COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
JUDICIARY COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARING
140 MAIN CAPITOL BUILDING MAJORITY CAUCUS ROOM HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020 9:30 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON POLICE TRAINING AND DEPARTMENT ACCREDITATION
BEFORE: HONORABLE ROB KAUFFMAN, HOUSE MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE MATTHEW DOWLING HONORABLE TORREN ECKER HONORABLE JOHNATHAN HERSHEY HONORABLE BARRY JOZWIAK HONORABLE KATE KLUNK HONORABLE JERRY KNOWLES HONORABLE ANDREW LEWIS HONORABLE NATALIE MIHALEK HONORABLE PAUL SCHEMEL HONORABLE JESSE TOPPER HONORABLE TIM BRIGGS, HOUSE MINORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE DAN MILLER HONORABLE CHRIS RABB HONORABLE MELISSA SHUSTERMAN HONORABLE MIKE ZABEL HOUSE COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT:
THOMAS DYMEK MAJORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
MIKE FINK RESEARCH ANALYST
ELANA MAYNARD LEGISLATIVE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT INTEREST
TIM CLAWGES MINORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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Pennsylvania House Of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 3
INDEX
TESTIFIERS
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NAME PAGE
MAJOR STEVE IGNATZ, DIRECTOR PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE, MUNICIPAL POLICE OFFICERS EDUCATION AND TRAINING COMMISSION(MPOETC)....6
ISAAC SUYDAM, DIRECTOR PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE, MPOETC, TRAINING AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT SECTION...... 15
SERGEANT TIMOTHY FETZER PENNSYVLANIA STATE POLICE BUREAU OF TRAINING AND EDUCATION, USE OF FORCE UNIT...... 20
SCOTT BOHN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PENNSYLVANIA CHIEFS OF POLICE ASSOCIATION...... 35
CHIEF JOHN ENGLISH, PRESIDENT PENNSYLVANIA CHIEFS OF POLICE ASSOCIATION...... 37
LES NERI, PRESIDENT PENNSYLVANIA STATE LODGE FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE...... 68
STEPHEN SHELOW, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, JUSTICE AND SAFETY INSTITUTE...... 78
EMANUEL KAPELSOHN, PRESIDENT THE PEREGRINE CORPORATION...... 88
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
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(See submitted written testimony and handouts online.)
4
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: It is past 9:30, so
4 we are going to get started, and as we begin this morning's
5 agenda, if we could first rise for the Pledge of
6 Allegiance.
7 (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited)
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
9 I want to give Minority Chairman any time he'd like for any
10 opening remarks.
11 MINORITY CHAIRMAN BRIGGS: Great. Thank you,
12 Chairman, and I just want to -- it's been nice to see you.
13 I haven't seen you in a few months so it's good to be in
14 person.
15 And I just want to let everyone know I'm looking
16 forward to a good discussion about a lot of the training
17 issues. We had a good legislative outcome, I think,
18 earlier in the summer and I think it's a good time to learn
19 even more about what you all do. And I know my members are
20 excited for this opportunity.
21 So thank you, Chairman.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you,
23 Representative Briggs.
24 This is a great time to get together and to
25 understand more about the training issues that we are
5
1 dealing with. We passed some legislation earlier in the
2 summer and there's other legislation that is always before
3 the Committee. And we are looking forward to visiting the
4 training center at the State Police Academy here in the --
5 I believe it's next week the Committee is going to be
6 coming to visit.
7 So gentlemen, I'll start out with our
8 Pennsylvania State Police Panel. I want to remind everyone
9 that this meeting is being recorded and is also being
10 livestreamed so whenever you're speaking, if you can get
11 that microphone as close as possible so that folks at home
12 can hear what we have to say because I do believe this is
13 important information and testimony that should be heard by
14 all.
15 And as we start out, I neglected to have the
16 secretary -- if she would please call the roll.
17 (The roll was taken)
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
19 And we're going to get started to keep things
20 moving.
21 First, we have a panel of gentlemen who serve us
22 with the Pennsylvania State Police and training area. And
23 first, we have Major Steve Ignatz, Isaac Suydam, and
24 Sergeant Timothy Fetzer.
25 And I'll let you each talk about what you do and
6
1 give the testimony that you have here for the Committee
2 this morning, and then we'll open it up to questions for
3 you. Gentlemen.
