The biggest portion of St. Louis County Police Commissioner Dr. L.J. Punch’s recent letter to the police chief had to do with use-of-force policies and statistics.
The entire letter outlines action steps in six areas of concern: training, diversity and inclusion, transparency, evaluation, use of force and protests. Punch explained that the recommendations are based on information pulled from the Ferguson Commission, U.S. Department of Justice report, Homegrown STL and the St. Louis Violence Prevention Commission, as well as the Ethical Society of Police.
During the Board of Police Commissioners meeting on August 18, Lt. Colby Dolly, commander of the Bureau of Research and Analysis, responded to several of the use-of-force suggestions Punch made. However, because of the poor audio of the Zoom recording, the public could not hear his responses.
Below, Dolly discusses Punch’s recommendations with the American, and his answers are printed below Punch’s statements, in the order they appear in the letter. Dolly oversees policy development, grants, crime analysis, and accreditation in his role.
Punch’s recommendation: “Rather than simply reviewing the use-of-force policy, we must allow explicit sharing of the statistics regarding the department’s use of force, reported by race and gender and location and disaggregated. This would allow a review of how the practice and behavior of policing is impacting the region.”
Dolly: The key word in that first sentence is that it’s “disaggregated.” We do share aggregated data. We publish a report every year that says how many total uses of force we have and what kind of forms it was — was it a taser, a baton, etc. So I’m all for sharing data. We can share the disaggregated data to a point. Think of it like crime data, you see a map of points where a crime occurred. You could do a similar type thing with use of force incidents. You’d just have to limit who was involved — the officer or the citizen — you wouldn’t want to share that information. But that’s possible to do.
American: So you could report it just like you do for regular crime statistics, but also break it out into race and gender. How difficult would that be?
Dolly: It wouldn’t be real difficult. I think the interpretation of it can be difficult. Let’s say three officers go to a call and three of them use physical force. That’s one incident. We could count it that way, but what if they used force on two people. Now is it two incidents? There’s no right or wrong way to do it, we’d just have to be clear.
American: Could you apply the same metrics or standards that you use for crime statistics?
Dolly: Yeah, and that’s probably what we’ll end up doing. If one person shoots into a house and there’s five people in the living room and the bullet travels in the proximity of those people, that’s five aggravated assaults. It’s a national problem of standardizing how you count these things. On the one hand, if we put this stuff out there and then our accounting system is more broad and we count more, then the uninformed consumer of the data could say, “On my gosh, St. Louis County is out of control!” When really, it’s the way we are counting it. That’s kind of our fear with this.
Punch’s recommendation: “It has been stated that the #8cantwait guidelines have already been embraced by the St. Louis County Police Department which are as below. I share here those guidelines and move through the language of the use of force policy identifying opportunities for growth and clarification. I am not a lawyer. I speak the truth as best as I can. This is precisely the kind of work that any additional funds could be used to do. This deep careful work, focusing on language and working with officers and leadership to understand culture takes time and human resources. There is inadequate support, regulation and expertise in the department to do this kind of work without undue bias.
The #8CANTWAIT campaign has especially gotten a lot of attention online. It calls for police departments to immediately make the following changes:
1. Ban chokeholds and strangleholds 2. Require de-escalation 3. Require warning before shooting 4. Require exhausting all alternatives before shooting 5. Duty to intervene 6. Ban shooting at moving vehicles 7. Require use of force continuum 8. Require comprehensive reporting
Under the department’s use-of-force policy, it states, ‘C. If feasible, a verbal warning shall be given prior to the use of deadly force.’
– The word ‘IF’ is a loophole and should be removed as any action without warning can be allowed due to the presence of this two-letter word.”
Dolly: I said this in the meeting, I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment of it. I understand the fact that other people look at it as a loophole, but the whole issue of giving a warning “if feasible,” part of that came from a Supreme Court case Tennessee vs. Garner in 1985. But the issue then becomes if you were to make officers give a warning every time before they use deadly force, it potentially could become dangerous for citizens or the officers. If someone starts shooting at you, they are not going to have time or the mental capacity to give a warning. This would not go along with industry standard.
Punch’s recommendation: “A. Where deadly force is not authorized, officers should assess the incident in order to determine which non-deadly technique or less lethal weapon will best de-escalate the incident and bring it under control in a safe manner. Only the appropriate amount of force necessary to bring an incident under control is authorized. In making an arrest, no more force shall be used than is reasonably necessary for the safe custody of the prisoner or for overcoming any resistance that may be offered and for ensuring the delivery of the prisoner into safekeeping. Officers are not authorized to use chokeholds, neck restraints, shoulder pins or similar weaponless control techniques with a potential for serious injury.
– While this does not permit chokeholds, it does qualify situations in which deadly force is not authorized as if it is the primary posture and de-escalation is a compromise rather than a primary posture. It does not include decisive language to ‘exhaust’ all efforts before lethal force.”
