Formal policies on use of force in law enforcement are important, but they’re not nearly as vital as leadership that creates a culture in which excessive force is simply not tolerated.
Exhibit A: the Denver Sheriff Department.
Oh, sure, this is a department that has a spanking new, up-to-date and humane use-of-force policy that was unveiled a couple of months ago to much praise, including from this editorial page. We said it was hard to imagine a much better model.
Deputies are being trained on the revamped policy and will have no excuse in the future for failing to understand that force must always be a last resort.
But that doesn’t mean the departmentap hands were tied under the previous rules or that the agency’s well-documented scandals involving the mistreatment of inmates were a function of outdated policy. As if to prove the point, the Denver Sheriff Department this summer for excessive use of force in incidents that occurred before the new rules were released and involve the type of behavior that might have been swept under the carpet several years ago or even justified as appropriate.
The firings are the latest evidence that Sheriff Patrick Firman, who was hired last October, is determined to create a culture of respect and restraint. They’re also an encouraging sign that the public can expect the new, stricter rules will be fully enforced as well.
Itap not easy being a deputy in a big-city jail. Some inmates are verbally abusive, or balk at direct orders. Not a few suffer from mental illness that makes their behavior unpredictable. You don’t have to be a saint to deal with them, but you do have to rise above the instinct to retaliate in frustration or anger.
All three of the deputies fired this summer failed that test of self-control. They overreacted to provocative or recalcitrant inmate behavior with retaliatory violence — in one case hurling the prisoner head first into a steel table; in another, kicking a door flap on the cell while the inmate held it; and in the third, punching the inmate in the face.
And then they compounded the offenses by misleading their superiors with less-than-credible claims of how they had felt threatened.
According to the disciplinary letters obtained by The Denver Post’s Noelle Phillips, attorneys for two of the deputies argued that severely punishing their clients would send a dangerous message that prisoners can defy orders, with one attorney claiming “the inmates are sort of running the roost.” But thatap not remotely what the descriptions of the three incidents, as detailed in those letters, suggest at all.
In fact, the deputies were at all times in control of the inmates and of institutional order. What they lacked control over was their own urge to inflict punishment. And the department is right to conclude they have no business remaining on the force.
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