[00:03:12] Hi, this is Richard Watts. I'm the director of the Center for Research on Vermont. And today is part of the College of Arts and Sciences Expert's Life and the Center for Research on Vermont Research. Wednesdays, we're going to have a special conversation with Dr. Stephanie Sabrino. Stephanie is a professor of economics at the University of Vermont.

[00:03:40] And she examines the impacts of economic inequality, race, class and gender on the economy.

[00:03:50] So welcome, Stephanie, to our experts like Wednesday presentation today.

[00:03:58] Our topic is.

[00:04:01] A study that Stephanie did on driving while black and brown in Vermont. Welcome, Dr. Sabrino.

[00:04:08] Thanks.

[00:04:09] So we're going to talk about racial disparities in policing in Vermont and a study that Stephanie completed with Dr. Nancy Brooks. And then we'll have a broader conversation about institutional racism and this moment that's happening around the country. But I thought we'd start by talking about your study and the research you did in Vermont. So perhaps give us the I know it's based on something like half a million traffic stops, but maybe give us the outlines.

[00:04:45] Sure. Let me just say that this work started at a number of years ago, actually 2008, I think it was, in which a group called Uncommon Alliance was formed in the Burlington area. And it was because of repeated incidents of racial profiling by the police, at least from the perspective of people of color in our community. And so at a certain point, you know, recall Winooski agreeing to meet with the community of color and hence the uncommon alliance. They met monthly. The problem was that people would come in and they'd tell the story about an event that they felt was racially biased. And the police would say, well, you know, maybe it's by this or this. It never was successful in being more than an anecdote. And so the agreement was reached that the police would collect data, they would collect data on the date, time and place, stop the age, gender and race of the person that stopped. The reason for the stop? Whether or not there was a search of the vehicle. Whether or not contraband was found, if there was a search, and what the outcome of the stop. What was the ticket? Was it a warning? Was that an arrest? And I think maybe because that earlier study showed racial disparities in in that shouldn't in county area. The legislature was moved to require that all law enforcement agencies collect these data. So our 2017 swearing in was the first man, to my knowledge and the only analysis of that data. And what we found is that we call it driving while black and brown want because we wanted people to understand what is the experience of people of color driving in Vermont? What is their experience with regard to policing? Does it differ?

[00:06:37] And the answer is yes. Danieli We found that in most agencies the bias was antiblack bias. And to a slightly lesser extent, lanting Hispanic bias, but not necessarily a Asian bias. In fact, what we found was particularly blacks and Hispanics that were overstocked relative to their share of the driving population. Right.

[00:07:07] If, let's say blacks are five percent of the drivers of Burlington, we'd expect them to be five percent of the stops. We have no reason to believe that they're worst drivers or better drivers today. So we looked at stocks, but that's not the only thing that you can look at. You also can look at what happens at the end of a stop or people of color are more likely to get a ticket than a warning as compared to white drivers. So they treat treated more harshly. Are they more likely to be searched? Is their vehicle more likely to be searched than white drivers? And how is it that you actually find contraband? And that's actually a critical measure of racial bias, is if there is a higher search rate of people of color, but a lower what we call hit rate, that is the percentage of searches that results in contraband is actually lower than for whites. So here's what we've done in Vermont, that all agencies work over stopping drivers and almost all the agencies were under stopping Asian drivers. Right. So you groups are treated differently. And the bias that we observe in this country, in Minnesota and in Charlotte, North Carolina or wherever else in this country, is typically this greatest bias is anti black bias, especially by the police. And so we found that blacks were twice as likely to be arrested as white drivers subsequent to a stop. So why is that? What explains that often is suspicion. So, for example, if you're stopped by the police and they you know, they charge you with something, if they believe you're a flight risk, they might take you back to the station to book you, whereas somebody that they don't believe is a flight flight risk, they'll just give them a ticket. And so racial bias plays a role in that. There's more mistrust.