Dolly: Actually, I see [Punch’s] point here. I will concede that our current use-of-force policy, the language can be improved. What I envision is that we do need to make it more clear, even in the layout of the policy, that the default starting position is that you don’t use any force. That’s where everything begins, is that we do not want to use force and we shall de-escalate as much as possible and exhaust everything reasonable before using force. I do agree that there is room for improvement there.
Punch’s recommendation: “B. Individual Employee Responsibility 1. Every employee of this Department has the responsibility to immediately contact the Bureau of Professional Standards or the Department Duty officer and report any act which they believe involves the use of excessive force as described in this Order. 2. Any employee who fails to report physical or verbal abuse against any citizen by another member of this Department is subject to disciplinary action.
– The language ‘believe’ and ‘excessive force’ does not align with best practices in the requirement of reporting ALL use of force and even threat of use of force.”
Dolly: I think we are talking about two different things here. There’s excessive force. That is something that is not condoned by the department. It’s misconduct. That has to be reported. No one is going to dispute the fact that you have to report excessive force, and it has to be reported immediately. It’s in our policies, but we can make it right up front that you have to report any excessive force or any misconduct.
The other part of it is “all use of force,” I look that at as something slightly different. Now we aren’t talking about misconduct, we’re talking about things that are authorized by the department. If you do anything that is outside normally handcuffing, that all counts of use of force, and that has to be reported. The only thing that we don’t report, that some other agencies do, is that you point your weapon at someone. But we are looking at changing that. It does seem simple in a way, but to make that change we have to inform officers of what the change is and then to train them in what exactly counts as pointing a gun at someone. We have to get that all in policy before we can roll that out.
Punch’s recommendation: “B. Firearms Shall Not be Discharged Under the Following Circumstances 1. As a warning shot; or 2. At or from a moving vehicle, unless the occupant(s) of the vehicle represents a direct and immediate threat to the life or safety of the officer or an innocent person, and then only as a last resort; Officers shall avoid tactics that could place them in a position where a vehicle could be used as a weapon against them (i.e. reaching into the vehicle to turn the car off and secure the keys, approaching the vehicle from the front, etc.). When confronted with an oncoming vehicle, officers shall make every attempt to move out of its path.
– This also gives a caveat, which allows a firearm to be directed toward a moving vehicle.”
Dolly: Looking at these model policies, they typically allow for shooting at vehicles in extreme circumstances only.
American: So someone you pull over for an expired license plate and they drive off and then you shoot at the vehicle. That’s not allowed?
Dolly: No, and an officer just got charged for that. Our policy actually has in there that you should not put yourself in the position where you are creating this danger or hazard for yourself.
Punch’s recommendation: “‘IX. NONDEADLY USE OF FORCE PROCEDURES A. The precinct watch commander or appropriate bureau commander must be notified immediately whenever an officer uses or attempts to use force under extraordinary circumstances.’
– Again, this is open to interpretation of the word ‘extraordinary.’ It has been stated twice that this policy has been reviewed since the DOJ evaluation, however it is dated without edits from 2010.”
Dolly: We will try to strengthen the language on that. Basically, there’s room for improvement. We will try to make it more concrete.
American: Is there anything you’d like to say about Dr. Punch’s letter overall?
Dolly: You probably couldn’t hear a lot of this in the meeting, but Punch did say that a lot of the things in the letter is what [Punch] has gathered from the community. [Punch] is the conduit to give everyone this information from the community. I have no problem with people wanting to give input on police operations. I welcome that. I don’t take offense to it or anything. That’s how you know maybe you need to change something.
American: Would you then disagree with the tweet that was put out on August 19 at 4:38 p.m. on the @SLCPA_FOP (St. Louis County Police Association) Twitter page? It says, “@lj_punch we encourage you to take the opportunity to utilize our training simulators on use of force and generally educate yourself before peddling extremist viewpoints on policing based solely on opinion. This rhetoric puts officers at risk against violent extremists.”
Dolly: Wow, there is a lot to that. Do I think that Dr. Punch and other board members should go to our training simulators? Sure, as a general principle. I don’t think there’s any harm to it.
American: What do you think about the “peddling extremist view points?”
Dolly: I don’t think all of them are aligned with best practices. I’m not going to say if they are extremist viewpoints or not. They are viewpoints that are somewhat different from what the police department views the world from, but I think it’s productive in a way to hear these things and address them directly. Sometimes I think things just need to be talked out.
American: Why don’t you want to say whether it’s extremist or not?
Dolly: I think that’s a hot button way to say things, and I don’t like to characterize people’s viewpoints one way or another. It’s their viewpoint.
American: So you would never say that Punch’s letter is extremist?
Dolly: No, I don’t look at it as extremist. It’s a perspective in the community, and I’m happy to respond to those different perspectives and viewpoints on how people feel in the community.
American: Do you think it’s divisive for a police union to say publicly that these views that came from the community are extremist?
Dolly: I’ll defer that to the police association.
American: Are you part of that union?
Dolly: No, I’m not.
