Um, the Thursday, September fourth of the citizen review board is now in session.

Um, so um we're gonna do the attendance, Alice.

Uh, Linda present.

Uh Ada?

Here.

Mike?

Here.

Harry?

Here.

Peggy?

Here.

And Samy has been excused absence.

The first thing on the agenda is has everyone had an opportunity to review the um August minute.

Oh my gosh.

You can tell I don't sleep deprivation.

Um, has everyone had an opportunity to review the um August meeting minutes?

So I need to get a motion on the floor to adopt those minutes.

Unless we have some discussion or someone uh disagree with the minute.

No, I love the way they're set up.

Okay, thank you.

Very nice.

Um I'll move it.

Okay, we have a motion on the floor to accept the um August main uh minutes.

Um can we get a second?

Second.

That's been moved and second uh in the discussion.

All in favor?

I have it.

Motion uh to accept the uh August meeting is passed.

We'll get those posted on the web uh tomorrow.

Um so um next thing on the agenda is the chairman report.

Um last week I met with um uh councilman Marty um who has suggested a new board member.

Um we are now and then I also sent out a letter to um uh a prior board member advising them that um he was being removed off of the uh board because of absenteeism.

Um and so we'll be having the new member.

Um uh councilman Joel Majoke has also um has a uh new member that will be coming to the board.

So we'll be one shy of having back a full board.

So once those um the council has voted on on Cho Majoke's uh pick, so um I'll be meeting with that individual sometime next week.

They'll bring them up to the par on the requirements for the board.

Um, and then once the uh we get the letter back from um Olivia, we will then be moving forth with uh bringing the second board members on, and then um we'll get the third board member hopefully before the end of September, and we'll be at a full operating board by then.

So um other than that, that's about all I have to report.

Uh just been a busy uh month in the office, and I'm gonna turn that over to um oh um I'll turn that over to Nalita and she can um give you the background of what has taken place at the uh CIB office.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Um as Don said, we've been extremely busy throughout the month of August.

Um, but we have definitely been out in the community.

Don Johnson has gone um to the jazz and the city, which was held at various places, so he wasn't just at the the one place, but he uh went to a few.

I've accompanied to uh one at least one of them.

He was also present at Hanover Thursday that was hosted by Pamela Hunter.

He also attended the Comptroller's Breakfast at the Marriott, and he has been at the Pan African village at the state fair.

He was there for all 13 days.

So we got a chance to um hand out brochures and things like that to let the community know that we are here and we're up and running again.

Uh our next thing, my next thing on my report is we have eight new cases.

Well, 10 new cases that came in.

Eight of them were specifically addressed for the Syracuse PD.

Um, one case was not, and it was turned over to Anthony Heard, um, the human rights specialist for Anadaka County, because it was dealing with the deputy sheriffs.

One of the cases is going to be a joint effort.

Um it had the Syracuse Police and the Sheriff's Department together.

Uh, and there was a complaint that was made.

So we will be working closely together to try to um solve that case or at least go through that case together.

Um CRB sent out 57 letters to close out the 2023 cases that was passed the allotted time of the 18 months.

Out of the 57, 15 was returned.

There were also four cases that had no address, so there wasn't a letter that was sent.

Um we couldn't send, of course, we can't send a letter to someplace we don't have but 18.

Um, but the 15 that were returned was entered into their file folders so that we at least have a paper trial saying that we did attempt to reach them.

Um also during the month of August, myself and Don have met with six individual people in the office to give them updates on their cases, also to open new cases and then inform clients of our jurisdiction policies and procedures so that people would know what the CRB actually do.

So they come to the office for things that we don't actually work with.

So explaining the policy and the procedures definitely helped out.

We were able to refer them to the places that could help them in some of the instances.

Okay.

And our team, including our dedicated intern, played the big part in keeping things running smoothly.

Our enter, our internship, I'm sorry, our internship with On Point for College successfully wrapped up on August the 29th of 2025.

