is some process that has occurred. And so it's not just easy to dismantle the civilian oversight entity in a city if it's been— if it has gone through those processes. Not to be mistaken with police advisory boards.

In most cities that have police advisory boards, those are created because the police chief wanted, you know, community members' input as far as their the different things that they're doing as a part of the police department or their initiatives or even policies and practices. However, if it's not codified, then it can be disbanded, you know, day one it may be in existence and the next day it can be disbanded. So by legislation, of course, that goes through the whole legislative, local policy-making process, and then of course by charter that requires a vote by the community. Okay, getting into the different models. We think of oversight as having 3 broad approaches, and so that would be the review-focused model, the investigative-focused model, and then the auditor or monitor-focused model.

And then there's a hybrid model, which I'll get to after I talk about the, the first 3 models. I will point out here though There are no two oversight bodies that look exactly alike. So even if we lined up 50 different review focus models, which are typically the civilian review boards, there are going to be some similarities that they have that overlap. But because each city or jurisdiction develops its model according to the needs of that jurisdiction and what's going on and what is able to be negotiated and passed, if by ordinance, then it's going to— there are going to be some variations and some nuances. So just keep in mind, no two oversight agencies or model jurisdictions with oversight employ oversight in exactly the same way.

So what I'm talking about when I— over these next few slides, these are generally the common threads that run through any type of particular approach to oversight. So review-focused models, they sound like what they are named. They are created for and are comprised of individuals who are volunteer community— volunteers in the community who volunteer to sit on a civilian review board or civilian review panel, a name such as that. But essentially, they review the misconduct complaints that are completed by whether it's the local police department or it is completed by independent investigators. And those are the jurisdictions that actually have independent investigators outside of the police department.

Those investigators are a part of the oversight mechanism in those jurisdictions. Regardless of who conducts the investigation into a misconduct complaint, it's the review body that reviews the complaint to make sure it's thorough, fair, and complete. Typically, these volunteer positions, the individuals are appointed by, in some cases, the mayor in addition to city council members. Sometimes there are designated seats according to the city council or assembly district they represent. Sometimes there are seats designated for particular groups in the community that have been marginalized historically and currently.

Currently to ensure that there is a representative voice at the table on these bodies. And so these are public meet— or public bodies, and so they would follow public meeting laws in accordance with state law and any union contracts that are in place. The typical responsibilities for review models, of course, they can receive complaints that are filed by citizens regarding police misconduct. They can review the completed investigations. If during their review process they determine that the investigate— the investigation was not complete or thorough or fair, or there's some flaw to it, these bodies can remand it back, whether it's to the police chief or the independent investigator for further investigation.

If somebody who's involved in the complaint, whether it's the person who filed the complaint or it's the officer who is the target or subject of the complaint, if they're not satisfied with the outcome of the investigation, then the— they can file an appeal and oftentimes the civilian review board is involved with hearing that appeal. Many civilian review boards have the authority to recommend changes to policy and practice with the police department and some even have the authority to recommend discipline for the officers who are involved in a particular case and found to have violated policy. That's going to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And then of course, review models are a direct link between the public and law enforcement. And so many review bodies have the authority to conduct community outreach and engagement to help hold public forums around particular incidents or just generally about what they would like the community to see regarding oversight in policing.

These are the general common responsibilities with these models. And then second, the investigation-focused model. This is where there's an oversight mechanism that can have the responsibility to conduct independent investigations when someone files a police misconduct complaint or there's a use of force incident. Depends on what, what is outlined in— outlined is what what can be investigated by these bodies. So oftentimes these individuals, investigators, work alongside a civilian review board.

And so they— this is where the independent investigations come in. So whether it's the police department internal affairs or the independent investigator that conducts the investigation, the review board then would review that case. Okay. These are paid positions. People with investigative experience usually fill them.

And, and sometimes they're one and the same as the independent auditor in a community. But for now, just thinking in the investigation, their typical responsibilities that they have, of course, anything that's involved with conducting investigation from interviewing witnesses, gathering evidence, reviewing body-worn camera footage or other footage. They may be limited to investigating only certain types of cases. So some ordinances and bylaws for existing oversight bodies, they actually lay out and are very clear about the types of cases that independent investigators can conduct investigations on. And then they may be limited to investigating complaints based on who filed the complaints.

For example, was it a citizen out in the community who filed the complaint, or was it someone within the police department who filed the complaint? That may make a difference.

Because of the nature of the work that they do, their investigations, they have greater access to law enforcement agency databases and records than communities that just have a civilian review board. And also they're more likely to have subpoena power.

The third model is the auditor or monitor focus model, and this is where we see oversight being more proactive. So now with, with this model, rather than waiting for an incident to happen and someone to file a misconduct complaint, this is actually more proactive. OK, and I'll explain more on the next slide about, well, what does that mean? What else can these oversight bodies do? But essentially with these models, these are paid professionals who oftentimes have many years of experience in auditing positions or investigative positions.

