COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Thursday, November 21, 2024 2:10 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE RICHARDSON COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY COUNCILMAN CURTIS J. JONES, JR. COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS COUNCILMAN MARK SQUILLA COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR. RESOLUTION: 241032 - - -
I note that the hour has come and this meeting is now called to order. Clerk, will you please call the roll and take attendance. Members that are in attendance will please indicate that you are present when your name is called.
Present. Thank you very much. A quorum of the Committee is present. We also want to acknowledge the presence of Councilmember Rue Landau. This hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee on Law and Government regarding Resolution No. 241032. Mr. Christmas, would you please read the title of the resolution.
A resolution 20 authorizing City Council's Committee of the Whole to hold the public hearings required pursuant to Chapter 17-2300 of The Philadelphia Code ("Public Hearing Prior to Execution of a Labor Agreement Concerning Police Employees Represented by the Fraternal Order of Police"), which Code Chapter requires that the Council hold a hearing in connection with the City's contract proposal in anticipation of collective bargaining between the City and the Fraternal Order of Police.
Before I call on the Clerk to call the first panel, I want to acknowledge the author of the bill, Majority Leader Councilmember Kathy Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you, Council President. And thank you colleagues so much for being here today and all of you who have joined us for this important hearing. You all know that four years ago we made history in the city of Philadelphia and on November 18, 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic, for the first time ever Philadelphians had the opportunity to have their voices heard around the contract between the City of Philadelphia and our Police Union. This was only made possible following the passage of my legislation, Bill No. 200364, which calls for public hearings in advance of the City's contracting process with our Police Union. I want to pause to say thank you to our former mayor, Mayor Kenney, and also our Deputy for Labor, Richie Lazer -- our former Deputy for Labor, Richie Lazer, for his leadership and ensuring that we actually had someone from the community, someone who testified at the hearing as a part of the Arbitrators' panel, and also to our former City Solicitor Diana Cortes and her entire team, some of whom are still here today. We certainly appreciate their partnership and all of their assistance back in 2020, but we know a lot has changed since then. We now have a new Mayor, a new Police Commissioner, a new head of our Police Union in addition to several new members of Council who I am so proud to serve with each and every day. I know that we all still share a common goal and that's to ensure that there is transparency and accountability across all sectors of City government, and this is especially true as it relates to our public safety partners. So I want to take a moment to thank our Mayor, Mayor Cherelle Parker; our Police Commissioner, Commissioner Bethel; President of the FOP, Roosevelt Poplar, whom I'm very deeply appreciative of; and Renee Garcia, our City Solicitor; and our Public Safety Director and our current Department of Labor Representatives. I thank you all for your continued partnership and for your work. Today we will hear from the Parker Administration about their public safety priorities and the progress that has been made thus far. However, the overwhelming majority of today's hearing will be focused on hearing directly from Philadelphians. I want to be very, very clear. As the author of this legislation, we are here to listen. We're here to listen to what our citizens, our fellow Philadelphians want to see as a part of this process. And today we will ensure that we hear your feedback and submit that feedback to our Administration as they move forward in this process. To everyone who has joined us in person and to those of you who are tuning in from home, please know that today we are reaffirming our commitment that we made to you four years ago, to center the voices of the community as we work towards making all levels of government work even better for the residents of the greatest city in the world, and that's the city of Philadelphia. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Council President. And thank you, colleagues. (Applause.)
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Curtis Jones.
I'm sorry, Mr. President. I'd like to wait until the Administration makes their case. Thank you.
You're welcome. Any other opening comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
None, okay. Hearing none, at this particular point in time I'm going to ask for our Chief Clerk for this hearing, Mr. John Christmas, to please call the first panel to testify on Resolution No. 24 241032.
Cara Leheny, Director of Labor and Employee Relations, Department of Labor. And joining her to field questions will be Chief Public Safety Officer Adam Geer, Director of Public Safety. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Good afternoon, Council President, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson and members of City Council. Thank you very much for having us here today. My name is Cara Leheny. I am the First Deputy Director of the Department of Labor. I am also the Director of the Office of Employee and Labor Relations. Among other things, one of our functions is to be the chief negotiator for the City of Philadelphia. I am joined by the Director of the Labor Department, Perritti Divirgilio who's immediately to my right, and Adam Geer, our Public Safety Director. I have a PowerPoint to sort of walk everyone through the ACT 111 process. I'm just not sure logistically, do I just ask that the deck be advanced or should I have something in my hands to advance it myself?
We have it. Madam Leader, can you join me at up at the podium please. The team will walk you through the actual process. Thank you.
Wonderful to see you and thank you for all of your help and for your partnership through the years, over the last four years really. You've been with us since the beginning and you've been with us through litigation, so I'm deeply appreciative of all of your hard work and all of your efforts. We do have someone here to advance all of the slides. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Well, then I would ask that the slide be advanced to the first. Thank you. Let me tell you a little bit about the law that is how we bargain with our Police and our Fire personnel. That is called the Policemen and Firemen Collective Bargaining Act. It was Act No. 111 of 1968, so we colloquially refer to it as Act 111. And that's how I'll do so throughout this hearing. Act 111 gives police and firefighters the right to organize and bargain over terms and conditions of employment. Those include wages, hours, working conditions, pensions, retirement and other benefits. Unions bargain with the public employer. That's the legal term, the public employer, which in this case is the City of Philadelphia. Represented employees are prohibited from striking, which is why instead of what we call bargaining at the table, we have a panel of three arbitrators who write the contract for the parties. That is called interest arbitration. I know you -- I'm sure you have also heard of grievance arbitration. Grievance arbitration occurs when there is a dispute over the terms of an existing contract and that is usually heard by one arbitrator. Would you advance the slide please? Thank you. So what's the process for interest arbitration under Act 111. Well, parties are required to exchange their proposals at least six months before the start of the fiscal year when the contract ends. So for us of course that's -- since our fiscal year ends on July 31st, we exchange proposals no later than December 31st. Parties then have a minimum of 30 days to bargain before demanding interest arbitration. Once the demand is made both parties identify issues in dispute to submit to the arbitrators. These issues set the jurisdiction of the panel. Each party selects an arbitrator to represent its interests on the panel. We call these party arbitrators. The party arbitrators jointly select a neutral arbitrator. The neutral must be a Pennsylvania resident. Evidentiary hearings are held and both sides present their issues in dispute to the panel. And ultimately, at the end of the process the panel issues a final and binding decision. May I ask that you advance the slide. So I mentioned grievance arbitration a little earlier, and I just wanted to talk a little bit about what that is. Grievance arbitration we usually describe it as two types of arbitration, discipline or contract. Discipline arbitration occurs when a grievance is filed in response to a disciplinary action by the City. The burden of proof is on the City to prove that there was just cause to impose discipline. The City must prove all seven elements of just cause. And one of those elements is whether the penalty is appropriate to the misconduct that has been proven. In contrast, contract arbitration really refers to every other type of arbitration under the contract. Maybe there's a dispute over overtime or a work schedule change or something like that. And in those situations, the Union bears the burden of proof to show that there was a violation of the contract. Would you advance the slide please? So going back to interest arbitration, how do we develop our proposals. Well, as I mentioned before, the City is the bargaining agent by law and the office, my office, the Office of Employee and Labor Relations, the Department of Labor is the chief negotiator for the City and acts on behalf of the Mayor and her Administration. The process has -- the historical process to developing proposals has been that my office of LR works with the City's legal team, gets input from the police department, meets with other key stakeholders that might be, for example, the Citizens Police Oversight Commission or CPOC. Before that, it was Police Advisory Commission. We probably will also be meeting with other departments that may have a role to play, the Office of Human Resources, the Director of Finance or the Chief Administrative Officer as examples.
Historically, there was some informal input from the public or advocacy organizations, but that typically came about because someone in the mayoral administration might meet one-on- one or in a small group with particular organizations. If you would advance the slide please. However, in 2020, on September 20, 2020, what I call the public hearing ordinance was introduced by Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson, and it became effective on September 20th. And that ordinance ensures a formal way for the City to receive public feedback in advance of the bargaining with the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which I will call the FOP throughout. On November 18, 2020 that public hearing, that very first public hearing, was held -- it was a virtual hearing because of COVID. On December 30th, the City's proposals were sent to the FOP. We then had a series of interest arbitration hearings between June 21, 2021 and July 28, 2021. I just want to note this doesn't mean we were in interest arbitration every day of those days. The dates sometimes get spread out depending availability. Ultimately on September 14, 2021 the award was issued and it governed the period between July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024. And last year the Kenney Administration entered into a one-year extension of the existing award so we are now getting ready to bargain a new contract. I should probably mention when I say we bargain a new contract, every award builds on the previous award. We don't renegotiate every single term of the contract. If the term is working for the parties, it stays in there and we just bargain about new things. So when I talk about the collective bargaining agreement, I'm really talking about a series of interest arbitration awards going back many years. Would you please advance the slide? I'd like to talk about what we got in 2021 because we got some major disciplinary reforms that was obviously of significance to the public at large. I remember attending the public hearing. I think it was about seven hours. We had, I don't remember, there were I think well over 60 members of the public who testified and they were resounding in their concerns about the discipline process. So one of the important reforms that we got was a revised disciplinary code. The key points there is that it added some new charges, it revised some charges and it enhanced penalty ranges and reckoning periods. Now, that may not be some -- those phrases may not mean a lot to people. A penalty range is connected with progressive discipline. So, for example, you're a little sloppy in your paperwork. We're not going to fire you over that. First offense might be a reprimand to 5 days. Second offense might be 5 days to 10 days. Third offense might be 10- to 15-day suspension. The reckoning period is how long those offenses stay on your record for purposes of progressive discipline. So using that example I gave, your first offense is Year you get -- you commit your first offense. And so, you get a reprimand. Year you commit your second offense. Well, that's the second offense in the reckoning period so you are now looking potentially at between and 2 days of discipline, of potential 3 suspension. But you don't commit 4 any more offenses for two more years and then you commit that offense again. You're back to the first offense under the reckoning period because the reckoning period was only five years. If you would please advance the slide. Another set of major reforms that we got concern about is the Police Board of Inquiry, which we refer to as PBI. Now, the Police Board of Inquiry essentially has two -- it's part of the police department and has two components. There is what we call the unit that issues when Internal Affairs or another or say my office, the Employee Relations Unit, substantiates misconduct. The Charging Unit will look at the allegations that have been sustained.
We'll compare them to the existing disciplinary code and we'll choose the code violations that are appropriate for purposes of the offense. That is called -- we call it the Charging Unit separately. The other part of the Police Board of Inquiry is the actual board that hears the conduct cases that the police department brings. So before any discipline is -- typically before any discipline is issued, the officer, represented by counsel, will appear before the panel. Before the 2021 contract, that panel consisted of a peer, then it consisted of a supervisor and a rank above the supervisor. Now, it was my experience that if you were a police officer and you were facing discipline, you obviously had a police officer as your peer. The supervisor would start at the lieutenant level not at the sergeant level, so there'd be a lieutenant and there'd be a captain, and obviously as you go up in rank you're going to see those positions, those ranks change a little on the panel. And I should also mention that the Charging Unit also was comprised wholly of FOP members, uniformed members of the department. So another thing that happened at the PBI before 2021 is that a department advocate, the position is called department advocate -- essentially think of it like the prosecutor for the police department at the misconduct hearing. That person was also a member of the FOP, a uniformed member, and did not necessarily require legal training. Some of them had it, some didn't. So those were some of the things that were in existence before 2021. However, in the 2021 contract one of the first things, one of the major changes is that the Charging Unit is now comprised not only of uniformed personnel in that unit but also of a CPOC representative who is also looking at the same things that the Charging Unit is and they're working together to come up with the appropriate charges. Another important reform is that the department is represented by attorneys from the Law Department at PBI hearings. We have recently staffed that up and we have some very highly-skilled former prosecutors. I think a couple of them were from the DA's Office, very highly skilled and experienced attorneys. The PBI panels now instead of having a peer representative have a representative from CPOC sitting on them. And then as I said, the two sworn members who are the supervisor and the rank above that. PBI members also receive training on department directives and expectations. During the course of the hearing -- this is a very important reform, probably doesn't happen too often but when it does, it's a really great reform to have -- during the course of the hearing if the PBI thinks that there should be different charges that wasn't correctly charged or they hear something and they're like, wait, did anyone investigate that, that feels like that should have been investigated, they can ask the department advocate to have that remanded either for new charges or for additional investigation. And another key reform is that each member of the PBI Board also provides their own independent reasonings for their findings and the recommendations they make, because the PBI Board does not have the authority to directly issue discipline. It makes recommendations to the Police Commissioner who retains the authority to accept those recommendations, modify them in some way. And prior to 2021, you might just get it -- you typically got like a little sheet and people would check off whether they thought the person was guilty or not and what penalty they thought was appropriate but you didn't necessarily know why they did that. So those are some really important reforms that we received. And if I may ask that you advance the slide. I do want to talk about what we asked for, some other things we asked for because we came -- well, my office came before this body four years ago and told you things we were going to ask for and you deserve a report card on it.
One of the things we sought back then was reimposing the city residency requirement for new hires. We did not receive that in the contract. We also sought to allow the Commissioner to transfer officers without restriction and we did not receive that. We did expand the Department's ability to use civilians, meaning non-uniformed individuals. I've talked already about how CPOC has become involved and how we now have attorneys representing the department at the PBI, but we also got very important language, language that would allow us to hold an interim interest arbitration. In other words, during the term of a contract if the City wanted to civilianize certain positions, put a non-uniformed person doing work that the FOP has historically performed, we could invoke an interest arbitration panel to resolve that instead of having to potentially wait until the next contract cycle. And, in fact, we actually did hold an interest arbitration in 2023. Also, another thing that we asked for is that we prohibit arbitrators from changing the penalty if misconduct is proven. We did not get that. But as I said, we did have significant revisions to the then existing disciplinary code. Would you advance the slide please? In terms of grievance and arbitration, we sought to expand the existing arbitrator pool. Those of you who were in Council four years ago probably remember there was a lot of interest and questions about who are our arbitrators, what's their diversity and do they repres -- you know, can we say that they represent the City of Philadelphia. Arbitrators are chosen from typically a pool that the American Arbitration Association maintains. But one of the really important reforms that we got, and this was really cutting edge, is we created a Police Termination Arbitration Board, the PTAB, for short. And we put together a panel and each party got to select an equal number of panel members. And by contract, at least 40 percent of those members must come from historically underrepresented groups, people of color, LGBTQ women. And additionally, and it isn't reflected here on this slide but this is also very important, we don't have to simply draw from the arbitrator pool of the American Arbitration Association. We put in some standards that we could use non-AAA arbitrators. They would either need to have a JD or have a certain number of years of experience doing labor relations work and they would need to do a training that the FOP and the City worked together and presented about our process, you know, a little bit of, you know, so they knew what they were walking into about the elements of just cause, that sort of thing, and they would also have to agree to abide by the code of ethics of the National Arbitrators Academy. Another concession that we sought was to restrict back-pay awards. If someone was awarded back pay, the kinds of things they could get, you know, could they get their lost overtime, different things like that, we didn't get that. And we also sought to establish evidentiary rules and a scope of the arbitrator's authority farther than what's already in the contract. We didn't get that. May I ask that you would advance the slide. Thank you. So let's talk about what some of the priorities that the Administration has identified so far. Discipline, we are continuing to seek reform in terms of discipline. One of what we're looking to do is to build on CPOC's successful integration into the police department's disciplinary processes. We're also looking to streamline the discipline process. These things are important because they increase transparency, they enhance accountability and they foster public trust. In terms of grievance and arbitration, we're going to try to again get additional terms regarding the evidentiary standards and the scope of the arbitrator's authority and also restricting the back-pay awards. Why are we trying for that again?