[00:09:01] Half of African-Americans, there's more belief that they're outsiders than force. So that could explain the arrest rate disparity. Truly, I haven't seen a good explanation for it yet. That would legitimize the disparity. So we also find that black drivers are three hundred and sixty five percent more likely to be searched than white drivers in Vermont and Hispanics. Two hundred and sixty percent Asian drivers, half as likely as white drivers. So, again, we see in what we hear, what we read in critical race theory, that the darker your skin that is, there is colorism more mythologized, the darker your skin tone and treat Asians as honorary white. Right. We also know that the percentage of his case search and that resulted in contraband was very low for blacks relative to white. So clearly there is over watching a black sweater, watching white fibers. And we did an analysis on the sky that after this twenty seventeen study in which we asked Vermont State Police for information about, because what police officers would tell me is that they believe in black and brown drivers bringing drugs to Vermont. And so they're typically searching for drugs. So we want to know if that's true or not. And this they are not required to give a statement on what the contraband is, that Vermont state police were very generous with time and they went through all of the searches of 2016. In all those cases in which contraband was found. To me, what was startling of that was that of all of the search terms that resulted in hard drugs. So cocaine, heroin and opioids. One hundred percent of the drivers were white. Not a single driver of color, but drugs. For me, that's an example of a stereotype that is not consistent with reality based in terms of random drug service purchased on the highway. And finally, one thing that we found was when we say there's a little bit of hubris, but when the legislation came out, towns were not required to give us information on office officer level. They. But some of them did. They no longer do that. But if we look at the data, individual agencies and what we found is there's not like there's a bad apple. In most of these agencies, the overwhelming number of officers were over stopping white drivers. So I think it's a cultural issue. It's you know, one could argue with the Kings to exploit that the offending officer was just a bad apple. But the reality is there's a culture around this and the culture of leadership in the department matters. And we have to recognize we all have these biases. We have been trained. We've been socialized to associate African American working for threat and criminality. And the sad fact is what they are profoundly. They live once here of whites. They live in fear of whites. And we have it just backwards. And the reality is that we all have it when it shows up. It shows up in the Vermont data just as it shows up all over the country.

[00:12:34] And remember, so we're talking with Stephanie Cygwin, a professor of economics, about a study on racial disparity. People are welcome to post comments or questions about this or the broader issues of racial institutional racism than we see around us in this country.

[00:12:50] So on the study, I remember when it came out and there was a lot of news and attention brought to it, Stephanie.

[00:12:58] And I'm wondering, Vermont has a sort of scattered police system, right? We have a state police. Right.

[00:13:04] Probably manages and is the more professional arm.

[00:13:08] But then there are, I don't know, dozens and dozens of local police forces. So what what was the reaction when you brought this for in a pub play? And I know you made an effort also to meet individually or, you know, to go out and talk to people about it?

[00:13:23] Yeah, I mean, I presented a number of police departments, some towns invited me to speak to their select boards about it or in advance. I had shared the data with police chiefs so that they wouldn't, you know, wouldn't be a surprise to them. The reaction really was pushback. I think there was a polite thank you very much at the time. But they there was, I would say, a backlash, trying to deny the results, to say we're not racist. We don't have a problem. All of this is justified. You didn't you didn't sufficiently take into consideration the context. And then really mostly what has happened is that police departments don't even use the data. They're not they're not even looking at the data. The data is really meant for them to be a tool just to look at the data and say, wow, we have these disparities. Let's sit down and talk about why that is. What could be causing that? You know, maybe sometimes those disparities are justified, but maybe they're not. But if you don't use the data to give you that feedback there, you know, what's with the census doing it? And how can you get better at this? If you're not using the data? And so in many ways, I would say ninety nine percent of police departments don't even use the data. I know of two that do.

[00:14:47] Mean maybe two, maybe three. Amazing.

[00:14:51] Because you collected so much, so many data points.