There are quite a few former law enforcement law enforcement officers who have these positions throughout the country. But the, the goal or the purpose is to look more at the systematic issues happening within a police agency, to monitor what's happening, to audit certain things with the idea that if something is caught during the monitoring and auditing process that needs to be tweaked or fixed, or there's a flaw in a policy or practice somewhere, The idea is that ongoing monitoring and review of what's happening can help identify any potential problematic areas and fix them before they result in some kind of major problem. And the typical authorities for this range, of course, the anything related to misconduct investigations and complaints that are filed, that's in the green side, the green box on this slide. So monitors and auditors can be involved with auditing those cases. They can be involved with the active investigation of those cases independent from the police department.

But on the right side of this slide, you can see that they have a much broader mandate, so they can look at anything and everything when it comes to a law enforcement agency. So they can look at what are the training requirements of a police department, what are the— who's providing the training, What are the staffing, the staffing plans? What, how do they recruit people to work for the agency? What's going on with their use of force policies and practices? So they just have a much broader range and broader latitude for what it is that they're doing.

And again, this is more proactive because of the nature of what they do. Of course, they have a very much broader access and direct access to police records, police officials, the information basically that's generated out of the police department. It's necessary for them to have that level of access to carry out their work. And then the hybrid model. What we're seeing more and more, although I just went over the three general approaches to oversight, what we're actually seeing is cities more and more often taking bits and pieces from each of those different models and creating what works for their jurisdiction.

So when we say hybrid models, that can, can look two, two ways. So first, there can be a hybrid agency, so it's one oversight agency that performs multiple authorities and responsibilities for— from two or more of the oversight approaches. So they can have It can be one agency that has investigative authority as well as a review board, as well as someone who monitors other aspects of the police department. The hybrid system is a single jurisdiction having multiple agencies that are independent of each other, but they all provide oversight for the same law enforcement agency. And so examples would be see much larger cities, in this country.

Seattle, Chicago are two of the most common ones where they have at least each of them 3 to 4 or 5 different agencies that provide oversight to the— their city's police department. Okay, and I'm going to wrap things up really quickly here. I'm not going to go over these, but I want to just share this slide with you. We pretty much promote these 13 principles for effective oversight as a result of what little research there has been done in civilian oversight of law enforcement, but a lot of talking sessions with civilian oversight professionals and practitioners and volunteers doing the work. Between the research and the feedback from people who have been doing this work, These 13 principles were developed a few, few years ago, but I'll point out a couple here that are really significant.

So, of course, independence. The whole idea is to provide some kind of external oversight of what's going on when it comes to police misconduct and other aspects of the police department. So being independent from the police department is pretty critical to do that and to address the issues historically why there's been such a call for independence. Right? Uh, uh, external bodies or individuals providing some kind of oversight.

Um, another one I'd like to point out is clearly defined and adequate jurisdiction and authority. When an oversight body is established in the community, it is really important to be as clear as possible what their authorities are, um, and what they're able to do, not able to do, timelines, timeframes, um, as clear as possible, uh, So it prevents any confusion or any difference— differences in interpretation as much as possible. Unfettered access to records and facilities is really important depending on the level of responsibilities and authorities an oversight mechanism has. It is really important to be able to have records, have access to law enforcement officials in order to carry out the work. And then, um, Adequate funding and operational resources, of course, is really important.

One of the, one of the challenges that, that we see over and over in jurisdictions across the country is not having enough funding to actually carry out the work that is required and authorized by statute for them to do. And so I will leave it there, and I am happy to answer questions about anything at this point. I know I went over a lot of information. And so I hope that I provided a good overview, but happy to answer any questions now or even later on after today if needed. Tina, thank you.

That was a lovely overview, and I'm sure there are questions out there. I think you were going to unshare your screen so you can see people. Yes, so I can see you. Okay, great. So we're going to use the hand raising.

I think I missed something back in the housekeeping. I just wanted to remind everyone that this is a public meeting. Meeting, and we aren't using the chat as a way to engage. And so for questions, if you can raise your hand, we'll go ahead and call on you. Questions for Tina?

I know I have a few if people don't raise their hands, but let's give everybody a moment.

Yeah, that works. Okay. Oh, sorry. Um, let me ask my— actually, can I come next because someone's at my door? Okay, gotcha.

Um, well, I don't see any other hands, so Tina, I might just kick us off on maybe a question about sustainability. Um, with each of the models, it looked like, um, maybe the first one was the main one that wouldn't have support staff, if I kind of had that right, or can you kind of talk about like what are the different ways that sustainability plays out with the different models? And gosh, you know, even if you had something codified, it still has to be funded. That's kind of the big trick. So is there anything you can say about that?

Yes. So typically if a jurisdiction only has a civilian review board, and no, it doesn't have independent investigators or a police auditor or monitor. These are typically much smaller communities and they— here's where there are so many differences. Some of these small communities actually have one person who is the support staff in a full-time position and they provide support to the commission or the board. And others do not have full-time staff assigned to them.

