1 Background Interviews on Dr. Joel Fitzgerald Nominee to lead Baltimore City Police Department January 1, 2019 Prepared by: Bernard C. “Jack” Young Sharon Green Middleton Robert Stokes Brandon Scott 2 Dear Citizen, Beginning on December 9, 2018, and over the course of two days, a four-person delegation of members of the Baltimore City Council spent nearly 15 complete hours conducting background interviews with roughly 35 individuals in Fort Worth, Texas. The purpose of the delegation’s trip to Fort Worth and subsequent interviews was to inform the Baltimore City Council as it prepared to conduct confirmation hearings for Dr. Joel Fitzgerald, Mayor Catherine Pugh's nominee to lead the Baltimore City Police Department. What follows are firsthand accounts gathered from subjects who’ve encountered Dr. Fitzgerald during his time as Chief of Police in Fort Worth. A licensed court reporter was used to create transcripts of two separate meetings of community members that were held at local churches in Fort Worth. The portions of the report that were captured by the licensed court reporter appear in their original format and provide an unedited transcript of dialogue during more than four hours of interviews. In order to preserve the authenticity of the transcripts produced by the court reporter, we have refrained from editing those sections. The interviews featuring Fort Worth elected, government, and business officials were captured by staff to the Baltimore City Council and appear with limited editing. 3 Contents Schedule ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 Day 1 – Sunday, December 9, 2018 .............................................................................................................. 5 Panel Discussion at Baker Chapel AME Church ........................................................................................ 5 Day 2 – Monday, December 10, 2018....................................................................................................... 124 City Manager David Cooke and Assistant City Manager Jay Chapa ...................................................... 125 Councilman Brian Byrd.......................................................................................................................... 128 Councilman Cary Moon......................................................................................................................... 130 Mayor Betsy Price ................................................................................................................................. 132 Mayor Pro Tem Dennis Shingleton and Councilman Jungus Jordan..................................................... 135 Councilwoman Ann Zadeh .................................................................................................................... 137 Councilwoman Kelly Allen Gray ............................................................................................................ 139 Bill Thornton, President and CEO, Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce ............................................... 141 Panel Discussion at Greater St. Stephens First Church ......................................................................... 143 Day 3 – Tuesday, December 11, 2018....................................................................................................... 214 Fort Worth Police Officers Association ................................................................................................. 214 4 Schedule:  Sunday, December 9, 2018 o 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Baker Chapel AME Church – 1050 E. Humbolt Street, Fort Worth, TX  Monday, December 10, 2018 o 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Forth Worth City Hall – 200 Texas Street, Fort Worth, TX o 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Greater St. Stephens First Church – 3728 East Berry, Fort Worth, TX  Tuesday, December 11, 2018 o 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Fort Worth Police Officers Association – 2501 Parkview Drive, Suite 600, Fort Worth, TX 5 Day 1 – Sunday, December 9, 2018 Panel Discussion at Baker Chapel AME Church Attendees          Devoyd “Dee” Jennings, President and CEO of the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce Estellla Williams, Fort Worth NAACP Pastor Sultan Cole, founding Pastor of Revealed World Ministries and Chairman of the Board of the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce Vernell Sturns, Retired City of Fort Worth Assistant Manager and Form Executive Director of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Pastor Melvin D. Wilson, Senior Pastor of Baker Chapel AME Church Coletta Strickland, President of the Fort Worth and Tarrant County Minority Leaders and Citizens Council Chaplain Rich Stoglin, Community Leader James Dunn, Fort Worth Police Officer and Instructor at Fort Worth Police Academy Roy Hudson, Former President of the Fort Worth Black Law Enforcement Association 6 1 1 CITY OF BALTIMORE TOPIC INTERVIEWS 2 3 4 5 RE: CHIEF JOEL FITZGERALD DECEMBER 9TH, 2018 6 7 8 BAKER CHAPEL AME CHURCH 9 1050 E. HUMBOLT STREET 10 FORT WORTH, TEXAS 76104 11 12 13 BERNARD C. YOUNG COUNCIL PRESIDENT 8 2 1 Interviewees 2 3 1. Sultan Cole 4 2. James Dunn 5 3. Roy Hudson 6 4. Devoyd Jennings 7 5. Glenn Lewis 8 6. Vernell Sturns 9 7. Rich Stoglin 10 8. Corletta Strickland 11 9. Estella Williams 12 13 Baltimore Delegation 9 14 15 1. Bernard Young 16 2. Robert Stokes 17 3. Brandon Scott 18 4. Lester Davis 19 5. Michael Huber 20 21 22 23 24 25 10 3 1 2 1. Questions For All: Q. (2.) How would you describe the 3 Commissioner's ability to implement community-based 4 policing practices? 5 Can you speak to specific examples? 6 A. (Roy Hudson) I can speak on behalf of 7 that. My name is Roy Hudson. I'm the former 8 President of the Fort Worth Black Law Enforcement 9 Association. 10 Based on my experience I'm a former 11 neighborhood patrol officer, NPO, and a former 12 Neighborhood Patrol Sergeant over the NPOs of the 13 community service officers. We had a six-year 11 14 disconnect in community relations with the police 15 department and the African American community. It 16 was basically left up to the Black Police Officer 17 Association to be that gap. 18 Since Fitzgerald's arrival, I can 19 safely say the relationships between the community 20 and police has definitely improved. 21 As a 23-year Veteran here, he's the 22 most community-oriented Chief that we've ever had. 23 He's all about community policing officers. Our 24 officers are always in constant training. James 25 Dunn is actually a trainer with the Academy, he will 12 4 1 2 tell you that. It's turned our department around as 3 far as community relations, as far as the way we 4 deal with people. I think that as a whole we're 5 light years ahead of where we were especially in the 6 small amount of time that he's been here. 7 He works you to death, but that's 8 what you can expect. I can safely say that he's 9 definitely been an asset to our department, to our 10 officers; especially the officers of color and our 11 communities of color. He's definitely been an asset 12 to our city and to our department as a whole. 13 Q. When you talk about you being on the 13 14 neighbor patrol, are they the same officers that 15 work the same shifts over and over and over? 16 A. (Roy Hudson) Yes, sir. Our neighborhood 17 patrol officers are different than the regular 18 patrol officers. We deal with quality of life 19 issues, long-term problems. It could be something 20 as big as trying to find -- knowing your community 21 stakeholders, knowing who your people are in the 22 community. 23 The NPOs are responsible for all the 24 neighborhood crime; to follow-up on all the 25 neighborhood stats. They provide monthly and weekly 14 5 1 meetings with their stakeholders. They're over the 2 neighborhood association meetings, they just do it 3 all. They're totally held responsible for 4 everything that goes on in that area. They change 5 their hours depending on the crime trend and they 6 also have to provide a weekly and a monthly report 7 to command staff. 8 Q. The reason why I ask that question, 'cause 9 I grew up knowing all the police officers on each 10 shift. They knew who we were, we knew who they 11 were. They knew the good, they knew the bad, they 12 knew the ugly. 13 That's what we're looking for with 15 14 community policing where the same officers work the 15 same shifts. If that officer is on vacation, then 16 we know who that next officer is going to be so they 17 can really be engaged with community. 18 A. (Roy Hudson) The problem that we had with 19 our previous Chief, he eliminated all that. We went 20 from a "beat" concept to a "zone" concept, so we had 21 officers that may be on the north side going to 22 south side and it would take every bit of 30 to 40 23 minutes to get there to satisfy a cause for service 24 and it didn't work in that favor. 25 Our previous Chief did not believe in 16 6 1 that. He eliminated every program that we had that 2 had to deal with community policing, which included 3 Coming Up, our late night basketball programs and a 4 lot of other programs related to funding. 5 When Chief Fitzgerald came into place 6 he brought the beat concept back. The benefit of 7 having a beat concept, when you're a day shift 8 person and you have a situation going on, you hand 9 that information to your second person then to your 10 midnight person. We knew who our robbers were. We 11 knew where to find people, we had confidential 12 informants. We knew who our burglars were, we knew 13 who our business owners were. We knew people who 17 14 our activist were, we knew people that were 15 anti-police. We knew it all, that was what he 16 brought back into our city in the three years that 17 he's been here. We just got a Best Practice Award 18 due to all the changes that's been brought forward. 19 20 21 2. Government Employees, Current or Former: Q. (11.) Baltimore is tasked with policing 22 gang and drug commerce related activity. Does Fort 23 Worth face similar issues? If so, how has 24 Commissioner Fitzgerald addressed them? 25 A. (James Dunn) I'll take a shot at this 18 7 1 question since I do work with in chain. There's a 2 course called De-escalation. In other words, we're 3 going to try to figure out how to bring the 4 atmosphere or the anger down before you have to go 5 hands on with somebody or deal with somebody. 6 Whether it be a gang call or a 7 regular patrol call; using words understanding how 8 you can de-escalate something with just words. Not 9 the first thing you do when you get there is pull 10 out your gun and wreck shop and shut everything 11 down. That is something he has implemented. 12 13 From a training perspective, before the State he mandated an 8-hour de-escalation 19 14 course. He was very proactive, he didn't wait for 15 something to happen; he took initiative and mandated 16 all officers to take this course. 17 This equates to our gang unit, our 18 SRT unit, our specialized units. Now, when you get 19 on the scene you must talk to people and figure out 20 what's going on before you go hands on or weapons 21 on. With that being said, I think he's done a 22 magnificent job implementing that. When a police 23 officer comes to the to the scene he didn't want 24 them to just take any kind of action. He preferred 25 to preserve human life with humanity, all mankind, 20 8 1 2 love all mankind. A. (Roy Hudson) From a management 3 perspective, our uses of forces have come down 4 tremendously. We have a system in place called Blue 5 Team where all of our acts on cameras are being 6 looked at from the Sergeants on up and they are 7 reviewed by everyone in chain of command. He holds 8 everyone accountable especially the supervisors who 9 impose discipline on these officers. So if you're 10 not imposing the correct discipline based on 11 traditions in the past he holds you accountable for 12 that big time. 13 He's really pressed the point where 21 14 we do have to change our way of policing. He's 15 stressed that throughout our entire chain. From a 16 management perspective, because I'm a Lieutenant and 17 I have to look through blue teams all day long, 18 everything that you see on video is very transparent 19 because you can't duck a video. 20 He holds the recommendations of the 21 supervisor who imposes discipline accountable as 22 well. So from someone from a management 23 perspective, we appreciate this because our 24 complaints have actually gone down tremendously. 25 Q. The training that you do, does that 22 9 1 training start when you have new officers come to 2 your forces? 3 A. Yes. He's lengthened the academy because 4 this is something that's necessary and needed to be 5 added. Now every officer is required to have a Body 6 One camera; everything must to be recorded. 7 He's changed the general orders which 8 is basically our bible: These are the rules you 9 will abide by. Your camera will be on at all times. 10 You will record every interaction with the 11 civilians, good, bad, ugly or indifferent so that 12 way you're held accountable. 13 Q. Can you go into the gang and drug culture, 23 14 how you handle that? We have gangs in Baltimore and 15 they're the ones who's fueling the killings. 16 There's drug and gang members. So how do y'all deal 17 with the gang members? 18 We're under a Federal Consent Decree. 19 Full policies and pattern and practices from the 20 Feds. The President and our whole Council, we ask 21 the Feds to come in to regulate situations. Most of 22 the time the Feds come in on their own. 23 One of the main things that they did, 24 for example, they would go out and literally just 25 clear a corner; anybody on the whole corner. 24 10 1 We want to know from your standpoint 2 how has it been dealt with here? Have you seen the 3 areas of where you have your gang and drug 4 problems -- have you seen the violence go up since 5 he's been here? How has he dealt with it? Has it 6 been through clearing corners or is it different 7 methods? 8 A. Well, I can say just from personnel 9 perspective, our gang unit was basically disbanded 10 under the old tree; we didn't have a gang problem. 11 When one of city councilman's houses got shot up, 12 now we have a gang problem. They brought the whole 13 gang unit back. 25 14 In reference to narcotics, I'm a 15 former narcotics officer as well; we didn't have a 16 narcotics unit either until he brought it back. 17 They had bias and they cut narcotics down to maybe 18 four officers for whole city; one for each side of 19 town. 20 He's beefed up the issues and 21 honestly, I've been in certain meetings where you 22 see someone at a normal street corner and make a 23 phone call, and like clock work you either have the 24 gang unit or a special response unit right there on 25 the spot dealing with people. 26 11 1 He's actually gotten out of his car 2 and let people know, I'm not having this here I will 3 arrest you myself. What a lot of people don't like, 4 especially the new officers; which we're not use to, 5 he listens to his radio and he answers calls. 6 In his interview we asked him what 7 was his biggest criticism coming from Allentown. He 8 said my biggest criticism is the officers don't like 9 that fact that I answer calls. In a city this big 10 when he has the second busiest schedule other than 11 the Mayor, he's still on his radio answering calls 12 and showing up. 13 You can really appreciate that and 27 14 the troops appreciate that as well because you have 15 a Chief here that's on our level not dealing with so 16 much of the administrative side, but also cares 17 enough to be in the field with us. 18 A. (Chaplin Rich Stoglin) The context of what 19 the Lieutenant is saying, the great State of Texas 20 is divided into 254 counties. Out of 254 counties 21 this is the third largest county in Texas. The 22 first is Harris, that's Houston, the second is 23 Dallas and this Tarrant County. 24 The largest city within Tarrant is 25 Fort Worth which is 900,000 citizens and growing to 28 12 1 give you context so people will know what we're 2 talking about to give you some appreciation for 3 that. 4 So when you start looking at a city 5 that's 900,000 that's growing, the largest city in 6 the third largest populated county. I think they're 7 saying that 60,000 people are moving to Tarrant 8 County per month to give you context. 9 When you start looking at this area 10 and what's happening and how vast it's growing, 11 they're people coming in, it's huge. Just to give 12 you further context of what the population is and 13 how vast this city is growing. I think this city 29 14 has 11 stations now and I think one of them was 15 opened under Chief Fitzgerald's watch. 16 This is Southeast Fort Worth; this is 17 the largest quadrant of African Americans, although 18 it's changing, in the city of Fort Worth. North 19 Fort Worth is racetrack and all of that so the 20 lieutenant was talking about the north and south; 21 the distance in terms of calls. So now they've 22 terrifically reduced that because you now have a 23 station over there. 24 Q. One last follow-up to that; for you two 25 specifically. So if you're an NPO or a beat officer 30 13 1 or whoever and there's a drug corner, what is the 2 strategy to deal with the people on that corner? 3 A. (James Dunn) I think it would be based on 4 the history of that corner. If the officers that 5 work that beat know that's a particular gang unit 6 and they know those people that are in that gang 7 unit, they're going to call a gang out. 8 It's not going to be that officer 9 approaching it by himself -- or it may be. Hey, I 10 know these kids are 15 years old, they're trying to 11 be with this gang and they're not really gang 12 members; it just looks bad because there's so many 13 of them. He can go approach them on his own and 31 14 talk to them and handle that. If not, he can get 15 the gang unit out and it can be an aggressive call 16 that's needed. 17 A. (Roy Hudson) On the narcotic side, one 18 thing that he brought back, we had several different 19 sections in narcotics. I was in there for a while 20 so I was a part of every unit that was in there. 21 Special Approach Unit, it's called SAU; they deal 22 with the street dealers. I was part of that unit 23 and they go out and they do buy bust right there on 24 the spot in plain clothes instead of waiting on 25 someone to make a buy or a combination to form to 32 14 1 2 work this big case. They use to call them the jump-out 3 boys. We actually would do the buy right then and 4 there. If you're standing on the corner, we're 5 highly trained, we'll walk up and just buy 6 something; that's a delivery, that's a felony. 7 We also have a take-down unit. As 8 soon as that buy is made the take-down unit takes 9 them down immediately. We've seen a lot of dope 10 just based on that. So he's brought that back as 11 well. Like I said, we had a six-year disconnect. 12 Our previous Chief, Halstead, disbanded everything. 13 A. (James Dunn) To piggyback off of that, 33 14 when we talked about the gangs, I think we all 15 agreed that the homicide had escalated with gangs, 16 violence and drugs as well. Our city has went from 17 300 homicides a year versus last year we had 70; 18 this year we're going to be well under that. 19 Q. When was the last time you had 300? 20 A. (James Dunn) This is 2018. So 2016 21 before he got here we had a homicide rate of 300 a 22 year; he took it down to 70 as of last year. This 23 year we're paced to be lower than that. 24 A. (Roy Hudson) This year we had a total of 25 20 percent decrease in overall crime; that's a first 34 15 1 in a city this size. 2 Q. Anybody else on that question? 