[00:14:55] I mean, people are poked in your study from a variety of places, but one was to did. But you have an economics expert. You actually have broad enough statistics. You can actually say things about what's happening. Even al level. Is that right?

[00:15:12] Yes, so we had there were half a name topping Sutherlin. Just to be clear, this is data that the police departments generate. Right. So it's their data. And we. So some towns were too small to be able to say anything with statistical reliability. So hind's when it comes to mind. Right. I think they had 500 stops. And so when you think of, you know, racial proportions in the state, that wasn't really enough to say anything on a lot of the indicators. But there were larger towns like Rutland, Burlington's Wilston and South Burlington, for example. And we're in the process now of analyzing data through 2018. So many of those towns that were too small then to say anything about statistically, we can now do that. But, yeah, we you know, certainly there were statewide the sample size with a large enough and it was large enough for certain towns.

[00:16:05] And in just defining so clearly show this is not would you not have used the word implicit actual bias? Because black and brown drivers were stopped at three to four times, the rates searched at much higher rates.

[00:16:24] And then, as you said, much actually much likely, much less likely to actually have any contraband.

[00:16:32] Right. Right.

[00:16:34] So, you know, it's consistent with the stories that people tell me because, you know, especially after this study, before that, and especially after the Senate, people call me and tell me about their experience with the police. And, you know, with, you know, especially people of color. And it's consistent with the data.

[00:16:51] Yeah. And then, you know, and it brings that home so early, these stops and and in absolute awful circumstances for people of color, black and brown drivers that talk just talk about that a little bit.

[00:17:11] So it's not just some number that you're more likely to get stopped. It's the ramifications of getting stopped.

[00:17:18] Yeah, and I'm not sure that many people understand how traumatizing this is. You know, I mean, when a person of color. Sees a blue light in the back. They are already in. They are in a panic situation because they now fear for their lives. Right. So in one case, then I got a phone call was from a woman who's African-American and worked for the Department of Human Services. She was stopped by the state police. She actually churchly had her badge was in the car and the police chief, the police officer, the troopers stopped her and said that she was. I don't know, following the car in front of her too closely. This is what we call a pretextual stop. No. In that they find some reason to stop you. And believe me, if any police follow you for an hour a mile, they'll find something, you know, some reason to stop you. And so he then said, look, nervous. And then he said he went and got a dog and, you know, and said he wanted to search the car. And so she said, OK. You know, you just from listeners just said that you do not you do not have to say yes. You can say no. And that would force the officer to go to a job and get a warrant. So in any case, she said, sure. And he searched the car. And soon as he saw his badge and he said, OK, thank you very much, and went on his way. But that was that was two hours to two and a half hours. She told me she was going to leave Vermont, you know. And I've heard this from numerous people who it is just very it's it's humiliating. It's traumatizing. They lose time from work and they're scarred by this. And the worst part of this is that we don't actually, you know, it hurts policing because many community members to trust the police, to be able to report things and so on and so forth. And that doesn't happen, you know, if people don't trust the police. I think there was at least people on last night on the video. Indulge me, watching white guy really, you know, Farfel the road race. And he said when he got the job, he said. So the memories that, you know, you're not going to like this. But if I do my job well, crime crime calls are going to rise. Calls and calls with know complaints about crime are going to rise. And the mayor said, why is it because I will build relationships with the community to call here and they will feel safe calling us and reporting crimes that they otherwise wouldn't. So I think that's what we've sacrificed if we don't address this issue.

[00:20:08] We have one question here, Stephanie. As citizens, how do we start the conversation with our police officers about how they might actually use this data that you've collected and analyze?