So there is a city employee in, in, in some department within the city who has the responsibility to provide support added on to their overall job responsibilities. So it's only like one small portion of their job. And so it's— we see everything from that model where someone may spend, I don't know, 10% or 25% of their time working on supporting civilian oversight to having a full-time person. And so typically oversight, these volunteer members who sit on boards and commissions, they don't receive any payment. They're, if they do receive stipends, it's a nominal amount, typically around $50 or $100 for attending a meeting, but it's not usually above that or more than that.

Very few, only a couple that I'm aware of actually like have a more substantive stipend, but those are the much, you know, very large cities. But those are the volunteer boards. And so on a cost-wise, if you're thinking cost-wise, because there's only one staff at the most in some cases, that's going to be the required the least amount. There still should be money in the budget though, even for these if it's only a civilian review board, because we do recommend like this is This is not easy work as far as the subject matter people are dealing with. And I just gave you a very broad overview, but there are so many pieces to civilian oversight of law enforcement that we recommend ongoing training, and civilian oversight is just a part of it.

You know, there would be other training from law enforcement, from what it's like to serve on a city public body. So there are different pockets of training that we recommend, and some of it might cost. And also if they do community outreach engagement, there's a cost there. If they publish an annual report, which every single review board I'm familiar with, they're tasked with doing that. So there are some costs still associated.

Of course, with the other models, the investigators and the auditors and monitors, being those are paid positions and, you know, skilled employees, then that's going to be a personnel cost to have those positions in place. And the more you have, of course, the more it'll cost. So thanks, Tina. Thea, are you ready?

Yes, sorry for that. There's a— y'all may know we're having a kind of epic natural disaster. Yes. Yeah. So there's like a lot happening here.

Okay. I guess I kind of had two questions. One, for the communities you've worked with, what were some of the Like, what are the goals of the oversight boards? Like, what is ultimately the change that they're trying to make or the problem they're trying to resolve? Is it focused on, like, misconduct within the police department, or are there other kind of public safety goals that they're, you know, trying to help make change towards?

So that's one question I have. And maybe we'll start there because I have another one, but I need to remember what it is, so I'll listen to you. So for the— I would say generally, because again, each, each— if you look at 100 ordinances, they're going to have 100 different mission statements and goals and purposes. However, I think generally one of the common themes among any oversight, among all the oversight agencies in this country, is to have transparent, to have transparency when it comes to policing. And so in addition to that though, so transparency and accountability.

So going without taking a deep dive into the history of civilian oversight, there's the common thread from when it was first even considered back in the early part of the 1900s And we see it through like the Wickersham Commission in 1931 and the Kerner Commission in the '60s. The idea that there is a need for an external or independent group or agency that oversees police, basically policing police departments, that has been around for many years and been acknowledged by federal commissions, presidential commissions, local commissions. And so that is a big a big part of why oversight exists today, and most bodies have not lost sight of that, that having transparency within police departments is really important, and also holding people accountable when there is misconduct. That goes to developing the public trust in policing. That's a major goal as well.

And so in order to have the public have trust in local policing, they have to view the agency as legitimate. And so that's a big part, you know, the transparency and accountability is a big— they're big factors in whether a community deems a police department to be legitimate or not, which all goes towards building the trust in the police department. Overall, generally, I think I can say this for anybody who's been in oversight for a long time, there's an understanding that there are like each community is its own ecosystem. And so in any ecosystem, there are different parts of it and that play their role. Like if you think of a cell or something, each— there are different roles for each component of an ecosystem.

And so while we say that civilian oversight is necessary part of public safety and community well-being and public health, health, it doesn't solve all the problems. And so there have to be other factors or components of this ecosystem, like there should be good mental health services, there should be other social services, there should be, you know, all types of components of any healthy community. And so civilian oversight, we stay in our lane because we're good at this and we, the communities we work with, we train them to be good at what they're doing. And with the understanding that yes, we can collaborate or an oversight body can collaborate with other segments of the community or other stakeholders for the overall goal of public safety and well-being, but oversight isn't going to become the mental health provider, right? We should be working alongside mental health providers.

Matter of fact, like Chicago— Philadelphia, their oversight body, there's this pretty decent size, is a large city, but they were receiving so many intake calls, people filing, calling to file police misconduct complaints, and a lot of them weren't even about police misconduct. They recognized that, hey, you know, a lot of people are calling for help, has nothing to do with police misconduct, but they're reaching out. And so they actually started to, they did develop their own kind of information packet, their referrals with different various social and mental health service providers and basic, you know, basic needs providers in the community so that when people did call them, they would have someone that they could refer them to. So working in collaboration absolutely is a great thing, but state— we, yeah, oversight is very specific, and so we try to stay in our lane and encourage others to do that as well. Yeah, I think that's actually really helpful, the ecosystem concept, because I think in through this task force, I feel like in some ways we've been trying to, or maybe it's just me, I've been kind of thinking about the whole problem and how oversight like addresses the whole problem.