Because it promotes consistency in decision-making and it ensures that public funds are appropriately expended when there is a back-pay award. Would you please advance it? Thank you. Another thing we're looking to do is get some reforms around work schedules. We would like to expand the Department's ability to make temporary changes to work schedules to allow it to respond to major unforeseen events. It does have some flexibility in the contract. We're looking to expand that. And we also want to increase the Department's flexibility to properly staff national security events. We're seeking these because public safety is enhanced when the police department has the flexibility to deploy sufficient police in response to unforeseen events, and it ensures that when Philadelphia is on the national or international stage, as we soon will be again, that we can keep our citizens and our guests safe. We are also seeking some additional civilianization of posts. And again, this allows us to free up police officers to do what they do best, which is police functions. And it also frees up -- and it also puts some folks who might have special training that would be appropriate for that position into that position. So those are what we're looking for. I've come to the end of our presentation. I just want to say that in addition to those themes we are very interested in hearing what the public has to say. We want to hear from them. We'll be here throughout to listen to their feedback. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation and for all the information you shared, particularly the timeline sort of helping us understand why we are here today. I wanted to just start off with a couple very brief questions before I pass it along to my colleagues. The first is will there be any opportunity for a community member to be a part of the panel when you are in interest arbitration like we did last time?
I am sure that is something that I would think we'd be happy to explore that.
Okay. Excellent. And then you talked about the civilianization portion of the proposal and that being one of the major themes for the 2025 contract. We know that you all did undertake that activity in 2023. But if you could talk about the specific positions that you all are seeking to identify in that realm.
I may not remember all of them. I apologize. I do know that an important focus for the department is in the police dispatch, the 911 center. And we have obviously -- we have non-uniformed members who take those calls, but we do not have a promotional path for them. They are supervised by uniformed personnel. And one of the things we are looking to do is to create some civilian promotional path, not to displace -- there's a reason you have uniformed personnel in the 911 cent -- the dispatch center, but to create additional paths and give our really very hardworking dispatchers the opportunity to promote and -- my gosh, I'm so sorry, Council Majority Leader, I just cannot think of -- I know there's at least one other and I just can't think of it.
Sure. Well, we'll ask that you can just submit that information at a later time to the Chair for dissemination to members of Council. I have to pause here to put a plug-in for the young people who are Police Explorers. We've included them in our Apprenticeship Guide Book, and I know that there's sort of a low period between the time when they finish the program and before they can actually apply to be a police officer. So that may possibly be a part of what you all could look towards relative to one of the civilianization positions.
Feels like I'm still in court sometimes. And this is all part of the --
Adam Geer, Chief Public Safety Director. And this is all part of the process. As we now get into the next several weeks, we'll continue to meet with our primary stakeholders and continue to listen including the department. And I won't speak for the Police Commissioner here today, but certainly they have a mastery of their force of where we can make inroads in these requests into civilianization, so we'll get into those specifics in a very granular level I'm sure throughout the department and where we can see possible negotiation points with civilianization in the force.
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Harrity for a point.
Point of information. We actually did put the money for the Cadet program too. I don't know if they worked it out yet, but the funding is there. That's so they can go from the Explorers right into the Cadet program, because the problem was we were losing those kids in between the time that they could be in Explorers and then sign up to be a police officer. So hopefully that part of it is fixed. And the whole idea was so that we could use them to do some of the paperwork and stuff like that because they're cadets and will eventually be going into the thing. So I know they worked it out with the FOP and it is part -- they did accept it, they are happy with it, so hopefully it'll kick in soon.
Thank you, Councilmember Harrity. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you. I would like to begin by thanking my colleague Councilmember Gilmore Richardson for the legislation that made today's hearing possible. I remember in 2020 after the murder of Walter Wallace, Jr. in West Philadelphia and the massive uprising across the country in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other Black people. Council passed a law requiring the public hearing before the City begins the negotiation on any new police contract, and the police contract is the City's single largest expenditure accounting about 15 percent of our budget, and that does not include the millions of dollars that the City pays out every year in settlements to victims of police misconduct. As members of Council, we have the responsibility to shed light on police operations and practices and to seek increased transparency and accountability for such a large portion of our annual spending in our city. Sometimes people assume that after the uprisings of 2020, the police became more accountable to the public. And while there have been some reforms, including the establishment of the Citizens Police Oversight Commission, the relationship between the police and communities of color has remained largely unchanged. And the fundamental lack of trust has not changed, the pervasive fear among parents of Black children has not changed and the collective trauma that we feel when another person of color is killed by police has not changed. So in 2022, a Philadelphia police officer shot and killed Eddie Irizarry and his family is still seeking answers. And just last month, an off-duty police officer shot and killed 54-year-old Robert Jones and his family is also searching for answers. These killings made the news, but there are countless issues that do not make the news. And without independent investigations, police violence, illegal searches and sexual assaults can be swept under the rug and out of public view. So, Philadelphians, we know this and we deserve a police force that is accountable to the public and subject to independent investigations. So one of my questions is over 500,000 voters in 2020 approved the ballot measure to require the Citizens Police Oversight Commission to conduct independent investigations of police misconduct, and this has not happened because of a provision in the police contract that forbids it. In the current contract negotiation, is the Administration bargaining for the CPOC's ability to conduct independent investigations?
May I? Before Public Safety Director is going to address the Administration's position, I do wish to clarify something, Councilmember, and I do appreciate what you're saying and I know the excellent work that was done by this Council and Councilmember Jones in particular in putting together the Police Oversight Commission, but Pennsylvania law says that there are certain subjects that we have to bargain. They are called mandatory subjects of bargaining. Discipline is a mandatory subject of bargaining. Discipline processes are usually a mandatory subject of bargaining. I say usually because of course, and I say this as a lawyer myself, I spent years in the Law 13 Department's Labor Employment Unit 14 before assuming my position on 15 April 1st, fortunately the law does not like -- likes ambiguity or I wouldn't have a job. So I can never say definitively this will never be something we have to bargain or this is something we always have to bargain. But generally speaking, discipline is a mandatory subject of bargaining which is why we did bargain in 2021 to get to try to put into effect what is in the CPOC ordinance. And so, the panel said -- and they didn't prohibit CPOC completely. What they said is where something is a mandatory subject of bargaining if the FOP doesn't agree, we're going to have to bargain it. And I do understand the Councilmembers frustration and I don't mean to minimize it in any way, but that's just the way things work in a bargaining context. And I will defer now to Director Geer.
Thank you. In addition to that, Councilmember, I appreciate your comments, your opening comments very much. As it relates to the position, the good news, right, is that the City of Philadelphia has this very robust piece of legislation that we see, right, and that now we must -- obviously the contracting process exists. And so, we have a roadmap with the CPOC legislation and it's our job when these negotiations come up to do what we're doing in this process, talk to our stakeholders, talk to the Administration, talk to the police department, see what's achievable, right, see what we can go into the room and work on and negotiate with the other side to get the best contract possible for the citizens of Philadelphia, understanding that that legislation exists. The good news is that we've been a part of this process now. We've been working on it for a couple of months, and I feel real good about the relationships that we've formed with the Police Oversight Commission. We've met several times with their leadership, with the police department, we've met with community stakeholders, right. So I feel very good about understanding their position and understanding their very real want. And they're going to get up here and they're going to tell you that they want that exact same thing. We have to be clear- eyed. We have to understand that there will be challenges with that position. Our overall goal is to continue to work with the Police Oversight Commission, understanding what the citizens want, what their expectation is, and align that with our priorities as an Administration and the police, and make the inroads where we can in important ways.
Okay. So just for clarity, is the ability to conduct an investigation on the table part of the negotiations?
The independent investigation is a conversation that is going to be a difficult conversation. I'm not going to sit up here and tell you otherwise. The independent investigation portion of the legislation has many complications and they are far-reaching. And just to give you an example, when there's an independent investigation there's chain of custody issues that come up in terms of evidence collection, there's duplicative statements that might be taken by two different parties that complicates potentially an eventual trial. There are many, many complications. And again, I want to be as frank as possible. It's going to be difficult to achieve. So where we're starting with I think as an Administration is taking a step back. We have experts on our panel. One of the employees in my office who's taking notes today is a former CPOC executive director, so we understand the lay of the land, so to speak. I hope I'm being clear that we will work with CPOC to make these inroads where we can in important ways. I also want to be very clear that independent investigations is a steep hill.
Thank you. I got the answer to it. So in the past two years, police misconduct lawsuits have cost the taxpayers around 60 million. That is the salary of about 1,000 teachers. How much do you anticipate police misconduct lawsuits costing the City in the next year?
I'm sorry, Councilmember. I would have to defer that question to the Law Department because we would look at probably the historical data to try to project forward. We can get back to you with that information.
So can we -- this is a request for information. Can you get it back to the Chair of this Committee for us please?
Thank you. So our schools are facing closures. SEPTA is planning fare increases and service cuts and we're in the midst of a housing crisis. Do you think that our City can afford any of these misconduct lawsuits?
I'm so sorry. I think I missed a word or two. I heard -- you were talking about the increase in cost in SEPTA, cutting services and I heard something police misconduct lawsuits. I'm so sorry. I missed I think the crucial part.
Okay. Since the information that you don't have available today is not available, but no matter what the number is do you think that our City can afford them with the crisis that we're already in?
I mean, I think clearly we are trying to limit liability. And we will be able to respond with the Law Department if there's any additional inquiries as it relates to that. But our responsibility is to make sure that we have a police department that there's no misuse or abuse of authority. And the Mayor says this every single time, right, she speaks at a police recruit graduation. We are not running away from the fact that we support our police department. They're doing an incredible job. They've changed their posture with this community policing model under the Mayor. In the same breath, we are not going to tolerate any misuse or abuse of their authority, right. If there happens to be a subsequent lawsuit, no, we never want to pay more money out. Obviously, our preference would be for that money to be going to other services for the city.
And just for clarity, I was not saying that the police department is not doing a good job. I'm talking about misconduct here, not the duty of our other public servants. I'm the only one with questions, with no time frame?
Okay. So for years we've seen alarming stories about police officers who portray the public trust who are then fired by PPD but later get their jobs back through the grievance arbitration process. So naturally -- nationally, I'm sorry, percent of police firings 13 are overturned, but in Philadelphia 14 it's at 70 percent. 15 So this is for 16 Ms. Leheny. When you worked at the 17 Law Department, you likely saw many 18 of these cases when you represented 19 the City in grievance arbitration 20 proceedings. What issue has the 21 City experienced with the grievance 22 arbitration system that may be 23 addressed through interest 24 arbitration?
Well, we are -- as I mentioned, sometimes what can be a challenge is that arbitrators may apply different burdens of proof. The standard burden of proof to be applied in arbitration is typically preponderance of the evidence, but some arbitrators will say, well, in a discharge case you have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt or by clear and convincing evidence. These are higher standards, higher burdens. And these evidentiary burdens are not uniformly applied. It's not that every discharge case has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but some arbitrators may apply it. You may not always know -- if you're lucky, they tell you, and then you know as an advocate what you want to try to do to strengthen the case. So that's one of the things we're seeking here, uniformity. We're also seeking, again we would like where we have proven -- where the arbitrator agrees that we have proven the misconduct that the penalty is not changed, because that is one of the seven elements of just cause as I mentioned, that essentially the punishment fits the crime. We call it proportionality. And sometimes an arbitrator agrees we proved exactly what we said we were going to prove, but the arbitrator decides for a variety of reasons. And I'm not minimizing those reasons. An arbitrator might be looking at the full -- the police officer's full history or they may feel that the officer showed remorse in the hearing. And so, they lessen the penalty. It happens. And I think, Councilmember, but although I'm not sure because I'm not exactly sure where the 70 percent comes from, but I know when The Inquirer did a survey of over years, they 7 conflated cases where the City lost 8 outright, where we simply were 9 unable to sustain our evidentiary 10 burden and prove that there was just cause for any discipline whatsoever, but there was also over 50 percent of those cases where we got what we call split decision where the arbitrator found that we had proven just cause for most of it but maybe that the penalty was too heavy so they reduced it. I'm not minimizing the cost in terms of public trust and faith in our department when that happens. I'm not minimizing that at all, but I am just saying it's not actually 70 percent of the cases because I did my own analysis at the time because I was supervising the labor practice. Of those cases that The Inquirer analyzed, the City won approximately percent outright. 7 In other words, everything got 8 upheld. The FOP won slightly less 9 than 25 percent outright, and the 10 balance of them were what I call 11 the split decisions. 12 And again, not to say 13 that we were happy with split 14 decisions, we never are, but I do 15 want to set the record straight 16 because it's not as good a 17 headline. 18
Okay. And then after, colleagues, just because we have another committee here at 6:00, for this round -- we have two additional panels after this. We'll do five minutes for this round, if that's okay, and go from there. Okay.
Has there ever been precedence in the City for allowing some types of investigations to be done by departments and agencies other than Internal Affairs? For example, did prior executive orders regarding the CPOC's predecessor, the Police Advisory Commission, grant that agency investigatory powers?