[00:20:17] Well, it's a really great question. And I think Williston is a great example because are their numbers are elevated in terms of racial disparities. You know, I don't know the structure in Burlington, but I'm sorry, Wilson, but Burlington is a police commission. I don't know what the mechanisms are, but I think you want to talk to your mayor and select board and ask them to have a presentation on this issue. And then, you know, I would say develop a citizen's oversight group or mechanism for the entities outside of the police department. Getting these data and then saying to the police chief, what are you going to do, present us a plan for reducing these disparities? And then let's track your progress over time and let's have your job evaluation depend upon how well we've done in addressing these racial disparities. Community groups are the only ones they're gonna call these law enforcement agencies accountable, because in Vermont, the only state level entity we have is the I think the commissioner of public safety, which only oversees Vermont state police. So there is no entity outside of the towns that is overseeing the the individual towns.

[00:21:35] So I would say, you know, ask them for the data, demand that there be a monthly report of the data that is put on the city's Web site and look at the data and engage them in meetings at city council or whatever the public meetings are. And you know that that to me would be really cool.

[00:21:54] You had some other recommendations just put about the collection, the ongoing collection of this, how it's organized, some of any other suggestions like that that you had?

[00:22:04] Yeah, I mean, so this is kind of policy stuff, especially for legislators. You know, there's data that we could get that would answer some questions that people have. So oftentimes, for example, the police will say, oh, well, it was an out-of-state drivers. It's not clear to me why that would explain away the racial disparities. But that would be good if we had data on which which drivers were from out of state in which drivers went from upstate. We would love data on what the contraband is. I think it would be important for the public to have officer level data anonymized. But it's so we can see what is the pattern of behavior within agencies, for example. So we made numerous recommendations. One of the biggest deficiencies I see is that there is no statewide report, there's no ownership of this. And in other states, the attorney general will collect the data and report it on a Web site. Missouri does this. North Carolina has a Web site where anybody could look at the data for any city or town. And so we in the data in Vermont is not very good because people don't code the data the same way. It's very good. We spend hours trying to. Analyze the data. Because it's so disorganized and if you really want it to be a tool, then the state really needs to take ownership of it and analyze it and clean the data so that it's useful to agencies and useful to the public.

[00:23:38] For me, one of the striking things about your study on racial disparities in policing was that Vermont actually did less well.

[00:23:46] In some other places in the country, we always pride ourselves on being so thoughtful, progressive and I don't know, immune to some of this. And yet this clearly indicates that we're as bad or worse.

[00:24:00] I mean, I think, you know, I've found that that's the biggest impediment in any of the work that I've done on racial equality in Vermont has been the a the defensiveness of white people here about what you call me, a racist when you know you're not calling them a racist and their belief in their liberal liberalism. So they are willing or unable to scrutinize their own actions. I mean, I'll give you an example here from Burlington recently on the school board, which we have an African-American, I should say, a black superintendent and an all white board, that when he recommended five principals to be hired in the spring.

[00:24:45] Two of them were black and three were white.

[00:24:48] The school board approved all of the white principal nominations and turned down the black nominations. And every time that happens, you know, so. And I think they believe that they're good people. But you have to be willing to look at your behavior. And, you know, even though the person is the current chair of the school board prior to getting on the school board, would often criticize the school district. But she only criticized black administrators. For me as a person that does this work. That's very glaring. And then the question is, how do you get people how can you help sensitize people and become aware of what I think are unconscious biases? Right. But, you know, this moment in history is telling us that it's time for white people to step up and and not put this work on the shoulders of people of color to always be saying that we can't take it anymore. None of us should be able to take this anymore. We are all diminished by this. And so, you know, I really hope that white Vermonters address their weight, fragility and join the game because they think their values of Vermonters are really admirable. But they they have a blind spot when it comes to the issue of race.

[00:26:05] All right. Two. And thank you for that.

[00:26:07] Maybe let's just pause for a moment and talk about what's going on in the country. And then I'll come back to some of the specific questions people have about your study.

[00:26:14] But.

[00:26:16] We, you know, peaceful protests around the country.

[00:26:23] The death of Jorge Floyd has brought so much attention to this. What are you thinking, Stephanie, as you watch all this unfold?

[00:26:32] Oh, it's very, very hard.

