Groton — The town could soon move to create a new group intended to increase communication and collaboration between the police and the community.

The proposed group would not have direct oversight over the town's police department, but would “build stronger relationships between police and the community, increase communication, and allow for the police and community to exchange ideas,” according to a report from the Representative Town Meeting's Civilian Oversight Research Committee.

The group is envisioned as a “collaborative committee” that includes community leaders, police and members of town government and the community, and “can be designed in a way to open communication and make recommendations to the Town Council’s Public Safety Committee,” according to the report.

The group would be an advisory committee, and would not be a civilian review board with subpoena powers, which the town's attorney said would have required a charter change.

The RTM's Civilian Oversight Research Committee report proposed forming the group as one of the three consensus recommendations included in its final report. The committee "examined local and state laws, interviewed members of town government and the town police department, researched various models of civilian oversight of police throughout the country and met with the Groton Town Council Public Safety Committee."

The Town Council took an initial vote in favor of forming the proposed police and community group at its Aug. 24 Committee of the Whole meeting, with the matter slated to go before the full council at its meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

"The rationale is to form a group that will build stronger relationships between the police and the community by increasing communication and allow for the exchange of ideas," Town Manager John Burt said. "It's really a further step in community policing."

The city had formed a similar group, called the Police and Community Together group, last summer in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

A current draft proposal for the town group, which is intended to start the discussion but is likely to change as it gets discussed further, calls for 11 members, including the town's police chief or his designee, the town manager or his designee, a town councilor, an RTM member, a Board of Education member and six Groton residents, Burt said.

In addition to the police and community group, the RTM committee's consensus recommendations included posting “civilian complaints and the associated findings” on the town’s website and researching “options such as targeted community policing based on need, paid social workers as regular co-responders available to every shift, and funding for more training in defensive tactics, conflict resolution, de-escalation, use of force, and implicit bias.”

Chief of Police Louis J. Fusaro Jr. said that complaints already are posted on the town's website. The police do not include the complainants' names and, if there is no wrongdoing, the name of the officer also is not included. The department also posts information, such as police department policies and use-of-force statistics.

He said the department follows the statewide policy for handling civilian complaints.

He said the department is engaged with the community, through events such as "coffee with the chiefs" on Friday in Mystic or office hours held by Community Policing Officer Heather McClelland and K-9 Chase. The police department also has done various training, including in de-escalation.

The police department also hired two community service officers, which are not police officers, to assist with community policing and do some other tasks, he said. 

A draft motion prepared for the Aug. 24 meeting had included all three recommendations, but was amended to only include forming a group after discussions that the police department already was implementing steps in line with the other recommendations in the wake of nationwide calls for police reform and a state police accountability law.

Councilors Rachael Franco, Conrad Heede, Lian Obrey, Juan Melendez, Joe Zeppieri and Juliette Parker voted in favor of the motion, while Councilors Aundré Bumgardner and Portia Bordelon voted against it.

Public Safety Committee members weigh in

Franco, a Public Safety Committee member who at the Aug. 24 meeting supported the motion to form the new group, said she heard the outcry from the community after Floyd's death, marched with community members and listened to their concerns and had conversations with residents, Fusaro, police officers and RTM members.

"I took what I had heard and encouraged the Police Chief and Town Manager to add funding to the 2022 budget for a Pilot Program for a Social Worker to be embedded with the Police, community policing, as well as additional training," Franco said, noting those initiatives passed in the budget and the police list complaints on the website. The one remaining initiative that the town had not already implemented was community outreach for public safety, which she supported.

Bumgardner, chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee, said the RTM and council committees have held joint meetings to address police accountability in the aftermath of residents taking to the streets and declaring unapologetically that Black Lives Matter. They met with organizations within the community and across the state and brought in experts and the police chief and town staff.

He said he supports all three recommendations and called it "a huge mistake" not to formally adopt all three, considering the town has taken steps to implement a lot of the measures called for in the recommendations over the last year. He noted the recommendations for community policing and training and said it's abundantly clear that the council, through the approval of its last town budget and adopting certain policy measures over the last year, is moving in that direction.

Bordelon, a Public Safety Committee member, said the amended motion stripped away two key components based on the logic that state law required those actions, but she pointed out that state law may change at any point in the future. She voted against the amended motion because she feels "it is important that we, on a municipal level, commit to at least these three consensus recommendations, regardless of what happens at the state level."

"I am in favor of ensuring that our police, and all public safety departments, are as well-supported as possible. The addition of a social worker is a great first step in what I hope will become a wider trend in practice," she added. "I'd like to explore ideas on how to fund the police in better, more cost-effective ways that invest, strengthen and broaden the community policing model."

k.drelich@theday.com