But I think what you're saying is it addresses like a piece of the, a piece of the ecosystem, which is really helpful. The other question I had, if there's time for it, is And forgive me if I just wasn't tracking well enough with your presentation, but when you were talking about the audit model, so, you know, when— maybe, you know, here we used to have a Public Safety Advisory Commission, and so that's something that's sunsetted but could be brought back and kind of re-revived in a, you know, with, with a different charter, however we want to do it. That's one option. But I guess I wondered with the audit function, Is that something that can be done, like, say it was done once a year? Because I guess with our police department, at least what I understand, and Chief can correct me if I'm misstating this, but we do investigate and it's internal.

So I understand what you're saying about having that separation from the police department, but we do investigate 100% of complaints that are filed, and there's a pretty robust best effort. Like, people can, can make complaints anonymously. They can make them in lots of different ways. And what I understand is APD does investigate all of those, and they actually sustain a fairly high rate of those complaints, like, compared to— and this is just one comparison— to the folks who visited us last winter from, I think, Columbus. The, the percentage of complaints that they shared in their presentation that they sustained was much lower than than what I think is standard or generally true for APD.

So I was curious, again, kind of thinking about our community and what works, is an audit function something that could happen kind of once a year, but it's like an appendage to something like a Public Safety Advisory Commission that might also have broader roles, you know, and then you kind of continue with the process that is going on internally, but you have this kind of external check on it on a regular basis. I'm just curious if that matches any of the models that you've shared today. Yeah, so of course, like, lots of variation. And so of course, you know, the— there are— yes to your question, um, there are some cities, and I think Kansas City is one, but essentially, um, their inspector general or independent auditor may look at a variety of different things. Or even some cities, I know that— I think it's Pasadena, but they actually don't have a full-time auditor on staff.

They contract with the auditor to do auditing on various things as needed when, you know, when it's called for. And so I guess the short answer, the quick answer is yes. There's so much variation in how an oversight mechanism is— can be set up. And so really what works best with, like, with Anchorage, if you all find out something, were to find like, oh, that actually makes sense for us, we've already got kind of something in place where this can be added to the existing system, then yeah.

I think anything you bring up, any variation of oversight, there's probably someone doing it. Maybe not a whole lot of cities, but there's likely someone who's doing it in the same way or a very similar way. And I forgot to mention when I was talking about the auditor-monitor model, some of the common titles of those professionals are independent policing auditor, inspector general, independent monitor. And so those titles, if you've ever heard of those, that's what those individuals are. Yeah.

Nice. Great. Great questions, Thea. Thank you very much. Nicely done, Tina.

Rich, you've got your hand up. What do you got?

Oops, mute. Let's see, unmute yourself.

Thank you, Tina, for this presentation. It really helps to see the different models of civilian oversight. And with more and more cities starting civilian oversight of their law enforcement, is there a trend now on what type of model is probably more popular, is this across the board?

I will tell you, when we are working with cities that are, or jurisdictions that are considering it and, you know, just in the very beginning wanting to get this going and/or drafting their ordinance, they're going to, they typically start with everything they want, right? The dream, which is to have it all. And then of course, through negotiations with all the stakeholders in the community it looks something very different because when this— through the process of establishing civilian oversight, everybody should be at the table and have some kind of input. Not saying that, you know, anybody capitulates to anybody, but everyone should be involved with what that looks like. And ultimately it has— there has to be an agreement.

And that includes the police department and the police union. Because there are a lot of laws and other things that go into play with what's allowed confidentially-wise, you know, just personnel-wise, all of the laws governing city personnel and police unions. And so typically, I'm trying to think of any of the— I'll say this, and this is very general. Smaller communities, couple hundred thousand, population, the populations of a couple hundred thousand and less, they generally get the Volunteer Border Commission.

If they have a staff person, now they'll, they'll ask for more, they'll ask for a full-time staff in those cases, but oftentimes they don't get that, and so they might have a part-time city employee who's already employed to support them. But midsize and larger cities, They're going with— well, in addition to the volunteer board or commission, it's not unusual to see an investigator and an auditor. So small staff, again, depending on the size of the city, but we see that that is a very common makeup of civilian oversight in kind of a, like a mid— a small to mid-sized city. At least 1 or 2 independent investigators, as well as the director of oversight and the Director of Oversight in some places is also the auditor or the monitor of oversight. So director, auditor, monitor, a couple of investigators, and then the Civilian Review Board.

What, what's the population of Anchorage? What size is Anchorage? You know exactly what the population is. 270,000. Is that okay?

Okay, okay. And I will say, when it comes to funding, Denali, you— I didn't mention this earlier, you initially, your initial question, but we see a couple of ways that to ensure that funding isn't just at the discretion, like discretionary funds every year. One way that we see see built into the ordinance, in some ordinances, is that the civilian oversight mechanism in the jurisdiction has like a certain percentage of the police department budget. It's typically very low, like 1% or 1.5%. It's not that— that doesn't mean the money's coming out of the police department budget.