[00:26:40] I think the you know, the other pain of watching somebody murdered on video by one of our most important public institutions was a defining moment for us. Even with, you know, so even with the videos in the past several years, it's given people insight into policing and the disparate treat treatment of especially men of color. But even with those videos where people were often able to say, well, maybe something happened just before the video went on or, you know, all of these other things. And I think that this video maybe opens people's eyes. But I think the most significant thing about this moment is, I think two significant things. The fact that thankfully people, especially people of color, but black people, to have stood up and said this cannot happen anymore, that this has been the last straw for us. But the other thing that's different this time. I have never seen police hold each other accountable. And we now see statements from the Vermont State Police, for example, from other police departments, Police Chief Sullivan Country saying this is not this is not right. And they are condemning this officer as a murderer. That is never happened in the past. There have always been more well, we need to investigate. There might have been other factors, the bill. And I think what's happened here is that many police probably already blocked this. But the club culture, you know, the frat culture of police departments is such that you you're so afraid to disrupt your relationship with the group that you sometimes don't speak up. And now, for some reasons, police now feel that it's OK to speak up. And I'm hoping they will continue to speak up in the future. I mean, if we have our own voices in Vermont. And I'm hoping that, you know, police departments in Vermont will now be going to speak up and hold each other accountable.

[00:28:48] So stay with Vermont in your research. Somebody asked what Hardman's did respond to your study. Who what towns may have stepped up to look at it?

[00:28:59] And what did they actually do differently?

[00:29:04] Well, let me. You know, so I think there is. Let me say this.

[00:29:07] There's like maybe actually four that kind of use the data, but to really use it.

[00:29:12] So I'll just talk about the two that really use it, which is Vermont State Police and Brattleboro police. And what they do is they they look at the data, they look at the officer level data. And if there's an officer who is let's say, you know. 30 percent of their car stops are drivers of color when drivers of color, only 10 percent of the population. They see that there's this disparity and they call the officer in. And they say, let's talk about it. Let's talk about how you're policing and so on and so forth in in Brattleboro. They do this routinely. It's part of the evaluation. And actually at Vermont, State Police to their people are evaluated on this. The commanders are evaluated on the degree to which they are promoting bias free policing. So that's really the way to look at the data. You know, use the data is to download it every month.

[00:30:08] It doesn't take much to analyze it and talk about it, talk about what's going on. And sometimes you'll find that there are explanations. So, for example, there was a case in which one officer had stopped a lot of Hispanic drivers in a particular month or week or whatever it was, it was really noticeable. And they called him in and it just happened to be that it was a group that was driving over and something had happened. But there was a I've forgotten the circumstances, but there was an explanation for it. And that's fine with it. By calling officers in it and pointing to the data, it continues to remind them that implicit bias can play a role. And be careful when you're when you're policing. That bias is not what is driving your actions.

[00:30:56] And somebody else asks us about and I'm not sure that you touched on this, but the undocumented workers in Vermont. Vermont has maybe fifteen hundred people working on our dairy farms. We would not have milk without people doing this work. And increasingly with the movement of ice further and further into Vermont. So you can see the question here. What do you know about the undocumented workers being stopped?

[00:31:25] Yeah, that's a really good question. No, I think it's. I don't have data on whether somebody is documented or undocumented on their license, so I don't know about that. I think the bigger issue has been when there is the passenger who is Hispanic and they might have stopped the driver and then they may decide they're going to ask passenger looks for his documents.

[00:31:51] And as I understand it, a few years ago, that was really a big issue. And the attorney general issued some guidance on that to make it illegal to ask passengers in those circumstances. But I'm not really clear on those details. I can't say too much about that. But I do think the fact that there is the issue of potentially being an undocumented driver is partly what is driving the Hispanic white disparity in Vermont.

[00:32:19] You know, in previous talk, Stephanie, you talked about the impacts by class, gender and race of the pandemic.

[00:32:28] And I wonder if you go talk about because it feels like all of this is coming together at a similar time.