Our intern David was a great help.

He organized the office, he watched videos, he gathered data, he created useful brochures, and supported our media efforts.

We are thrilled to say that David will be staying on as a volunteer on Mondays and Fridays whenever he's available.

So he'll still be around to help us out, which I think is great.

So I have made some connections also with the sheriff's department.

So I've connected with the Onadaga County Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

That's the sheriff's department.

Monica Williams is the Chief Diversity Officer.

Montanette Rocker is the deputy chief diversity officer.

And Anthony Hurd, Senior, is the human rights specialist.

So we'll be working with them as well.

They do pretty much what the CRB do.

It's just for the county.

So we'll be working together.

It's good to have great connections and places that I may not know where to go to get help from.

I can always ask, and um, they've been a very, very great help with volunteering information to help out for the CRB.

Um we have new hires.

We are excited to announce a new addition to the CRB.

As you know, as of August 13th, we hired Julie Boniface, who's here tonight.

She is our legal secretary and has already proven to be a tremendous asset, bringing a positive attitude, strong work ethics, and positive energy to the room.

She has been on fire since she walked in the door.

She walked in ready to go, which I love.

There is nothing that I have not asked her to do that she has not accomplished and successfully accomplished.

She keeps our paperwork in line and in order.

I love the way she asks questions and makes us rearrange things and think things out to make sure that we have organization within the CRB.

Um also starting on September the 10th, we will have a new hire, Adonia Wade will be starting as our community engagement specialist.

And she comes with a lot of energy.

She's um has existing community connections, um, and her resume was very, very impressive.

She's already in the community, already doing great things.

So it's going to be a great asset to have her to join the CRB team.

I'm really excited about getting her and um having her to start.

She's ready to go already.

She's already have called and she's excited about starting as well.

So I'm excited about where we're gonna go with the community engagement.

Um, and the last thing that I have on my report is evidence.com.

So we finally got in touch with evidence.com, or I can't say we, Julie got in touch with evidence.com, and they have responded back.

They have given us a quote for 60 months, which average out to be 978.96 cents per year, which is a total of 4,894 and 80 cents.

This will allow us to view evidence in real time as SPD loads the footage.

It will also allow us to create files with both SPD and our own correspondence, and it frees up space on our PCs, and they are willing to give it to us with unlimited storage.

So that's going to be really great where we can we can create folders, and as we create folders, we can move them over where they need to be.

It frees up our space so that we have room on our computer to save what we need to because downloading, as I was stating before, downloading the evidence when it's uploaded to us, sometimes takes about an hour to do.

Some days, depending on how many videos we have, it takes about an hour.

This way we can when they upload it, we can see it right away.

That is my report for the month of August.

And I just want to add to that.

So we still have two vacancies that we are going to be interviewing in the upcoming month.

The uh the one will be for the investigator, and the second one will be for the data analytics.

So once we get those two people on board, uh, we'll have full staff and uh we'll be off and running full force at that point.

Um on the last item that Nolita talked about was the evidence.com.

Uh during the last meeting, we had decided that we wanted to get uh a price quote before the board made a decision on whether or not we were going we were willing to uh um take on that expenditure for the CRB board.

We now have that.

Um so um if anyone has any questions, if not, I'd like to put uh put it out on the floor for someone to make a motion that we go ahead and uh sign up for evidence.com.

Is does that um do we have the money for that or do we have to ask the council?

Is it within our budget?

Do we have we we have the money in the budget that we can just move it from one um uh line item to another line item?

Okay and um that nine hundred and uh seventy-eight dollars that's uh from our budget runs from June to June.

Uh huh.

That that's from June to June.

So we definitely have the money to support that $978 for that.

And it will it will definitely help in the office um that we can get things done in real time instead of waiting, because the way the process works now is that we have to send a request up to uh internal affairs.

They have to pull the information and then they have to give it back to us.