3 A. (Estella Williams) We get all kinds of 4 phone calls and I speak to it from that standpoint 5 not knowing the insides of who's doing what or how; 6 but we get phone calls from individuals in the 7 community complaining about young people slinging 8 drugs or gang members or whatever. 9 When we get those phone calls we make 10 calls to the police department. I can say that we 11 have had return calls from some of the individuals 12 in the community who said they have greatly 13 appreciated the fact that police have shown up, 35 14 whereas before they didn't show up; they would 15 ignore it or whatever, but they were very pleased. 16 We would do follow-ups with the 17 complainant as well and they were pleased because 18 they said that, that was disbanded; they would find 19 another location. How it happened or what to place 20 with it, we don't know those inside little tactics 21 but we did get feedback that police officers were 22 there. 23 They didn't come in, you know, with 24 guns drawn telling people to, you know, you've got 25 to do this, that or the other; at least they tried 36 16 1 to form a relationship. 2 I can even speak further. I have a 3 family member who is a law enforcement officer and 4 it's amazing how he builds relationships with these 5 young people who are perhaps products of gangs or 6 products of drugs. It's amazing because I would 7 talk with some of them, because of the position I'm 8 in, and they would refer to him as OG. I was very 9 bothered about that because from my day an OG was an 10 "original gangster". 11 I'm thinking you're calling my 12 son-in-law "OG". Well, I later found out they it 13 was not, they had a relationship with him and it's 37 14 Officer Garret and you know him. So therefore, it 15 was education for me to think of how he could walk 16 in the mitts of these young people who perhaps were 17 involved with behaviors that were not appropriate, 18 but yet they respected him enough to listen; enough 19 to have a change of mind of things or respect. 20 So that, I would say, came from 21 somebody in authority to say these are things we 22 must do as far as getting these police officers in 23 the communities, being at the neighborhood meetings 24 and things as that. So you know, I think it's a 25 very positive gesture. 38 17 1 A. (Roy Hudson) I can add to that as an NPO 2 Sergeant and as an NPO, one thing that he emphasized 3 with us, which was expected of all of us, is to get 4 out of your cars. One thing that we did, we got out 5 of our cars and we went door to door. 6 We'd pick a neighborhood, 7 specifically ones that were not pro-police. We 8 dealt with hard people, not soft people that were 9 pro-police. We actually get out of our cars and we 10 go door to door say "I'm Officer Hudson. I'm just 11 in the neighborhood. Is there anything you need?" 12 13 You'd get a wealth of information and something that never happened before, but you have a 39 14 police officer; whether they trust you or not, it 15 like "huh"? It would turn into some good 16 information. "I don't need you but you might want 17 to check out what's going on over here, you know." 18 So what I'm saying is he really 19 emphasized us getting out of our cars, letting our 20 windows down, hearing what's going on. That's very 21 big with him and for someone who's actually in the 22 room, and you actually have to be in the room with 23 him, because he's very transparent. 24 25 The people that you have probably talk to that have a negative view on this chief or 40 18 1 people that have purposely and intentionally removed 2 themselves from the room. If you remove yourself from 3 the room, you remove yourself from transparency and 4 information. 5 As someone who spoke out against this 6 last chief, and I ended up having to sue the city. 7 Our National President came down here six times and 8 he let all the people know that the things we were 9 going through internally and externally was the 10 worst that he had ever seen in the history of NBPO 11 being here period, so we were looking for somebody 12 and it starts from the inside. 13 If those expectations come from 41 14 inside you can't do anything but put that mission 15 out there. You know, if it's emphasized and the 16 citizens see it and the officers see it and there's 17 that expectation, they're going to do their job. 18 He expects you to do your job, he 19 holds everyone accountable. So those horror stories 20 that you hear in most cities about the thin blue 21 line and all that kind of stuff, that does not exist 22 here. 23 Q. It's been said officers get out of the car 24 being on a beat. How did he enforce that or make 25 sure there's officers doing that? A lot of times in 42 19 1 Baltimore community wanted them to get out of the 2 car and walk, but it didn't always happen. 3 How do you make sure they're out 4 there, 'cause some of them are saying they're 5 walking the beat, but some are actually not doing 6 it? How does Chief Fitzgerald make sure that 7 happens? 8 A. (James Dunn) Again, we go back to the 9 body camera, everything is recorded. You're not 10 sitting in your car for eight hours, it's on all the 11 time. 12 13 A. (Roy Hudson) On a bigger sense, he revamped our command staff. He put some people in 43 14 place that knew about community that were community 15 involved. Some didn't even have the rank normally 16 to have those positions, but he appointed people, 17 key leaders within our department, that knew how to 18 talk to people that were very involved in the 19 community. They're called "Commanders" and those 20 are the key people if you have a problem you call 21 them because they have a very personal relationship 22 with the community and they in turn made things 23 happen. 24 25 A. (Chaplin Rich Stoglin) Mr. Sturns, years ago you were talking about this kind of thing. He 44 20 1 is the one, this is the guy and these are icons who 2 brought in people from the cities because you have 3 to report to Civilian Personnel. So this gentleman 4 here brought a lot of people and some who became 5 city managers and others. So Mr. Sturns has been 6 talking about this for a long time. Right, Mr. 7 Sturns? 8 A. (Vernell Sturns) Yes, sir. I want to say 9 a word about the neighborhood police, NPO. We have 10 one in our neighbor and he attends our meetings. He 11 reports on crimes that occurred in the area. 12 I mean, it's a great relationship. 13 The development cooperation furnished the office, 45 14 would take two cases of water down there every week; 15 that was because of the relationship that had been 16 established with neighborhood police officers. They 17 changed, I mean, it's not the same person all the 18 time. They changed but the quality of the training 19 is there. 20 A. (Roy Hudson) One thing that I appreciated 21 about Chief Fitzgerald is he doesn't have a filter 22 when it comes down to telling you what you need to 23 hear. When we were first having issues with our 24 previous chief, and y'all probably know about the 3E 25 Plan, one of the things that we fought for was to be 46 21 1 in the room and be able to hear these decisions that 2 were being made. So as the President of BPOA I 3 actually got to sit in the room with Command 4 Staffing; you hear some stuff that you normally 5 don't hear. 6 One thing that he did tell everyone 7 on his first meeting, anything that goes on inside 8 this room that you hear; if I hear anything 9 different that comes out of this room I'm going to 10 hold all of you all accountable because it happens 11 right here. I'm not going to tell you how to run 12 your shop because y'all make too much money for me 13 to tell you how to run your shop, but I will tell you 47 14 15 I will hold you accountable. So whatever goes on in this room it 16 better not come back otherwise. Now, people did 17 what they wanted to do, that's the nature of the 18 beast. This culture here, they weren't ready for a 19 black chief. If I wouldn't have made a whole bunch 20 of noise, we still wouldn't have one. 21 The city was forced to put us in a 22 position to address diversity and he is that person. 23 I hate to say this, selfishly, we would like to keep 24 him honestly. 25 You can ask any officer of color what 48 22 1 we went through, and I've been here 23 years. He's 2 definitely made a difference here whether you like 3 his decision or not. I mean, with any chief you're 4 not going to agree with everything he says, but he's 5 a very smart person. When he says make it happen 6 and you put his plan in place you understand. 7 He's kind of light-years ahead of 8 what we were accustomed to because we had a rock 9 star chief who just really wouldn't let the POA and 10 anybody else plug at him and he was out of the 11 picture. In fact, the last thing this last chief 12 did was remove the word "diversity". The word 13 diversity was removed from our general orders. 49 14 Anything that had to do with diversity he removed 15 that word and ordered that word to be removed. 2. 16 2. Government Employees, Current or Former: 17 Q. (8.) Thinking about that, can you 18 describe how Dr. Fitzgerald and his ability to 19 explicitly deal with and address additional 20 institutional racism and bias? 21 So we're thinking about that from 22 racial inequality within the system. You know, the 23 policy, your practice, discriminatory treatment; 24 like, give me examples. 25 A. (Roy Hudson) One of the first things he 50 23 1 did is he put diversity back in our general orders. 2 Number two, he addressed the issue where African 3 American officers and specifically supervisors that 4 have never been in positions such as homicide. 5 Those elite positions that people stay in and get 6 credit for and put on their resume, he stressed that 7 as well as surprised people and came on interviews, 8 you know, just popped up. 9 Traffic division, where I am 10 currently, that was where racism, if that's what you 11 want to call it, the racial issue initiated here. 12 They were making snowmen and putting bananas in 13 their mouth and putting nooses and taking pictures. 51 14 Everybody that complained about it got retaliated 15 against and transferred out or fired or accused. 16 We had a situation where one of our 17 black lieutenants had interviewed for the lieutenant 18 spot, which I currently hold, and it was already 19 wrapped up 'cause it's the good old boy system. You 20 know, they already know who they're selecting, they 21 just put you through the process; well, the chief 22 showed up. The chief just showed up and he found 23 out when the interview was and he showed up and he 24 asked questions on leadership, and they didn't ask 25 questions on leadership. 52 24 1 After his questions they didn't have 2 a choice, and I don't think it really had anything 3 to do with his position. He had some very key 4 questions that had to do with that specific 5 position. They didn't have a choice; for that 6 reason it was the best person for the job. Normally 7 we were excluded, not even accounted for or we 8 didn't even make the cut for an interview. 9 Q. I think the stuff you're saying is great, 10 it's definitely something that myself and the 11 President have been dealing with in our police 12 department since I was a staff member. 13 Also, one thing about what practices 53 14 that impact the community; I think a perfect example 15 is no matter where you are in America, if you're 16 black or brown you're much more likely to get pulled 17 over, searched, pulled out of the car, all of those 18 kinds of things. How has he dealt with those kinds 19 of structures here? 20 A. (Roy Hudson) I'm actually over the 21 procedure of the Justice Division because I am in 22 the community. He hand selected me because I'm 23 involved in the community to head that program. 24 25 We have a staff here that actually goes out and talks about procedures; we have a 54 25 1 PowerPoint Presentation, we had one the other night 2 in Como. He's very open and he will meet you 3 whenever you want to talk about something, even if 4 it's for lunch or for coffee. He makes himself 5 available especially considering his schedule. 6 A. (James Dunn) To piggy back on what he 7 said, he started our procedural justice program. We 8 have a procedural justice unit that teaches and it's 9 mandated every officer goes through this course on 10 procedural justice. 11 If you want to promote in the Fort 12 Worth Police Department there's a book called 21st 13 Century Policing that deals with diversity. The 14 main course is on diversity; you have to read that 55 15 book in order to promote to become a supervisor and 16 to be a leader. 17 So these are things that he's 18 implemented that he see's; you need diversity in 19 order to lead people. You can't just go and get 20 promoted and be a sergeant over somebody's career 21 and livelihood and you don't know anything about 22 diversity. So every promotion has that book in it 23 now since he's been here. 24 25 Q. Is there anybody from the community that want to chime in on that question, how he's dealt 56 26 1 with institutional racism? 2 A. (Vernell Sturns) It's no different here 3 than anywhere else. Institutional racism is alive 4 and well and it's been fought on many levels. 5 Politicians, community activist; it's something that 6 you could never turn your head to. 7 A. (Glenn Lewis) Well, I have more of an 8 experience with the chief. He's a big supporter, 9 allowing police officers to actually go in and 10 invest on the front end versus divesting on the back 11 end with kids and in the city. 12 When you're talking about dealing 13 with racial issues, what that allows a police 14 officer to do is to actually have an experience of 57 15 cultural sensitivity. So now what he's done, he's 16 adopted a literacy initiative because he does 17 believe in investing on the front end versus 18 divesting on the back end and allowing police 19 officers to go in the schools and work with 20 students; teaching them how to read. 21 He's a huge proponent of support of 22 education because he realizes that's a great 23 investment in our community. 24 25 This year alone the goal was 250 out of the 1800 employees and that's police officers as 58 27 1 well as civilian work force. This year we have 100 2 people that are going in right now once a week 3 working with a student and sitting down with them; 4 he's letting them do that on the clock. 5 A. (Roy Hudson) When the call load gets low 6 and when they have a chance, they are officially 7 trained in the Read To Win Program and the city has 8 adopted it. The Mayor's office has adopted it, Fort 9 Worth ISD has adopted it. In fact, we did the Pilot 10 Program for that program and it's actually data 11 driven so you can follow the stats all day long. 12 When the case load gets low enough 13 they actually have permission from the Chief to go 59 14 to these schools and read to kids; teach the kids 15 how the read and it's a curriculum that they have to 16 go through the training for. 17 18 A. (Glenn Lewis) The officers are referred to as First "Read" Respondents. 19 Q. We were trying to reach Randy Simpson, 20 the President of POA, Tarrant County, Regional 21 Lodge 44 and they refused to meet with us. 22 23 Can you share any information as to why they didn't want to meet with us? 24 A. (Roy Hudson) I'm one of the founding 25 members of DPOA. The reason why we were -- 60 28 1 2 Q. Are you all apart of this or are you-all separated? 3 A. (Roy Hudson) No. I'm a member of all 4 three, the Latino Police Officer Association, the 5 POA and the Black Police Officer Association. I 6 chose to do that because I wanted to know everything 7 that's going on. Historically, the reason why we 8 got started is because when we needed help we got 9 none from the POA and we're paying members. 10 I've been a paying member since I 11 started the academy. There were 36 of us that had 12 an issue with Chief Halstead when he was here. As 13 President of the BPOA, I took our issues to the BPO 61 14 15 President, which was Rick Van Houten. I said on behalf of the paying 16 members who are also dual members, we need your 17 assistance with dealing with the Chief. He told me 18 to my face, in reference to the BPOA we're going to 19 take a neutral stance when it comes down to Chief 20 Halstead so you're on your own; you can look it up 21 on YouTube. 22 I cried like a baby and I came back 23 to my office, I took my uniform off. I specially 24 put my National Black Police Officer shirt on and I 25 met the media across the street; I gave my statement 62 29 1 that he needed to step down. It was after we 2 received no help from POA. 3 Well, now, it's a little bit diverse 4 typically, no, but historically that's one of the 5 reasons why we formed because even though we're not 6 labor, we were in this boat by ourselves. 7 In reference to community efforts, 8 the Chief wouldn't even give us permission as black 9 officers to go out and do things in the community 10 unless he brought his camera and his crew so he 11 could take pictures. 12 13 This Chief here, we have the largest back to school give-away in Tarrant County period; 63 14 he participates. I've got pictures all day long, he 15 comes out with us. Anything that's community based 16 he lets us do it for comp time; this other chief 17 denied us. 18 We were our own recruiters for not 19 only our black officers, but to even get our young 20 people interested in the police department. 21 Q. I would like to know why. 22 A. Because you only have 104 out of 1800 23 people. If they have a concern -- if we have a 24 concern it's generally not their concern. They're 25 still use to those old biases, the majority. The 64 30 1 2 majority still wanted Halstead here. Even though he admitted on National 3 TV that he did wrong by doing us wrong, they still 4 went to City Counsel and they rallied round him to 5 keep him; they didn't see anything wrong with that. 6 There were a lot of us that were 7 unjustly fired, including James here, and Chief 8 Fitzgerald brought those officers back and put them 9 in integrity unit; not only to protect them, but to 10 show others who didn't know who weren't in the room 11 when all this stuff was taking place, that these 12 officers not only didn't do anything wrong, but 13 they're also salvageable when they do do things 65 14 15 wrong. He's very compassionate, he's very 16 concerned about diversity. We've never had this 17 many African Americans here graduate in the Academy. 18 Now, we have four or five, seven when there use to 19 be two or three; seven in the last one. 20 These new officers are kind of 21 ballsy; not only are they on probation, but they're 22 holding board seats in our organization. They're 23 still on probation and can be terminated at any time 24 with no recourse, but that should show you where 25 were we in the past to where we are now. 66 31 1 There's a fear of what's going to 2 happen if we lose him. It was horrible especially 3 when you don't get support from the majority, the 4 people that are labor that are suppose to be 5 protecting you through process rights; we didn't get 6 it. They will tell you to your face, "we're not 7 doing anything". 8 4. Community Leaders: 9 Q. (2.) How would you describe 10 Mr. Fitzgerald's responsiveness to community 11 concerns? 12 13 I think you've already answered that, but if somebody else could reemphasize that for us? 67 14 A. (Glenn Lewis) You mentioned him showing 15 up at different events. The one thing that 16 impressed me recently during Thanksgiving, he showed 17 up and he didn't have his police uniform on, but he 18 came out with his son and had his joggers suit on. 19 If you looked at him you wouldn't have even thought 20 that wasn't the Chief. 