RCPRC December 22, 2020 Minutes

RCPRC Meeting Minutes

12-22-2020

Attendance.

• Terry Johnson – Volunteer Committee Member
• Ted Dixon – Volunteer Committee Member, Chair
• Josh Baron – Volunteer Committee Member, Secretary
• Rich Wright – Volunteer Committee Member
• Marc Cassidy – Volunteer Committee Member,
• Chief Scott Schaffrick – Chief of Police, Rosendale Police Department
• Councilman Matt Igoe – Rosendale Town Council Member (non-voting member, Police Commission liaison)
• Councilwoman Carrie Wykoff – Rosendale Town Council Member (non-voting member, Town Council liaison)
• Jessieca McNabb (Volunteer Committee Member)
• ADA Blackmon – did not attend (DA is engaged in a homicide investigation and cannot join)

1. Chair resignation

• Ted noted that he spoke with the supervisor yesterday and was informed that Jennifer Bliss resigned due to personal issues. Supervisor asked Ted, Vice Chair, to take over the Chair role.
• The Committee thanked Jennifer for her service.

2. Discuss overall findings (from the 3 public meetings) and community recommendations to be included in the plan

Rich has been starting to review the recordings and take notes.  He will complete this work over the holiday break period and update our note taking document.

We discussed our continued interest in engaging in more one-on-one conversations with the public and ways to do that via the phone to ensure confidentiality.  Rich also commented on the importance of these types of conversations.  The Committee noted that we would like to include recommendations in our report that will focus on increasing interactions between the community and police.

3. Status of subcommittee reports

We checked in on the status of each subcommittee’s written reports that will be used to get our next draft proposal completed.  Matt will take over the use of force and internal accountability, with Marc and the Chief to assist, that Jennifer had been working on.

Josh will take on following up on the data requests that have been made and our continued interest in speaking to those who oversee the data and related policies to understand why it cannot be released.

4. Discuss draft plan and presentation recommendations

We discussed the next round of work on the draft report/proposal.  The plan is to have each subcommittee report follow a similar format to the public presentations with three primary sections: Focus, Findings and Insights, and Recommendations.  We’ve set a deadline of Tuesday, January 5th for the reports to be completed.  Ted will then take the current draft plan “offline” to create a new version and then post via Google Doc for review and comments.

5. Review and confirm work plan timetable and responsibilities

We reviewed and briefly reviewed the current work plan timeline:

• Dec 15 to Feb 1 – complete draft plan and release to public for comments and recommendations
• Feb 1 to Feb 15 – draft plan is reviewed by the public, Town Board, Police Commission, and Town Attorney(s)
• Feb 16 to Mar 7 – RCPRC incorporate feedback and produces “our” final plan
• Mar 10 – RCPRC submits “our” final plan to the Town Board

5. other points?

We will meet every Thursday from 5:30 – 7 pm moving forward.  We discussed wanting to have one of the Town Attorney’s to join us at a future meeting to discuss a range of legal issues related to our work.  We also discussed an email we received that may have been intended for another member of the community and to have Josh email them to clarify.