No, be -- well, my answer is a qualified no. 20 Let me address the executive order piece first. Yes, the executive order for the Police Advisory Commission did that. But one of the mandatory subjects of bargaining is the movement of work that is exclusively performed by a bargaining unit in whole or in part. So even though the executive order said PAC should do certain investigations, Internal Affairs which is staffed by FOP members does those investigations, we would have had to bargain that. Just doing it by executive order is not -- it's insufficient under the law. But I would say that there have been a couple of times when Internal -- well, in 2020 as part of a contract extension, this is at the beginning of 2020, because originally the contract was supposed to expire on June 30, 2020 but COVID and everything so we did one-year extensions with everyone. One of the reforms we did -- a small piece of reform that we did get is that the FOP agreed that the Employee Relations Unit of my office which investigates EEO, internal EEO complaints, could instead of Internal Affairs investigate those. That was one, so that's something that's a little bit different than the normal Internal Affairs. And then every so often Internal Affairs may be conflicted out. I mean, there may be an allegation against someone and the City has done different things, maybe the Inspector General takes over. I think we have at least once sent something out through outside counsel, so it's rare but it does happen.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Brooks. And please submit any additional questions that you have for the record for dissemination to colleagues once we receive responses. Thank you very much. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Jones.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for having this hearing. What I admire about you is your attention to detail of what we committed to before to what our expectations are now. As Chair of Public Safety for City Council, one of the pieces of legislation that this body put forth and put on the ballot that I'm proud of is that we put on the ballot to challenge conventional wisdom to have a Chief Public Safety Officer and it passed. One of the other pieces of legislation that we put on the ballot and got passed and a half a million people voted for it was the Police Oversight Commission. I'm proud of that legislation. We have gone through a lot of maturation since then. We had to fight and build a standard operating procedure and fly the plane at the same time. We were able to recruit out of Dallas a director that is worthy of Philadelphia in this position. We got a staff, we got a staff that, 10 toes down, believes in what they're doing. What I'm saying to you, you are our negotiating team. I do not expect you to go into the negotiations and say, I don't know if we can get that. You're losing as soon as you walk in the room 24 when you are willing to concede a particular point before a confrontation, before a negotiation, that you cannot do. Because let me say this to you, and I'm glad my colleague went before me, because I don't know if I'm the good cop or she's the bad cop, I don't know, but in this case we agree that we will have problems, and we got lawyers too, right, if we do not fight for the investigation, one word. Now, you can define what the level of that is --
-- you can tell me that you're not allowed to go into these forensic labs, whatever it is you limit them to do, but from the start if you tell them they can't investigate, why the hell are we having a $5 million budget for them to do the best they can without teeth. I'm not having it. I think I can get nine votes to not have it. We'll figure out how to bypass whatever we got to do, but I need you to fight for it. And you need to tell them, and don't get it twisted, let me for the record say I am supportive of our men and women in blue, I love our Commissioner, I love our rank-and- file. There is not a scared straight that we don't go to, me and Member O'Neill and Driscoll went up to the police academy, got money in the budget to make sure that their berms were right, those are the backstops for their pistols. We go up there. Every time I go to an ATM, every time my wife gets a fill-up of gas, I'm glad they're there. During the pandemic when they rode up the street, I clapped. That let us know that our city was still operating, but do not get that twisted that I have to represent the people, those half million people that said we needed this. And in addition let me say this. The FOP when the new President was -- I ran, I got the first thing smoking up there. I have a fond admiration. He reminded me in our initial where he lived, where he grew up and how committed he is to the safety in that neighborhood. So for once, I don't think we are in opposition as a Council, as an Administration or as a police rank-and-file to getting things done. I'm not going to be in the grown-up room when y'all negotiate salaries, y'all worked it out, where they live y'all worked it out. And we take our lumps with the best of them, but there's some things we will die toes down for. And if we went through all of this to create a commission, investigate, one word, y'all figure out what the definition of that is, but don't come back here without that. Don't come back here without that. So I say all of that to say that I went through the last eight hours, Madam Chair, of interviewing. We had 50 applicants for the vacancies for the Commission -- I'm getting ready to end -- and we narrowed them down to 12, and some of them varying this degree of insight to what is needed, but all of them, all of them cared deeply about this process. So we're going to be ready in January to present a slate to this body of people who want to serve on that Commission. We will empower them with you or without you. I'd rather be with you. But my lawyer can't come in and say, hey, he's part guilty, we'll take the deal. All right. I've never had to be represented in court. But if a lawyer said that to you, I don't know. So thank you, Madam Chair. And I promise I will not ask another question because you said you wanted us to listen. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Was that a question?
So thank you. As always, Councilman Jones, I appreciate the support that Council has given, that your office has given, as we continue our work in public safety. You've been a true partner, as City Council, in making the tremendous inroads that we have as it relates to public safety. That is a victory that we share as a city and part of that victory is this chambers as well. You hit the nail on the head when you articulated the definition of investigation. Now, we are at the beginning of getting into the details of our plan to go into the room. So when I'm having these comments with Councilmember Brooks, and we're sort of like hinting at things, it's because we're developing a playbook. And the reality of it is we've had conversations with the new CPOC Executive Director, who is as dynamic as you described, and I'm happy that we got her here in the city of Philadelphia working for our folks. We have had conversations about what that definition of investigation is. So there is gray area there. And I don't want to dig any deeper than that, but we understand the mission and what folks are expecting of us.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, just state your name for the record --
Yeah, Perritti Divirgilio, Director of Labor. Councilman, we've known each other for a long time. I mean, even longer than the 18 years I was Director of Labor of Standards. And I think anybody in this room that knows me knows there's nothing soft about me at all. So when we go into them negotiations, they're going to be very serious.
Thank you. Thank so much, Councilmember Jones. And thank you for your work on the CPOC. Thank you so much. For the record, the Chair recognizes the presence of Councilmember Cindy Bass. Next, we'll recognize Councilmember Ahmad.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for all the work you have done, Majority Leader, in getting us this far. As someone new to Council, I'm really happy to see how much effort has gone into accountability. And in that vein, one of the very fundamental questions for you is I see under Act 111 the arbitrators are selected as neutral arbitrators and the only qualification is they must be a PA resident. Outside of that, are there any issues that would disqualify them? And how do you get -- I'm sorry. What role does anybody have in actually choosing those arbitrators?
Thank you for that question, Councilmember. Under our collective bargaining agreements, we agree to arbitration under the aegis of the American Arbitration Association. The interest arbitration process itself is specified by statute. So once each party has named its party arbitrator, we are -
The City of Philadelphia is one and the FOP is the other. And once we have each chosen our party arbitrator, we receive a list of five Pennsylvania residents who are in the labor arbitration pool of the American Arbitration Association. As I said, by law they must be Pa residents. But AAA, we are being sent people who have been doing grievance arbitration before. And then what happens is we do what's called a strike. Each party strikes. The City strikes first. The Union then strikes. Then the City, then the FOP. And whoever is left is the interest arbitrator. That is, as I said, how the law sets up the selection process.
And the follow-up is you mentioned in the last contract there was alternate arbitrators. What triggered you to be able to look at alternate arbitrators?
I think -- are you referring to the Police Termination Arbitration Board?
Thank you. So one reason we're able to do what we did in the contract is because Act 111 doesn't specify how you pick a grievance arbitrator, which the kind of arbitration that the PTAB gets involved in. So again, we contractually agreed to arbitrate under the rules and procedures of the American Arbitration Association. That also means that we can contractually agree to modify those. And that's what we did through the Police Termination Arbitration Board.
Okay. And then the final question fundamental: How are the seven elements of just cause determined? Is it we accept this because somebody decided these were the seven elements or how do you get those seven elements of just cause that the arbitrators have to say was met in order for finding of the police officer?
I'm a little embarrassed having done this work for 15 years and I can't tell you where it started. But the seven elements of just cause have been accepted not actually only by labor arbitrators around the country, but in fact the Commonwealth Court in a decision and I'm blanking on the citation --
-- actually define just cause and track those seven elements.
The reason I ask all these questions is anecdotally from the outside I have heard this is the place where justice falls apart in terms of somebody who's brought a complaint against the police. And so, I really want to understand what process we're doing is really addressing to put that to rest, that this is a fair and just process and there are no sort of workarounds to reinstate people that the Police Commissioner has fired. Obviously, this is a process. So that's really where I'm coming from to understand how are we tightening up the accountability in this whole process, in this whole procedure?
So we do it -- and frankly, we work on it every day even outside of the bargaining process. I can speak -- now, I'm speaking really to my experience at the Law Department. I've had the pleasure of working with every police commissioner since Commissioner Ramsey. And I know that our lawyers sometimes maybe we put on a case that doesn't go the way we hoped and we see that there might be a systemic issue that can be fixed. And we have always been able to go to the police department, to the Commissioner or to the professional responsibility, Deputy Commissioner, we've been able to go to them and say, here's what we saw, here's our concern, here's where we think it could be better. Now, again some of those things depending on what that recommendation is, and obviously I can't speak to any of them because it's privileged, but maybe there needs to be some bargaining around that. That might be something that we put into the hopper, you know, for the next bargaining cycle. But sometimes it's just trying to improve our systems, trying to improve our internal systems. And because even with the best of all intentions, we are human and there are always things that can be improved. I think it unfortunately will on some level always be a work in progress, but we continue to advance. It's not necessarily visible to the public, but we continue to advance.
And my final comment is not really -- I don't know how relevant it is here, but I saw that our FOP Union President had introduced an app for mental health support for people to use without having to declare to the whole world they're using it. Do we have any mental health support in this arbitration process for those who are on the hot seat, so to speak? I think personally mental health plays a big role particularly in these contentious areas. So I just wondered if there's -- I don't know if this can be built into the arbitration process or what, but somewhere that level of support that doesn't put us in these opposing camps is really critical I think. This is just a comment. If you have something to say, please do, but this is just my reflection.
Wellness, I'm -- what I think I can speak to is and what I know is that wellness, and that includes mental health, wellness is an area of concern to the police department and to the city. And I happen to know is to the FOP as well, and they do a wonderful job in providing resources to their members. I know the City is working -- oh, we're looking to create a new position. This is not necessarily civilianization because the work hasn't been done of -- the police department is, a victim, I could have the name wrong, victim advocate, you know, someone to work with crime victims and to have support for them. So there were a lot of ways that the department and the City are addressing that in the interest or grievance process itself. And by that, I mean I'm not necessarily sure we have to bargain those things. I think it would depend maybe on if there was a specific proposal from one side or the other. It's hard for me -- I can't speak in the abstract on that.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Ahmad. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And good afternoon to all the panelists.
Got a long one today. Because I'm a little tired and not feeling the best, I'm probably going to stick really close to the language in my questions that we prepared. Even though some of it may be a bit repetitive, I do want to get these things on the record as we've prepared them. For too long key pillars of creating a safer city have not been present, and you've actually already spoken to them a bit in your presentation. One is trust and the other is transparency. Yet both Council and the Administration have moved closer in recent years to addressing these issues through initiatives like the creation of the Citizens Oversight Commission spearheaded by Councilman Curtis Jones, as he's already lifted up, and the Police Termination Arbitration Board. However, more work needs to be done to ensure that we continue to create truly safe communities across the city. And so, I want to return back to the CPOC conversation. Will the Administration be submitting -- and I know this is a uphill climb, I heard you say this -- will the Administration be submitting a proposal to the arbitration panel to enshrine CPOC's investigatory powers into the FOP CBA?
Well, again what I would say is that we are looking at. We are developing that language. I don't have a proposal language right now. And as Director Geer pointed out, sometimes there are challenges to the definition of what is an investigation when you have issues of chain of custody, of evidence or sometimes the ability to access certain databases or other resources that maybe you can only access as a law enforcement officer. There are obviously some laws around that as I'm sure you know. But I think consistent with what Director Geer has said, we are working with CPOC. We've met with them. I've met with them, with Executive Director McClary. We're looking more forward to talking with them some more and to try to realize the vision of the CPOC legislation.
My understanding is that if the Administration does not submit a proposal, then CPOC will have no 16 chance really at investigatory powers until the next bargaining cycle in three years. That's at least three more years where we prohibit CPOC from fulfilling the mandate that Council and voters have asked for independent investigations into misconduct. It seems like this is the case. But why does the Administration find it unnecessary to pursue more rigorously this vital reform with such broad-based support?
Well, I don't think any of us up here have expressed that it's unnecessary nor am I sure that we can judge the rigorousness of our proposal when we are still developing it. So I hear what you're saying, Councilmember. I have heard Councilmember Jones, I've heard Councilmember Brooks. I've heard -- I hear you. We all hear you. We don't disagree and we are going to work very closely with CPOC and we are going to work hard to try to realize the vision. But at this time, I just can't accept the characterization that we see it as unnecessary or that we're not willing to be rigorous.
All right. Philadelphia Police Officer Ryan Pownall who was fired for shooting David Jones in the back and killing him had murder charges submitted against him dismissed on a procedural technicality. In April we learned that he'll be reinstated. In making that decision, Arbitrator David Reilly disagreed with the recommendations of the Use of Force Review Board as well as the current and former Police Commissioner. Is there a standard that all arbitrators must follow in making their decisions? It sounds like there were a couple of different standards.
Well, all arbitrators are supposed to apply the elements of just cause, and they typically do. But it is -- when I say typically do, I can't think of an arbitrator who hasn't applied the elements of just cause. But what I would say is again evidentiary standards -- the evidentiary burden of proof might be different from arbitrator to arbitrator. I addressed that earlier. And I think -- and by the way, I will say this because I'm not here to knock arbitrators. Arbitrators are like judges or anyone else. There are interpretations of the law and of standards. And they might look at -- one arbitrator might look at one element of that just cause and think of it slightly differently than the next. So, yes, broadly speaking they are to apply those standards, but there is obviously human variation.
The variation, do those variations create challenges for the City -- I hear the bell. How do those variations kind of create challenges for the City? And if there are any, is the City attempting to mitigate or address these particular challenges?
If there are challenges by these variations, there's not like a unilateral standard, it's kind of interpretation, does that present challenges for the City? And if there are, are you all attempting to mitigate or address these particular challenges?
Yes. I mean, of course there are challenges and there always will be. There would be if we were defending a case in court. But as I mentioned I think in response to Councilmember Ahmad, one of the things that the Law Department has always done, and I anticipate it's going to continue to do because I know those lawyers, we look at the result, how did it work out, what didn't work, what could we be doing better. We talk with our client, whether it's the police department or if it was a different department for a different issue and we try to where we can -- sometimes it's just a peculiarity of the case. Maybe a witness doesn't show up. And if a witness doesn't show up and if they're an eyewitness and we have no other confident testimony, that case goes -- we're probably going to lose that case, right. I mean, but sometimes it might be a systemic thing that we can fix, we can do better, we can improve and hopefully avoid that challenge in the future.