It's just the percentage of, okay, if the police department budget is X, then the oversight budget will be 1.5% of that, right? Not taking the money from them. The other thing we see is if there are independent investigators, that number is based on, like, for every— like, just making this up without looking at my notes in my computer somewhere, but for every, say, 50 police officers, there is one independent investigator. So it can be based on staffing or it can be based on the overall budget of a police department. Ordinances or cities that have been able to get that as a part of the ordinance that are, you know, a little more comfortable there than knowing that it's kind of fixed into the ordinance or the charter.

So They don't have to worry every year whether or not they're going to be funded. Yeah, that— those are some great nuggets there, Tina. Thank you. We need to move into wrap-up, but I think we have time for one or two more questions if they're still out there. Looking for hand raising.

Okay.

Going once.

Okay. Oh, Mercedes, hello.

Hi. Yes, again, thank you, Tina, for being here. Really appreciate your presentation and you answering questions. I—. This is not— this might be a little qualitative, and I'm not sure if you can speak to it, but I know that there had been concerns out of, on the law enforcement end, and specifically locally here from the union, about whether or not having civilian review boards would actually hurt the morale of the law enforcement, or that, I think the quote was used was that the community stopped thanking their police officers if they had a civilian review board, and that it changed the tone of the these cities.

I don't know if you're able to speak to some of the communities that NaCole has worked with in putting up or like in influencing or helping with CRBs in these places, these communities, but is that a common thread or are there cases in which these communities have actually seen strengthened relations between the public and law enforcement, or is there any kind of anecdote to kind of talk to that point?

This is an excellent question because yes, of course there are all kinds of misunderstanding about civilian oversight of law enforcement. And so, and any, anywhere where civilian oversight of law enforcement has tension with the local police department or a union, that often gets the most press, right, wherever it happens. But I will say, like, there are plenty of cities that have great relationships between civilian oversight entity and law enforcement, and they had to work to get there in some cases. And so interestingly enough, like, this was one of the priority areas. We have our conferences coming up in a couple weeks, our annual conference, and this was a priority area topic that we asked people to submit proposals models for their presentations is specifically communities where they, they, they may not have had the best relationships between oversight and law enforcement, and so they had to work to get effective working relationships and good relationships.

And so Spokane, Washington is a model in that regard. Let me see. Alexandria, Virginia does a great job. There is someone else in addition to Spokane that is actually— like Spokane will be presenting at the conference, and so their police chief as well as their, their over the independent auditor monitor, he's called the ombuds, the Spokane ombuds, they'll actually be presenting together. As far as what it took for them to get to this good working relationship and how they had to, you know, deal with all of the misconceptions, the harms from the past relationship.

And this question comes up a lot, so much that Mercedes, I can actually send an email. I don't know if you all would want this or not, but I got asked this question so much, like, where is this working? Are there any communities where the law enforcement agency and the oversight agency, like they have effective relationships. So I put it on our— I asked that question on our listserv, and sure enough, like within a day or two, I had at least like 15 different communities respond and say, "Hey, we have a wonderful working relationship with our police chief and police department. It works well here." So There absolutely are effective relationships where oversight exists between the oversight body and the police department and even the police union to some extent.

And so, you know, there's always going to be, of course, a little disagreements there, which naturally that's the nature of each of the groups. But for as far as the police chief, police department, absolutely there are some effective working relationships. I'm looking for at the— yeah, in addition to Spokane, I can't find it, of course, on my sheet right here, but I'm happy to send Denali— I don't know if you would want me to send you the list of the communities that have said, yes, we're working, it's good for us. Yeah, we're working. Yeah, that sounds like a great list.

And Tina, it sounds like your conference might be something that folks are interested in as well, if you want to share that information. Well, we have a couple more speakers, so I need to keep us moving along here. Tina, thank you so much. That was— I know that it's hard to boil it down to just, you know, a really high-level overview, and I think you nailed it. And also, Tina, thank you for offering your door open to us as we move through the rest of our process.

I, I don't doubt that we'll be reaching out to you. So again, thank you, Tina, and thanks for the great questions from everyone. Thank you. Wonderful. I'm going to transition us into the second part of our program here.

So we have two local folks that are joining us. Darryl Hess Is with the municipal— he is the municipal ombudsman, and he was appointed in August 2012. He also has a background with the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, where he served including as chair. And then we have Jennifer Booz with us. Jennifer is the executive director of the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, and before her role, she was the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

So, as we're— if you're wondering why, what, why are we talking to these folks? So, let's kind of set the stage here. We thought that it would be really important to talk with some folks that have already existing commissions or bodies that are serving a function, maybe not necessarily in some cases could be public safety, but like last time we met, we heard from the agencies that are working on public safety. And the purpose of our conversation today is to start really thinking about the functions, like how does the work flow? What is the membership?

