Hey, we're a little thin on the ground for community members, but we do have all of our commissioners, and so I'm gonna call our meeting of public safety to order.

Um, two minutes and twenty seconds late.

Um, so um Mr.

Davis is here from OPA, and uh I've seen this presentation before, but uh thank you for being here, and he's gonna talk about our know your rights presentation uh first.

I thought that's how we had the agenda going.

So you may want to slip around your slides.

Flip it around.

Um but uh just just to uh for the for the public.

Uh this is a program that I think we're all very proud of, which uh Mr.

Davis has been very clear.

Um, where two or three are gathered together, he is willing to come out and do a know your rights presentation.

So take it away, Mr.

Davis.

Love the reference.

Good afternoon, Mayor.

Uh Manager Commissioners Public Safety Committee.

Uh, this is an abridged version of our know your rights program.

Uh just by way of a reminder, OPA offers uh several different types of know your rights programs in community.

This is the primary one we're asked to present, which is what to do when you're stopped by the police.

Uh, before jumping into it, I do want to uh make sure I give a shout out to Albert Gasaki who is here with us as well.

Albert leads our know your rights program, he's uh an analyst in OPA's office.

He's the one who's working with community to schedule, also get our volunteers who do a lot of the presentations as well.

So thank you, Albert, for all of your work.

Okay, let's jump in.

So when we uh walk through our know your rights program, this is usually a presentation that takes uh about an hour, maybe more with question and answers.

Obviously, we are not gonna do that today.

Uh so no, this this is the highlight real version of our know your rights program.

We talk about uh OPA, we have several exercises, and I'll talk about the exercises without doing them today.

Um we also go through some key terms used in the presentation.

We talk about uh different types of police departments, how to file complaints and things of that nature.

But the bulk of what we talk about is how uh is what to do if you're stopped by police.

So we give a background in the Office of Oversight and Public Accountability.

Since you all already know that, I am gonna advance through that slide, and then we uh start with an opening question, and we ask uh the members in the room, you know, what is their overall experience with police and law enforcement?

And what we find through that conversation is people have varied experiences.

There are people who share very positive interactions that they've had with police, and there's others who share things that are concerning uh based on their interactions, but that helps us level set that helps us get to a place where we recognize uh something that I say often in these presentations, and that is uh police are people, and because police are people, there will be times they get it very right, and there will also be times when they don't get it 100% correct, and that's why we have laws and systems in place to navigate those spaces.

Uh one of the messages that we always want to make sure that everyone understands is that every human has rights, uh, and that is without regard for uh their their citizenship status or anything like that.

In the United States, one of the best things about our country, at least the way the laws are actually written, is that everyone has a rights, whether you are uh a citizen of this country or not.

So, because of that, it's important that everyone understands those rights, knows what those rights are so that they can put them into place.

So it's a couple of things that we talk about, and these are some key terms.

Terms that are always uh they're legal terms.

I usually I walk through the presentation by explaining I'm an attorney.

I practice uh criminal law for the first half of my career.

Um, and with that being said, I had three years of law school to learn these things, and I still have to go back and review the uh these cases.

I've I've tried uh homicides, armed robberies, everything you can think of when it comes to criminal cases.

And still, I need to brush up on some of these things from time to time.

And there's still situations where someone will give me a scenario and I'm like, I need to look that up.

So, what does that mean?

By coming to a know your rights presentation, you're not gonna leave an attorney, right?

You're not gonna leave an expert on the law, uh, but we hope you leave with a greater understanding of what your rights are.

So uh we want every community member, and I'm gonna treat you like you're that group today.

We want you to leave understanding that you don't leave as an expert, but you do leave with more knowledge than you came in with.

Uh, and we will still encourage you to learn more as you go forward.

So, a couple of standards that we should always be aware of when we are talking about our rights and responsibilities.

One of them that you will hear often, it's probable cause.

When I talk about probable cause, I usually describe probable cause as a strong maybe, right?

So probable cause uh the legal standard is that there's sufficient evidence to reasonably believe that a crime has been or is being or will be committed, or that evidence of a crime is present in a specific location.

So the requirement is that officers need a degree of certainty and like fair probability.

That's that strong maybe that evidence or criminal conduct will be found.

Let me give you an example of that.

So if an officer is like making an arrest for a DUI, an example would be an officer sees a driver run a red light and then they pull them over and they smell alcohol in their breath, right?