Madam Chair, I do have a few questions. I know that you said we have five minutes. Is there another round or should I submit the questions?
If you'd like to ask one additional question and then submit the remainder of the questions for written response, that would be greatly appreciated, my colleague --
-- only because we have a number of witnesses who have now signed up for public comment. And I want to be sure that we hear directly from the public as that was the genesis for this legislation. I thank you.
Yes, ma'am. Let me roll this one and now I'm going get off your time. Can OELR and the Administration commit to providing Councilmembers with copies of the City's current contract proposals as well as any amendments to those proposals between now and December 31st? And additionally, can OELR and the Administration also commit to providing Councilmembers with copies of the FOP's current contract proposals as well as any amendments to those proposals between now and December 31st? And if not, why not? And then I'm done.
Mic drop. Let me say this, our proposals are a work in progress probably up until about the time that we send them over to the FOP. So I can't commit to you that we can provide them to you in the lead-up to when we send them over. We can certainly look at sending our proposals to you afterwards. I have to look a little bit -- I have to check with the lawyers. I get to say that now. I have to check with the lawyers because I'm actually not sure if we can share the FOP's proposals with you or not. Interest arbitration is not itself a public process. It's not like going into court and watching. The public can't -- that's the law. The public doesn't get to walk in so I'm not so sure about the FOP piece. And so, I would need to look into that. I need to make Law look into it is what I really mean to say.
Thank you for your time. And thank you, Madam Chair, for your liberty.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember O'Rourke. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Gauthier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for your work on this. We all know the Philadelphia Police Department has a significant staffing shortage. We obviously want to improve recruitment for sworn police officers. At the same time, we would be remiss not to explore every tool available to support the work of PPD. In July 2024 the Controller's Office reported that PPD had 1,084 vacancies. One of the proposed solutions for this staffing shortage is civilianization or hiring civilians to perform work that have been performed by police officers. The 2021 Interest Arbitration award allowed for civilianization under certain conditions and a more detailed civilianization Interest Arbitration award laid out specific roles that could be replaced with civilians, public safety enforcement officers, abandoned vehicle unit personnel, body-worn camera technician roles, mail delivery roles, graphics and audio visual roles, crime scene unit investigators, firearms examiners, document and digital evidence examiners. In 2021, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Fels Institute of Government published a civilianization report authorized by the City which recommended even more roles that could be civilianized. So with that in mind, I just wanted to ask a few questions on our progress. Regarding the civilianization Interest Arbitration award negotiated during the last contract cycle, what progress has the City made on civilianization? What obstacles has the City faced or hurdles have we faced to civilianization? And how many public safety enforcement officers are currently working and what are their duties?
I'm going to have to get back to the Council on the public safety enforcement officers. I don't know the number of officers, PSEOs we currently have. I think their duties vary. I know that they're doing work -- I'm so sorry. I'm blanking on what we call them, but basically high traffic corridors. But I know that they were also assisting with removal of abandoned cars and things like that. So I need to check with the police department and find out what the current duties are. Several of the civilianization pieces we got in 2023 were very quick. We were able to implement them almost immediately. And I know, for example, probably the biggest, I'll say biggest ticket item, was the firearms examiners. And I know that the police department, the Bureau of Forensic Science is actually in the process of getting ready I think for a new class to sort of take full duty there. I don't know the numbers and it's not just firearms examiners. There's other forensic scientists. We can get you that information, but there has definitely been -- none of that has been held up except perhaps by the challenge that so many people are having in terms of firing people.
Okay. Are we in general where we want to be as far as civilianization? And what obstacles have there been towards that goal?
That's a hard question for me to answer because it's the police department that identifies for us what positions they feel should be civilianized and what would benefit the department. And so, I don't -- I know Commissioner Bethel is looking to civilianize some additional positions, and the obstacle there is simply the bargaining of it. But as I said, I am not aware of any barriers to being able to satisfy the gains we made in the 2023 interim.
Is there someone in the Administration who oversees that work other than PPD?
So the Police Commissioner really is in the best position to understand sort of his deployment and where he might utilize civilians and where he might object himself to civilianization. So we'll continue, that is on our list of discussions that we will have with the Commissioner as we go forward towards our final detailed plan.
Okay. I really like Commissioner Bethel. I think he's wonderful. I've known him for a long time. But do you think that there's a conflict between PPD being solely responsible for figuring out what roles are civilianized? And should there be someone else in the Administration that is focused on that work at a high level?
So within their organization -- because we sit at the table with Commissioner Bethel and have those conversations and then the Mayor ultimately sees that final whatever it is we're going to do, so it really is an Administration's approach and I have extensive experience in law enforcement. As a former Assistant District Attorney, I know the department very well. But, yes, he is the Police Commissioner and we are one administration and we'll work together to identify those positions.
Okay. I mean, I expect if you all are working together that when the next time you come before Council that you have that information if it's important. And if you're a part of the process, I would expect that. But please do follow up with what was requested.
Right. And just as I stated, we are having those conversations so we are gearing up to get those details and it is not a static thing. It can be fluid as well.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Gauthier. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Harrity.
Thank you, Leader. Good afternoon, everyone. How are you doing? You guys actually answered most of the questions I had. But just while I got you here, Adam, I'm reading the testimony of Rosie Poplar, current President of the FOP Lodge 5. And he states, We must take meaningful action to make the Philadelphia Police Department a competitive and attractive place for police officers to work. That starts with ensuring that our pay and benefits match the incredible demand of this position. So my question today is do you believe the retention rates are low due to the lack of competitive salary and benefits for our police officers?
I think in this we will respectfully disagree with President Poplar. He is doing his job trying to get the best for his members and I respect him for that. What I would say it's certainly not as if the police department is the only police department in the country that is having challenges in recruitment. There has been -- it is challenging in a lot of areas in a lot of jurisdictions. And so, no, I would not say that our salary and benefits are the reason.
Okay. Have you compared our salaries here for our police with comparable police departments in different places of the country because I do believe that the compensation is definitely an issue? You know, bottom line is they're trying to snake our people from all over the country. There was a billboard not too long ago on 95 that said be a Miami police officer $75,000 to start, $20,000 signing bonus, live on the beach, you know. So we did actually do something about that when we figured it out and we put the money there for the bonuses in order for us to be competitive. It's not 20. It's about because 9 it's 20 percent of the salary. 10 And what we didn't 11 understand is that we also had to 12 put a retention bonus in there for the officers. So they worked that all out and it comes to about 12,800, whatever. But I would like to know what salaries of other police departments are, New York, for instance, California, LA, San Diego and how do we compare to those salaries?
I am not a comp -- I will fully acknowledge I'm not a compensation expert. We have those experts in the Office of Human Resources. And it is pretty standard, fair at every interest arbitration that each party will have an expert in compensation to testify about comparators. One of the important things, Councilmember, is what is our comparator, the tax base of New York City, of Miami, of San Diego is very different --
Okay. How about Delaware County then where they're paying 100-and- something thousand an officer?
Delaware County. For instance, that's close, same kind of tax bracket, you know. I get New York's cost of living, whatever. But the bottom line is our officers are paid buckets compared to other police departments. That's all I was asking. And you're saying that you disagree that the salary isn't the problem. But from my own conversations not only with officers who are working now, but also with people who are thinking about becoming officers who then turned around and instead of applying to Philly, applied to Montco and Bucks and Delco because they're literally paying 40,000 or so more than we are, so I believe that something has to give there. And I get it, you guys are in negotiations and that's cool and all, but I think you guys should do some homework. Look at what those salaries are in those other cities, all right, because I'm not going to put you on a spot and tell you how much they are because they're a lot more. But, you know, homework. This is coming up quick and I'm sure that's going to be a sticking point, salary.
And since I'm doing it and while I'm here, I might as well mention that we should also be looking at their pension plan because there's no 10 reason for an officer to stay after 25 years when all they can get to is 65 percent. There's no reason for them to stay after they get their time because at that point they're losing money for staying. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Harrity. And if we can since they are not here, possibly have our Office of Human Resources provide the data that Councilmember Harrity was requesting regarding the comparison of starting salaries for members of the police department adjusted for the cost of living of course. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Young.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmembers Gauthier and Harrity pretty much asked the questions, the line of questioning I was going to go toward. But I do have one question related to I guess the discipline of officers. We all have friends and family who are police officers, right, so they tell us different things that they would come and openly say to folks. And there seems to be from what I'm gathering a difference in discipline toward Black women officers in the force than there are toward some other officers. And just want to see how we can address that in the upcoming negotiations.
I'm sorry. Just want to make sure I understood your question. You have heard complaints that there is racial disparity in how officers of color are disciplined versus non-White officers. Did I understand that correctly?
We certainly hear of those complaints, but we hear those -- but the -- one of the elements of just cause is equal treatment. You look at officers not simply -- I mean, certainly gender, race, all of those things. You also look and see what is their history, how much discipline -- what's their rank, how long have they been on the job, what's their disciplinary record and that does create differences because you are not going to treat an officer who has a clean disciplinary record of years 5 similarly to an officer who's been 6 on the job for a year and has maybe 7 already incurred some discipline 8 and it may be that those 9 individuals are also of different 10 races or genders, but that is -- 11 that is not -- that has not ever 12 been my experience as the 13 driving -- that the demographics 14 are the driving factor. 15 It is -- it is about 16 the -- it is generally about who 17 these officers are, what their 18 histories are, what the level of 19 discipline is. And I don't agree 20 that -- I don't agree that there is 21 some sort of systemic bias against 22 officers of color or female 23 officers or whatever. I don't know 24 all the, you know, all the -- all the demographics you're thinking of. I don't agree that there is a systemic bias. I will not tell you that perhaps there has never been an issue. I would never suggest that, but I do not see a systemic bias.
So I guess internally who follows up with -- and it's another question, essentially along the same lines, where there are complaints filed by those Black women officers are often not followed up on as often or severely as some other complaints, right, that are being made by other officers. And so, how does this agreement or how will the City address that in this upcoming negotiations?
So I think one of the things we did, and correct me if I'm wrong, Karen, I know you will, is that improvement we got in the last cycle where we had the person from CPOC in the PBI hearing so that process was -- we added a member of CPOC to that process. Let me take one giant step back though and say that there has been a lot of studies, right, that that might suggest and some of them come from the education world, that some of our young Black and Brown folks are disciplined harder and at higher rates than their non-colored classmates. Point is taken. Taking another giant step back, it is something that this Administration and I am personally, especially coming from my world as an Inspector General, critically attuned to. And I've heard you and this is something that I've heard in the past and there will be more than just this avenue and this negotiation to deal with those types of concerns. And I know that we have a Commissioner who's committed to the same thing.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Young. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Thomas.
Good afternoon, colleague. I'll commend you for the great work you're doing. I would commend you a little longer but I've got limited time. I do appreciate the work that you all do especially outside of this space. But I think for today's conversation and specifically listening to the responses to some of the questions that members are asking, I'm really disappointed in the responses that I'm hearing to the questions that members are asking. When you talk about some of the responses around the Oversight Board, the lack of willingness to be aggressive is extremely disappointing. Listening to the response around public safety officers not knowing those numbers, that's definitely disappointing. Your perspective on arbiters, we'll get to that a little bit later, is disappointing. But then to sit here and say that there's no systemic bias in the police department, I believe that's a little bit out of touch. That's disingenuous to sit here and say that there's no systemic bias, especially against women. I don't know many things in the world that don't have systemic bias against women and I'm not a woman. So for that to be said on the record in this hearing with a woman who actually is leading the conversation by a woman -- (Applause.)
-- that's alarming and that's disappointing. Let me move on though because that wasn't a part of my questions. So the Administration has communicated an appetite to do something around a uniformity clause to help with some of the tax issues and economic issues that we have in the city. I think that's a great idea. In that same spirit, we've seen multiple stories about police officers who've done things like say the N-word on radio calls, rob drug dealers and hang them over the side of rooftops and many other things, and those officers were able to get their job back and sometimes even able to get back pay. The only solution to that is Act 111. What is being done in this year's negotiations specifically looking at Act 111 and how it ties our hands even in times when a criminal activity is taking place where someone can get their job back and get back pay? Do we have the same appetite around Act 111 that we do around the uniformity clause to put us in a position to be able to hold specifically bad officers accountable? And I have to frame this by saying this: I walk into City Hall every single day. And when you walk into City Hall and you interact with the police officers that we do, these are some of the nicest people that you're ever going to meet in your life. I respect and appreciate the officers I deal with on a consistent basis, and I think everybody should have the same experience that City Councilmembers have as it relates to how we interact with police officers. That's not the case right now. So Act 111, can you give me about a 30-second response?
I'm not sure, Councilmember, if we cannot change Act 111 through our contract process. It's a state -- I don't know if you're asking for changes toward Act 111.
So again, I'll reframe it. So the Mayor communicated an appetite to specifically do something about the uniformity clause which is something that we can't do anything about. It's in the same category as Act 111. So what I'm asking is the same appetite that we have around the uniformity clause, which we cannot do anything about, do we have that same appetite around Act 111 because the time to do something about it is right now while you're going through contract negotiations. It's a simple yes or no. Either, yes, we have the appetite or, no, we necessarily don't?
So let me -- yes is the short answer because there's broader advocacy than this. I believe that gun preemption and the state preemption law falls into this category of advocacy work that we must continue to do and I believe that it is timely that we do that work, yes.
All right. So you plan on working in collaboration with members of City Council to work with our state partners to see what we can do to be able to address Act 111 so when some of these egregious situations take place, we can actually fire people who deserve to lose their job?
Amazing. Thank you. That's the answer we wanted to hear. Thank you. A couple years ago we seen a report from the Controller's Office that talked about issues related to Heart & Lung. We knew that more cases around Heart & Lung were here in the city of Philadelphia by multiple folds compared to other large cities. What is going to be done around Heart & Lung throughout the course of this year's contract negotiations?
We have sought reforms on Heart & Lung for a long time. We have gotten some, not as many as we like and as we want, and that is a focus that has been a focus for a very long time, Councilmember. And we work closely with the Risk Division of our Finance Department which administers the Heart & Lung and see some of the issues close up and try to target proposals that help to address, assist abuses and other problems in the process.
So have we seen reductions? Do we have numbers as it relates to where we are compared to where we were when the report told us how egregious our numbers were?