What is the authority? So think about this part of our agenda as like the mechanics. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and I've got, we've got 3 questions that we shared with Darryl and Jennifer, and I think what I'm going to go ahead and do is just ask those questions all at once if that works for you guys, just looking at the clock, and I won't take them one by one. So I'll just read them out loud and then we'll start with Darryl and then we'll move to Jennifer and we'll do the same thing. We'll open it up up for questions, so you guys write your questions down as you're listening to the speakers.

So the first question is pretty basic. Can you briefly describe your entity's purpose, membership, overall authority, and then how's it funded, including like how does the staffing work and maybe what are their roles? And then the second question is, how does your organization receive do you receive and review and act on public input or complaints or grievances? What are the words that you use for those? And are there any nuances around election cycles or leadership changes that influence that work?

And then the last question is, maybe if you know this information, if you don't, that's okay, but when your body was formed, Were there any challenges or controversy or lessons that were learned from that experience? And you may or may not know the answer to that if you weren't there back then. So those are the 3 questions. Darryl, can I ask you to go ahead and go first? Thank you.

Thank you, Denali. The Anchorage Municipal Ombudsman's Office was established in our home rule charter in 1975, and the charter's Bill of Rights says that the people of Anchorage have the right to the services of an ombudsman. And we have pretty broad jurisdiction. We have jurisdiction, we, to investigate complaints and concerns regarding municipal agencies, offices, and employees, and the Anchorage School District.

We don't— obviously don't have a membership. It's—. We're 3 municipal employees in the office.

We have the authority to enter any municipal workspace during regular business hours unannounced. We can issue subpoenas to compel testimony or production of records.

We can see there are very few municipal records that we cannot see. We have the authority to look at municipal documents and records, including draft and final. Obviously, we can't see attorney-client privilege documents. We can see unredacted police reports. We can look at personnel files.

We can't copy them or take photos, but we can take notes. We can look at Labor Relations internal investigative files. Um, there's not much that we can't see, which is important in our work. And our work product, our case files, are not public records and aren't subject to a public records request or a subpoena, and we can't be compelled to testify in court regarding an ombudsman investigation. So we have pretty broad authority, pretty broad jurisdiction.

However, we have no enforcement powers. We offer opinions and make recommendations which the departments, the administration, the Assembly can accept or reject. But I would say 95% of the time they accept our recommendations and implement them.

We are funded— we have two funding streams. One is general fund dollars, so about 60% of our operating funds come from general fund dollars. The other 40% come from intergovernmental charges. We track the departments that we review, investigate, deal with, and those departments are billed for our services. So this year we will probably bill $170,000 to the departments for our efforts.

So they pay for our services. Um, we have 3 full-time staff. We are all exempt executives.

To help protect our staff because we will frequently offer opinions that are not popular. The ombudsman has a 4-year term of service, and to dismiss me during my term of service takes a majority vote of the assembly in an open meeting. The Deputy Ombudsman and the Associate Ombudsman serve at the pleasure of the Ombudsman. So that means they can't be dismissed by the Assembly or the mayor or HR department because somebody is unhappy with an opinion they issued. So it's to offer some protections to our staff.

We receive complaints in a variety of ways. People walk into our office. We're open to the public. They can call. We have a complaint form they can fill out.

They can mail it in. They can email it to us. We accept complaints over the phone, by email. We don't always require somebody to fill out an actual complaint form. You can call us and we'll take the complaint over the, over the phone.

We determine if it's jurisdictional, if it's something that we have jurisdiction over. If not, we will refer it out. Last year, our 3-person office had contact with approximately 1,450 constituents, and of those 1,450 contacts, 233 were perfected into cases where we actually investigated. Needed. So if it's not something that's jurisdictional or something that the department hasn't had a chance to, to address, we will refer that person out, or we may refer them to the Congressional delegation or a nonprofit or, or a state office, depending on what the issue is.

So we will look if it's jurisdictional We'll do an initial review, determine if it's something that can be settled, resolved fairly quickly. We'll contact the department. If it can be resolved, then that's an informal resolution. If it's something that can't be resolved, the department is not agreeing with our initial assessment, we will do a formal investigation. Uh, at the end of that investigation, if the department concurs with us and agrees to make the changes that we think are necessary, then the case is resolved.

If we can't get them to agree, then we will issue a formal report. So last year, for 233 investigations, I think we issued 3 formal reports, maybe 4. So that is the way that we try to resolve issues that the department doesn't agree with us on. So the code says we can publicize our findings, we can make the assembly, the mayor, and the public aware of our findings by sending that report to the assembly with an assembly information memorandum so it becomes part of the public record. Record.

And that will frequently motivate the department to perhaps reconsider their decision, or the administration or the assembly to move forward with some changes to code or policies. One of the great things about our office, we can find a complaint justified even if the municipal agency or employees or department follow the current code if we believe that code is unfair and unreasonable. And we have issued multiple reports where we found complaints justified because we believe that the code was unfair and unreasonable and recommended it be changed. And in every instance, the Assembly did change the code to attempt to make it more fair and reasonable. So that is one of our primary functions, is Okay, can we make government more fair and reasonable?