At this point, we'll be able to just go in when we have a um once the data's up there, we can go ahead and we can pull it down and look at it.

So and so we're paying the 60 months up front.

Um no, we can pay we can pay here.

We can pay annually.

Um I would prefer to do it that way just in case the Syracuse Police Department decides that they no longer want to use evidence.com.

At least we have not paid a full six months or five, how many months?

I mean six years.

60 months, so five years into something, and then they change their mind.

And the other thing is good for budgeting purposes.

Who owns evidence.com, XR?

XIX on.

So for budgeting purpose, it makes a lot more sense.

Yeah.

Instead of pinning up the the whole $4,000 or $4,500, whatever, um, to just do it by a year since our budget comes up every year anyway.

So and then we can make sure next year that we uh uh accommodate for that extra this extra uh item that we have on here.

So I make a motion to purchase the evidence.com subscription for five years, paying it annually at $978.96.

Okay, we have a motion on the floor.

Um any discussion.

Okay.

Uh can we get a second?

Okay, it's been moved and second.

All those in favor?

I those opposed motion carry.

We will go ahead and we'll get that order.

Thank you guys very much.

Well needed.

Okay, so moving right along.

Um I have a question on this one.

Okay.

But I'm they up here we were talking about the groups working together.

Is is Anthony heard is that the person that used to work in the CRB office?

Okay.

So he understands the whole process, everything anyways.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

And and you know, uh, just to highlight that that point right there is that a lot of times we'll have complaints from the sheriff's department.

Uh up to this point, we had no uh can do it between the CRB and the sheriff's department.

And now we do have um a contact.

So we can uh work together to make sure that everyone get the cities, the citizens of Syracuse um get things done the way they need to have done.

So um upcoming events in September.

The only event that we have right now before our uh new persons on board is that we're planning on um tabling at the uh Westcock Fair, which is always the last Sunday of September.

Uh very diverse crowd that's up there.

So we want to make sure that we have some exposure uh for not only the college students but the people the residents that live in that area to understand that the CRB is here to help them in any issues that they may have that warrant uh our consideration.

So um we had tabled the external advisory board.

Has anyone thought any more about that?

Uh Mike, I think last meeting you had some some questions about that or I thought I thought we examined it what we were really talking about.

Uh I thought we ended up uh the we're looking for a group to examine our bylaws to see whether we could change it, streamline it, define it better, and then make that recommendation to uh the common council.

Okay.

That seemed to be pretty much what we were talking about.

That's not a bad idea.

Great idea.

So now which which committee was going to be working on that.

That's a very good question.

I thought we were just gonna like yeah, pick some people out that wanted to do that, that are excited about bylaws.

I thought I thought we were gonna bylaws.

Unless there was more discussion, we were gonna vote as to whether we agreed to do this thing.

And then uh I thought we were gonna find people.

Uh people uh it was board members where we're gonna recommend people that could be part of this board.

Okay, or take any recommendations, I guess, from common council members, something like that.

Seven, I believe was the number.

Yeah, I'll go with seven.

Oh, then there should be a few of us and a few of them.

Okay.

Don't you think?

So you we're now talking about the structure of the committee.

So we're looking at a total of seven, so at least three board members and somebody off the street.

Three of us, three of them.

So that only give us six.

So who would be the seventh one?

Oh.

We said it that okay.

So we're looking at three uh board members, three city residents, and the administrator.

And so if if um everyone can send me um someone who they think that would um be a good pick for um the advisory board, or the um, and then I can send it out and then we can have a vote and uh decide who we who would be a good anecdot a good candidate um to be on the uh the advisory board.

So if we can get that done within the next two weeks, that'll be great.

So should that person that we suggest bring in some type of paperwork showing some things that they've done that may be beneficial, or are we just gonna pick and choose them based on that's knowing now?

Well, I have a lot of faith in the board.

So um if if anyone decides on someone they think that that would be a good fit, um I'll I'll just have to go and face value that you have done all the due diligence to to make sure that they would be a good candidate.

Um unless you just want to send you know like a mini resume of of those candidates that um that you would suggest to show that they would be.

Uh the other thing is then we're gonna have to figure out which of the three board members are gonna be um on the committee.

And I can see the enthusiasm.

Yeah, so uh two weeks, Don.

I don't know if that's realistic.

Oh, two weeks for the weeks get names in and yeah I don't know.

What do you what do you think then, Harry?

Well I'd say at least a month.

Okay.

So let's move that from two weeks to a month.

Um uh submitting names for the committee.

But if they can get it in in two weeks, get it in.

Yeah.

Whenever whenever you can get it in, get it in, and we'll go from there.

So okay.

And uh just in describing this to someone, we're whoever we we're asking, we're telling them that we're looking for an oversight committee that's going to reevaluate the bylaws of the CRB and make a recommendation.

Okay.

That's what their job is going to be, is that we're talking about that.

That is correct.

Okay.

And we also need to give them a time frame on how much time is going to be involved in doing this and how many what would uh the meetings are are going to be.

So you want to limit the nomination so that very simply that you can't nominate someone you're either related to by marriage or biologically, legally or biologically, so you don't get that interplay with uh being a family member.

You want to do that?

But that absolutely.

So make up a seat, and that way we'll be able to express that to them.

Okay, something I'll pick up.

Okay, I'll I'll I'll write up um some uh documentation on that on what what would be included if they and then I'll get that out to everyone.

Um and then that way when you're talking to people, you can let them see that and uh make a determination whether or not they want to um become a part of the advisory board.

Um do you think that we should have someone from city council?

I think so.

Yeah.

Yes.

Good.

Because they know the laws in the back.

Well, the the other ones that really want this advisory thing.

All right.

So if we ask somebody from So let me let me put this out to the board.

Instead of going with seven, uh, what is anyone think about nine?

Two of those members would be from the council.

The problem becomes when you get up to nine, is that's a lot.

A lot of people that's a lot of people to be looking at the document to tweak.

Just drop one of the numbers.

It's either three board members or two board members and um and a council.

And a council person or three board members and two city residents and a council member.

Okay plus Nolita, right?

That's seven, leave it at seven.

Does everyone agree with that?

I agree.

Yeah.

What was the match?

Three, three, one, three, two, one.

So I'm not sure.

Connor, are we gonna need to do a vote on that?

So three three one, but the one group has a city council there.

Which group do you want it?

Uh counter work uh assistant corporation council.

Uh you're gonna need to vote on the committee.

Is what you're asking?

Right.

Do we need to have a vote on the the number of people on the advisory committee and the and who will it consist?

I think you're saying you we have to vote on the establishment of the committee, right?

Uh yeah, I think you'd want to vote.

First and then uh you know vote on the you know membership of the committee, yeah.

So kind of you have a record of that.

Okay.

Okay.

So I guess we we're gonna have to get a motion on the table to uh set up an advisory committee.

I make a motion that we set up an advisory committee of seven people made up of three board members, one common council member, two citizens, and uh the current administrator.

Okay.

Can I get a second on that?

Any discussion?

Okay, let's uh move for the vote.

All in favor?

Aye.

Those opposed?

Motion carries.

So um we'll start working on getting that developed.

Um so we'll move on to the next item, which is committee reports.

Um first one is the outreach and the public education committee.

Nothing on that.

Uh next one is uh board development and training.

So nothing to report there.

Um government relationships.

Um nothing to report there.

Okay.

Uh police relations.

Did you guys meet last last month, Mike?

No.

No, we have a meeting coming up.

I can't remember which this month or next month.

Do you remember?

October.

Okay.

Okay.

We have a date set.

Um I just can't tell you without my calendar exactly what the date is.

Okay.

And um committee operations.

Okay.

And committee on hearings.