I'm sorry. I didn't -- you wanted numbers as to where we are in -- I just didn't catch -- I would need to get that from Risk. Risk manages, has that information, not my office, but we can certainly get it. I just want to make sure I know what I'm asking for.
If you could just make sure that the Chair of the Committee gets information as it relates to where the City of Philadelphia is currently with Heart & Lung cases in comparison with other major cities across the country. That'll let us know where we are as it relates to our trajectory and our economics and how we're paying out. Madam Chair, I heard the bell. I just want to close out by again saying this is not about bashing law enforcement. Every industry has folks who are good apples and are bad apples. As a former teacher, I know that some of the things I read in stories if I did that as a teacher, not only would I lose my job I would be incarcerated. So we just want to make sure that we have the same standards across the board for all professionals. And as I close out, again the comments around arbitrators, I believe you said that they interpret different ways. I don't want to paraphrase exactly what was said, but I just think that's a little offensive and disingenuous to talk about the system that we know systemically favors a certain different group of people and put it under the cloud of interpretation. Some of these incidents are murders. People lost their lives. People have been charged with crimes. These are some serious things and we do have some systemic problems. There's a lot of people listening to these hearings and listening to what we're saying. This information is on the record. years from now 6 children may read and listen to 7 what was discussed today. 8 So let's just try to be 9 as accurate as possible in the 10 midst of what we're communicating, 11 but most importantly let's be 12 respectful of the things that 13 people have went through as to why 14 they care about this issue, right. 15 When Councilmember 16 Gilmore Richardson introduced this 17 bill four years ago, people were 18 protesting for this. People were 19 crying. People were talking to us 20 about some of the things that they've experienced that changed their life. I think some of the things that we're saying right now it would be disingenuous to basically say people's lived experiences didn't happen to them and to say that -- I'm going to stop right there. Thank you, Madam Chair. (Applause.)
And if I can respond. Councilman Thomas, I know that you do a lot of work on this. I know that when I was in the Inspector General's Office I worked with your office to look at reforms we could make in the police department and I worked with your office to look at that CPOC legislation. Some of your concerns, right, we have had conversations about and share. And I won't respond to everything you said because there was a lot there. What I will respond to, I want to be clear about this, that it is tragically and it is plainly clear that there is systemic biases throughout many, many of our institutions, if not all here in the United States of America. So I just want to say that that is the statement that I'm making and it is plainly, it is plainly true. We have to do better. We will do better. We have leadership in this City that understands these issues and we will continue to work towards those issues, but we share these concerns. And it's not as if we take any other perspective other than the fact that it is a horrendous thing when there are those biases when they present themselves, especially when we have in the case that was brought up by Councilmember Young, African American women who make that decision, right, that very difficult decision to take a public role in law enforcement and then might get treated differently within as it relates to their discipline. Just show me the case and I will with the Commissioner make sure that we do everything in our power to right those wrongs.
I'm going to close out by saying this: Adam, we're going to do this dance for some time, right. Please don't make me be the angry Black man for you to have to say that, right. I think that what you just said is important, but it should be that's how you guys should lead with the conversation. When we talk about police, we all get so afraid to be critical. You know, this City Council voted to give police officers a raise three years in a row, three years in a row. It's okay. We're critical of our teachers, people are critical of us, we're critical of the Mayor. Nobody's above criticism. They can be criticized. And after we criticize each other, we can give each other a hug and say it's going to be okay. No one is above that. So please don't make me and other members be the angry members before you are able to say with all honesty this is the problem and this is what we're willing to do. Madam Chair, I do apologize. Thank you for a little bit of leniency on that.
Well, that was my first opportunity to say in a context that was relevant and I'll say that any time you want me to say that, brother. I'll say that any time you want me to say that. When you want me to lead with that, I will lead with that. And we will be doing this for a long time and I'm happy to. This is the chamber and this is how it looks when we're trying to make progress.
Thank you. I just really wanted to follow up on my colleague's statement to say that, and I appreciate his sentiment 1,000 percent. I just wanted to say that, Adam, Mr. Geer, for your response, your response is one of likely lived experience, but the original statement that there was not this systemic bias that exists didn't come from Adam. And so, I think that just sort of redirecting the conversation from the original source, Adam I'm assuming had the experience that we've all had as people of color but not that as a woman, but still as a person of color the biases that exist. And so, I think that the original conversation didn't originate there. I appreciate him sort of coming to the rescue, so to speak, and addressing the matter. But I think when you have someone who sits high and has decision- making authority, it is troubling to me as well that there would be no recognition of the biases that we face every single day or no 17 experience with it. Maybe that's what it is. But nonetheless, it's still very troubling. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Councilmember Bass. Please respond.
Thank you. I hear you and I did not speak well. I understood from -- what I heard of Councilmember Young's question and I may very well -- and I think I misinterpreted and I certainly blew my response, is that -- is the department deliberately disciplining people of color or women differently from others. I have not seen that sort of intentionality, but I would never dispute and I don't because it is -- because not only because it's proven by research, but because we see it all the time in the culture that, yes, there are different -- there are biases that are applied and which we have to fight against all the time if we are not the person -- if we are -- I'm privileged in terms of my race so I have to remind myself that a woman of color in my position or saying something that I say may be perceived differently, and I do remind myself of that, and I recognize that as a woman I am sometimes expected to behave a certain way or criticized because I don't behave and conform in a certain way, so I do recognize those are there. And I do apologize to this body and to the public. I was not intending to deny the very reality of what you were asking, and I am sorry that I misunderstood your question. And I am sorry -- and I am sorry that my response was badly, badly handled. I take accountability for that and I apologize.
Thank you. Thank you very, very much for that response. Okay. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips for a point of information. Very quickly, colleagues, for a matter of the house, we have several additional members in the queue for Panel 1. We do have a second panel and one member in the queue for Panel 2. We have witnesses at 10 least to give public comment. We 11 have an additional Committee 12 hearing at 6:00. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips.
Majority Leader is excellent, isn't she, y'all? I just want to say -- point of information which I think is really important for us to understand. Is there a standard discipline? Just point of information for the police department, like there's a standard discipline protocol if something happens, you get this type of discipline that should be happening across the board or is it arbitrary?
Pardon me. I'm going to ask that you hold the response to that question so that I may acknowledge Councilmember Landau who does have another commitment. Then we will circle back to responding to the question from Councilmember Phillips and then recognize Councilmember Lozada in that order. Okay?
Thank you so much, Majority Leader. First, I just want to comment on some of the conversation that just happened. One, there's systemic bias and racism in every system that we have in America. There certainly is in this system as well, so I don't even know -- there's nothing to discuss here. I just think our job is to eradicate it. Our job is to acknowledge it and attack it. But I also want to note that it's my impression that my colleagues was also commenting on the bias in the arbitration awards themselves. So I wanted to say just to go back for everybody's -- to lay a foundation again that there's a section of the Police Termination Arbitration Board, it's a group of no fewer than 10 arbitrators, but says that the number -- that one of the requirements is at least 40 percent of the PTAB will be people who identify as women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and other represented communities. What is the current makeup of the PTAB? What percentage are women? What percentage identify as people of color, as members of the LGBTQ community or any other represented groups?
I'm sorry. I'm just -- we recently added some people so I'm just tallying it up in my head. We have at least -- and again, I really do apologize. I'm really -- I just want to make sure -- I'm hoping I'm remembering everyone, all the names correctly. As I said, we recently added some people. We have 4 individuals of color. We have 3 women. I am not -- I am not sure if anyone identifies as LGBTQ. It's possible they do and I'm just simply not aware of that. I don't know. I don't know every member of the panel sort of personally and we wouldn't necessarily ask someone that question.
Okay. It does help with diversity, inclusion when you do ask in order to intentionally make a diverse panel. Out of the 7 you discussed, 4 people of color and 3 women, are any of them in dual categories, like an African American female where it would seem that that person would be double counted in these numbers?
Okay. So now, we have to go back and do the numbers again. So there's a panel of 10. And out of the 10, how many identify as women?
And how many do you think out of the identify as people of color 5 including -- 6
9 That's what I was trying to get at. 10 Okay. So there's 3 people of color we believe in general on the panel of 10?
No, there are -- no. Well, first of all, I think it's -- I think we --
And I think it's actually -- I know it's supposed to be a panel of 10. I think it's 9 currently. So it's 4 of 9.
I was interested in the provision that regarding the removal of PTAB arbitrators. So how many have been removed? And if they've been removed, was it by the City or by the FOP? And then I have a follow- up question to that.
Both parties have removed arbitrators over the last three years. It can happen on an annual basis. The FOP has removed I think it's three and the City has removed one.
And how many removed PTAB arbitrators still completed the cases that were already assigned to them and how many cases did those -- my understanding is even when they're removed, they complete cases. How many removed arbitrators still completed cases and how many cases were completed?
I'm going to have to check the statistics, Councilmember. I'm not -- I know at least -- I'm going to have to -- I don't want to misspeak. Let me get the statistics for you.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I need to attend to other business.
Thank you, Councilmember Landau. I request that you submit all of your questions for written response and further dissemination to the Council via the Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Lozada.
And may you respond to Councilmember Phillips' question?
And just a reminder, the question was real quickly is there a standard protocol when it comes to discipline procedures in the Philadelphia Police Department or is there room for arbitrary decisions because that could potentially, point of information, because that helps with the discrimination question that was raised earlier?
Absolutely. There is a disciplinary code. This is bargained-for code. It has been bargained for since 2014 and there were previous iterations of this code. This code gets revised ever so often. There are also disciplinary procedures. I'm blanking on the directive number. Those are laid out in the directives about how a case proceeds through the system. I laid out a little bit of that when I was talking about the Internal Affairs, the Charging Unit, PBI. But there's more than that. And, yes, there is some language in our collective bargaining agreement which I think is an area of concern for the City in particular where certain offenses if they would garner no 17 more than a five-day suspension, so usually a reprimand of five days would be the range. They are given -- they are what we call command-level discipline. The commanding officer of the officer gets to make the decision as to what the penalty should be, and that is not reviewable by the Police Commissioner. And that is a source of great concern to the Commissioner, to the City. That does create, it does create room for unequal and disparate outcomes which could be based on a lot of things, including just whether someone's a friend of someone. And so, that is a serious concern.
That seems like where we need to start in terms of fixing so appreciate that.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, Councilmember Phillips. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. While I appreciate your apology, I understand Councilmember Thomas' frustration, and I think that he has a point, right. There are people that are going to be watching this that may be considering joining the police department or in the future and when they see this type of response, it kind of makes them hold back. And I think that the goal of contract negotiations and the point of us being able to have conversations should always be to find ways to attract talent into our police department. And there's no secret that I have had the benefit and the great opportunity to work very closely with the police division in the 7th Council District. I consider myself very fortunate, right, because some of my members don't have the very close relationship that I have with a lot of them. And so, I am privy to some information that maybe some of my colleagues are not. But Councilmember Young also mentioned data, and data matters. And so, there's no reason for us to come into this chamber and not have data, right. There has to be a way in order for us to change and make things better, make working environments better, make it easier for us to respond to some of the challenges that we experience in some of our departments. We need to have the data. And I'm sure that somewhere somebody has data around the types of complaints that come in, what's the demographics, are they women, are they women of color, are they men, are they LGBTQ, how were they responded to, what were the outcomes, what was the disciplinary action and what did the arbitration process say and what did the supervisor say. Somebody has to have that data. And we have to be prepared to have honest conversation in spaces like this and in your respective offices. There has to be honest conversation in order for us to fix, because the goal again should be making sure that our police department is ready and prepared to respond to the public's safety and quality of life. We're asking our police officers every day, especially in the 7th Council District, to do more and more and more. When we compare their salaries to other cities, it doesn't compare. We saw a large number of officers leave our department because of this type of situation, because of the arbitration process, because of the way they were treated, right, and so we have to be prepared. There's no reason why we should come to this chamber and ask very basic commonsense questions and we don't have that response. It's unacceptable. We have to figure it out. And again, I appreciate your apology. But the levels of positions of people that sit in those desks are in, we should be ready. These are not questions that have been asked for the first time. And so, we should be prepared to respond to this. And this is coming from someone who supports the police department in a way that maybe others don't in here, because I again get the opportunity to work with the majority of officers who are good-standing, respectful, responsible officers who really want to protect and serve, and this type of stuff doesn't help us. It doesn't help us. And so, I respectfully ask that we think about when we're coming into this chamber about what has been asked in the past and how prepared we are for the future. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. And just very briefly, Councilmember, so the way that I look at what you just said and the all truths, right, in terms of the data which Civilian Police Oversight Commission, correct me if I'm wrong, also pulls the department obviously and looks at those kinds of numbers and we're upstream of that when we're thinking about some of the changes we're making. But to the point of the larger conversation that we were all just having, we know what's obviously true. We know, I think, what the data is going to show once we get there. We're thinking about how to make these disciplinary, like, the processes that will affect those numbers further downstream. So I absolutely hear what you're saying and I certainly acknowledge that, but it is also like we were saying before plainly true what we might see when we visit some of those numbers.
In order for us to prepare for the future, we need to recognize and be really honest and transparent about what has happened in the past, right. And so, us not being able to respond to that is a problem. And the only people that we are affecting are those good officers that really want to do right by the department and by our city and by our citizens.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lozada. We will now proceed with Panel 2. Thank you very much, Panel 1. We appreciate you being here and we look forward to working with you all directly as this process moves forward. I again have to give kudos to Richie Lazer because he made sure back in 2020 that we were included and involved every step of the way and that we had an opportunity to have someone from the community, actually one of the witnesses of the 100 witnesses we had at the last hearing, to be a part of the panel before the interest arbitrator. So I put that out there again as the humble ask and request, that we at least do everything we were able to do last time and more. Thank you so much.