[00:32:36] Yeah, yeah.

[00:32:38] Yeah. So, I mean, let me just say first, the gender effects are really very clear in that women are overwhelmingly part of the health care social service sector and are disproportionately exposed to Kofod because of the work that they're doing in health care. And at the same time, schools are closed and child care centers are closed. So they are trying to juggle these dangerous jobs with the risk of bringing the virus home in a household in which their unpaid work is exponentially increased. Right. Families can't eat out anymore. Well, maybe recently they can. So they're carrying a huge burden. And then you have women who are disproportionately segregated into the lowest wage service sector jobs as custodians, domestics, fast food workers and so on and so forth. And those are public facing jobs many times. And in those cases, those workers have lost their jobs. Their wages are too low. They don't have any savings. And if they are able to go to work, they go to work with all of the health risks, including lack of health insurance that that involves because they can't afford to stay home. And if they stay home, they're destitute. So it's gendered in that way. It's raised in the sense that I know people a lot of people have talked about the sort of the physical vulnerabilities of people of color due to the effects of racism. Right. They have higher rates of chronic diseases. They have this what we call weathering the the accelerated deterioration of the body because the impact of racism on the body. There's also the fact that that one study I saw found that that that African-Americans were recommended less for testing, less frequently for testing them, were similarly situated white patients. And there was a story on The Daily the other day about a Hispanic man, a U.S. citizen who went to the doctor four times with symptoms of Cauvin and was sent home without ever a test and ended up dying from it. So so there's two sides of that, right? Both the long term impact of racism on the body, as well as the current same implicit bias that we see in policing we see in the medical field as well. And of course, we know that disproportionately people of color are low income folks who are affected by this crisis because either they can't afford to stay home or if they do, they have so few assets and savings that they we have a huge problem of food, food security in this country now as a result of comfort and access to health care, too, I believe, with real time, particularly in rural areas.

[00:35:28] Do you sticking with Kobe just for a and you wrote a column recently with Jane O'Dell about how you think that government resources might be best directed at this moment. Can you talk a bit about that?

[00:35:41] Yeah.

[00:35:42] I mean, if if the crisis disproportionately affects certain groups, then that's where the funding should be targeted. People, wealthy people, people like me, the. I have a job and a good salary. It's not affected. I don't need those resources. Right. So they need to be well targeted. But I think in particular in Vermont, small and medium sized businesses, which are more likely to be minority owned or women owned, for example. But all small businesses, these businesses don't have the retained earnings to weather this crisis that larger firms have. And so if we don't support them, they are going to go bankrupt. They're going to go out of business. And that means that those positions won't be there for people to go back through. When this period of social distancing ends. The other thing that I talked about in that article is that while the state government has done well in terms of responding to combat, there is the threat of returning to kind of regulate Hoobler right up, flawed economic policy. You know, cutting the budget, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do during this period of time. There are ways to weather it economically. And we should be doing that because we don't there will be much more suffering and the recovery much longer that were we to step up and do what we need to do to support small businesses and families right now.

[00:37:14] We are going to just take a few more questions for Stephanie and I.

[00:37:19] I want to bring this back again to this thing that's happening all around us right now and ask you, because people want to know you might blow account of Hind's Bird. There was a kids protest today of people marching in sympathy. What what are the kinds of things that you did people could be doing at this moment, do you think, to draw to make some of the changes that might be necessary?

