Use of Force

JERI WILLIAMS: How the public perceives law enforcement is definitely a key factor in us being believable to the people that we serve. As a result, we've changed and adjusted our policies. I told you earlier too that we have our policies and procedures online. That was one of the big changes that we had just to share and show people that we're being transparent. So if I'm writing your ticket, if I'm coming to your house taking a report, if I'm taking bad guys to jail, I should not be afraid to invite you into my world

and why we do what we do. So we've made adjustments to our policy as a result of transparency. We've made changes to our use of force policies and procedures, so much so that we're really going to take the earlier part of next year to really drill down and look at escalation and de-escalation of force. So there are many studies out there. You can look at implicit bias studies, you can look at legitimacy studies or there's a lot of data and research out there that dictates and shows that if I am chasing after

I stop, I get out. My adrenaline is already through the roof. I am juiced. I am pumped. I'm going to do what I was trained to do. And what I was trained to do is contact and control the situation. And this is going to be an odd thing to say, but should that officer be the same person who goes hands on with that individual right away? It's a question of the day. If you look at the research from Dr. L. Song Richardson from UC Irvine, she has a study that says that that officer who did the chasing or driving to catch the person should not be the person to go hands on with the individual, because you will undoubtedly have an adrenaline rush that's different than someone who understands and knows this person

needs to be apprehended. It's just a different dynamic. So when we talk about changing and adjusting, those are the types of things that I'm talking about changing and adjusting when we look at escalation and de-escalation of force. In a lot of the scenarios that we have-- the shoot/don't-shoot situations-- where we have a machine that helps our officers with its decision making, there are scenarios where the officer will come up on someone, and they may have their gun drawn, but they look and they see that you have a clipboard and not a gun, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to still have my gun pointed on you,

or should I retrieve and put my gun back? We are providing our officers with those type of scenarios, because in real life-- it's called reality-based training-- in real life, that could very well happen where you have someone who sees you, they see that you have your gun drawn, they see other officers, they hear the dog barking, they give up. So we should be willing to adjust and make that adjustment on the fly very fast. So we're making some changes in our policies to that. I talked a little bit earlier about the communication piece

of law enforcement. We're going to kick off our whole principal policing and police legitimacy training at the beginning of next year that's going to require a lot of staff time, a lot of cultural change with our officers. But in the last two years, based on the national attention that has been drawn by cases from New York, you name it, we've had to make adjustments. I was told once, and this was years ago, by one of the Assistant Chiefs of

Department, flexibility is the key to police management. And for protecting and serving the public, flexibility is the key. So when we need to learn, adjust, change, and improve, I think we're bound by code to have to do that. So those are some of the changes that we're making. I'm really proud to say that we're making and, quite frankly, it will make us a more transparent, a much more just, a much more believable police department. When we talk about some of the adjustments to training that we are looking at in the next year and a half, we have to key in the factor of implicit bias and that those biases that we all have that are just ingrained that we really have to work on avoiding in order to provide service that's

equitable and just to everyone. So it's educating our officers that we all have some forms of bias within us but to step above that and be the people that we took the oath to be, to be that person who is treating everyone the same way. And, again, that platinum standard goes back to treating people the way they want to be treated. So implicit bias is also a component of Dr. L. Song Richardson's work out of UC Irvine.

Summary: Chief of Police Jeri Williams discusses changes being made within her police department related to use of force and implicit bias. She describes efforts to make the force more transparent and to prepare officers to adapt quickly to different situations.

Question:

Do you agree or disagree with the changes she may be implementing on having an officer that is in pursuit not deal directly with the perpetrator upon containment of the individual? 

Explain why you agree or disagree with this implemented policy change in use of force. Then, bring in a real-world case study/article in which the police use of force was found either to be used too much or validated.

What were the parameters of the case?

350-450 words excluding references, APA format and a minimum of 3 references