Okay. You can please approach the witness table. You can state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. Colleagues, in the interest of time thus far we have one member in the queue for Round 2. Seeing no further members in the queue for Round 2, after this we will move forward with the public comment portion of the public comment hearing. We are going to ask that the public commenters please summarize your testimony and limit your testimony to three minutes. And that is only because we have another hearing at 6 o'clock that we must turn the room around to prepare for that additional hearing. Okay. But we want to be respectful of your time. We appreciate each and every one of you for being here. I am thankful that you are here and willing to give additional comment on this very important matter that is a large portion of our City budget, but we do have an additional hearing. Please proceed. State your name for the record. Thanks. MS. McCLARY: Good afternoon, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, Councilmember Jones and other members of City Council. I'm Tonya McClary, the Executive Director for the Citizens Police Oversight Commission. You all know it as CPOC. I'm joined by our general counsel Catherine Twigg, and I want to acknowledge that our Chair of the Commission Hassan Bennett is in the audience as well as Commissioner John Solomon, and you will hear from them during public comment. I'm pleased to provide testimony on Resolution 241032, Council's public hearing on the City's contract proposal and anticipation of the collective bargaining between the City and the Fraternal Order of Police. So I want to invite you, Council, to pause with me and to take a look back and a look forward. For many years and through many historical events, Philadelphians have pushed for police reform. We all remember 2020, the urgency, the nationwide moment of reckoning. In the midst of a pandemic, thousands of people took to the streets and demanded that police be held accountable when they commit misconduct and abuse their power. People shared their stories, became activists in their communities and talked about reimagining public safety. People also voted. Half a million Philadelphians voted to create CPOC in 2020 in the ballot initiative. And the following year this body, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to come to this city, this body passed one of the country's most ambitious civilian oversight agencies. This project is as urgent now as it was then. Council created CPOC to oversee and investigate the conduct policies and practices of the Philadelphia Police Department. The Commission works to increase transparency and accountability of the PPD, work collaboratively to improve police conduct, enhance the quality of internal investigations and improve the relationship between the community and the police department. Additionally, CPOC provides recommendations on how to improve the police department to the Mayor, the Managing Director and the Police Commissioner. And since our creation in 2021, CPOC has made significant, significant progress in its ability to monitor complaints against police made by members of the community, providing an independent civilian check on the discipline process. CPOC's investigation division does this by monitoring interviews of complainants and officers during Internal Affairs Division investigations and asking questions when clarity is needed or concerns arise. Our investigators respond to the scene of every police shooting in this city, so whether it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon or 3 o'clock in the morning my team is there, monitoring from the very beginning when every bullet casing is picked up. So be clear, we are there and monitoring it from the beginning. And as you may remember, when Eddie Irizarry was fatally shot by PPD in August of 2023, CPOC was on the scene.
We provided independent oversight, made recommendations to PPD and held a town hall with simultaneous Spanish translation to give voice to the community's grief. The Auditing and Monitoring Unit has newly established live, live auditing functions that convey CPOC's recommendations on investigations to the IAD Deputy Commissioner in realtime. So we are helping to catch issues with investigations before the investigations are finalized. CPOC reviews discipline charges with the Department's PBI charging captain when there are sustained misconduct findings in complaints against police, and we've reviewed hundreds, hundreds of sustained misconduct allegations to ensure their properly charged and we've recommended further investigation when needed. Additionally, CPOC staff sit as a voting member at every single officer discipline hearing. That's over 100 scheduled hearings in 2024 so far, and this collaborative work allows CPOC to effectively collect data, make policy recommendations and attend hundreds of community events a year to increase transparency and build trust with communities across Philadelphia, and we're going to keep building on all of this collaborative work. Now, let's look forward. More work needs to be done to truly become the Commission that the Philadelphians and this Council body envisioned when they voted to create us and give us power. The city of Philadelphia deserves transparent and fair investigations that keep all residents, police officers and communities safe. To fulfill this mandate, CPOC must be able to independently, independently investigate by conducting our own interviews and gathering analysis relevant to evidence of police misconduct. And I want to clear up something that was stated in Panel 1 about confusion, about statements, et cetera and collecting of evidence. We're talking about administrative investigations. Our team is not going to be at the scene doing the fingerprints, collecting so there shouldn't be no 24 problem with chain of custody of evidence and there should be no 2 problem with dual statements because the only statements will be ours. We're not talking about parallel investigations. We're talking about CPOC being able to do its own investigation, so there won't be any confusion. So I want to clear up some of the things that I heard from Panel 1. The goal is high-quality thorough investigations done by well-trained impartial City employees who are not police officers. This will result in greater trust and community participation in the disciplinary process, support for PPD leadership and their personnel decisions and it will lead to fewer outcomes overturned by outside arbitrators. Philadelphians have made it clear. CPOC independent investigations would build trust in public safety services and further our collective goals of making this city safer. And I want to say one other thing that I want to clear up and be clear, that people here we are not doing investigations. If we don't make it to these term sheets by December 31st, we will only be able to audit and monitor like we are doing. I want to be clear we are not doing independent investigations. We are as close to the line as we've been able to get, but that is not close enough. We need to get over the line and be able to do what this Council and this community said they wanted us to do. And so, I'm respectfully asking that you take this opportunity to listen to the concerns of the community and to use your role to recommend appropriate changes to the contract to carry out Council's legislative mandate to CPOC. And I want to thank again, Councilmember Jones, Councilwoman Gilman Richardson, for their advocacy and leadership on this matter. And I want to thank all of the members of City Council for your time and your attention. I also want to thank the Mayor and the Administration and the residents of Philadelphia for your time today and for this opportunity to speak.
And I invite you all to join me at CPOC's reception right next door, right across the hallway. Come and get some cupcakes and pretzels and some snacks. Learn about the work that we do, learn about the accomplishments that we've made and learn how you can help us get on these term sheets by December 31st. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. )
So I've met with you on a number of occasions. This is the first time I've ever heard you bring that Texas heat. I'm going to yield the mic to my colleague Jamie Gauthier.
Oh, me? Oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much for being here. I'm very excited about your appointment and even listening to your powerful testimony and the fire that you brought today. It gives me a lot of confidence that you're the right person for this role. Thank you so much. I wanted to dig into -- we can clap. (Applause.)
I wanted to dig into the subject of investigations a little more. To unpack a little more about complaints against police in Philadelphia, if someone wants to file a complaint against a Philadelphia police officer, they can do so with CPOC. But CPOC then sends the complaints to PPD Internal Affairs which conducts the investigation. Can you confirm first if that's right? And can you also share some examples of complaints that people have made against police in the city so that we can understand the types of allegations that CPOC was set up to investigate? MS. McCLARY: So I do want to confirm that that currently is what happens. So if you file a complaint with CPOC, we do a lot of the intake. We follow up with the complainant when it's possible, but it does get sent up to Internal Affairs. Our department has the ability to go with the complainant if they would like when they're interviewed, to be there, to be with them during that questioning process. We are able to monitor the interviews of the officers and then we're able to kind of track the paperwork, but we are not ourselves doing the investigations. What are the concerns about that. There's several concerns. The reality of it is and depending on what world you live in, this may sound strange to you, but not everybody wants to give their complaint to the police department.
Yeah. MS. McCLARY: And so, we have had people that have called our office or come by our office and when they found out that we were going to send these over to Internal Affairs, they left.
Yeah. MS. McCLARY: They said, I don't want to do that, I thought you all were going to do the investigations. And they have hung the phone up or left the office and been discouraged. We get complaints of all kinds. We get complaints from search warrant issues, somebody's car was damaged in a chase and they've been having a hard time getting repaid from the police department, somebody's door was kicked in, they can't -- we get complaints about people not being responsive. We get complaints around lack of service. People have called for several times, nobody has come out. We've heard complaints, even very serious complaints of uses of force where people have accused officers of using force when it was not justified. And so, the cases that come through our door on any day can just be anything. And so, we are proud to say that we intake those as vigorously as we can to aid IAD at this point to do the investigations, but we need to be able to handle those cases when they come in the door ourselves.
Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about what CPOC has learned about complaints and complaint investigations from the auditing and monitoring that you have done as an agency? And can you also talk about how independent investigations would go beyond CPOC's current work? MS. McCLARY: So our -- we have a wonderful auditing and monitoring unit. And between July of this year and November, they actually audited 122 cases. And out of those 122 cases, they made recommendations in 86 of them. So 70 percent of the investigations that Internal Affairs did we had recommendations in 70 percent of those. One of the things that -- some of the things that we found were missing allegations, so Internal Affairs didn't list all the allegations against the officers that were possible. We found that the civilian witnesses in some of these cases, many of them had never been contacted or there was not documentation of how they had been contacted. We're talking about the complainant. And so, has not been contacted. We also had to ask them in some cases to adjust their findings because some of the findings -- for example, they have five categories and we were trying to figure out why they recommended something to be, for example, unfounded versus exonerated. If I was an officer, I'd love to be exonerated, right. So why not say the officer was exonerated. And then in other cases, the analysis. There were times where we weren't even necessarily arguing with the finding, we just even know how they got there, what was the analysis, how did you come to these inclusions. And so, these are some of the things that we found. And in terms of what we would be able to do currently than what we're doing now is that the team is auditing it. They're sitting on the sidelines. It's like being at the Super Bowl and you're not being able to play in the game, you've been benched. So you can watch it, you can cheer, you can do all of this, maybe you can shout some correction from the side, that's what we're doing. But we need to be in the game and playing. So what we're talking about is when you file a complaint that comes into our office, we are the one that is interviewing the civilian. We are the ones that's interviewing the officers. We are the ones that are actually putting the package together to make the recommendations that will then come to me for approval and then go work its way through the chain. So we're talking about literally handling it from nuts to bolts from the beginning versus just monitoring it or auditing it while somebody else, in this case, Internal Affairs is doing the work.
We certainly don't want this kind of talent on the bench so we have to fix that. Can I get one more question out?
Okay. As the City is preparing to submit its proposal for the contract, has CPOC had the opportunity to provide a list of priorities to the Administration for bargaining? How has that process and communication looked so far and what role has CPOC played in the interest bargaining process previously? MS. McCLARY: I'm going to turn it over to Counsel Twigg to answer that question.
Thank you. Yeah. CPOC has asked the city -- I'm sorry. Catherine Twigg, general counsel for CPOC. CPOC has asked the City to include us in negotiations and we're grateful to be having ongoing conversations with the Administration. CPOC's former executive director, I believe it was PAC at the time, provided testimony to the interest arbitration panel last time, which was very useful from what I've heard in addition to advocating for CPOC's particular interests and our investigative role to be carried out. We can provide a lot of helpful independent perspective on how the police discipline process really plays out, how the terms of the contract really work in, in day-to-day life, what works, what needs adjustment.
Have you been granted the permission to serve in the same capacity this time?
I don't think we've had that conversation yet. We'll certainly be asking to testify at the interest arbitration panel hearings.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier. And I wanted to thank you all for your testimony and for your work and again welcome you to Philadelphia and uplift the work that I know you all are seeking to accomplish. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you, Chair. And I do want to thank you for the work that you've done since you've been in this short time. Like, yeah, thank you just for your testimony so far. It's very refreshing. My question is what is the impact of the work the CPOC has on being able -- like what would be the impact if you guys were able to do the independent investigations? MS. McCLARY: There would be a lot of impacts. One of them would be to hopefully speed this process up. It's been amazing to me since I've come here to see cases coming through PBI that are three and four and five years old. I understand the FOP's concern that are we could be potentially taking work away from bargaining unit members, but the reality of it is ID is overwhelmed. This is a humongous city. And so, there's no way even with all the overtime in the world that they're going to be able to keep track of these cases and do them very timely. And so, some of the things that we can do is help speed up the process for discipline. Also, we're able to, I think, be able to hear more from the community. One thing that we also do is we take commendations, so I think the more that the community knows that we are in the process, that we are doing it, you're going to hear the good of Philadelphia policing as well as some of the potential bad. And so, I think being a bridge that people know that they can trust will also help us just hear more, whatever it is, from the community. And so, those pieces alone are just crucial, but the actual helping with the workload is going to be extremely impactful but also having people know that there is an agency outside of PPD that will be able to hear from them, be able to do this work, is going to be equally impactful.
So just to follow up, under the current investigation process how many officers have been committed of misconduct, how many officers? From under the current investigation process, how many officers have been found to have committed misconduct? I'm sorry. I was going to fast.
Currently CPOC is not performing those investigations, so we don't have -those statistics would be from IAD.
Okay. MS. McCLARY: And I want to be clear on that because I think people keep -- there's a segment that wants to keep saying we're doing investigations. We're not. So I want Council to really understand the weight of what it means if we aren't being able to bargain, because there are a lot of people that characterize what we're doing as investigations, and we are not doing investigations.
Thank you. Thank you so much Councilmember Gauthier and Councilmember Brooks. Are there any additional questions for Panel 2? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we thank you very much for being here this afternoon and for your continued work. We look forward to continuing to work with you all and with Councilmember Jones. MS. McCLARY: Thank you.
Okay. Excellent. We are now going to proceed with Panel 3. Prior to the Clerk calling the roll for Panel 3, I'd like to reiterate my deepest gratitude and appreciation for each of you being here today for the work that you all, so many of you have done on this issue not just today but for years. In addition to that, I must reiterate that we do have another hearing at 6 o'clock, and you see that we have to start breaking the room down now. And I do apologize for the brevity of this part of the conversation because obviously that's what this is for, is to hear directly from each of you. We are going to request that you summarize your testimony. Please try to keep your testimony within the three-minute range. I'm just basing it off of the number of witnesses who have signed up to testify and the amount of time we have left for this hearing. Okay. If you have any written remarks that you'd like to submit for the record, we are more than happy to receive those remarks and ensure they are included in the record for this proceeding. Lastly, I wanted to mention that we did receive written testimony from Roosevelt Poplar, President of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, and we appreciate the submission of the testimony in advance and that will be included in the record for this proceeding. Okay. Thank you very much. Clerk, will you please call the roll.
Okay. Please approach the witness table. And then if you could call the next two names. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Okay. You all will be the next two after the first witness. I would request that you state your name for the record, proceed with the summarized version of your testimony and we'll go from there. Thank you.
Am I on -- oh, good. My name is Samantha Michelle Monroe -- sure, no 4 problem. You're welcome. Do I need to move the coat too -- okay. My name is Samantha Michelle Monroe. I live in West Philadelphia. I was raped at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. When I reported it to the CPOC after the police didn't investigate it, I received emails about calling me a psycho, a bitch, don't believe her. And I've been told that --
-- I'm harassing them when I'm looking for it -- so let me finish. $60 million --
Ma'am, ma'am -- ma'am. I respectfully request that you do not use that language in this proceeding.