And just talking about the history of our office, I wasn't here 50 years ago, but I was living in Anchorage, and there was a lot of controversy about establishing this office. So the, the charter, which was adopted in September 1975, called for our office to be established and for the assembly by code to give us our jurisdiction and, and authority. That didn't happen until February 1977, nearly 18 months after the municipality was established, because Mayor Sullivan vetoed multiple versions of our enabling ordinance. The mayor believed that the ombudsman's office— he accused the Assembly of trying to create a super ombudsman. And he was afraid the ombudsman's office would infringe on his authority.

And he thought the ombudsman should be an executive who served at the pleasure of the mayor. He did not like that it was a legislative ombudsman. And in the code, it says that our office is independent No municipal official can tell us to accept, reject, open, or close an investigation. It is entirely in our authority whether or not we initiate, decline, close an investigation. So the mayor was unhappy that the assembly wanted to give us subpoena powers, so he vetoed it.

It was on the front page of the newspapers. It went on for, for months and months, and he did finally veto the final version, but the Assembly managed to get the votes to override the veto. He really had a heartburn with the subpoena power. All right, well, that's super helpful, Darrell. Jennifer, let's go ahead and let you go.

I'm just watching the clock. I want to make sure we can squeeze some questions in, so I'm sorry to rush I don't want to rush you. No worries. Let's, uh, Jennifer. Great, thank you.

So the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, also founded as part of the Home Charter 50 years ago, operates very much like the described commission and investigator, professional investigator body that was spoken of in the presentation at the beginning. So we have a 9-member commission. Those commissioners are appointed by the mayor's office to serve their terms, and so they meet on a monthly basis. And then we have professional staff, so the commissioners hire the executive director, myself. So I serve at the pleasure of the Commission.

I report to the Commission, and then we have 3 full-time investigators and an executive assistant. And so we are all municipal employees who report to the Commission and work here in City Hall around the corner from Darryl's office for the municipality. And we are chartered again through the Anchorage Municipal Code. So under Title V, Title V gives our purpose, powers, responsibilities, etc. So our duty is to deal with issues surrounding discrimination in the municipality.

So discrimination related to race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., etc., in the areas of employment and education and financing and housing. Within the geographic boundaries of the municipality. So the two things that we do to help eliminate discrimination within the municipality is one, educate our community and businesses on civil rights and the laws that are applicable in federal laws, state laws, municipal laws that are applicable, and then to investigate complaints of discrimination that are brought underneath Title V to our office. And so folks can make discrimination complaints multiple ways, just like the Ombudsman's Office. So they can come in person to City Hall.

We're open 8 to 5, Monday through Friday. They can call and make a complaint over the phone. They can fill out a form online, etc. So as many ways as possible, and then out in the community as well. When we're out in the community, doing education.

And so we have an, an entire investigative process that's laid out in our title that we follow, including gathering evidence, issuing subpoenas, making determinations. And then our Commission also gets involved if we need— if there is an appeal of a decision for reconsideration, that would go to our Commission. If we are not able to settle a substantiated claim through a settlement or conciliation, then our board would also review that case. At that point, it becomes an open public hearing, and they can review at that stage, the Commission members, and make a determination.

Election cycles do affect any Commission that is appointed by a specific body, the mayor, for example. So as you can imagine, as politics and administration changes, appointees would change to commissions. The hope is that you have at all times that you would have a balanced and equitable commission to be able to act on decisions, but it can be influenced by those sorts of decisions. And much the same as the Ombudsman's As you can imagine, establishing this sort of commission 50 years ago was also difficult. For any of you that are interested in the, the history, you can check out the 50th anniversary page on the MUNI site.

Daryl wrote an excellent article about the founding of the commission and some of the difficulties involved in moving that forward. So I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, well, thanks, um, both Jennifer and Darryl, um, for giving us that overview. We have just under 10 minutes for questions. Um, I've got a few in my back pocket, but, um, let's go ahead and do the hand raising, um, with the group and see what questions we have out there about the mechanics here when we think about a body like this.

Okay, I don't see any hands yet. If you guys do what you did last time, everybody's going to have a question and we have 5 minutes left. Ha! Okay, Bruce, what do you got?

I think you're muted if you're talking, Bruce. Bruce, can you hear me?

Bruce, go ahead and try and unmute yourself.

Well, I'm sorry, I wish I could help.

I know on Zoom there's an ask to unmute option. Is that something that I'm not in control, but if others have any tricks, I would invite that.

Typically we can only mute, we can't unmute. Yeah, okay, well Bruce, if you can hear me, I— oh, vanished from my screen. I don't know if he's gone or not. Bruce, if you're still there, we definitely want to hear your question. We just need to get your audio to work.

So, okay. If there's some accessibility issues, Bruce, you can type it into the chat too, and we can read it out loud. Yeah.