21 Just that kind of personal 22 interaction and handing out boxes and getting 23 involved and passing out food to families and things 24 of that nature, you know. He didn't just show up 25 and leave after the event was over with, he hung 68 32 1 around about 45 minutes, an hour later just 2 engaging. 3 A. (Roy Hudson) We call it barbershop 4 conversation after it just having been that way, but 5 you know how we talk in barbershops, right? 6 It just so happen I was in uniform 7 getting my haircut, coming home and some people had 8 some questions about an unfavorable decision, the 9 Jackie Craig situation that you have probably heard 10 about. I called the Chief; I said there's some 11 people that have a question. He said where are you 12 at? 13 He came right on and sat down and got 69 14 his haircut and he was very open about that 15 situation. That kind of started a trend; it's 16 something we just started. We called it barbershop 17 community conversation; he said Roy, that was a good 18 idea. So we scheduled with barbershops just to have 19 open and honest and transparent conversations. 20 The people that are fussing, they 21 gravitated around me when I had an issue but they 22 didn't say anything when Halstead called a minister 23 against cops in their own church. 24 25 When you have a police officer speak up and say, wow, there's something going on here. 70 33 1 When you have all the activist, whether you like 2 them or not, some of them are the one's that are 3 speaking up against him now; they gravitated toward 4 me because of -- maybe their own agenda. 5 6 Q. What activist are you talking about? Police activist? 7 A. (Roy Hudson) No, the community activist. 8 Some of them have put out some wrong information. 9 I'll give you an example if I can. 10 Let's say Dr. Bell's church, you 11 know, I know he's spoken out openly against the 12 Chief. When I spoke out against the Chief we 13 developed what we call Unity In The Community 71 14 Coalition. It has grown tremendously since we first 15 started, but on one of our meetings he brought a 16 young lady in, Assistant Manager Valerie Washington; 17 she came in with a family and a young man claimed to 18 had been tased in the back of the head and unfairly 19 treated by police officers. 20 Myself and our treasurer, our 21 original secretary, we talked to that family after 22 the meeting and it sounded bad. Dr. Bell was like 23 the police is this and this and corrupt and he had a 24 whole crowd of people there. The Constable was 25 there, people from Fort Worth ISD, people from TCC; 72 34 1 they had the Board of Trustee and a whole church 2 full of people and they listened to this young lady 3 and her son talk about how they weren't fairly 4 treated. 5 Well, afterwards I talked to the 6 young lady, the parents and the young man. I asked 7 did they have a police report. He said, I have the 8 police report right here. 9 What do you see? Possession of 10 marijuana, possession of prohibited weapon, evading 11 arrest. So what I did is, I went back and I pulled 12 the video; it wasn't what they said it was. That 13 child was a student and somebody called in on him 73 14 and the police showed up, they chased him, they 15 tackled him. 16 When they tackled him a gun and dope 17 fell out of his pocket and he was actively trying to 18 reach for the gun; they could have shot him. They 19 used a less lethal technique, a Taser, which we are 20 trained on. When they pulled out the Taser instead 21 of a gun when he was moving around in the struggle, 22 one of the Taser probes hit him in the head; that 23 happens, that's collateral damage. 24 25 When I went back to talk to Dr. Bell about that. I explained he was misinformed by these 74 35 1 people and I would appreciate it if at the next 2 meeting you would straighten that out because you're 3 talking about the entire department. 4 The next meeting he didn't do it. In 5 fact, he said the same thing and I talked to him 6 about that. He said well, you just have a different 7 relationship with the Chief than I do; it had 8 nothing to do with my relationship with the Chief, I 9 like Dr. Bell. I don't have anything personal 10 against him. 11 In fact, he helped me when I was 12 going through my struggle because I was in this by 13 myself. When they say people got your back; when it 75 14 comes to a situation like this where you've got the 15 whole department and majority of them don't look 16 like you; the ones that looked like me they stood 17 way back. 18 I was on TV by myself speaking up 19 against the Chief and people from my own Board 20 stepped away because they were afraid of 21 retaliation. That's what we typically do; no 22 disrespect, but that's what we typically do in 23 situations like that especially when they talked 24 about losing your position and your shift and your 25 days off and your take-home car and the benefits 76 36 1 2 that come behind that. I never was afraid of that and I've 3 been here 23 years and I've never been in trouble. 4 I've never had a day off, never been counseled, 5 never had a wreck, my record is spotless. In this 6 day and age that's rare, but I'm speaking on someone 7 who has never been in trouble and supervisor. 8 What I'm saying is, when you have an 9 opportunity to correct the problem, you start to 10 look at that situation differently in reference to 11 relationships. I'm telling you what you put out 12 there is not factual. 13 What I appreciate about Chief 77 14 Fitzgerald is when we do have an issue he use to 15 call all three Presidents in when we had a critical 16 incident he would show us what he had. He would say 17 now I'm going to call our people, you know, the 18 community in and show them this because we have to 19 be transparent. 20 Well, Rick Van Houten, the President 21 of the POA said we can't do that because we need to 22 protect the due process rights of the officer. I 23 said, no, we need to be transparent and he let him 24 know, which I appreciate it, "let me make one thing 25 clear, you may be the President of the POA, but 78 37 1 you're not running this department. So I'm 2 removing -- I'm stripping you of any and all 3 responsibility that you thought you had, this is my 4 department." 5 I really appreciated that on that 6 end, he set the tone. So at the same time when he 7 goes to the meetings with the general membership 8 they only listen to him because they're not in the 9 room. Unfortunately through personal reasons and a 10 personal agenda he preached a different message 11 because he was a Halstead fan too. 12 13 A. (Chaplin Stoglin) To get a broader perspective, I know the officers are talking, maybe 79 14 the community can talk. I know he's been involved 15 in some chamber community issues. People normally 16 talk, but I know in Arlington where I live, he has 17 been very involved in talking to our Chief of Police 18 and been involved because you have the larger police 19 chiefs in the area. So I know he's been in some 20 chamber events and some other events that typically 21 we didn't see other people talking. 22 So I know he's even been to Arlington 23 which is the second largest city in Tarrant County 24 for some events and as the Chief of Police here to 25 be a visit there. 80 38 1 A. (Glenn Lewis) I think one issue we have 2 not addressed, perception is everything. 3 Unfortunately, you can't be all things to all 4 people. One of the concerns that some people have 5 addressed, even in our community, is that they maybe 6 didn't feel as though the Chief connected with 7 enough people. 8 I'm strategic in asking certain 9 question, because in the beginning I asked you what 10 pastors were in Baltimore. The Chief and I talk and 11 I always just let him know I'm just here just to 12 provide some insight, a different perspective. 13 One of the things I think is key if 81 14 he does go to Baltimore, I've expressed this to 15 Chief, you've got to get a community for you, your 16 wife and your son. Even if you don't join a church 17 in the Baltimore area, go visit the churches because 18 our people want to feel connected with you. 19 He had a long list of accomplishments 20 here in Fort Worth, Texas but people don't care 21 about that unless they can feel like they can touch 22 you and they know you. That was some of the 23 concerns, you know, that some people had, Dr. Bell 24 and some other people. It's probably because maybe 25 he didn't become a member of somebody's church. 82 39 1 Honestly, I'm speaking as a pastor. 2 A. (Roy Hudson) In my talking I think I kind 3 of got away from the FOP question. Typically the 4 culture here, there's a disconnect or with the 5 officers there's an anti-administration attitude 6 here stressed by the POA that you can't trust 7 anybody that's in command staff. 8 They're fighting for your rights and 9 the administration is against you, which is simply 10 not the case. That's probably why you're not 11 getting corporation from anyone. Now, you can talk 12 to any of us, we'll be more than happy to talk to 13 you but we don't make up the majority. Half of us 83 14 don't even go to the POA meetings because the things 15 that they do don't pertain to us specifically. 16 When we have tried to get them 17 involved in things -- when you were talking about 18 black or Hispanic, there's a negative connotation to 19 it anyway. So they have refused -- well, some in 20 the past, especially during Rick Van Houten's time, 21 they had refused to even participate in the 22 community events with us. 23 It's always like we're trying to 24 overthrow the government or something when you throw 25 black into something or Hispanic into something. So 84 40 1 to go back to that question, that is probably the 2 reason why you're not getting corporation from the 3 members. 4 A. (James Dunn) I'm going to be a little less 5 political correct. Van Houten has an issue with the 6 Chief and his followers carry on that same issue. 7 He got in some trouble with Fitzgerald and he didn't 8 like that; before that was never heard of 'cause he 9 had the good ole boy system. You just don't touch 10 the POA President, 'cause this is who I am and this 11 is what I do. He could have fired him; he held him 12 accountable and he got punished. So his kick-up is 13 the reason why you're getting negative feedback from 85 14 the POA. 15 4. Community Leaders: 16 17 Q. (7.) How has Commissioner Fitzgerald supported the immigrant community of Fort Worth? 18 A. (Roy Hudson) Well, I know that he's 19 involved with the local moss. Is that what you're 20 talking about? 21 22 23 Q. In general community, his general practices. A. (Glenn Lewis) If you looked at his Chief 24 Advisory Board, it has made up a diverse group 25 across our entire city. 86 41 1 A. (Vernell Sturns) In Texas we've got a 2 whole lot of immigrants; you've got to be sensitive 3 of it. 4 4. Community Leaders: 5 Q. (3.) How would you characterize CF's 6 ability to prioritize and connect with marginalized 7 community groups, i.e. race, gender, sexual 8 orientation, people with disabilities, the homeless? 9 A. (Randy Scott) As far as gender type 10 relationships, I don't think there's a general issue 11 with him not being involved in any of those groups. 12 I'm going to reverse that. I don't 13 think that's where any of the issues of the 87 14 community is about, it's basically been about race. 15 We were one of the first groups, when he first came 16 to town, had a reception to him to let him know how 17 important he was to the total community; we 18 spearheaded that perception. 19 Secondly, I was in a meeting with the 20 President of The Hispanic Chamber two days ago and 21 this similar issue came up. His name is John 22 Hernandez, I think he'll tell you the same thing I'm 23 about to tell you. A big issue here was Sanctuary 24 Cities and the Hispanic communities embraced the 25 idea of Sanctuary Cities so you had some splits 88 42 1 2 there within the Hispanic community. Basically a lot of them embraced it, 3 they marched about it; it was a big deal here in 4 Texas, big deal here in Fort Worth. The Hispanic 5 community rose up and said they would love for this 6 city to be a Sanctuary City. 7 My point to you on that, even though 8 there were rules and regulations concerning, I 9 guess, walking by being Hispanic or being arrested 10 because they could ask you for your papers. 11 Chief Fitzgerald went out of his way 12 as much as he could within the rules of the police 13 engagement to let the Hispanic community know that 89 14 the officers, under his command, wasn't going to be 15 running out there just grabbing Hispanic people and 16 telling them "give me your papers". 17 He made it clear to the officers that 18 that was not going to happen on his watch. So 19 that's the biggest thing I think that happened here 20 and it showed his leadership on that. 21 A. (Roy Hudson) As far as the LGBT, we have 22 representatives assigned in our department that 23 represent that community. 24 25 A. (James Dunn) We have a course as well that is taught by an alternate lifestyle officer 90 43 1 that teaches other officers how do deal with that 2 community; mandatory. 3 Q. Homeless too? 4 A. (James Dunn) Same thing with homeless, 5 autism, mental health, all those classes are 6 mandated through this Chief of how to deal with 7 diversity. Not everybody is going to be the normal 8 or what you're use to seeing; you need to learn how 9 to deal with other people's race, gender, their 10 ethnicities or their backgrounds and lifestyles. 11 Those are the things that he has 12 mandated through the training of the Academy that 13 I've seen personally. He sat on the Board and say 91 14 hey we need to get this, this and those classes. 15 I'd go out and get them and get the contracts signed 16 and classes were there and these officers were 17 mandated to go to training just like shooting or use 18 of force or non-lethal weapon and anything else, he 19 had these classes and made sure that the officers 20 were trained with diversity. 21 Q. What do you mean? 22 A. (James Dunn) So there's an LGBT Board and 23 there's members from that board that teaches other 24 officers that may not have that life style how deal 25 with that lifestyle or what things that might offend 92 44 1 them that we might not think is offensive. 2 There's certain words that are 3 offensive now as far as referring to some with a 4 particular gender. It's learning what's being 5 offensive to somebody whose never dealt with that. 6 A. (Roy Hudson) To follow up with what James 7 was saying from a training perspective, we have a 8 training that we have to go through constantly 9 because we're always in constant change for the 10 good. 11 We have to go through this thing 12 called Power DMS. Typically in the past when there 13 was new information or new change or a new general 93 14 order the Sergeant or the Supervisor would read what 15 it is and then you get it, you sign a sheet of paper 16 acknowledging that you received it. 17 Well, the accountability part it with 18 Power DMS is you have to read it and you have to 19 take a test at the end to get past it. You can't 20 just take the test again and again until you pass it 21 because that too was being monitored by your 22 supervisors who held you accountable. The 23 accountability came around the circle. You have to 24 validate that you know this information especially 25 when you get in trouble. 94 45 1 So you can't say you didn't know this 2 information because you have, it's documented and 3 you passed the test. 4 A. (James Dunn) We have a Tech Med Program 5 and PSTD program that no one in this area has. 6 1. Questions for All: 7 Q. (4.) How would you characterize CF's 8 ability to successfully investigate and discipline 9 officers if necessary? 10 My question is, we still have the 11 corrupt police still in the police department that 12 still have their same old network. 13 If he's selected as the Commissioner 95 14 in Baltimore how would he deal with cleaning what 15 Trump called the "swamp" that's in the police 16 department? 17 A. (Roy Hudson) I can tell you this 18 personally because I came out of his office. I 19 invite any of you to check, it's probably public 20 record, on the arbitration success rate here when 21 officers are disciplined. Since we're under Civil 22 Service Protection they go to an arbitrator and they 23 get their jobs back or the discipline changed. 24 25 Check the record, officers rarely have won their arbitrations because he handled it 96 46 1 2 straight up and the POA does not like that. Q. The reason why I said this is because 3 there was a test that was given out to other 4 officers in Baltimore. The guy they gave the test, 5 the people got promoted and he's still over there; 6 he got slapped on the wrist. 7 Q. Adding on to the Councilmen's question 8 too, I think that especially for the officers, it's 9 important for you guys to know that; in Maryland the 10 police officers actually have extra protection, so 11 they have a law enforcement officers bill of rights. 12 So he would have extra steps, it's 13 extremely hard to fire a police officer in Maryland. 97 14 A. (James Dunn) To piggy back off of that as 15 it relates to the POA Department, the good old boy 16 system, again, there was an officer that got in some 17 trouble and Fitzgerald held him accountable and 18 fired him rightfully so. 19 The POA got in an uproar and went to 20 bat for this particular officer. They all 21 surrounded him, had a press conference; they said 22 the Chief was wrong for firing him. They got 23 part-time jobs and set-up a GoFundMe account to 24 support this officer and his family and put his kids 25 on TV. They painted this beautiful picture of this 98 47 1 officer who had done wrong. 2 What he actually did was he shot a 3 black man that was unarmed with a shotgun and said 4 it was an accident. 5 6 A. (Roy Hudson) He showed the POA and myself the video. 7 A. (James Dunn) Fitzgerald held him 8 accountable because he lied. He said I don't 9 remember touching the trigger, it went off by 10 itself. No gun will fire unless you pull that 11 trigger, he shot that man and Fitzgerald fired him. 12 13 He went to arbitration and had all of this political stuff behind him. The Arbitration 99 14 lasted five days; on the second day of the 15 arbitration he quit the job and said he didn't want 16 his job back. He was glad they didn't indict him; 17 his lawyers advised him to take his stuff and keep 18 walking. 19 4. Community Leaders: 20 Q. (6.) Can you talk about how Chief 21 Fitzgerald implemented a standardized method to file 22 complaints against police and track progress of 23 cases and be transparent as possible with that 24 information? 25 A. (Roy Hudson) In one of the meetings they 100 48 1 were coming up with a way to put it on the Fort 2 Worth website, not to name the officer but to put it 3 out there; what the officer did, what the 4 allegations were and what the punishment was to make 5 it public for everyone to see. 6 A. (James Dunn) It's out there now, 7 arbitration, rules and everything for the police to 8 see. 9 Q. Has he put any new practices in place, new 10 policies in place, about how to handle them; a more 11 open way for the citizens to report them and that 12 kind of thing too? 13 A. (Roy Hudson) He just made it clear, this 101 14 15 is what we're about, total transparency. When we've had critical incidents 16 before it makes the news he calls those people that 17 are going to be boisterous. He wants them to see it 18 firsthand so the message doesn't get misconstrued. 19 He understands that the true message 20 is going to come from the people that's putting it 21 out, not a paper, not social media. He invites 22 reliable sources to let them know what information 23 he has. He does explain that most are doing it 24 right, but acknowledges that some are doing some 25 wrong things and are held accountable. 102 49 1 Q. Can you talk about how Dr. Fitzgerald 2 handled this recent incident with the camera footage 3 and the leakage? What does everyone think and how 4 was that situation handled? 5 A. (Roy Hudson) I wasn't involved in the 6 investigation. I know he was truly upset that the 7 two people he trusted, according to the 8 investigation, was violated. Through the internal 9 investigation and the information that was presented 10 to him he demoted two officers for exposing 11 information off the record. 12 13 They were upset with the Chief because initially it seemed he was giving them 103 14 preferential treatment because we had a race 15 problem. He's the one that provided all the factual 16 information about the things he was doing. 17 18 Q. When you say black officers "objected to the pole", what do you mean by that? 19 A. (Roy Hudson) Because our relationship 20 with the POA, especially the Board of Directors at 21 that time, we knew the agenda. The day before Chief 22 Fitzgerald was sworn in he asked me to meet him at a 23 restaurant. I was on the committee hiring 24 committee; of course I'm going to meet with him. 25 He said Rick Van Houten wanted to 104 50 1 meet with him but he wanted to make it clear that he 2 was going to be transparent with him and it's going 3 to be equal with everybody; it wasn't going to be 4 any behind the scenes kind of stuff. So when I met 5 with him Rick and his whole crew was surprised 6 because he was wanting either a favor or he was just 7 trying to feel him out. 8 We had an issue with officers being 9 arrested for alcohol related issues. Rick Van 10 Houten ordered a whole tray that took up half of 11 this table with shots trying to get the Chief to 12 drink and take shots with him, but the Chief was 13 very aware of that. 105 14 There was a Caucasian guy looking 15 over at the Chief and after about the fourth or 16 fifth time of Rick Van Houten trying to get CF to 17 take drinks, the Caucasian gentleman asked did he 18 know who he was. He told Van Houten that he knew he 19 was the same person that got dirt on the previous 20 Chief. He explained that he looks a little 21 different without the uniform on. He told Rick he 22 was a snake; that's a good man. If you do anything 23 to discredit him we are going to deal with you. 24 They were suppose to send 25 representatives from each association to talk to the 106 51 1 officials but they didn't include, as promised, and 2 I addressed that they neglected to include us in the 3 process. 4 5 Q. We've heard about the pole. Did you answer the pole questions? 6 A. (Roy Hudson) I responded, it was biased. 7 Q. As far as you know, did most black 8 9 officers respond or didn't respond? A. (Roy Hudson) We did not respond, but we 10 responded in e-mails because it was obvious the 11 questions were very biased. They weren't even 12 questions you could even think about, they were 13 just biased questions. They were very opinionated 107 14 questions and those aren't legitimate questions that 15 you ask anybody. The questions had condemnation to 16 them, there was nothing good, nothing objective. 17 Q. When we look at what the percentage is for 18 the answers, are you saying that if you don't have 19 black officers responding that's going to effect the 20 rates? 21 A. (James Dunn) Yes. 22 A. (Roy Hudson) I'll be honest with you, we 23 have more Hispanic officers than black officers. I 24 think as a whole if you put all of the officers of 25 color in the mix it would pretty much be equal. 108 52 1 If you're going to pole people, ask 2 any officer of color. Get the big picture because I 3 don't think we even make up three percent. We have 4 a concern with the POA; we've asked for equal seats 5 at the Board and we never got those equal seats. 6 In fact, even on the hiring committee 7 the POA had three members, the BPOA had two and the 8 LPOA had two. To go further than that, we had three 9 days of interviews and they allowed the POA to walk 10 out with the questions and I made a fuss about that. 11 I held it up on the second day and I said we're not 12 going to ask these questions because you-all have 13 compromised the whole interview process. They had 109 14 to call someone from human resources to make a 15 decision. 16 4. Community Leaders: 17 Q. (4.) What personal qualities make CF 18 successful/unsuccessful in his role here in Fort 19 Worth? They can be quick impressions. 20 A. (Roy Hudson) He's compassionate. He 21 cares about his officers. He cares about the 22 community; very hands on. Some people would say 23 he's a micromanager. Some people say he's on full 24 throttle all the time. He works you extremely hard. 25 A. (Glenn Lewis) I think he's very 110 53 1 thoughtful in his decision making process. It's a 2 rarity when a person may have to go back and rethink 3 a position and then change it, but I think he does 4 his due diligence. 5 A. (Roy Hudson) Innovative. One of the 6 things that I think he's been a little short on 7 y'all may need to help him with when he gets to 8 Baltimore with: 9 Like it or not the Police Chief of a 10 large city is a political job. You can't just be a 11 police officer, you have to be a politician as well 12 because perception is reality. You have to have 13 some PR people or some skills to sort of manage that 111 14 perception in the overall community and I don't 15 think he's done a good job of that here. 16 I've lived here 64 years, 17 representatives, community, in the state house; I've 18 been involved. A lot of the things I'm hearing here 19 today, I've never heard 'cause he didn't do a good 20 job of putting them out there. He needs a good PR 21 staff or somebody around him who is a politician. 22 A. (Estella Williams) I would just say that 23 he's supportive. From the standpoint of an 24 organization, I found that if he could not do 25 something that was asked of him he did solicit 112 54 1 support from others and not just let it drop. 2 A. (Glenn Lewis) He's extremely intelligent 3 to be innovative and proactive with things that no 4 one else has done in this state. He has put us on 5 the map in so many areas I couldn't have dreamed we 6 would have been in for the things we are doing in 7 our training facility. He's miles ahead of the 8 technology and what's going on and a people person. 9 He has love for all mankind, not just a black 10 officer or a white, your family, your kids; just 11 people in general. He may not be a politician but I 12 think he's a very humane person. 13 A. (Roy Hudson) Chief Fitzgerald knows 113 14 officers by name. I lacked one class from getting a 15 certificate. He asked Roy, why haven't you gotten 16 this certificate? I told him it doesn't pay me any 17 more than what I get to have the certificate. He 18 explained that shouldn't be the reason and that I 19 needed to elevate myself. He pushes all of us to be 20 educated through training. 21 A. (Vernell Sturns) I agree with Glenn, you 22 know, what you guys say today is what a chief ought 23 to be, it's not out in the community. I can 24 understand it's hard to try to engage with 25 everybody, but he's got to do a little better job. 114 55 1 I believe after listening to you guys he's done some 2 very dynamic things with that department, but I know 3 what it was like in '73. 4 5 Q. Why do you think Chief Fitzgerald wants this job? 6 A. (Roy Hudson) I don't think that he feels 7 appreciated for the work and progress that he's done 8 here. He's been here three years and he's a change 9 agent. For someone who has gotten us as being 10 recognized as the largest city for best practices; a 11 chief who has reduced crime by 20 percent overall 12 without being compensated, no raise, no nothing. 13 A. (Chaplin Stoglin) Please make sure he has 115 14 a performance evaluation every year. He hasn't 15 received one here in the city of Fort Worth since 16 he's been here. 17 Q. Where is this supposed to come from? 18 A. (Glenn Lewis) He's supposed to have one 19 every year. This chief has unfortunately got caught 20 up in a lot; some that is his fault and some is not. 21 What's not his fault is having a performance review. 22 What's not his fault is who is responsible to giving 23 him that review. The politics as I see, you have 24 city counsel folks who just do not favor him and 25 they overwhelm the city staff with that unfavorable 116 56 1 attitude. That may be one of the reasons why he has 2 not been reviewed. 3 Q. Based on your experiences would you say 4 that Chief Fitzgerald bears any responsibility for 5 this lapse or would you say this is just in city 6 hall? 7 A. (Vernell Sturns) Absolutely not. He's 8 not responsible for an evaluation. That is the 9 responsibility of the manager and the assistant city 10 manager he reports to. 11 A. (Chaplin Rich Stoglin) This request was 12 made back in February; no response for six months. 13 4. Community Leaders: 117 14 Q. (5.) What concrete steps has CF taken to 15 create positive points of contact between police and 16 community like athletic leagues; internship 17 programs; recognizing community leaders who have 18 successfully worked with the police? 19 20 A. The Police Chief just implemented the first Gala, youth fundraiser Gala. 21 A. Police Athletic League, Read To Win. 22 A. Midnight Basketball League. 23 A. We have a Criminal Justice Program at 24 Eastern Hills High School. We go talk about 25 procedural justice and police issues. 118 57 1 Now as far as CCPD Funds and things 2 of that nature, I know City Council is upset because 3 he won't release those funds which normally they 4 borrow from us to build buildings like convention 5 center and other things; he's refused to release 6 those funds. 7 We have an overage of police 8 officers. The officers have what they need to do 9 their jobs because he won't give up those funds. 10 The CCPD funds that the citizens vote for that we 11 get, you know it's supposed to go to the police 12 department; it stays in the police department and 13 that's a first. 119 14 Q. What does he use it for? 15 A. To get us the equipment that we need. To 16 get the officers that we have now that they complain 17 about; our Police Athletic League, the Read To Win. 18 Midnight Basketball, the overtime that we need to 19 have all these things staffed. That's where all 20 that comes from. 21 We actually have a cheerleading group 22 now; a professional cheerleader that comes out and 23 trains the little kids to come out to support our 24 PAL programs on the weekends. 25 4. Community Leaders: 120 58 1 Q. (1.) How would you describe 2 Mr. Fitzgerald's ability to effectively build 3 relationships with community leaders? Can you speak 4 to a specific example? 5 A. (Corletta Strickland) In the 6 conversations that I've had with CF he was telling 7 me some of the things that you guys are talking 8 about and I said that's wonderful, but the issue is 9 the citizens don't know it. What are you going to 10 do to fix that? 11 I can't remember the officer that was 12 there with him, but all I got was "we're working on 13 it". That was a year and a half ago and I haven't 121 14 seen the results. All of this is fabulous but we 15 have too many outlets for there not to be more 16 information in the community about what is going on 17 inside the police department that benefits the 18 department and the city, so that is our perception. 19 He's been invited to speak because we 20 have a community forum and we had a person from six 21 different law enforcement agencies to come and the 22 Fort Worth Police Department was not represented. 23 24 25 Q. What you're saying is he didn't build a relationship with the group that you represent? A. (Corletta Strickland) He has not. 122 59 1 A. (Roy Hudson) He's got a city to run. 2 Sometimes he's triple booked, he's on everyone's 3 schedule. The Mayor's office makes his schedule, 4 the city manager makes his schedule, the assistant 5 city manager makes his schedule; his own secretary 6 makes his schedule. 7 So I can say working in his office 8 sometimes he's triple booked. It's kind of like if 9 you go to an assessment assembly where you have to 10 look at all the tasks and you prioritize them, you 11 know, it's one of those situations where you've got 12 other people running your schedule and you're only 13 one person, but he is accessible. 123 124 Dav 2 Mondav, December 10., 2018 125 City Manager David Cooke and Assistant City Manager Jay Chapa Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to implement community-based policing practices? Cooke: The challenge when Chief Fitzgerald arrived was to change the culture of the Fort Worth Police Department and to address concerns that the city got away from community policing. There were two main ways to address this: (1) to be visible in the community, and (2) the police department had gotten away from the beat system. Chief Fitzgerald took the police department back to the beat system, with officers patrolling specific geographic areas. Chapa: In the 1990s the Chief set up a community policing system and introduced the beat system. Then the next chief eliminated the beat system in favor of a “Zone” approach. Chief Fitzgerald reintroduced beats, focused on neighborhoods, and re-strengthened ties between the community and the police department. Q: Why do you think Chief Fitzgerald wants this job? Chapa: Chief Fitzgerald is up for a challenge. He is into solving large problems. He starts from the big picture, and then drills down. NOTE: Chief Fitzgerald has approached both Cooke and Chapa about getting a “substantial pay raise.” They were not able to do that, so he may have wanted to pursue other options. They both said that Chief Fitzgerald is genuinely interested in trying to make a difference. Q: Could you talk about why evaluative tools are in place for Chief Fitzgerald? Chapa and Cooke say they are finalizing that now. He will be judged “accomplished.” He is doing well, but can still improve. He’s made huge strides improving the police department, particularly by implementing implicit bias training and de-escalation training. Among the negatives is the fact that policy changes are implemented slowly. Q: Who were some of Chief Fitzgerald’s best hires, and what made them assets to the department? Chief Fitzgerald created a new rank of Commander. This is a non-civil service rank that reports directly to him. Each Commander oversees one district. This move has been well received by the community. This was a great decision, and his hires were great. A few of the Commanders have moved up to Deputy Chief. Q: Could you speak about the officers who were demoted during the highly-publicized incident with Jacqueline Craig? The officer did not handle the Craig incident well. He arrested three African American women a mom and her two daughters. During the investigation, some info leaked to the media. A Deputy Chief and Assistant Chief did this. Chief Fitzgerald investigated and demoted them both. One subsequently left the department. Q: Can you speak to a time when Chief Fitzgerald’s leadership failed the City of Fort Worth? Cooke: I’ve made him accountable for his budget. There are to be no pay raises if he overspends his budget, but the police department continues to overspend. It should be up to the Chief to keep his Department in line. 126 Chapa: But he has reigned in overtime spending. He did this by requiring more justification and scrutiny. Overtime spending has dropped $3-$4 million. Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to explicitly address institutional racism and bias? Cooke: Chief Fitzgerald voluntarily joined the DOJ program National Initiative. This looks at the training regimen in the police department. He implemented implicit bias training, de-escalation training. He has also instituted more consistent discipline with in the police department, but of course there is more work to do here. Chapa: The POA no confidence vote (referring to the survey) stems from Chief Fitzgerald’s efforts to hold supervisors accountable. Chief Fitzgerald did not want the buck to get passed up the chain of command. Q: How has he addressed institutional bias? Chapa: He’s done a lot of work here. Chief Fitzgerald came in to a zero-tolerance police department. He has eliminated zero tolerance. Cooke: He changed the name of a unit from “Zero Tolerance” to “Special Response” to help indicate a change of approach and policy. Q: Did he just change the name of the unit or did he change the practices of the unit? Chapa and Cooke say he changed the practices. There are fewer community complaints about disparate impact than before his tenure. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? Chapa: No Cooke: No Q: Can you speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald successfully negotiated a difficult item in the police union’s MOU, such as pension reform, overtime policies, etc.? Cooke: He has not been chief since we’ve had to negotiate. He allows the POA to attend command staff meetings. Chapa also attends. Q: How does Chief Fitzgerald approach police recruitment? Chapa: We do not have the problem of too-few officers. There are strong ties between communities to individual officers. This is not to say that we don’t deal with institutional racism and harmful traditions. The POA has improved as well, which helps Chief Fitzgerald. Chief Fitzgerald has not changed the evaluation process, but has changed some of the metrics. Q: Can you speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald was able to identify a weakness in his leadership, seek out training, and successfully implement lessons learned? Cooke: Chief Fitzgerald is a very confident man. He came here with a totally different perspective on what the police department’s responsibility to community is. Chapa: Chief Fitzgerald would likely stand by his decision in the Craig case, but would handle the announcement and follow-up differently. Q: Do you consider Chief Fitzgerald to be a responsible steward of the police department’s budget? Cooke: This is a challenge for him. He didn’t take the burden on taxpayers seriously at first. But he has worked to improve accountability. The biggest budgetary challenges are patrol and special 127 events. Chapa: The police are not convinced they have enough officers. But when they want to create a new unit, then of course they find they have plenty of resources for that. Q: How would you contextualize the Fort Worth Police Union’s survey finding that 84 percent of the police force believed that morale declined under Chief Fitzgerald? Cooke: This is about holding police officers and supervisors accountable for doing their job as supervisors and holding officers accountable. The POA says officers say there is uneven discipline but that is because discipline used to come from the Chief and Command Staff, but now it is coming from lieutenants and supervisors. Q: Did Chief Fitzgerald incorporate an equity lens? Cooke: Yes, no doubt. Chapa: Absolutely. Chief Fitzgerald will press officers on race and equity issues at command staff meetings. Q: Can you cite an example of a policy or practice that Chief Fitzgerald instituted to deal with institutional racism? A: Can’t think of one 128 Councilman Brian Byrd Statement: “There’s a part of my district that’s crime-riddled and I’ve been pleased with the police department’s response to crime. It’s down 10 percent. The chief put someone over that area and we speak weekly, if not more. I’ve been very pleased.” Q: Would you reconfirm Chief Fitzgerald? A: I don’t have any reason not to. He was particularly helpful to me during the Senate Bill 4 discussions that we had last summer. It was an immigration bill that the Texas Senate put forward, which basically said that any law enforcement official could ask for papers anytime they wanted. We were concerned that it would be open season on undocumented individuals and we didn’t want to see that in Fort Worth. Chief Fitzgerald picked up the phone and told me what the plan would be. Fast-forward almost a year and a half now and his predictions were correct. It’s not great but … his predictions came true. Q: In your opinion, how has Chief Fitzgerald handled any disagreements with the Council? A: I’ve asked him a couple of times in a public meeting where I was disappointed with something that happened. Sometimes he did well and sometimes he didn’t. When I asked him some specifics about human trafficking, it was ‘hey can you stop bugging me about this? Why don’t you trust me to take care of this?’ I get his frustrations…. Sometimes I thought he was too thin skinned. Q: How has he implemented top to bottom policing changes? A: There was a situation where the chief wanted his folks in the top commander spots. It required a Council vote to be able to get those new positions. I wanted in particular a certain commander and the way civil service works you don’t have a choice. Chief Fitzgerald looked at it and said there needed to be more communication…. It was supposed to not increase the budget. He showed us how they’d move stuff around… the police department over spent their budget last year. Q: How does he approach police recruitment to ensure it’s representative of the community? A: That’s a big discussion. The taskforce report says the recruits aren’t representative. What we found was that the recruits didn’t represent the minority population enough. We saw that in recruits and in leadership. That’s something we need to work on. The chief has a lot of support from the minority community. They’re coming tomorrow night to speak out for us to keep him. I’ve heard from residents who want us to match what Baltimore is offering to keep him. Everybody’s been asking is he staying or is he going. I can’t hire or fire the police chief. Q: How has Chief Fitzgerald addressed institutional racism? A: He has a lot of support from the black pastors’ association. They really like him. There’ve been a couple pastors who’ve come out against him because of how he handled the officer Martin incident. When I talk to police officers the word is in a police department this big we’re going to have some bad apples but we try very hard to get rid of them. I thought that the way that 129 they responded to the Senate Bill 4 situation was well done. We put a new policy in the department so we’d be in line with state law. There were memos and messages. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: I can’t give a specific example. Q: Has Chief Fitzgerald implemented a policy you didn’t agree with? A: I can’t think of anything. I’m having a hard time to get our police department to stop arresting the victims of human trafficking. It doesn’t work to get the victims. He’s moved some resources toward combating human trafficking. But not enough, in my opinion. Q: Why do you think Chief Fitzgerald applied to come to Baltimore? A: If I had to guess, I’d say he’s an east coast guy and this gets him closer. There have been some real rocky things here. He’s had to receive some real calling out from citizens who’ve spoken out about how he dealt with the Jacqueline Craig thing. On the other hand he stood tall and pressed on through it. I can only speculate. There were people who felt very strongly that the officer should have been arrested. 130 Councilman Cary Moon Q: Would you re-confirm Chief Fitzgerald? Why or why not? A: Yes. He is the only chief I’ve worked with. He is strong on community engagement. Overall he’s done a good job. Crime is down and the police department’s relationship with citizens has improved. Q: Can you speak to a time when Chief Fitzgerald’s leadership failed the city of Fort Worth? A: Early on he made poor personnel decisions, but this is a common problem with new executives. His hiring decisions over the last few years have been much better. He did not being anyone with him from past departments. Q: Do you consider Chief Fitzgerald to be a responsible steward of the police department’s budget? A: Yes and no. Last August the police department asked for an $8 million budget increase. Moon was the only council member to vote against. But two weeks ago, there were three facilities projects completed, and all three came in on time and under budget. Q: Can speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald was able to tactfully share difficult information or disagree with council? A: Chief Fitzgerald was forthcoming with the Council on the Craig incident. Moon disagreed with Chief Fitzgerald’s position on the sanctuary city issue. Chief Fitzgerald did not support Texas Senate Bill 4, but Moon did. Moon didn’t like how Chief Fitzgerald approached immigration detainers either. But he says they disagreed while maintaining dialogue. Q: Can you speak to CF’s ability to conduct and implement “top to bottom” policy review changes? A: He implemented the beat system, and added the Commander positions. His officers are engaging schools, attending town halls, and participating in the community. Q: How was Chief Fitzgerald able to implement training programs for officers around constitutional policing, implicit bias, and community based policing? A: Moon advocated with Chief Fitzgerald and his assistant chief to improve training and institute programs on better interactions with autistic children. Chief Fitzgerald implemented these programs, and Moon appreciated that. Q: Who were some of Chief Fitzgerald’s best hires, and what made them assets to the department? A: Chief Fitzgerald has made a lot of good hires. He’s given folks a chance. He’s made very good decisions with his commander hires. Q: Why do you think CF wants this job? A: Chief Fitzgerald likes police work and is up for a challenge. He’d like to make more money. Mostly, he’d like to take his career to another level. Q: How does CF approach police recruitment? A: Fort Worth Police Department struggles with recruitment like any other department. He has begun approaching high schools, community colleges, and four-year colleges, including HBCUs. Moon says the police department is still short officers, but isn’t sure how it compares. 131 Q: Could the fact that Chief Fitzgerald hasn’t received an evaluation or a pay raise contributed to his decision to apply for the job in Baltimore? A: Moon thinks this would be true of anyone. Q: We’ve heard a lot about the beat system in Fort Worth. Can you explain how that system works? A: Moon says that although he cannot explain the intricacies of the beat system, he knows property crime in his district is down and that overall crime is down. Q: Baltimore is tasked with policing gang and drug commerce related activity. Does Fort Worth face similar issues? If so, how has CF addressed them? A: Moon cites some recent successes on this: a major sex trafficking organization was taken down, some recent large gang busts, and other high level arrests. Q: How would you contextualize the Fort Worth Police Union’s survey finding that 84 percent of the police force believes that morale declined under Chief Fitzgerald? A: The last POA president, who opposed Chief Fitzgerald, was the one who pushed the survey and the one who framed it. Over the last year and a half there have been improvements in the relationships between Chief Fitzgerald and officers. Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to explicitly address institutional racism/bias? A: Moon is happy with how Chief Fitzgerald has handled the situations. He feels Chief Fitzgerald has “taken the side of the process. In the face of criticism, you have to go through the process.” During the Craig incident he emphasized due process. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: Could not provide a specific policy. Q: Can you speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald successfully implemented a departmentwide technology update? Like a records management update? A: Chief Fitzgerald implemented the body camera program in Fort Worth. Separately, He’s had success getting donations of vests and body cameras for his officers. 132 Mayor Betsy Price Q: How would you rate Chief Fitzgerald’s performance? A: I think he’s done an excellent job. I hate to see him go. He stepped in at a time that was really difficult. It was a time where we had our biggest racial incident. We’d danced around the edges of it. He had two of his top lieutenants who were accused of leaking evidence and that’s hard for anybody to step into a situation like that. Joel handled it and did a good job. He had not been in a city this large. It was a big leap and it took him awhile but I think he got there. Managing a 2100plus force was a lot larger than he’d ever had. He had two in his command staff who were in the running for that job. There was some friction there and that’s to be expected. But we wanted an outside candidate. We needed some cultural change. He did a nice job working with the POA. They can be very difficult. They can be wonderful partners but also very difficult. He’s done a nice job working with the Race and Culture Task Force. There were more challenges than he was expecting at the time. It’s not a walk in the park in cities nowadays. But Joel has done a good job. Q: How would you rank the diversity of his staff? A: I think he’s struggled a bit. The POA has fought him at every turn. The two folks who he wanted to move up were the ones who got accused in this Craig incident and that was a setback for him. His staff probably isn’t as diverse as he’d like or we’d like. You can’t just force people into diversity. You can’t just leap them up from Corporal. Some of his best people are Corporals. He’s put in six commanders and that’s given him the ability to move some of those people up and that gave him some diversity there. Q: Was there an incident involving Chief Fitzgerald’s son? A: His son took the test here and couldn’t pass it. If there were rumblings they didn’t reach us. Anytime you have somebody that has a child or cousin take the test they’re going to grumble. He wasn’t picked. He didn’t have a high enough score. Had he been one to force him through then we would have had a problem. But he didn’t. Q: Why do you think Chief Fitzgerald wants the job in Baltimore? A: I don’t know. It took me by surprise that he was looking. For one thing he’s from that area on the East Coast. I think he’d like to go back. Chiefs are notorious for moving on after three or so years. Q: Why hasn’t Chief Fitzgerald received a performance review? A: His review is done by his direct boss, Jay Chapa. For whatever the reason Chief Fitzgerald thinks it should be David Cooke. Before I was elected the previous chief thought he reported to the Mayor. We needed to keep the politics out of it. The pay raise deal. He wanted one we felt like he was at a good spot. His recommendation was not to raise it right now. We fund the budget Oct. 1 and they do reviews in September. He was getting three or four percent but that wasn’t what he wanted. Q: Has Chief Fitzgerald been a responsible steward of the police department budget? A: I think that he has created a budget staff that will be responsible. We really had an issue with our police department and their budget. It wasn’t Joel’s doing. The prior chief thought the budget was just a guideline and they constantly ran over it. David Cooke said ‘you will meet this budget or you will come back to us and Council and say why.’ They did a good job this year. They were a little over but it was a lag from some carryover. I think he has a better handle on the budget. 133 Q: Has Chief Fitzgerald’s leadership failed the city? A: No. Not really. There were some dicey issues during the Craig incident. But I made some mistakes too. I suspect the situation with his chief that was accused of leaking could have been handled differently. But you learn from those incidents and move on. We have the gangs but we have the gang unit that’s done a pretty good job. About 15 years ago Fort Worth had a really bad gang problem. The police department and the District Attorney have done a nice job. Some of those leaders we sent to jail 15-20 years ago are coming home. But Joel and his command staff have done a nice job of implementing a team that looks after the repeat offenders. Joel works closely with the district attorney. Q: How has he addressed institutional racism and bias? A: He’s been very good …we’ve held several town halls. We’ve had a task force that’s done a really in depth look at this issue. I think that he’s really trying. Everybody’s trying but I don’t know that anyone has the silver bullet for it. Q: Talk about the survey from POA that gave a no confidence in Chief Fitzgerald A: Political. It’s very political. A whole lot of that is pension driven. We’re in the process of a very difficult pension situation right now. Some of that is to try and sway Council on the side of not changing the pension. Joel had talked to them about getting in line on this pension thing. They don’t like it and I don’t blame them. But they won’t like it more if it goes bankrupt. Q: Have you been impressed with Chief Fitzgerald’s hires? A: Charles Ramirez has done an excellent job. He’s probably the highest-ranking Hispanic. Ed Krause, a deputy chief, has really grown under Joel. I think he’s done a nice job grooming officers who are now commanders. He’s done an excellent job in the neighborhoods working with our Neighborhood Police Officers. I’m hearing really good things in association meetings about the NPO’s. He’s involved in a big city chiefs mentoring program. Q: Do officers feel that they have the support of Chief Fitzgerald? A: I think so. There’s always some, no matter where you go who aren’t happy. I’d keep him if I could. I’m not real happy with how this has shaken out. It was the response when he came back and simply demanded a raise. But I would keep him. Q: Have there been times when he’s disagreed with elected officials? A: He’s very tactful. He’s a very good speaker. We really haven’t had any major disagreements. Q: Any ways Chief Fitzgerald has implemented data driven policies or implemented tech updates? A: The body cams. We’ve changed how they’re handled. The policy on the in-car dash cams is another example. He’s very good at collecting data to use for officer discipline. Q: How has he helped combat racism within the police department? A: The homeless community has a whole new unit working with them. He’s had additional training for every officer on the force. Some of the old hands obviously go kicking and screaming but some of the younger officers understand. I think it’s slowly turning the wheel. When we get our recap of the year we will see some changes. We saw some last year, which was better, and I’m hoping that this year is even better. 134 Crime as a whole has gone down. Violent crime has gone up a little. They’ve done an excellent job focusing on human trafficking. You’re going to expect that to rise because they’re in the community more and receiving more complaints.” Q: How has Chief Fitzgerald worked with the Immigrant community? A: They’re picked up only if they have outstanding warrants. We don’t ask for anyone’s papers. If you have warrants we’ll pick them up and the sheriff will handle it from there. Senate Bill 4 had all of the Hispanic community up in arms. It didn’t mandate that we had to ask for papers at every stop. Q: Can you speak to his ability to implement top to bottom changes and enhance equity? A: Everything we do is being looked at through an equity lens. We have a formal policy. The Council put it out. It covers everything from crime to our selection of fire department hires to the installation of streetlights. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: I can’t give a specific example. 135 Mayor Pro Tem Dennis Shingleton and Councilman Jungus Jordan Q: Would you re-confirm Chief Fitzgerald? Why or why not? A: Shingleton: Very bright, good demeanor, calming. A: Jordan: Intelligent, calm demeanor, handles adversity well. Q: What information was most helpful in assessing Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to do his job? A: Shingleton: Officers have targets on their backs these days. You have to assess the ability to handle, and he’s proven that he can do that. A: Jordan: He is big on community policing. He’s really enhanced police department’s ability to reach out to the community. Q: How would you describe CF’s ability to implement community-based policing practices? A: Jordan: He reinforces policies in support of community policing. He has helped calm the waters. A: Shingleton: He instituted changes to the chain of command and the organizational structure He brought more senior people in the police department down to the neighborhood level. Q: Could you talk about how he’s handled the police department’s budget? A: Shingleton: Chief Fitzgerald beefed up the police department budget, and he went over budget once. He knows how to make things work. He’s made good use of the Crime Control Prevention District funds. (These are funds generated from a sales tax increase assessed downtown. The funds benefit the Police Department.) A: Jordan: When it comes to the budget, Chief Fitzgerald takes the approach that it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission. He goes for budgetary items that he feels the police department’s needs. Q: Could you talk about Chief Fitzgerald’s implementation of de-escalation training? A: Jordan: Ministers will attest to the difference in officer response. Chief Fitzgerald stood tall during the Craig incident. There have been many improvements since that incident. Chief Fitzgerald treats people with respect. Q: Why do you think Chief Fitzgerald wants this job? A: Shingleton: He’s an east coast guy and probably just wants to go home Q: Did Chief Fitzgerald incorporate an equity lens in policy implementation and tracking? A: Jordan: Hires for command staff “Commanders” have been diverse and done with an equity process. In fact, this has created some controversy in the department. Q: Can speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald was able to tactfully share difficult information or disagree with council? A: Jordan: Council was skeptical of commander positions. He came up with the funds internally to pay for them. The Council challenged him for an explanation. A: Shingleton: He handled these questions well and responded appropriately. Q: Can you speak to CF’s ability to conduct and implement “top to bottom” policy review changes? A: The Commander positions would be relevant to this. He also created a new patrol division in the fastest growing part of the city. 136 Q: We heard in an earlier meeting with community leaders about a time when Chief Fitzgerald missed a community meeting with prominent citizens. Can you speak to this? A: Shingleton: If Chief Fitzgerald missed a meeting or invite that would be out of the ordinary. A: Jordan: That is not representative of his overall approach. One group of ministers want to keep him and one want to get rid of him, so you have to take these things with a grain of salt. Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to explicitly address institutional racism and bias? A: Shingleton: Chief Fitzgerald emphasizes equal treatment. A: Jordan: Fort Worth reached out to the National League of Cities for guidance, and Chief Fitzgerald has been an active participant in that effort. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: Shingleton: No A: Jordan: No 137 Councilwoman Ann Zadeh Q: Would you re-confirm Chief Fitzgerald? Why or why not? A: Yes. He is responsive to citizens’ needs. No complaints about his service. Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to implement community-based policing practices? A: This is very important to me. I represent the urban core. Chief Fitzgerald has done strong work with various groups. Q: Who were some of Chief Fitzgerald’s best hires, and what made them assets to the department? A: It was a good decision to institute the Commander position. Chief Fitzgerald has made good decisions in his tenure. Q: Why do you think Chief Fitzgerald wants this job? A: Don't know Q: Have Chief Fitzgerald’s commander hires been diverse and equitable? A: We’ve been focused on this issue throughout City government. I think he’s made good strides here. Q: Do you consider Chief Fitzgerald to be a responsible steward of the police department’s budget? A: There have been some overtime issues. He manages the regular police department budget as well as the CCPD budget well. The police department has been tightening belts since 2008. The police department has the funding necessary to cover the positions they have. Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to explicitly address institutional racism and bias? A: Some communities have historically not had the same access to the police department and City government. He’s done good outreach work to all the communities of Fort Worth. He has a good liaison system. Chief Fitzgerald has instituted policy changes to improve the treatment during arrests of people who identify as transgender. Q: How was Chief Fitzgerald able to implement training programs for officers around constitutional policing, implicit bias, and community based policing? A: There is ongoing training for officers, including re-training. Officers in Fort Worth get the most up-to-date training. Q: Did Chief Fitzgerald incorporate an equity lens in policy implementation and tracking? A: Yes. He has continued to carry this out. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: I can’t give a specific example. Q: Can you speak to a time when Chief Fitzgerald’s leadership failed the city of Fort Worth? A: The Craig incident would be one. But it was not a real option to fire that officer. He could, however, have communicated better during this incident. 138 Q: Baltimore is tasked with policing gang and drug commerce related activity. Does Fort Worth face similar issues? If so, how has Chief Fitzgerald addressed them? A: He has carried out diversion programs. Q: Can speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald was able to tactfully share difficult information or disagree with council? A: He handles this well. Q: How would you contextualize the Fort Worth Police Union’s survey finding that 84 percent of the police force believes that morale declined under Chief Fitzgerald? A: This does not seem statistically accurate and doesn’t correspond with my anecdotal conversations with officers. Q: Can you cite specific examples that would speak to Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to implement community-based policing practices? A: She cites the PAL and a school outreach program with officers visiting schools to teach children to read. Q: How would you characterize Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to successfully investigate and discipline officers if necessary? A: Chief Fitzgerald did not do anything incorrectly but I don’t have a ton of information. Q: How does Chief Fitzgerald approach police recruitment? A: Chief Fitzgerald has implemented innovative, social media-focused approaches, which are popular and effective. Officers have relationships with their neighbors, and are part of their communities. Q: Can you speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald successfully implemented a departmentwide technology update? Like a records management update? A: No knowledge of this. Q: Can you speak to Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to implement data driven policing practices? A: E3 Report. He attempts to inform the public about how and why they do what they do based on data. Q: What would you say negative or positive about Chief Fitzgerald? A: Positive: I’m not happy he wants to leave! Negative: he can be long-winded Q: How are his relationships with community groups? A: Excellent. He is willing to reach out and attend meetings. He is very accessible. Q: Can you speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald was able to identify a weakness in his leadership, seek out training, and successfully implement lessons learned? A: Most of his issues relate to trying to learn a new department and find his footing. 139 Councilwoman Kelly Allen Gray “Fort Worth is a policing community. Since 2016, when we had the incident with Jacqueline Craig, community policing has been one of the foundations of our city. Having police out in the community and having relationships. Of the candidates, including our internal candidate that was on that interview panel, Chief Fitzgerald really seemed to be the candidate who would bring community policing here to Fort Worth, wrap his arms around it, embrace it and make it better. For me, that’s what he’s continued to do and that was my piece that I really liked about Chief Fitzgerald and it’s the thing I like about him now. He’s not afraid to be in the community. Joel talks a lot so you have to rein him in. but he’s not afraid to face the heat.” Q: Talk about his ability to directly address inequity, racism and bias. A: If you look at who our team is now, if you look at our assistant chiefs, our deputy chiefs, our commanders, those faces look very different now then when I first came on Council in 2012. My husband was Fort Worth PD and I’m 25 years into this. Just the whole piece of who is sitting at the table is very different. I always ask cops what they think about the chief. One of the things everyone always says is that the things he’s put in place are better. He understands what it’s like to be in patrol. People didn’t know who their neighborhood police officers were. I’m not trying to be on the Joel Fitzgerald bandwagon but I just see things from a different level. For the last 18 months we’ve been going through this Race and Culture Task Force. When he came here he looked at who was running the top layer of the police department and when you looked at that it didn’t look like the City of Fort Worth. So adjusting that was a huge change. They didn’t like that he was putting some color there and putting people there who had never had an opportunity to lead and they’re doing well. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: I don’t know. Q: When has his leadership failed the City of Fort Worth? A: I think everyone’s leadership failed during the incident of Jacqueline Craig. Q: Why does he want to come to Baltimore? A: I don’t know. I recently told him, ‘you know, in Baltimore they don’t like the police.’ We were sitting at lunch. He told me what was going on. We’re sitting on an aisle and over the course of the hour when we’re at lunch easily 10 people stopped by and talked about how great of a job he’s doing. In Fort Worth, if you take the Craig incident out of play, people generally like the police. Q: Does Chief Fitzgerald work well with the police union? A: No, but they don’t work well with anybody. Joel did something that the other police chiefs have never done and that was the beginning of the end of their relationship. The past POA president was at a conference and they had a fight. Joel sat them all down and there were days off without pay and they didn’t like that. That had never happened. Q: Has Chief Fitzgerald implemented data-drive policies for the police department? A: I know they use data, but I can’t provide specific examples. Q: If there was a time when he had to relay difficult information, did he do it tactfully? A: He’s never acted in a way that was inappropriate. When we talk about the commanders, Joel 140 did something that had never been done. He passed over a whole group of people who tested well but weren’t good leaders of people. What he did, when he put people in those commander positions, he chose good people. In doing that, a whole group of people were then able to become sergeants and lieutenants. It created this whole tension among the union because they said he was playing favoritism. Q: Would you vote to reconfirm Chief Fitzgerald? A: Absolutely. Do I want to host this meeting? Hell no. I don’t want my chief to leave. I like my chief. We all have issues. Do I think he’s doing a good job in Fort Worth? Yes. Do I think he’ll do a good job in Baltimore? Absolutely. I’m just a little selfish. Q: What are your thoughts about citizens participating in police discipline? A: We have citizens who are on the zoning board. They do a lot of things. They patrol the streets. I wouldn’t be opposed to implementing a citizens review board. Q: How has Chief Fitzgerald dealt with violent crime without violating people’s rights? A: We haven’t had that issue. We have a couple of pockets of places that have issues but the issues have not really come from when the police go in. 141 Bill Thornton, President and CEO, Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to implement community policing? A: I was fortunate to be a part of the selection process and the interviewing of all the candidates. I can tell you from the get-go from all the folks we interviewed he was the strongest candidate and he has not done anything to change my opinion. I am not close enough to the inner working to address this specifically. But I was part of his outreach over a six-month period when he had his leaders assess their community engagement from top to bottom. Q: How has he built relationships within the community? A: I think it’s excellent. No, he’s not perfect. He’s learned some things while on the job. He’s worked very hard at being engaged in the community. I view him very favorably. Q: How has he supported the immigrant community? A: He’s been pretty steadfast in dealing with the community in a responsible way. He’s not overbearing in any kind of way. Q: What can you say about his ability to successfully investigate and discipline officers? A: Any police chief is going to face challenges. The Jacqueline Craig incident was challenging. He’d be the first to tell you that he probably should have gotten in front of the community and shared what the steps would be to a resolution. Q: What are your thoughts about him applying for the job in Baltimore? A: I want Chief Fitzgerald to stay here. Once you’ve been a police chief in a community… I’ve seen a few police chief’s come and go and I’ve seen their tenures be challenging. I think he just wants to kind of flip the page. I think he loves what he’s doing. Q: What are some of his personal qualities that led to his success? A: I admire his integrity. He is a very warm and genuine individual and does his job with a lot of passion. Those are qualities that are very appealing to me. Q: How has Chief Fitzgerald addressed bias within the department? A: There’s a concerted effort on his part to be evenhanded. It’s been a high priority for him and in certain cases it may have gone a little sideways with the police force. I think there could have been some riffs because of his passion for equitable treatment. Q: Can you think of a specific policy Chief Fitzgerald implemented to deal with racism and inequity? A: I do not know how he has dealt with this. Q: Has he been responsive to the needs of the community? A: He asked the community to come in and spend time with him to help him understand their concerns and to focus his policies. Q: Are there qualities that you see in the commissioner that would be challenges? A: He’s not perfect. He’s not a saint. But there’s nothing that stands out. I think his team does a fabulous job working with the business community. Q: In your opinion, what’s the reaction on the ground from the business community in Fort Worth? A: I attended a breakfast of business leaders recently and there was not a person in the room that 142 wants to see Chief Fitzgerald leave. I just want to applaud the due diligence that you’re doing, but leave him alone. I don’t want your luck to be too good. 143 Panel Discussion at Greater St. Stephens First Church Attendees  Pastor B.R. Daniels, Jr.  Bishop M.D. Kirkland  Dr. Michael Bell  Vance Keys  Sgt. Kevin Fitchett (Ret.)  Jimmy Blackwell  Jacqueline Craig 144 1 1 CITY OF BALTIMORE TOPIC INTERVIEWS 2 3 4 5 RE: CHIEF JOEL FITZGERALD DECEMBER 10TH, 2018 6 7 8 9 10 11 GREATER ST. STEPHENS FIRST CHURCH 3728 EAST BERRY FORT WORTH, TEXAS 76105 145 12 13 14 BERNARD C. "JACK" YOUNG 15 COUNCIL PRESIDENT 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 146 2 1 Interviewees 2 3 1. Pastor B.R. Daniels, Jr. 4 2. Bishop M.D. Kirkland 5 3. Dr. Michael Bell 6 4. Vance Keys 7 5. Kevin Fitchett 8 6. Jimmy Blackwell 9 7. Jacqueline Craig 10 11 Baltimore Delegation 147 12 1. Bernard Young 13 2. Sharon Green Middleton 14 3. Robert Stokes 15 4. Brandon Scott 16 5. Lester Davis 17 6. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Michael Huber 148 3 1 2 1. Questions for All: Q (2.) How would you describe CF's ability 3 to implement community-based policing practices? 4 Can you speak to a specific example? 5 A (Kevin Fitchett) I only worked one year 6 with Fitzgerald, I was retiring when he came in. I 7 have not seen him implement any community policing 8 practices. Fitzgerald came to this police 9 department because our previous Chief, Jeff 10 Halstead, was proven to be through outside 11 investigations, racist in his applications in 12 dealing with Fort Worth Officers and with the 13 community. 149 14 When Fitzgerald came in because of 15 our constant meeting, that being the BPOA with the 16 city council the mayor and the City Manager. His 17 only job was to make things better in the police 18 department racially between the police department, 19 officers and black community and he made it worst. 20 During this time he did not come up 21 with any policing ideas that I can give you an 22 example that would make this man qualified to be 23 your next chief. 24 25 A (Vance Keys) If you want examples, he's exacerbated the racial relationships between 150 4 1 minorities in Fort Worth and the police department. 2 There was an officer that fired his weapon and shot 3 an unarmed African American as he was following 4 commands and placing a stick in front of his 5 residence on the ground. 6 The officer shot him, blew off part 7 of his arm, was subsequently indicted and Joel 8 Fitzgerald refused to fire this officer. He only 9 waited until after there was a hung jury and then he 10 terminated the officer after there was a community 11 outrange. 12 13 There's numerous incidents. There was an incident where African Americans were walking 151 14 armed, which is there constitutional right to do; 15 the police officers responded, they disarmed these 16 black males, they put them down, they searched them, 17 they seized their weapons and they ran their weapons 18 for warrants or stolen. You can't do that. 19 I was team division captain of 20 downtown Fort Worth where we had protests by 21 primarily Caucasian groups and this never took 22 place. They marched in front business leaders, they 23 marched in front of babies, they marched in front of 24 everybody with weapons and this was never done after 25 the fact. 152 5 1 I told Fitzgerald in a community 2 meeting that's wrong, that's legal, we can't condone 3 that; he said he puts officer safety first. There 4 is no officer safety issue, that's a constitutional 5 right that those people have; you can't abridge 6 their rights based on an officer's feeling. 7 Subsequent to that he coached a 8 supervisor on how to tell an officer to write a 9 report so it wouldn't look so bad. So basically 10 you're coaching officers on how to violate 11 somebody's rights. 12 Q I was more interested in the community 13 policing. 153 14 A (Michael Bell) There is no community 15 policing. We're not oblivious to the politics of 16 all of this. I hope he goes wherever he goes, great 17 for him, fantastic, absolutely. 18 The bottom line is we read his 19 resume, the one that he presented; we're well aware 20 of what he said. Much of that he placed on his 21 resume anything regarding community policing, he has 22 not implemented it. 23 Q Some of the meetings we had with other 24 folks they talked about his neighborhood called NPO 25 where they work in conjunction with the community, 154 6 1 they do school based stuff, PAL leagues. They said 2 were pretty much happy and that was from a cross 3 section of people that we talked to. 4 A (Kevin Fitchett) Of course, you have to 5 understand that NPO stuff was here before he got 6 here. I think your question said initiatives, 7 again, there were no initiatives. He continued 8 stuff that was going on already, but he had to 9 because it was working. 10 We've had that midnight basketball 11 and all that before he got here. He put police 12 athletic league on it, but it was here before he got 13 here. If they were happy with it they've got a very 155 14 narrow view of what a police initiative is. 15 I was there 30 years and I remember 16 when the NPO and all of that came and it was when a 17 previous chief was there that is now deceased so 18 Fitzgerald had nothing to do with that. 19 The advisory board was a carryover 20 from Halstead and anytime you disagree with the 21 Chief, you're no longer on the advisory board. 22 Chief came in and he gave the task force all of 23 these points about what he's done with the 3-E 24 Coalition, which is all fabricated, and it's totally 25 not true. 156 7 1 Sitting in an advisory board and him 2 making his presentation I knew for a fact he 3 explicitly lied, there were meetings with and 4 without some of the advisory board members. All of 5 these things looked good on paper but it doesn't 6 happy in reality. 7 A (Dr. Michael Bell) I chaired the 3-E 8 Coalition, part of that is a 3-E action plan. Part 9 of that has to do with the Chief and his 10 responsibility to the community. 11 The truth, if this is what this is 12 really all about, Valerie Washington, Assistant City 13 Manager, had to press the Chief to pay any attention 157 14 to the 3-E action plan. All of this is in the 15 media, all of this is easily verifiable; the 16 veracity is easy to prove. The media did a deal on 17 that, it was shown he didn't do anything. 18 He did none of that as far as 19 community initiatives. The NPO and all of that was 20 under Halstead had a more diverse community. He had 21 people across town racially, ethnically; he had a 22 more diverse group. The only reason that anyone met 23 with Fitzgerald as far as anything related to the 24 community is because of Valerie Washington. 25 A (Vance Keys) There was a five-year 158 8 1 strategic action plan that the Chief put in place. 2 One of the action items was what have you done with 3 the 3-E action plan and I can tell you it was 4 absolutely nothing. As a Deputy Chief I was 5 responsible for authoring the responses. We 6 couldn't write what was not done. 7 You can actually access and look at 8 what he's going to do and has done, it's been less 9 than three years as far as community service. 10 Q Why do you think CF wants to come to 11 Baltimore? Out of all the places why do you think 12 he wants to come to Baltimore? 13 A (Vance Keys) I think that CF has worn out 159 14 his welcome. He was asked months ago was he looking 15 for other jobs and he said no, but it was common 16 knowledge that he was. If you look at the press 17 Tweet that Mayor sent out when it was announced that 18 he was leaving, it was "I wish him well, he's done a 19 good job". 