The b-word? Oh, I apologize. Excuse me. I'm a little passionate. $60 million in months has been paid out to 14 female and Black and Brown police 15 officers in lawsuits. IA is 16 staffed by FOP members. 17 Let me see here. In 18 1977 the first public law was started to stop the discrimination of Black and Brown and female police officers. They signed a 30x30 pledge back in 1986 to stop this behavior and it hasn't stopped. But let's get on. Why would the FOP want to negoti -- first of all, why are we paying $7 million to the CPOC when legislation says that they should be investigating and they admit that they have not. They have lied to us for two years. Two years they lied to us telling me that, oh, we're investigating it. They told you that I'm suing them. I'm not suing them. There's no lawsuit. They have lied to you. Why is it that Anthony Erace who went behind the people's back when working for CPOC to negotiate with FOP is now hired by the Department of Labor to do the exact same thing, which is to obstruct justice for the citizens of this city. Why are we paying them? Why is the CPOC allowed to go out and run meetings that have nothing to do with police abuse? Why are they not investigating? They say they can't or are they just afraid to go against FOP? Take it to court. Let a judge hear, but you'd rather attack me or better yet they spend six months investigating a commissioner for standing up for me, the rape victim who did not get their rape investigated. But yet they say I'm crazy, psycho and I need help and maybe I should be raped again. Maybe then I'll learn my lesson all in emails that they have refused to give out to the public. You want to talk about transparency, openness? The CPOC staff has lied to us. I have document after document, paperwork after paperwork. Do you know that one of the CPOC staff members is a member of an FBI-investigated hate group?
An FBI-investigated hate group, but I'm the bad one. Do you know that another staff member worked for the Walnut Street Theater --
-- who is being investigated for grooming children? So they want to negotiate with the FOP? What credibility, what integrity do they have? Commissioner Thomas is sitting right here, ask her. She was my rape counselor and they fired her for counseling me for rape. They have been --
-- tapping my phone since April. They have listened to my phone conversations.
Ma'am, I apologize for what happened to you, but I respectfully request please summarize your testimony. I do apologize for what you have gone through.
If the FOP were to go negotiate with anyone, it should be anyone but the CPOC. I believe that the CPOC should be suspended, shut down and they should be audited. There is enough criminal activity in the CPOC. The fact that Jahlee Hatchet worked as a commissioner and was also working for the law firm of Dennehey and Marshall who protects the police. This is a joke.
Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
My name is Michael Clemens and I'm Co-chair of POWER Live Free and a resident of the 1st Councilmanic District. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the Council on this important subject that affects everyone in our city. POWER is a Philadelphia- based interfaith organization that represents about 50 congregations. POWER Works to improve society by collaborating with elected and appointed government officials to develop humane policies that positively impact the lives of all Philadelphians. Live Free is the part of POWER that has been involved in police accountability and oversight for several years. We've been working in coalition with others on developing effective non-police behavioral health crisis response by professionally-trained civilians. We believe that the main role of police is protecting residents and fighting crime, not being the primary purveyors of street-level social work to address a wide range of non-threatening citizens behavioral health issues. Another area that Live Free has been examining is the lack of consistency in the grievance arbitration process used to decide how discipline will be applied in cases of police misconduct. And Live Free has been involved in the Citizen Police Oversight Commission since its conceptualization. We met with leaders of Oversight commissions from across the United States to gain an understanding of what police oversight is and how we could make it work here. Then we worked with Councilmember Curtis Jones and his staff to help develop the CPOC legislation. This legislation was overwhelmingly passed by the City Council. We continue to monitor the CPOC's progress to ensure that it meets its mission in accordance with the original legislation and its intent. The legislation authorized CPOC to establish its own investigative branch to perform independent investigations. The findings derived from these independent investigations support specific disciplinary recommendations on misconduct cases. The CPOC is required to send these disciplinary recommendations directly to the Police Commissioner to inform him before he applies his disciplinary authority. For these investigations to be fact-based and effective, close coordination with the police department is required. This must be explicitly written into the collective bargaining agreement. The police contract must also compel all officers to give full and accurate testimony to and cooperate with the CPOC. Some of my colleagues at Live Free will now give their statements on other aspects of the police department contract that need to be addressed in the upcoming collective bargaining agreement negotiations. Thank you, Councilmember Gilmore Richardson, for holding this important hearing. Thank you.
Please approach the witness table. You can state your names for the record and then proceed with your testimony. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, Councilmembers, my name is Steven Strauss. I'm a member of POWER Live Free and the Treatment Not Trauma Coalition. I'm a retired public policy analyst and advocate, worked in a lot of different settings, context, cities. Today I'm focusing on the issue of civil civilianization. I appreciated the robust conversation that eventually happened earlier. The reason -- and I've actually talked about civilianization in testimony once before, so it's something that's while kind of a pedestrian subject is really quite important to the city. And I want to mention two particular aspects, one being traffic safety and the other being behavioral health crisis response on the traffic safety piece. Well, the issue is vital to the health and welfare of all Philadelphians. Right now I think that given the sort of post-pandemic environment in the city, especially on the roads with collisions and fatalities being really off the charts, we need to think very seriously as a city about the strengthening of traffic safety enforcement. There's no doubt about it. And unarmed public safety officers are already existing, and it strikes me that it's probably a good idea. There are, I'm sure, competing possibilities for their deployment, but I'm going to say that given the chaos on the road, and we all feel it, whether we're pedestrians bicyclists or drivers, that a civilianized force makes a lot of sense and here we have it. So we can get traffic stops going again without the issues of flagrant racial bias that Councilmember Thomas and others have worked so hard on. The other aspect that I want to talk about, behavioral health crisis response is something that is --
Yes. Okay. I want to say that the City is on the way to doing some good things in terms of this area because we do have a civilianized service, CMCRT. However, it's got a lot of problems. There are a lot of structural issues. There are a number of things to be worked out and the hope is that the city can be in the leadership tier of this country in getting a really top civilianized behavioral health crisis response service going. There are more than 100 now, and we have an opportunity to do that. We have to think very carefully about how to minimize police activity in this area and we can do it.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. If you have written testimony that you'd like to submit for the record, we'd love to receive that. Thank you.
Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hey, Katherine. Good morning, Majority Leader and members of City Council. My name is Sherrie Cohen. I'm a community activist, an attorney and a member of POWER Interfaith Live Free team. I want to thank team member Jonathan Broder for his work on the issue I will be addressing, which is how can the City's collective bargaining agreement with the FOP promote accountability to the people of Philadelphia, especially with respect to the huge number of fired officers who are found by the police department to have committed grievous misconduct against the people of our city, especially Black and Brown people, yet rehired to the force through arbitration. In 2017, a Washington Post investigation found that of all the police departments nationwide it reviewed, Philly had the second highest percent of fired officers reinstated. In 2019, The Inquirer found that the FOP successfully got discipline overturned or reduced about 70 percent of the time in cases between 2011 and 2019. From a recent review of over 80 arbitration decisions in the last six to seven years, we learned that one likely cause for this tragically high rate of reversals of discipline is the CBA's failure to require arbitrators to follow any specific standard of proof in their decisions. Standard of proof in a legal case describes the amount of evidence necessary to prove a claim in trial. In a criminal case, the government has the highest standard of proof as it must prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. But in a civil case, which these cases are, the standard of proof is that the evidence must show that it is more likely than not that the claim is true. In the majority of cases we reviewed, the arbitrator failed to articulate any specific standard of proof that they used to render their decision. And in too many cases, arbitrators used the beyond a reasonable doubt standard to determine whether the City had proved its case against an officer, which again is an evidentiary standard that should only be used in criminal cases or the arbitrators used other improper standards. The Police Board of Inquiry itself uses the preponderance of the evidence standard in its review of its members' cases. This is the standard we now recommend that the CBA impose in arbitration cases. So the CBA should state using the preponderance of evidence standard the City should prevail when the arbitrator finds there is a greater than 50 percent chance that the alleged misconduct occurred. Not one more fired officer who committed grievous misconduct should be reinstated to the force because an arbitrator had not been mandated to follow the proper evidentiary standard. Thank you.
Well, thank you. Thank you very much for coming in and thank you for your testimony today.
Thank you so much for being here. Please proceed to the witness table. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
State your name for the record and then proceed with your testimony.
My name is Kate Perez. Our PPD struggles with the lack of translators, racism internally within the department and externally harassing the underprivileged and an extreme lack of accountability. In addition, they are also guilty of trading officers with the apartheid state of Israel in exchange programs and anti-terrorism trainings. As a citizen, I argue against spending any City money on any organization that colludes with and legitimizes any apartheid occupation. By trading tactics with foreign police forces that are infamous for their civilian violence and crimes against humanity, our PPD officers increase their violence against citizens back home. I ask that this FOP contract explicitly state that there can be no exchanges between our police force and any apartheid states. There also seems to be a lack of accountability during crowd control as PPD regularly approaches peaceful protesters in full riot gear and fail to give dispersal warnings before tackling protesters to the ground, regularly arresting citizens, holding them for hours and releasing them without charge. A PPD officer joined with the Penn University PD to raid a Penn student's home, waving guns at them and at neighbors separating and interrogating students, refusing to show a warrant and forever traumatizing students over a graffiti investigation. Do the police not know the proper way to execute a warrant or do they feel empowered to act outside of the law as they know that their punishments, if at all, are never the same as a civilian? The families of Eddie Irizzary, Alexander Spencer and Robert Jones are still awaiting justice. The 100 Shooting Review Committee released the report in 2022 that said investing back into historically redlined communities can help prevent violence. These include evidence-based strategies such as better street cleaning, trash pickup, repairing occupied homes and more. If our focus is public safety, then our tax dollars may be better serving the public by fully funding SEPTA instead of investing in more officers to arrive after a crime occurs. Whatever we spend on the police would be better spent on preventative community care. Again, I ask that this police contract and any City contract explicitly state that there can be no exchanges between our police force and any apartheid states. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Pardon me one second, sir. For the record, the Chair recognizes the presence of Councilmember Squilla. Okay. Please proceed with your testimony. Thank you.
My name is Phillip Lockett and I appreciate you giving us the time to give testimony on this striking and important issue. I believe in CPOC. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. I'm fighting the sixth generation of the same family on the same block. And if it wasn't for CPOC, I wouldn't be here today. And with the little bit of teeth that they gave them, they worked wonders. They made the police department do their job. And my second issue is if you never been in a gang, qualified immunity is one of the biggest things you need to run a gang, because when you get a rookie cop partnered with a a senior cop and the senior cop shows the rookie cop how to do things under cover and he better not say nothing, that's qualified immunity. That's how it runs rampant in the police department. And it's the same entity that's stopping CPOC. They got a big conglomerate up to fight them, to fight us. And all we want to do is be fair and equitable with everybody. We don't want to have to go and start acting like Ramar of the jungle and go crazy. If we can't speak in plain English, the truth of what's going on and you guys can't grab it, then we going to have to do like what Tupac said. The first time we come up we going to say we tired and we ain't going to take it no more. And then the next time we come up, we going to tear up a little bit, you know what I mean. Because as human beings, we should be far past this by now. It's costing us trillions to be unfair to one another. Make it plain and simple, if they break the law, make them pay for it. That's it. And then that way you can take all the other agencies and put them to rest because now everything is fair and equitable. And with that, I want to give you a good kudos for giving us time so we can vent our stuff. I'm 75 years old. I'm supposed to be at Disney World, but I got to stay here and help out in Philadelphia, try to get their stuff together. And we are a good city. Just get rid of the unfairness no matter who it is. If you messed up, you messed up. You ain't going to die. We've been dying in the street. So, Councilman, I really appreciate it, and get the money for CPOC part. I'm down for it. Matter of fact, you got to give them a little bit more money because they've been asking for it for almost five years. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Will the Clerk please call the next witnesses.
Okay. Asa Khalif and Sharon Mackery. Asa Khalif, Sharon Mackery. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Inaudible).
What's your last name? Please proceed to the witness table. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
If you could state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Yes. Good evening, Council. Asa Khalif. I'm an activist and organizer here in Philadelphia. Okay. I'm going to get right to the point. The voters of the city voted in 2020 to establish CPOC and allow it to investigate charges of police misconduct. It's my understanding under the current police contract that the Philadelphia -- that the police union must sign off on any changes necessary to effectively -- CPOC, excuse me, making it difficult for CPOC to conduct investigations. I'm extremely disturbed that CPOC hasn't been able to investigate not a single misconduct probe. I'm also disturbed that the Philadelphia Police Union President is opposed to CPOC conducting investigations of cops accused of misconduct. He prefers the power to remain with the Police Department Internal Affairs. That's not what the voters of Philadelphia wanted. We want independent investigations with full transparency. We want CPOC to have full access. There must be changes in the new contract that will not make it difficult for CPOC. Police no longer can be trusted to investigate themselves in secret. There has to be an unbiased independent investigation. Respect what the voters of Philadelphia wanted without the BS. And finally, yesterday was Trans Day of Remembrance, and a dear friend of mine named Nizah Morris was murdered in 2002 and last seen alive in police custody. Her family, friends and activists want CPOC to investigate without any roadblocks from the FOP. We say her name and all the other names of victims victimized by police violence in Philadelphia. Justice for Brandon Tate-Brown, my cousin murdered by the police, and justice for David Jones. (Applause.)
Thank you for your testimony and thank you for being here. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Again, good afternoon. My name is Charito Morales and I am the co-founder and organizer for Philly Boricuas. Philly Boricuas is a grassroots organization community organization dedicated to uplifting and empowering the Puerto Ricans and the Latino individuals particularly in North Philadelphia. Throughout the culture events, advocacy and support services, we work to challenge inequality and building collective power to create more equity, future and foster social justice with the community. I stand before you today to address the harsh reality, the Philadelphia Police Department cannot be trusted to hold itself accountable. Time and time again they have shown a pardon of (inaudible) covering up their actions and avoiding responsibility. The tragic case of Eddie Irizarry is an example of how the police lied to the public and try to justify violence towards our communities. Eddie Irizarry was a 27-year-old man, was shot and killed by officers in August 2023. The police initially claimed that Eddie had lunged at them with a knife forcing them to fire. But when the body camera footage was released, the truth came to light. Eddie was sitting in his car, the knife in his lap, not posing any immediate threat to the police officers. Yet the department attempted to cover up facts, clinging to a false narrative in an attempt to justify the killing. This is not an isolated incident to the Puerto Rican and Latino community in Philadelphia. It is a reflection of a large part with the department. When they make mistakes, they lie to the public. They protect the own and fail to be accountable. The truth is that we cannot trust the Philadelphia Police Department to investigate itself. That's why we must provide the legal mechanism for the Philadelphia Citizen Police Oversight Commission to conduct independent investigations into the police misconduct. The Commission must have real authority, not just the power to recommend changes, but the ability to oversee and enforce investigation free from police influence. Only we can begin to address the systemic issues that have (inaudible) the department for too long. But the problem of accountability doesn't stop at the high-profile cases like Eddie Irizarry. The police regularly threaten vulnerable members of our community, namely homeless people with violence and cruelty. Time again we've seen instances where officers respond to homeless with force, physically removing people from public spaces, using excessive force to clear encampments and often threatening them as less humans. The acts are not isolated. There are patterns to how the police choose to handle the most in need of care rather than showing empathy or offering support for the people. The violent treatment of the homeless is a direct reflection of the department that lacks accountability or prioritizing control over compassion, instead of threatening people with dignity and providing resources to help the force, further criminalizing poverty and marginalization. If we are serious about justice and fairness in Philadelphia, we must ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions, both in how they threat individuals like Eddie Irizarry and how they threaten our most vulnerable citizens. We need independent oversight. We need transparency. We need a police department that answers not only to their own interested but to the community themselves. It is time to demand changes. We cannot wait any longer for the department to hold itself accountable. We must take action now to protect our people, to ensure justice and bring real reforms to our city. Once again, my name is Charito Morales and I represent the Latino community of the city of Philadelphia. Thank you for having me. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Will the Clerk please call the next witnesses.
