If you were trying to devise a modern, humane use-of-force policy for a sheriff’s department that responded to the controversies of the day, it’s hard to imagine one much better than what .
It’s also hard to imagine we just wrote those words, given all of the criticism we’ve leveled at the department in the past few years over abuse of prisoners, erratic discipline and scandalous hiring procedures — not to mention leadership that had been blind, if not indifferent, to the problems.
But the city has methodically — too methodically in our view, but we won’t harp on that today — moved to clean up the mess, including hiring a new sheriff from outside. And this use-of-force policy is another milestone in the effort.
So let us count the ways it provides clear and progressive guidelines on how and when deputies can resort to force.
To begin with, the policy emphasizes over and over that force is not the first or second option, but the last. If a prisoner won’t come out of a cell upon request, for example, a deputy cannot just knock him down and drag him out, or Taser him into submission. “When an individual fails to comply with an order or command,” the policy states, “unless immediate action is necessary to ensure the safety of inmates, staff, and third persons, force shall not be a deputy’s first response.”
A deputy’s response, “if time and circumstances permit,” must be to “use de-escalation techniques in an attempt to resolve the situation through voluntary compliance.”
And even if these techniques, in which the deputies will be trained, fail to work, the officer must usually still have a plan of action involving force approved by a supervisor.
Obviously deputies will have to use force sometimes. They’re dealing with people who can be volatile, angry or despondent, and it doesn’t help that some are mentally ill. So force will be allowed when a prisoner is an “imminent threat,” or when other efforts fail to get him to comply with a reasonable request.
However, deputies will be violating the new policy if they use force in response to insults or meaningless threats — as has occurred — or “to punish, degrade, humiliate, discipline, retaliate, improperly coerce, discriminate against, or unnecessarily cause pain or injury to an individual.”
Tasers will be strictly limited, too. They will be used only once on an individual, except to save life, and only when a prisoner is engaged in “active aggression.”
Finally, not only will deputies be expected to report use-of-force incidents in greater detail than before, they’ll have to explain what steps they took to resolve the confrontation without force.
It’s hard to exaggerate the extent to which this policy represents a wholesale change in department culture over just a couple of years ago.
Now, of course, the big challenge will be to enforce it.
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