20 Fitzgerald was alienated not only 21 with the police officers but members, by large, with 22 the black community. The morale on the police 23 department is the lowest I've seen in 18 years. 24 He's fiscally incompetent, he has ran the budget 25 into the dirt in Fort Worth PD; that's something I 160 9 1 think that needs to be addressed, he put us in the 2 red. 3 I don't know if that's something you 4 are aware of, but he did the same thing in 5 Allentown. You have officers that can't respond to 6 calls because we're at an overtime deficit. So 7 we're passing off calls which impacts community 8 service. That's not good community policing to have 9 five additional Commanders, yet you don't have a 10 budget to pay your officers overtime to serve the 11 citizens. 12 13 I think he's trying to escape. There was also pending lawsuits in Allentown for civil 161 14 rights violations against minority citizens and 15 there's the same thing pending in Fort Worth, so he 16 has a history. I think he's going to go where ever 17 he can go and use it as a steppingstone, but he's 18 not leaving because he's done a great job in Fort 19 Worth and it's time to move on; he's leaving because 20 he's under pressure. 21 A (Dr. Michael Bell) The evidence is in 22 what Betsy Price has said. The way Betsy Price has 23 characterized his leaving is, "he's done a good job, 24 we wish him well", there was no elaboration. 25 We're not sitting here as disgruntled 162 10 1 people that haven't actually grinded with Joel 2 Fitzgerald. When he came here Unity In The 3 Community welcomed him, I facilitate that group; 4 twenty plus community organizations, I chair 3-E 5 Coalition. The bottom line is when we initially met 6 him we had a great big reception for him at Holy 7 Tabernacle with all the bells and whistles. 8 We supported him initially when he 9 messed up with Jackie's situation because he 10 mischaracterized it as rude and not racist. We 11 literally battled in order to defend him. So we're 12 not some people who just have a bone to pick, we did 13 everything we could. 163 14 As a matter of fact, James Ragland of 15 the Dallas Morning News interviewed me because he 16 wanted someone to support Fitzgerald and I supported 17 him initially. Joel is a great interviewer, he's 18 very good, he's fairly articulate and he's 19 convincing; he's able to look you in the eye and 20 lie. 21 He's going to Baltimore because 22 that's an opportunity. Why wouldn't he go to 23 Baltimore? He's not beloved here aside from those 24 that he gives discretionary fund monies to. 25 I'll say this, be careful of men who 164 11 1 don't have a 9:00 to 5:00, who did not pastor any 2 churches, have no other liable source of income but 3 yet they wear suits all day everyday; they're at 4 every community meeting and they have means of 5 survival and we don't know how they're getting paid. 6 These groups that you may meet with 7 may be a go-Chief and say that there needs to be a 8 period of reconciliation, sounds like to me we're 9 going to put a Band-Aid on bullet wound. If you 10 think for a moment because this guy's skin is black 11 and that he's our friend because we have the same 12 ancestry, then you've got a problem. 13 When you take him off of our hands 165 14 we'll be able to say that we told you the truth and 15 exactly what you were getting. Chief Fitzgerald 16 will look at you dead in your face and tell you a 17 lie. He will tell you a lie so convincing, if you 18 had not known he was lying, then you wouldn't know 19 that he was lying. 20 He came to a meeting with about 200 21 pastors of the city; this is the same time that the 22 police cam recorder was released. He stopped his 23 meeting with us, he came back in and the only 24 passion that we've heard from Fitzgerald is that he 25 was going to find out who released that information 166 12 1 and they're going to be dealt with severely. That's 2 the only passion I've heard from the man. 3 A (Dr. Michael Bell) I was on the committee 4 that brought him in; I have been having to apologize 5 ever since. I interviewed him and every candidate 6 was supposed to embrace the 3-E plan. The bottom 7 line is when all of this is said and done, Joel 8 Fitzgerald will lie and he is good at it. This is 9 Jackie Craig and Jackie can tell you. 10 A (Pastor Daniels) The Chief wants to leave 11 because he's made a mess of things here. He's 12 angered the majority of the African American 13 community because he has not dealt with African 167 14 American issues. The injustice on the part of 15 police officers for African Americans, he has not 16 handled it in a proper way. He's light on 17 disciplining his officers and he makes no apologies 18 for that. All we want is fairness and justice and 19 he's unable to deliver that. 20 A (Vance Keys) An officer murdered an 21 unarmed man in front of his children and who beat 22 Henry Newsome and is indicted right now. When we 23 talk about light discipline, he has black officers 24 against this public record that have been alleged to 25 have lied to Internal Affairs and they have been 168 13 1 terminated. 2 We have an officer, John Roman, who 3 assaulted a patient at a hospital that was waiting 4 on a ride. He lied to Internal Affairs, lied to the 5 investigators, lied to the prosecutors; he is under 6 felony indictment and he is still working in our 7 department. There is absolutely no justification 8 whatsoever for that. 9 We have officers who have gotten DWIs 10 that are still working in this department. We have 11 officers that are under felony indictment that are 12 still employed. If you talk about community 13 initiatives and relationships you have to have 169 14 trust; there is no trust between the police 15 department and our citizens. I've lived in this 16 city for 20 years, I've worked here for 18 years. 17 I would challenge Joel Fitzgerald to 18 have a conversation with me in front of you at any 19 time and he won't do it because the things I'm 20 saying are accurate things that he absolutely cannot 21 deny. He will tell you one thing to your face and 22 the next person something different because he is a 23 master manipulator. I want you to know what you're 24 doing; you're doing more than the city of Fort Worth 25 has ever did because he was never properly vetted 170 14 1 before he came here. 2 1. Questions for All: 3 Q (1.) How would you describe CF's ability 4 to explicitly address institutional racism and bias 5 through policy and practice and action? 6 A (Vance Keys) You can't legislate 7 morality. When there's acts of abuse I would say he 8 has a poor track record and he has inability and 9 unwillingness to handle not only institutional 10 racism but individual racism; it's been shown 11 repeatedly. He calls racist acts rude and he won't 12 recognize it. 13 Q So no policy change within the department? 171 14 I mean not just within the department for black 15 officers discipline verses white officers, 16 Hispanics, et cetera, but also how it goes out to 17 the community. 18 How does it go out to the community? 19 Does he put policies in place to work on how many 20 percentages of black and Hispanics get stopped, 21 pulled over, taken out of the car; all that kind of 22 stuff? 23 A (Dr. Michael Bell) On paper you've heard 24 of his deal about implicit bias. You've heard that 25 he has all of these body cams and more than any city 172 15 1 in Texas, which Halstead's predecessor put in 2 motion. You can also read and know that the city at 3 his behest is fighting right now. They sued the 4 state attorney general because they do not want to 5 release the body cams of the footage. 6 You can have all the body cams you 7 want but if the entire Fort Worth community, 8 regardless of race or ethnicity does not have access 9 to it and the Fort Worth police department lead by 10 the Chief militates against it, then what difference 11 does it make? 12 13 Not only that part, the officer has his body cam on to a certain degree and he turns it 173 14 off. So it does no good to have all of these tools 15 and they are turned off. The only footage that's 16 shown after it's turned off is when the other 17 responding officers come; we're able to see the rest 18 of it then. 19 A (Vance Keys) Right now it's not a 20 "shall", it's really discretionary. You should have 21 your body cams on and if you don't have it on you 22 shouldn't have to explain why you don't have it on. 23 In all fairness, Joel Fitzgerald did 24 put a policy in place to where if you stop a citizen 25 you have to give that citizen a card and it tells 174 16 1 that citizen how to complain or how to commend an 2 officer. I will say with our history of Internal 3 Affairs and deputy chief over Internal Affairs those 4 complaints are really vetted at the supervisor's 5 level. So unless somebody contacts Internal Affairs 6 directly a lot of those complaints don't get dealt 7 with. 8 A (Dr. Michael Bell) Not only that, you're 9 dealing with a broken system, it was broken when he 10 came. So even with that piece of paper if I go to 11 Internal Affairs then they said it's the 911 caller. 12 Why come to us? It was the 911 dispatch who made 13 the mistake. That's another complaint that's 175 14 supposed to be part of 3-E action plan and that has 15 not been implemented. 16 Q I have questions. I don't know the guy 17 and I'm here learning, but the former Commissioner, 18 Halstead. When you went around talking to people 19 and they were talking about how racist he was, did 20 y'all speak out about that? 21 The reason why I'm saying this is 22 because I come here and I only hear about Fitzgerald 23 and the stories we've been hearing about this other 24 guy, some of the programs that you said Halstead had 25 in place, they're good programs. The cameras, we do 176 17 1 that in Baltimore; we've changed police 2 commissioners, they had programs already there. 3 If the programs are good it doesn't 4 matter who puts them there, it's how you implement 5 them and make them continue to work. I just wanted 6 to share that with you but I want to hear more 7 because I'm only hearing one side about how 8 Fitzgerald is. 9 A (Dr. Michael Bell) Sir, because this is 10 about Fitzgerald and secondly, I met with Halstead. 11 I met with him repeatedly for over a period of 12 months. The City Manager and Charles Daniels the 13 Assistant City Manager insisted Halstead, of course 177 14 as he said initially, was a racist. 15 We can talk about Halstead, but this 16 is about Joel Fitzgerald. Halstead was a racist and 17 that's why he's not here. As a matter of fact, the 18 BPO and the LPO came here because they could not get 19 fairness; as a result there's a Coleman Report. 20 The Coleman Report talks about what 21 went on internally in the Fort Worth police 22 department; that's also followed up by the National 23 League of City's Report. We did everything that we 24 could to get Halstead out of here and that's what we 25 did. 178 18 1 Joel Fitzgerald is black and I wanted 2 him to be Chief because he is black, let me just be 3 straight up. We all had that same hope. We did 4 everything we could. We jumped through the hoops 5 and we did everything we could to make him 6 comfortable. 7 As a matter of fact, the way that he 8 sought to divide the community, we fought for him as 9 much as we possibly could until it was so obvious 10 and so apparent to anyone that Fitzgerald was inept 11 once the crisis came. The bottom line is as Police 12 Chief he's a failure in Fort Worth. 13 1. Questions for All: 179 14 Q (4.) How would you characterize CF's 15 ability to successfully investigate and discipline 16 officers if necessary? 17 A (Vance Keys) To that point, as a 18 Lieutenant when I was in Internal Affairs I went to 19 our Mayor, Betsy Price, our City Manager, David Cook 20 and at the time our Assistant City Manager Charles 21 Daniels; along with other members of the BPO I told 22 them that our police department has a racial problem 23 when it comes to investigating and disciplining 24 officers. 25 Even if it goes to Internal Affairs 180 19 1 and the recommendations or whatever, the Chief has 2 the ultimate decision-making power. So Halstead was 3 racist insensitive or he was racist if you were 4 black and had issues you got fired; if you were 5 white, you might get slapped on the arm. 6 We went to the Mayor and City Manager 7 with these issues and nothing has changed under Joel 8 Fitzgerald. Most of these things are public record, 9 when you look at discipline of African Americans as 10 opposed to Caucasian it's smoking mirrors. He 11 treats everybody poorly; he gave me a report, 12 12 whites bad, 12 blacks bad. That's one thing, but if 13 you don't understand stats that's something 181 14 15 different. How many blacks do we have in this 16 city, 18 percent. He's inept or incapable or 17 unwilling to handle racial disparity. If people are 18 saying good things about Fitzgerald, either they're 19 naive, he's given them something or they want to see 20 him go on like I want to see him go on. You guys 21 are doing a good job vetting him. 22 William Martin who dealt with Ms. 23 Craig, we know for a fact that he lied on his 24 affidavit; to this day nothing has been done to him. 25 The city of Fort Worth, either Internal Affairs or 182 20 1 City Legal actually labeled his file "Officer 2 Martin's False Affidavit" which is a felony and the 3 person is still working. It's public record, he is 4 not transparent. 5 Fitzgerald is a charming guy, he's a 6 nice guy, I've taken trips to Austin with him. If 7 you have no issues and no controversy in Baltimore 8 he will probably do you an adequate job, but the 9 moment crisis cross up he's going to fold unless he 10 has learned his lessons from his failures in Fort 11 Worth. 12 Q 13 Just to follow up on Ms. Craig case, legally does he have the ability through the guy's 183 14 15 file to fire him right now today? A (Vance Keys) The Chief can fire me right 16 now. The Chief can walk in and fire me right now. 17 The thing that he told the community that upset me 18 so badly was, "if I fire this guy he's going to get 19 his job back." There is no difference between a one 20 day suspension and an indefinite suspension. You 21 have the right to appeal if the Chief takes that 22 action. So yes, he can fire the guy but he chose 23 not to fire the guy. 24 25 He said to the community after that his record is important to him; that every officer 184 21 1 that I've fired has always lost his job. I don't 2 want to risk my record of firing him and he's 3 rehired that is what he told us. 4 He was more concerned about his 5 record. He said whatever punishment I've ever given 6 an officer it sticks, no body overturns my 7 punishments. 8 Q Doesn't the officers have civil service 9 protection? Civil service is due process, you can't 10 just fire them. 11 A (Vance Keys) Yes, you can. In this city 12 under civil service the right due process means if I 13 terminate you, you have the right to file within 15 185 14 days to go to the civil service commission and 15 appeal that termination. 16 The Chief has the ultimate authority 17 to fire anyone and you just appeal it, that's what 18 civil service means here. He didn't do that when 19 clearly a guy violated people rights and they put on 20 his affidavit that he lied. It's clear violations 21 and the affidavit is public record. There was 22 research on Chapter 143 and made an appeal to the 23 city counsel saying these are the addendums that 24 says that the Chief has the right to act in that 25 manner. 186 22 1 A (Dr. Michael Bell) Joel Fitzgerald called 2 me and said that the POA doctored the voice 3 recording. In Fort Worth the murder rate has been 4 65%/70% so don't be impressed because we're at 65% 5 homicides. Fitzgerald has left us more damage in 6 his leaving than his arrival. 7 A (Dr. Michael Bell) All of this is on 8 video. If you look at city counsel video when Joel 9 Fitzgerald came under fire, see how many people came 10 to his aid. That's all you have to do, it's public 11 record. That night when we talked about Fitzgerald 12 no one came to his aid, he was there by himself. 13 These things that Halstead put in, he 187 14 had to because it was such a mess. We don't want to 15 make it sound like Halstead had all of these 16 brilliant and bright ideas. He was under pressure 17 to do that and even after doing it he still wanted 18 to still to his old ways; that's why he had to get 19 out of town. We were hoping when we got Fitzgerald 20 that all of that would be over, gone. We got the 21 same thing, worst. 22 As a police chief he's very 23 thin-skinned, you'll find out. He's very 24 thin-skinned and very vindictive. Valerie 25 Washington, Assistant City Manager, did everything 188 23 1 she could to make sure that the Chief was doing his 2 job and he fought against her every step of the way. 3 Joel Fitzgerald will tell you, if 4 he'll tell you the truth, he does not make decisions 5 without committee; not just him. He will tell you 6 that because that's his complaint. His complaint is 7 I'm not making any decisions by myself, everybody 8 else has to make decisions. That's his way of 9 deferring and not taking responsibility. 10 Q Are you saying the Assistant City Managers 11 is helping him make decisions or other people in the 12 department? 13 A (Vance Keys) As a Deputy Chief we have 189 14 these round-table committees, it's always what's the 15 consensus? It was always "we" made the decision, it 16 was never I did this 'cause I'm the Chief and this 17 is what I'm going to do. 18 He left Allentown with eight pending 19 lawsuits for an officer kicking somebody in the head 20 and not take any disciplinary actions on him. He 21 allowed someone to shoot an unarmed citizen and 22 didn't take action. He allowed brutalizing and lied 23 about it. 24 A 25 (Dr. Michael) Valerie Washington had to make the Chief do the right thing by the minority 190 24 1 community. She had to make him implement the things 2 that he may be bragging about now. She had to make 3 him meet with the 3-E Coalition. She had to make 4 him call us when something happened in the African 5 American community and talk to us so we could get a 6 handle on it and see how we should react and respond 7 because they didn't want the African American 8 community just blowing up. 9 He didn't want to talk to us. He 10 went behind her back and complained to the City 11 Manager about her and all of a sudden she got 12 switched to another job. She's not over the police 13 department anymore. He doesn't want to deal with 191 14 the civilian community because he says the civilians 15 don't know enough about police work to understand. 16 He doesn't want to deal with the civilians of the 17 city because he doesn't think we're smart enough to 18 comprehend what policeman are supposed to be doing. 19 We were denied a civilian review 20 board for different eyes and they said we wouldn't 21 understand what we were looking at. We're fighting 22 right now; we have this whole document that we've 23 spent a year and a half working with and before we 24 can present it to City Council it has to get that 25 approval. You have other questions go ahead. 192 25 1 Q The questions that I have you answered 2 them, you know, you didn't give me a chance to ask 3 them. 4 A We sound very passionate with our discord 5 for the Chief. This did not happen over night, we 6 wanted him to succeed. We ran the risk of his 7 failure that we'll never see another black chief in 8 our lifetime ever in this city. What switched our 9 hearts? What changed our minds? They said we 10 needed to go to City Hall. We started going to City 11 Hall every week and they changed the dynamics of 12 presentation so you can't talk so long. 13 A (Dr. Michael Bell) You all know Fort 193 14 Worth is a racist city. Everyone has said we were 15 defenders of Fitzgerald, advocates for Fitzgerald. 