Kaitlin Orner and James Whitehead. Anjelica Hendricks, James Whitehead. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Okay. Please proceed to the witness table. State your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hello. My name is Kaitlin Orner and I'm a small business owner in Germantown and a member of the Treatment Not Trauma Coalition. I am testifying today on the need for independent and transparent investigations into alleged police misconduct. I own a flower shop located just off the intersection of Germantown and Coulter where in the summer of 2022 there were two pedestrian-related fatalities in 11 days. The second of which involved 12 a woman in crisis who was seen on 13 surveillance footage acting erratically when two Philadelphia police officers arrived on scene and interacted with her. The officers were seen getting back into their vehicle as she laid down in the intersection, then driving away. She was struck and killed in the same position a minute and 30 seconds later. I filed a complaint against police five days after the incident after PPD released a statement that the woman had been crossing the street when she was struck, implying the incident was a traffic-calming issue, linking it to the prior accident. Using our footage, they omitted the fact that PPD had been on the scene prior to her death. Not knowing who the family was or if they were aware, I continued with the formal complaint process. I kept following up with PPD where they stated that they were unaware of the situation or could not make any comments on active investigations. The (inaudible) process proceeded normally for six months when I was then told by a supervisor that they would not be providing any additional information without a subpoena and later that the investigation had been classified internal. At that time I reached out to CPOC who conducted an inquiry into the incident and began monitoring. Over a year later it was revealed that the internal investigation went to PBI in early 2024 and that discipline had occurred. Despite the legislation passed for CPOC, they were not given the opportunity to be present at PBI and details about any sustained charges have been shielded from the public. Without transparency into the result of the sustained findings, it is unknown if the act of leaving the woman in crisis was addressed or if the officers were disciplined for a lesser infraction such as failure to turn on their body-worn camera. The complexities about when and why the case was classified internal are unclear, giving reasons such as I had filed the complaint too late or because I was a third party complainant. However, when the victim has died and you've lied to the family, who else would be able to come forward. After 816 days, the department finally stated that they will provide no further comment on the matter. They owed the community nothing. Switching the narrative from we can't comment on active investigations to we can't comment on internal investigations. When what the majority of the citizens of Philadelphia have voted in favor of are independent investigations. There's been no insight into what happened that night to either the public or the family of Elizabeth Negron. No one has been held responsible or accountable for her death. Thanks. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.
Good evening. My name is Anjelica Hendricks and I'm an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where I conduct research and teach on areas related to police regulations. Centered amongst that work is the investigation of alleged police misconduct and the barriers that exist to conducting those investigations effectively. And one thing that this body and our city need to examine is how do we measure investigations into police misconduct for their effectiveness. One of the ways you do this is by looking at the data, the rate of sustained cases, not simply in the general terms but across different categories of alleged violations while also looking into the demographics of the individuals issuing the complaints. And the complaint data in Philadelphia has revealed significant findings. I did bring the data with me. There are racial disparities in the sustained rate of cases. Charges made by White civilians are sustained at a rate of 27 percent whereas complaints by Black individuals are sustained at a rate of percent, and Hispanic 18 complainants are even lower 13 19 percent. This effect is statistically significant across all control barriers. I employ the City to investigate these disparities, not simply as it relates to the disparity of sustained cases but others as well. From a snapshot of completed investigations in 2017, it was apparent that investigators were assigned more quickly to complaints made by White residents than other demographics. It took an average of 3.36 days more for an investigator to be assigned for a complaint made by a Hispanic resident than by a White complainant. That is also statistically significant. Is the Administration comfortable with these disparities? They have access to this data. It is on the open data transparency portal. This is one category in when investigations can be evaluated, the existence of disparities and if those disparities can be reasonably explained. Another category that we use is the evaluation of the process. An evaluation that shows if the system is working or if it's not working. For example, the training and counseling program whereby officers are first given a second chance when they violate certain protocols, they are not even disciplined. Has the City ever evaluated that program? Previously, the program was utilized to divert nearly 80 percent of sustained allegations. Now, that number has dropped to 34.9 percent after an audit done by CPOC. To the best of my knowledge, the department has not evaluated if the training counseling program has improved officer behavior and compliance with policies. So far it appears as if the City does not care about these disparities and has done little to address the existing programs if they are a priority in the department. In PPD's 2025 fiscal year budget, the Professional Standards Department stated that their priorities relates to simply reducing the number of complaints against police, but that doesn't tell us if misconduct is actually reducing in the city. There are several reasons why someone may not file a complaint against police such as mediation or complaints are more likely to be converted into an internal investigation, as the speaker in front of me just stated. Overall, the City deserves investigations into police misconduct where the metrics align with our values, investigations which are free from unexplained disparities across race, gender and district, investigations in which all witness statements are evaluated similarly and not a system whereby the word of an officer is weighed more than the word of residents, and investigations that are strong enough to --
Ma'am, I apologize. Please conclude your testimony because we just received an additional round of witnesses and I'm afraid we will not have enough time.
Thank you. The residents of the city overwhelmingly voted for independent investigations and entrusted CPOC to do that job, and I ask for the City to fight for that. (Applause.)
Thank you for being here and for your work. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
My name is James Whitehead and I just want to say a few words regarding CPOC and why it's important. My name is James Whitehead for those who don't know me. I come here to represent the good and progress that CPOC has done along with the 500,000 Philadelphians who voted for CPOC to form in 2020. And in 2021, CPOC was formed with a promise to the people to bring about transparency and holding officers accountable for injustice and also police misconduct. CPOC was not formed to undermine IAD nor to discredit all police officers, instead place the ones that are operating out of the law and to hold offices accountable just as promised. The Philadelphia Home Rule Charter and the Philadelphia (inaudible) granted CPOC the right to conduct independent investigations. However, we have the FOP who is hindering the process and the promise that was made. I truly hope that within the new contract made between the City and FOP grant CPOC the rights to complete its mission. After all, the people are what matters the most. So if CPOC, FOP can agree to come together along with City officials to operate out of good faith, I don't see why there can be any problem with a plan to move forward. Thank you everyone for listening and God bless. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you very much for being here and thank you for your testimony. Good to see you.
Please approach the witness table. You can state your names for the record and proceed with your testimony. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Thank you very much. Reverend Mark Tyler, former Pastor of Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church and current Co-director for POWER Live Free where we have worked on this issue for a number of years. And I'm glad that I was just coming behind Anjelica Hendricks because she and I had the opportunity to serve together on the inaugural selection panel that selected the members to be nominated to City Council for their confirmation to become the first CPOC. I want to thank you as well, Councilmember Gilmore Richardson, for all of your work in this area and, Councilmember Jones, for being the champion on this law, on this particular legislation and all of the other members of Council. And let's be honest that what we're fighting is not really in this particular room, that for the most part we are in agreement. But we really have to stand behind our new Director of the CPOC, Tonya McClary, who you heard for yourself just a few moments ago who laid out for us really what's at stake. I'm shocked and appalled to come in and find out that they are not doing actual investigations. That was the crux of this particular legislation. The only reason we put it out there was to make sure we had something that was independent, and now to find out that they're basically just another version of what the PAC was, which is just watching and auditing and reporting what happens from the outside, we have to figure out what's more important, the desires of 500,000 Philadelphians or the wishes of a union as powerful as it may be. And I think that we'd agree that the desires of this voting community far outweigh it. And I want to just simply say this as I wrap up, that we can never forget the great cost that has been paid for CPOC to happen. CPOC would never have happened without the events of 2020. We called for this in 2019 in December right across the street at Arch Street, Live Free, along with many people in the community, others who signed onto it like Asa Khalif that you just heard of, and we thought it would be a 10-year fight to make it happen. Sadly, COVID happened within the next three months and then after that George Floyd lost his life. We found out about Ahmaud Arbery who had already been killed, and Breonna Taylor, add to that what already happened in the city with Brandon Tate-Brown and David Jones, and then finally Walter Wallace. And this city went up in flames not once, but twice in 2020. And many of us were on the streets. I was tear-gassed, and I had to watch a 5-year-old's birthday party on Chestnut Street as tear gas chased them in their home and then back out of their home, and these folk had nothing to do with anything that happened. And so, we can never forget that in spite of what some people have said today, that we are here because Black people have lost their lives and continue to lose their lives and while I'm sitting here today isn't it interesting that we receive an alert that in Trenton, not far from here, the DOJ has said that they have been involved in unconstitutional behavior, their police department with the community. This is not a Philadelphia problem. This is a systemic problem in this country wherever Black people find themselves and we cannot retreat in this moment. Let me just leave this last thing with you all, City Council. As a preacher, I want to give this word of encouragement. This has been a slow, steady, bumpy road to get here, but the Bible reminds us let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. And so, I just want to encourage you don't give up this important fight. There are people in the city who are counting on you. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you and thank you for your advocacy. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Sergio Cea. Good afternoon. I guess good evening, Council. I want to thank Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson whose legislation allowed for the first time in history for members of the community like myself to provide public comment on the FOP contract. I also want to thank Councilmember Curtis Jones whose legislation allowed for the creation of the Citizens Police Oversight Committee. As I mentioned, my name is Sergio Cea. I use el/he/him pronouns. I'm the Political Director of Reclaim Philadelphia. I'm also one of the many defendants that was represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for enduring militaristic police violence on 52nd Street near my home in West Philadelphia during the 2020 uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd and Walter Wallace by the police. When I suffered this abuse from the police, I was simply riding my bicycle after canvassing earlier that day for the candidacy of now State Representative Rick Krajewski. I still have vivid memories of trying to escape the shots of rubber bullets and tear gas canisters from police as I went down Delany Street between 52nd and 51st, seeing families on their front porches trying to quickly escape the gas into their homes and later as I passed Malcolm X Park, seeing a parent pouring water into their youngest child's eyes to alleviate the symptoms of tear gas. I was also part of a coalition calling for justice in the police murder of Eddie Irizarry. The police intentionally put forward a false narrative to the media portraying Eddie as a violent aggressor who lunged at police officers and not as video footage later showed someone simply sitting in his car. From my lived experiences and from what we all collectively have witnessed time and time again in our city and nationally, we know that the police cannot be trusted to investigate themselves. That's why CPOC is so important and why 78 percent of Philadelphians voted to create this commission. Philadelphians know that independent investigations from community members and non-police are critical. CPOC was meant to replace the Police Advisory Commission who lack the funding and authority to make change. Unfortunately, CPOC today is in that same position. That's why I'm testifying in support of changes in the collective bargaining agreement that will require officers to cooperate fully with CPOC's independent investigations. Following the election of Donald Trump, the FOP who have endorsed him will be emboldened and continue to be bad actors in our city without strong oversight and accountability. The City and its collective bargaining negotiations with FOP needs to prioritize CPOC and clearly outline its roles making sure that police cooperate fully with CPOC's investigations and that those investigations can operate independently from the IAD. Without these changes, CPOC cannot fulfill its mission and Philadelphians will never be able to trust the police. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you for coming in today and thank you for helping us with the community panel last time. Thank you. Will the Clerk please call the next witness.
Okay. If you could please approach the witness table. (Witness approached Witness table.)
While he's approaching, is there anyone whose name has not been called who is here to testify on the public comment bill? (No response.)
Okay. All right. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. You'll be our last witness for today.
Pardon me, ma'am. Pardon me. Hold on one moment. Pardon me. To clarify, this is regarding Resolution No. 241032, which is regarding the public comment period prior to the City entering into negotiations with the FOP. We will have a public comment hearing related to the arena that will begin at 6:00 p.m okay. Thank you all very, very much. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hassan Bennett, Interim Chair of the Citizens Police Oversight Commission. Well, I wrote something to come and say here, but I don't want to repeat everything everyone said. We've seen people from all backgrounds today. We've heard from people from all genders and support of the Citizens Police Oversight Commission. We've heard stories of relatives that have died, misconduct, belief in the CPOC and the Citizens Police Oversight Commission as well as belief in good actors within the police department, so I don't want to keep reiterating what happened. The last time I was here, Councilman Jones gave us advice. He said, maybe you guys should go away to a conference or something. And this year I was able to attend NACOLE, the National Association of Civilian Oversight and Law Enforcement, right. And in NACOLE I found something out, that not only does it oversight include neighborhood and our stakeholders like yourself, right, but oversight isn't overnight. You guys, it's a difference between legislation and reality, right, and that's what we're finding out today. All of us have a legislation. And it's funny that NACOLE brought it up because this is what we were facing in CPOC. We have this beautiful body. You guys wrote this beautiful legislation. They gave us teeth, but in reality there's hurdles to bring this legislation to life. Currently the hurdle is the bargain. We have to bargain for things, so I don't want to waste your time. I only have a certain amount of minutes. What I did hear from them is they said they had civilians at the bargaining table. So I'm going to urge this body to ensure that CPOC gets a voice at the table when it comes to the bargain to ensure that at least we are being heard with emphasis to our words. It's not just being whispered and we're pushing on to the next thing on the collective bargaining agreement. Let us ensure that we have a chance. Let us get that transparency by giving us a seat at the table. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony and for your work. We appreciate each of you for being here. Again, thank you, colleagues, for all of your hard work today and for hanging in there with us. I certainly appreciate each and every one of you. To all of you who have joined us for this particular hearing on 241032, we thank you for your attendance. There being no further questions from members of the committee and there being no 6 further witnesses to testify, this will conclude the business before the Committee of the Whole today. We thank you all very much for your attendance. (Committee of the Whole concluded at 5:31 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL