Good evening.

We like to call this again.

All right.

Good evening.

We'd like to call this Court of Common Council public comment meeting to order for today, January twelfth, twenty twenty six.

Happy New Year to everyone.

Also streaming live on Facebook and HPA TV YouTube channel.

Thank you for joining us today.

Public comment shall be conducted in accordance with the following procedures.

Each person wishing to address the council thereof shall, upon recognition by the presiding officer, give his his or her name, and if he or she represents a group, shall in addition state for the record the name and address of said group or organization and shall limit his or her remarks to three minutes.

All remarks shall be addressed to the council as a body and not as an individual member thereof.

If anyone addresses the council in in the individual capacity, they will be redirected to address the council as a whole by way of warning by the presiding officer.

Any person making personal impertinent or slanderous remarks or who becomes boisterous while addressing the council shall be forthwith barred by the presiding officer from further audience at said meeting, unless permission to remain is granted by two-thirds vote of the council members present and voting.

During the public comment, there should be no debate by the council, although questions may be asked by the council to persons making such a presentation.

Our first uh speaker is Peter Little, and our timekeeper for this evening will be Councilman Gale.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Uh I'm here today to continue uh speaking about what I've been raising with the council uh with City Hall leaders and with the Civilian Police Review Board over the last several sessions, several meetings, namely the failure of the CPRB, the Civilian Police Review Board to forward its findings of sustained misconduct, its sustained findings of misconduct from 21 2021 to 2024 on to the chief of police for review and possible administration of discipline.

It just uh is an issue that will not sleep.

Uh and I'd like to say a couple of things tonight.

One really two things, both relate to the power of data.

We uh as members of the public find it very hard to know whether or what exactly happened to the findings of sustained misconduct that the CPRB over those four years realized there were approximately 75 individuals, residents of Hartford, um from outside Hartford, who filed complaints, took it upon themselves to go through the somewhat taxing process of being interviewed and um scrutinized for their own integrity and uh reliability, and yet despite the CPRB, these nine volunteers who quite faithfully, month after month gathered to review the misconduct cases that were presented to them, despite them finding approximately 75 officers had committed misconduct, it appears that those findings weren't forwarded.

So it's very hard to know the data.

What happened to that the data?

Why was it not forwarded?

And indeed, as uh Mayor Aralumpalam stated in November to investigative reporter Sam Smink at Channel 3.

Is it true that the large the vast majority of those cases receive some form of discipline through the internal affairs process that the HPD maintains as a matter of course?

So we as citizens as residents are really without the necessary data.

So this week we are filing FOIA requests.

I should say, on behalf of I'm re here representing American Justice Project.

American Justice Project is filing freedom of information requests to obtain that data.

And we will analyze it and we will report to the community independently of the CPRB and independently of the HPD, independently of the council, because frankly, over so many years, the community has been disappointed by the city's uh efforts to create out an effective police oversight mechanism.

So that's one point of data.

The other point of data is uh concerns well, I'll leave it there for now.

I think that's enough for tonight.

Just to say that we are proceeding with our efforts to put up a public dashboard on what we call the forgotten.

75, these 75 individuals who we don't know whether they have received um justice, frankly.

They were promised justice.

We don't know.

We have no way of knowing whether they received justice.

I spoke to Liam Brennan about it, I've spoken to Joe Lopez about it.

They hem, they haw, they say, Well, let's just look forward.

We're not just gonna look forward, we're gonna look backward, and we're gonna report.

Thank you.

Mr.

Little.

Can you say for the record your address?

My address um 42 Kenmore in Bloomfield.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Paul Mata.

Paul Mata, one Linden Place, suite 104, Harper Firefighters Local 760.

Good evening, Council President, members of City Council, and members of the community.

My name is Paul Mata, and I'm here to speak on behalf of Local 760.

Tonight, we are here asking you to vote in favor of a union contract that we truly believe is fair and sustainable agreement, not only for our members, but for the city of Harvard and the community that we proudly serve every day.

This isn't this has not been an easy road for us.

Over the past year, our members have remained patient, professional, and committed while working through this process.

Throughout this fight, we never lost sight of what matters most, continuing to serve the citizens of Hartford with dedication, safety, respect, even while advocating for a contract that reflects the value of the work that we do.

The approval of this contract represents a major step forward for the Hartford Fire Department.

For too long, firefighters in the busiest department in the state were amongst the lowest paid.

While doing some of the most demanding work, our crews have handled record-breaking call volumes and responded to some of the most challenging structure firefighters, structure fires in Connecticut's recent history.