[00:37:48] You know this it's a really good question, and I want to I'll just talk generally for a moment. This requires long term focus. It is. And I just read a quote by an African an African philosopher who said Things are moving really fast. This is the time to slow down. And in a certain sense, I think that's true, that there's no quick fix solutions. But we can begin to think about what are the long term solutions and ways that we can engage to address this. The biggest problem with this kind of thing is that when there is an event like this, people are really motivated and agitated. But after the fact that they will back to their lives. Understandably. And if we don't have a sustained focus on this, things are going to change. So I think the first thing to do would be to look for those places of entry, if you will. And a lot can happen, especially at the local level. Right. If we're not involved in Washington politics and so forth, we have to work at the local level, at the state level. And so it means looking at your community and what are the entities within your community that are weighings to advocate for change. So engaging your city council or your town manager, I mean, just give an example about Vermont. When we when we did our press conference on our study in twenty seventeen. There were a few mayors. But, you know, it's the mayors and top managers that have to hold police departments accountable. If they're not, then citizens need to be calling them, you know, calling them on this and saying, you know, you're responsible for evaluating the police chief. And this has to be a criterion. And I mean, no, I don't mean to suggest that that always has to be kind of a negative pressure. But we have to demonstrate that we we're watching it. And you're accountable for your actions. I just watched the video last night of the team of people that were beaten up by the police and chased by the police in Atlanta, Georgia. And the press conference was really beautiful because they were invited up to speak. And what they said was, no, thank you. That there is accountability. Police officers were fired and they said, thank you for getting these monsters off the street and for holding the police accountable. And so accountability is really a lot of what people are looking for. So demand that the data be made public, demand that it be published once a month. Not after two years without ever having looked at it. Demand that they're going to figure out how to address it and monitor their develop a group that will be a watchdog, for example. You know, another issue is for kids that are students is that there are disparities in discipline in schools in Vermont, just like everywhere else in the country. A number of high schools in Vermont have developed special gruss justice groups that were responsible for flying the Black Lives Matter flag. When that happens, that generates conversations within the family and within the community that we need to be having. Silence is the enemy here. Silence is the enemy. So finding ways to continue to raise this issue and watch what's going on and work on finding solutions.

[00:41:19] And I like that so much because you bring it back to what we actually can do in our in Vermont. So there is a study that shows there's racial disparities in policing. We have local police officers who may in most cases, do want to do better, but they need to hear from citizens in their communities.

[00:41:39] We care about that.

[00:41:42] You know what, the police chief from South Burlington was really interesting. Schonberg and really thoughtful about this issue. And what he said to me is, you know, one of the biggest deficits is that most police departments don't have the funding to do kind of implicit bias training and and or the knowledge to organize. But mostly what the police officers lack is a knowledge of racial history in the United States. And when they are confronted with it. They begin to understand the racial dynamics that we're observing, that, you know, because you know that because people of color are disproportionately homeless, it isn't because they're lazy, it's because of residential segregation and job discrimination and so on and so forth.

[00:42:30] And that this is true of violence against African-Americans as hundreds of years old. It's not just a recent phenomenon. So, you know, I would ask, how can community support police departments to develop that training? I mean, they're not in a position to do it themselves. Right. And I would hope the state would step up and say, let's, you know, we need to take some responsibility for policing the local local level, provide them the resources to analyze their data, to get it back to them in a timely fashion and to help formulate the kind of trainings that will change their mentality. But if the state doesn't do it, you can do it at the local level. You can demand that your town manager or mayor and work with them. I don't mean demand, but say, you know, we as citizens, we pay the taxes that fund these salaries. You need to represent our values. And so, you know, use town dollars to achieve those goals. I mean, that's I think one of the more fundamental things is actually the kind of racial racial history training for police departments would be profoundly important.

[00:43:35] Thank you.

[00:43:36] And for all those thoughts and you, we can post a link to the paper that you did and invite people to keep this conversation going and however you would like and if you have, I'm going to turn it over to Briona to talk about where we're going next or if people have ideas for future talks for our College of Arts and Sciences Center for Research on Vermont every Wednesday at noon.

[00:44:04] So thanks again, Stephanie. And my pleasure. Thanks a lot.

[00:44:15] So as I said, Brianna, go ahead. Oh, God.

[00:44:22] Thank you, everyone, for watching. If you have any ideas for next week or any future weeks, we don't have anyone booked for next week. So we would love to hear your ideas. Yes. Go tuned for what we have coming next week. We'll make an announcement later.