Oh, I do see Bruce is over here on my screen. Sorry, Bruce, if you can hear me, please do go ahead and use the chat and we'll read it into the record if that's an option for you. Great. Well, I don't see any other hands, so absent any other hands, my question for both Darryl and Jennifer is when you think about this process, and I talked to both of you before we got on this call, you know, where do you think the gaps are when we think about a potential new commission with the focus on public safety? What gaps do you see?

I didn't tell you who could go first.

Go ahead. Oh, I'll go first. Yeah. You know, based on my interactions and conversations in the community over the years, uh, I think there's a desire both from the police department and the community for some sort of a civilian body. And unfortunately, you know, we have the task force which has gotten off track over the years, and the Public Safety Commission really got off track over the years.

I think the public wants to see a body with a clear mission, a clear role. And I think this has been the problem in this community over the last decade is we've had the task force, we've had the commission, but there wasn't clearly defined roles and responsibilities. That is what's really important. Okay. Just for clarity of the record, I just want to define that task force that Darryl's talking about.

Darryl, you're probably talking about the Anchorage Community Police Relations Task Force, yes? Yes. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thanks, Felix.

Bia?

Yeah, I just wanted to add to what Darryl's saying because I think that's the roles and responsibilities and the functions, and then also that, that has to be really clear. I think the staff support also has to be clear, but I don't think that's a huge hurdle. I mean, I think I think as we've talked about in this group, some of the other commissions have really clear staffing from departments, and it's kind of a normal part of the business. So I think that, that can be figured out. But then I think the other piece of it is what's— what are the priorities or strategy or desired outcomes, but whatever you want to call it, that that commission is tasked with, like, checking in, monitoring, are we getting there?

I think that sometimes is tricky. And I'm saying this from just some that I've had personal experience with, you know, once you get it set up, that's great, but then what? Like, what do you, what are you doing? You know, and so I think there needs to be some, and you know, we do have some things we could use, like we have the, I mean, one thing we have is the strategic plan for the alcohol tax that has a big kind of public safety mandate. We have the mayor's Public Safety Priorities and Plan.

You know, I'm sure there are other things we could work from, but like, I think the— whatever body we have needs to have a clear sort of view of what are the priorities that they're tasked with, you know, seeing if we're getting there. And if we're not getting there, what do we need to do differently? Like, just, it's the content in addition to the form that needs to be determined at the outset for it to be successful. Nice. Thanks, Thea.

Jennifer, we have— I believe this question is for you, so maybe you can round us out also with your thoughts on gaps. So Bruce, this is for the record. Bruce, thank you. You got your question in the chat. I'm going to read it into the record.

Does the ERC have jurisdiction over alleged discrimination based on race, gender, or other protected classes versus just general complaints of government misconduct or perceived lack of fairness. So I think that's for you, Jennifer, and then tell us your thoughts on gaps, and I bet we'll be about done with our call. Yes, we very specifically look at discrimination based on protected class, so race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, marital status, age, and disability. So we don't look at government misconduct or lack of fairness, those would be issues that would fall more in the HR or the ombudsman's office. But we do— the municipality is one of the— our areas of jurisdiction in the areas of employment and finance and housing and places of public accommodation.

So we also do have some overlap in terms of in terms of looking at the municipality and the departments of the municipality, particularly in the employment realm. Yes. And then, and then gaps. I think just having a commission where all of these bits and pieces that are in different places, the task force, the commission, the ombudsman's office, my office, internal affairs, whatever homicide department may be investigating in in terms of issues that happen with the police, having a place for all of this information and data to be able to be looked at together in one aggregate. Hmm, okay.

Maybe like a clearinghouse, or I heard the word referral being used earlier when Tina was here, so that sounded, that sounded interesting to me. So, well, it's 11:59. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap up here. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer.

Thank you, Daryl. And thanks to Tina. I know she's not with us anymore, but she has offered to be a resource to our work. Before we close, I just want to remind everyone, after today, early next week, there will be a feedback form. And our hope is that as many of you and others that you know that are interested in this process will go ahead and provide input specifically on some of these key questions so that we can help narrow the focus of our agenda when we're in person together.

And secondly, November 13th and November 20th, we have two in-person work sessions 10:30 to noon, and we will begin turning what we've learned into draft recommendations. So we'll share what we heard from that feedback form and use that to inform our agenda. Felix? Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to really pointly encourage folks, if folks do have— I guess getting to a little bit of what Theo was saying— if you have feedback or proposals on content and/or form, that may not fit exactly in that feedback form, to please make sure to get that to the clerk's office, to Denali, whichever way is most comfortable for you so that we can take a look at any of those proposals.

So definitely want to encourage folks to send those to us.

Thanks for that plug, Felix. We're getting closer and closer. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, but we're about to roll our sleeves up, right? So we're really looking forward to seeing those of you that can join us in person. And I believe that concludes today's session, so we're adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.