16 Jackie Craig was assaulted by a police officer who's 17 still on the force; a gentleman was assaulted by a 18 police officer with his personal shotgun. 19 David Cook said we brought Fitzgerald 20 in to help mend fences, to build trust and he 21 hasn't. He said this openly and publicly at True 22 Vine Baptist Church; this is his boss. David said 23 in open public that we brought him in for this and 24 he's failed to do that. Now, that's kind of stretch 25 for a City Manager to say something like that. 194 26 1 Q When was that? Was that this year? 2 A (Dr. Michael Bell) No, it was last year 3 4 at a Unity In The Community meeting. Q If I may, I'd like to hear from Ms. Craig. 5 We've heard a lot of things about her and her story. 6 I'd like to hear her thoughts about Fitzgerald and 7 the whole situation. 8 A (Jackie Craig) I think Fitzgerald is a 9 bag of garbage. What people fail to realize is what 10 he did to me didn't only effect me but my whole 11 family. I have a niece right now that's dealing 12 with a fact that a teacher just choked her son, 13 admitted it on paper, called him retarded and she 195 14 won't call the police because she doesn't want to go 15 through what I went through. 16 When you have to deal with that and 17 you can't even give you kids piece, I don't 18 understand the purpose of life anymore. That was my 19 whole mission was to be able to keep my kids 20 comfortable; her mission as a mother and she can't. 21 She has to look her son in the face knowing that she 22 couldn't give him what he needed and he's only six 23 and he has to still sit in the room with this 24 teacher. It's not fair. 25 (Speaking on the incident at The YMCA.) 196 27 1 Supposedly they created this task 2 force or whatever behind my situation; called a 3 meeting to talk about it, I wanted to attend and was 4 told I wasn't able to. Fitzgerald said whenever we 5 need you we'll call you, you can't attend any 6 meetings. 7 8 Q Was it all internal people? Was community people there? 9 A There was community people there. 10 Q Ms. Craig, did he ever call you to say he 11 was sorry for what happened to you or anything like 12 that? 13 A No, he insisted on her being prosecuted. 197 14 Q Prosecuted for what? 15 A (Pastor Daniels Jr.) The charges that 16 they brought upon her and her daughter that night, 17 the community had such an out cry we said she 18 doesn't need to be prosecuted, this is wrong. This 19 was started by that officer and the Chief insisted 20 on prosecuting her. We had to go down to the Majors 21 office and say she will not be prosecuted, this is 22 your officer's fault; he precipitated all of this 23 foolishness. 24 25 The Chief called us and met with us and said we have to prosecute, let this whole thing 198 28 1 play out. We said no, we want the charges dropped; 2 he had to come to Mount Olive. He did not want to 3 drop the charges against Ms. Craig and her family; 4 he wanted her to be prosecuted and wanted her to go 5 before DA. 6 A (Vance Keys) I'm a proud police officer. 7 I'm proud to serve the community and I'm proud to 8 function in this role to be of service to others. 9 The Chief is what I call a cops cop and I don't mean 10 that in a good way; Fitzgerald wants to be liked by 11 cops. They didn't think anything was wrong with 12 that initial William Martin video. He said it 13 wasn't that bad. He put this guy back in the same 199 14 community against the will of the community and he 15 said it publicly at a church field with people on 16 the southwest. Those competencies don't measure 17 integrity, it doesn't measure compassion. 18 A (Dr. Michael Bell) I want to go back to 19 Jackie because she went to this deal and very 20 publicly; people were there so it's not like 21 something happened and no one was there. He kicked 22 her out of the meeting. 23 A (Jackie Craig) He had one of his 24 right-hand men or whatever he called him, to reach 25 out to me saying they were having a rally. When I 200 29 1 got there he told me Chief Fitzgerald wanted me to 2 fire my attorneys; they dug up some work and he's 3 not eligible to practice in the state of Texas. He 4 said if I fire them he'll write me a check right 5 then and there; I didn't fire my attorneys. 6 Q Did the Commissioner have the ability to 7 write a check without going through proper 8 procedure? 9 A (Vance Keys) No, he doesn't; that may 10 have been something that worked on through Risk 11 Management. He does not have authority to award 12 anybody money in terms of a lawsuit. 13 A (Jackie Craig) After all the threats and 201 14 crisis we lived in a hotel for three and a half 15 months. People actually rolled up at my house, 16 pulling guns on my kids. 17 Q Police officers? 18 A (Vance Keys) No, they weren't police 19 officers. That was when the people of the black 20 community got together and said since people are 21 doing these things we're going to patrol her house 22 armed. When that happened these officers showed up 23 and downed the people that were walking around armed 24 that called themselves patrolling her neighborhood 25 or her residence; that was the issue they had. You 202 30 1 can't put somebody down in handcuffs because they're 2 exercising their constitutional rights. They 3 handcuffed them and ran them for warrants or stolen 4 and now that's a lawsuit pending for the city of 5 Fort Worth. 6 Q So you can walk around with guns? 7 A (Vance Keys) Anybody can walk around with 8 9 an armed rifle, shotgun in the state of Texas. Q So knowing what Joel Fitzgerald stepped 10 into coming here to Fort Worth, the tender box that 11 he walked into racism and things of that nature, is 12 there any leeway that's given knowing what he was up 13 against in terms of a the girl/boy network? Was he 203 14 naive in terms of what he thought? Talk a little 15 bit about that. 16 A (Dr. Michael Bell) We welcomed him, we 17 knew that he needed slack. We knew that he needed 18 margin, we knew that he needed space. So therefore 19 we gave him the benefit of doubt on everything even 20 to the extent that when he was obviously wrong we 21 tried to make excuses for him. He had enough room 22 to maneuver. Because of Halstead's tenure he had 23 enough room to do some goodwill things and he 24 didn't. He wouldn't meet with the community unless 25 he was forced, just simple stuff. 204 31 1 A (Kevin Fitchett) He had three major 2 police instances in which he could have dealt with 3 as a chief that would have shown the department and 4 the public what he's about. One is a shooting where 5 one of his off-duty officers shot a guy, black guy, 6 running away and paralyzed him, did nothing about 7 it. 8 The other thing was when the officer 9 shot the guy coming out of his house, did nothing 10 about it. The other thing was Ms. Craig, did 11 nothing about it. So every chance he's had to show 12 what type of chief he was or where he was going to 13 lead the department, he failed. 205 14 So he was given a lot of latitude, 15 Chief step up, you've been given these golden 16 opportunities in which the officers were dead wrong, 17 if you saw the videos, it's easy to make a decision 18 to say you're wrong, you're going to be punished, 19 fired or something and he did nothing. 20 If he's going to consistently do that 21 he's not worth being a Chief. He was given three 22 major opportunities and he's done nothing but try to 23 brush them under the rug, lie to the community. The 24 only thing he's ever done to punish an officer was 25 take the two highest ranking black police officers 206 32 1 who were on their way to the top; who are qualified 2 and records were impeccable, he demoted them. 3 Here's one of them right here, Vance Keys. 4 Q Where is the other one at? 5 A (Kevin Fitchett) He took a job, Chief of 6 7 Police job in California. A (Vance Keys) Maybe he didn't get it, he's 8 not from the south. I'm from North Carolina, let me 9 be his advocate. Let me explain to the community 10 what he really means to say. All these black 11 churches, all these weekends I'm out there talking 12 to these people trying to repair the damage that he 13 and his officers have done. I told CF at one point 207 14 it can't just be me, I'm not over the south 15 division. I know I'm a black Deputy Chief, but you 16 have other commanders in different areas that can 17 address these things. CF told me sometimes when 18 you're black you've got to do more. I'm thinking 19 "well, doesn't that apply to you?" 20 We had a captain that got a DWI in 21 his unmarked unit at 3:00 a.m. in the morning on the 22 expressway, he got hit by another drunk and they 23 both get arrested. He comes in and refuses to talk. 24 Chief said he wasn't going to fire this guy because 25 he might kill himself. This officer was allowed to 208 33 1 go down to Florida and get rehab, all of these 2 different things. That's the Chief's discretion, I 3 don't have a problem with that. 4 The problem I have is when you get on 5 TV and you announce to the world that you hold 6 officers of all ranks of all ethnicity accountable. 7 A (Kevin Fitchett) When it goes back to 8 Ms. Craig, the officer that caused all these 9 problems never got charged or anything like that. 10 This guy, Vance Keys, was on house arrest for two 11 months coming to her defense. What kind of 12 transparency, openness, fairness is that? 13 A (Vance keys) Before he demoted me he went 209 14 to the black community and he went to retired black 15 officers and said he had some smoking gun stuff on 16 Vance Keys. The smoking gun stuff was there's text 17 messages between us that said the Chief did not do 18 his job. The Chief should have fired William Martin 19 for lying and for assault. 20 It wasn't a leak, he drop boxed; 21 those files were extremely large. I have him access 22 to my phone, to my computer, anything he wanted he 23 could get access to it. What I wanted him to do was 24 give me a document saying after you don't find what 25 you're looking for that you didn't find it. Just in 210 34 1 the interest of transparency, follow every avenue, 2 and it was not done. 3 Q His ability to, as you said earlier, walk 4 and chew gum at the same time and I say that because 5 we know the issues that you guys have here, but 6 we're a city under consent decree for bad police 7 practices. We have structural racism and we have a 8 huge violent crime problem at the same time. 9 I'm trying to see what people sense 10 as his ability to do that and he's going to be -- 11 talking with the Council, we're a lot more hands on 12 than they would be; to see how you guys think he 13 would be in that situation in that competent 211 14 15 environment. A Being hands on with you guys, he's not 16 going to like that one bit. He wants to be turned a 17 loose to do what he wants to do. He doesn't like 18 anybody to supervise him. He has a tremendous ego 19 and very thin skin much like our President. 20 His own officers say he won't listen 21 to anyone. If you say anything, "Chief, why did 22 you do such and so?" Immediately, very thin skin. 23 I think with some guidance and some 24 hands on this may be a situation where it may work 25 for him because no one on our City Council has done 212 35 1 2 3 4 anything to hold the Chief accountable. Q You've basically answered all our questions. A (Vance Keys) Fitzgerald has not had any 5 kind of collective supervision, so with a consent 6 decree if you guys are hands on that might be the 7 best thing for him. I have not seen him in an 8 environment where he's been held accountable by 9 multiple factions. If you've got people that are 10 willing to stay on top of him, he might flourish; I 11 can't say he won't. 12 13 I can speak from my experience in Fort Worth where I've seen him fail. Pay attention 213 14 to what you see, believe your eyes. Y'all give him 15 a chance. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 214 Day 3 – Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Fort Worth Police Officers Association Attendees       Officer David Cook, FWPOA Vice President Sgt. Manny Ramirez, FWPOA President Sgt. Pat Blauser, FWPOA Treasurer Ofc. Jimmy Pollozani Det. Anthony White, FWPOA Vice President Ofc. Carolyn Gilmore, FWPOA Vice President Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to implement community-based policing practices? A: POA President Manuel Ramirez: We work pretty closely with our chief’s office on a daily basis on all different types of issues. That was probably the biggest strength from Chief Fitzgerald. In terms of community policing. He was relatable with the citizens. He was approachable. There’s been a group of ministers and community folks who want to keep him here and it’s because he’s so receptive to community. A: Officer Cook: We’re the community liaisons full time. It is the same group full time. We do calls for service and community building. We work with schools, churches, businesses – anything on our beats. A: Officer Carolyn Gilmore: We wanted to show the community that we wanted to be engaged with them as people. The police advisory community – through this the chief has worked with residents to explain due process and to explain our contract, etc. What was long overdue was having open discussions on race relations. It can be awkward but we have to talk about it and we did that. When Chief Fitzgerald came, he went to every side of town and had employee forums. We could talk about the future and present ideas. The first couple of ones not a lot of people said a lot but once someone asked a question it just flowed. He took on some tough questions. In those meetings they were asking him questions that really should have been asked of the City Council but he took them on and answered them. A: Officer Pollozani: He’s dedicated an officer in his office full-time to be a part of the police athletic league. They also have Code Blue After Dark. They have teams and compete tournament-style in basketball. Those programs weren’t in place prior to Chief Fitzgerald and most importantly there weren’t resources from the police department dedicated to those programs. Q: Why is he interested in taking this job in Baltimore? A: Manuel Ramirez: I would just assume…. I’ve spoken with him about it. He’s from Philly and it’s a similar population in terms of demographics. I think that he’s comfortable there. And it is a good job. Somebody offers you the opportunity to be the chief of NYPD you take it. Somebody offers you the job in Baltimore you take it. Maybe he sees it as an opportunity to turn some things around. Some of the programs that work here it seems like those are the programs that are needed there. I understood why he wanted to take it. He thinks he can add value. Q: Who were some of Chief Fitzgerald’s best hires, and what made them assets to the department? A: Manuel Ramirez: He’s always put an emphasis on diversity but more importantly he’s put an 215 emphasis on quality. By and large I don’t think we can complain about who’s on top. You look at his three assistant chiefs they are all respected and didn’t have blemishes on their records. As a union we were a bit hesitant … he wanted to bridge the gap between his patrol officers and the citizens and by appointing the commanders he appointed he brought them closer because he appointed people who had ties to the community. Q: How would you contextualize the Fort Worth Police Union’s survey finding that 84 percent of the police force believed that morale declined under Chief Fitzgerald? A: Manuel Ramirez: It wasn’t a no confidence vote it was a survey. That was incident-based at that time. It was a decision that most of the troops didn’t agree with. We are a democratic organization. At that meeting we were directed to take that survey. The results, I would say, you can look at them in a vacuum because that’s right on the heels of a big incident. If you are a chief that everybody agrees with then you probably made the wrong decision. On that particular decision I think he got it right. If you fire that officer you’re appealing to the citizens. If you give him a slap on the wrist you appeal to the officers. Chief Fitzgerald did what he thought was right and gave him 10 days off without pay and chose not to promote him. I can’t answer how a survey would go today but I can guess it wouldn’t be as negative. A: Officer Carolyn Gilmore: In my opinion, the majority of the officers who took the survey are the patrol officers. They feel understaffed, no overtime. They don’t have time to eat lunch. Those are the officers who are upset. The chief can’t fix staffing without money. He was making a lot of needed changes. Q: How does Chief Fitzgerald approach police recruitment? A: Manuel Ramirez: When he first got here we were understaffed by about 200 officers. One of his commandments was staffing up. Now several years later they say we’re 70 officers over staffed. For a moment in time he was a folk hero because he advocated for hiring more officers and stuck his neck out to hire. That won him a lot of favor with the officers. Every six months we have performance reviews for officers. A: Officer Pollozani: He’s willing to train his officers when it comes to when to use force. He mandated that everyone in the department attend de-escalation training by PERF. Q: How would you describe Chief Fitzgerald’s ability to explicitly address institutional racism/bias? A: Manuel Ramirez: Historically, it hasn’t been an equal number of folks in each specialized unit. You can’t really mandate that you put a black officer here and a white officer here and a Hispanic officer there. If you have two equal candidates, diversity will be considered. That’s new and directly from Chief Fitzgerald. Diversity does matter. That’s been one of the pieces where he has put his money where it matters. The Chief has put a diversity consideration into the promotion policy. The General Orders now state that when considering two equal officers for promotion, you can consider diversity. Q: Can you speak to a time that Chief Fitzgerald successfully implemented a departmentwide technology update? A: Manuel Ramirez: Everything is data-driven. Once you get out of the car the camera comes on automatically. And if there are three officers and one officer’s camera comes on they all do. Q: Are you all telling us all this good stuff because you want to get rid of him? A: Manuel Ramirez: On behalf of the union, personally we wouldn’t do that. I think everything 216 we told you is indicative of how we feel about Chief Fitzgerald. If he leaves, we’ll advocate for an internal candidate. Q: How would you assess his tenure in Fort Worth? A: Manuel Ramirez: I think that he’s done a good job of preparing folks. We have folks who can pick up the ball and run with it. From a union perspective, whenever he did demote people that spoke volumes about what he was willing to do. It doesn’t matter what position you hold. The minute he said he was going to demote those deputy chiefs, they appreciated the fact that he would hold his two right hand men accountable. Q: Can you speak to a time when Chief Fitzgerald’s leadership failed the city of Fort Worth? A: Manuel Ramirez: You’re not a complete person if you don’t have failures. His failures have been such that he could overcome them. I think the survey was a failure of communication. He didn’t feel the need to come out and massage that. I think had he got out and said ‘this is why I’m doing this,’ maybe that communication could have been better.