There's nothing to report on the hearings, okay.

I do have a the committee on hearings.

This this is my segue from hearings.

This item that we've voted to purchase.

Um will that allow us to um um ultimately have hearings based on the fact that we'll have this information.

Everybody will review it and then we'll vote on whether we're gonna have a hearing on that.

Is that how it plays out?

Well, and h here's here's how it goes right now.

So um we download right uh the way the way it's working now is that we download the case.

Yep.

Then I what I do is then I transfer the case and all the videos, the complaint, the the police department um report into our external drive, which everyone on the committee should have access to get into that.

And you can watch those videos on the and on our external drive.

I'm gonna just so I'm clear.

Um you're putting in the drive.

We'll have we'll have access to the drive by uh um username, password.

User name, password, and then I can sit at home and look at the stuff.

Absolutely.

And then come to the meeting prepared to vote as to whether we should go that way.

There you go.

Okay.

Um and then those who haven't got their tokens and they're not working, let me know because I need to talk with a uh with uh with the IT department to make sure that everyone's has a token and is working on so well.

Peggy has yours.

I have yours.

I well, but I don't know which one is yours and which one is mine.

So I have two tokens.

But now with with with the with the uh evidence.com, basically that that will be an internal um process for the CRB uh office to be able to go in and look at those videos and download those and put those in there.

So it's it's it's actually a tool to uh expedite us reviewing cases when they come in that we get all that information uh in real time.

So other than that, if there's nothing else, um we're open for public public comment.

Uh everyone has a five minute.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I have one more item.

Uh I believe, and this is part of the email traffic.

We were going to establish a policy relative to relative to talking to the media.

Perfect timing.

Uh and so uh going back and forth.

Uh I made a suggestion that uh Nolita uh is the person uh the operating framework would be that that uh members of the CRB uh do not speak to the press about the CRB.

The person who speaks is Nolita.

And if she's not available, then you as the chair would speak.

That will not prevent reporters from calling anybody.

It simply means that when they do call, you simply refer them to our uh so my motion is that we uh I make a motion uh that uh the members of the CRB uh do not uh speak to the media relative to inquiries of uh about the CRB and all inquiries by the media are referred to the director and her actions uh the uh board chair.

There's been a motion on the floor.

Can we get a second?

Okay, any discussion?

No.

All in favor?

I motion carries, uh been approved.

So okay.

Now we're uh any any other old business or new business that needs to be discussed on the floor.

Okay, we're gonna open it up to the um the public.

There's a five-minute uh limitation on um for you to speak.

Um can I say something?

Now you don't get bothered by perfect timing, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um I know that our next meeting is not until um October 10th.

Right.

And I've told Molita about um my walk that I'm doing, but I just wanted everybody to put in their calendar October 18th, please.

October what?

18th?

18th.

That's a very important deal.

It is.

Now, what's going on on October 18th?

Um 3K walk or KJ's Angels.

What?

I can only walk a block.

I know.

You can walk as far as you can.

I'll have order for you.

It is a fundraiser for my foundation that I established.

And out of my side.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Uh are you gonna get the flyer out for us and then we'll get it posted on our site.

I'll send it to her.

Okay, great.

Anything that you might need from us here, just by the way.

Just come and spread the word.

I'll see.

Where's it gonna be?

On a dogga Lake Park, we'll obey.

You know, that's the date.

They're gonna come looking for the next big protest.

It won't be at the on a dog at Lake Park.

No, they're still looking for a place.

They better not come there.

Now that will obey.

Okay.

Um, so now uh if we don't have any comment from um the general population, uh the next thing on the agenda is that I need to have someone make a motion for us to go into executive session to review the cases that we have to review.

I'll move to go into executive session to review the case as we have.

Do we have a second on that?

Second.

Okay, all in favor?

All right.

Aye.

Uh meetings adjourn until after the executive session, and then we'll remeet back here to then close out the meeting.

Okay.

Okay.