4 MAJOR IGNATZ: Good morning, Chairman Kauffman
5 and Chairman Briggs and members of the House Judiciary
6 Committee. I'm Major Steve Ignatz, Director of the
7 Municipal Police Officers Education and Training
8 Commission, otherwise known as MPOETC.
9 With me today are Sergeant Tim Fetzer of the Use
10 of Force Unit within the Bureau of Training and Education
11 and Mr. Isaac Suydam, Director of the Training and
12 Curriculum Development Section at MPOETC. On behalf of the
13 Pennsylvania State Police, I would like to thank you for
14 inviting us to participate in a discussion regarding police
15 training as it pertains to use of force. My testimony will
16 cover this subject as it relates to PSP troopers as well as
17 municipal police officers.
18 PSP affords its members with extensive training
19 regarding the reasonable application of force while in
20 performance of their assigned duties. The department
21 utilizes both basic and in-service training platforms to
22 disseminate these teachings. A distinct goal of the
23 referenced programs is to ensure that department members
24 possess a requisite understanding of that which constitutes
25 the lawful and ethical implementation of force by a law
7
1 enforcement officer.
2 The PSP basic training program is conducted over
3 a 26-week period and encompasses 1,155 hours of overall
4 instruction. During this time, cadets receive
5 approximately 300 hours of instruction specific to the
6 appropriate application of force. This program is
7 regularly subjected to a review process and subsequently
8 revised when necessary.
9 PSP in-service training provides existing
10 department members with required use-of-force training on a
11 semi-annual basis. These programs facilitate the review
12 and update of current use-of-force standards, the
13 completion of recertification procedures associated with
14 the operation of lethal and less-lethal weapons, and the
15 assessment of the members' ability to properly perform in
16 realistic settings.
17 In 2016, the department realized the need to
18 officially create the Use of Force Unit within the Bureau
19 of Training and Education. Two of the four members of the
20 unit are the only law enforcement officers within the
21 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to have successfully completed
22 the Force Science Institute's Advanced Specialist Course.
23 As a prerequisite, they have also completed the Force
24 Science Institute's five-day certification course.
25 In the spring of 2018, the Use of Force Unit
8
1 began revising the cadet use-of-force curriculum which had,
2 up until that point, been developed and instructed by the
3 Academy's Criminal Law Unit. Through the leadership of the
4 Use of Force Unit, PSP is constantly assessing department
5 policies and regulations pertaining to use of force, and as
6 a result, PSP revised several existing policies, including
7 those related to conducted energy weapons usage.
8 In the spring of 2019, PSP revised its
9 department's tactical assurance program, an individualized
10 program designed to build confidence and to reinforce the
11 tactical and survival skills of all involved member or
12 enforcement officers following an officer-involved shooting
13 or serious police incident. PSP also designed and
14 implemented supplemental use-of-force training designed for
15 members or enforcement officers who demonstrate a need for
16 reinforcement of the department's policies and trainings as
17 they relate to the proper application of force.
18 Additionally, PSP developed a new
19 communications/de-escalation program designed to begin
20 building a cadet's communication skills early on in
21 training and culminate with the assessments of a cadet's
22 communication/de-escalation skills during scenario-based
23 exercises. The teachings focus on self-awareness,
24 emotional intelligence, decision-making skills, ways to
25 display empathy, improving active and reflective listening
9
1 skills, multi-cultural awareness, and implicit bias issues.
2 This new training will be administered to the 160th cadet
3 class, which is scheduled to start later this month.
4 Several times during the year, the Use of Force
5 Unit along with some members of the Bureau of Training and
6 Education command staff meet with the command staff of the
7 Internal Affairs Division to assess current department
8 use-of-force trends and any associated use-of-force
9 training. This allows the Bureau of Training and Education
10 to assess current training programs by examining incidents
11 occurring throughout the Commonwealth.
12 Unfortunately, because use-of-force statistics
13 captured by the department are not comprehensive in nature,
14 this is one of the only currently available mechanisms to
15 assess department use-of-force trends and training
16 practices. These meetings also ensure the department meets
17 CALEA requirements which indicate an agency must establish
18 a training committee who meets on a regular basis.
19 The Pennsylvania State Police has expended great
20 effort to ensure that its use-of-force training is founded
21 upon legal and evidence-based principles. As an example,
22 the department has sought and relied upon numerous
23 resources during the construction of current
24 use-of-training protocols, including but not limited to:
25 the U.S. Department of Justice, the International
10
1 Association of Chiefs of Police, inter- and
2 intradepartmental legal counsel, police practice and policy
3 experts, prominent psychologists and researchers in the
4 field of police performance, defensive tactics and crisis
5 communication specialists, medical experts, community
6 relations consultants, authorities in the area of police
7 reform.
8 The topics addressed by the department in both
9 the basic and in-service training environments include but
10 are not limited to: criminal justification statutes,
11 precedent case law, department policy considerations, legal
12 police-citizen interactions, officer's duties to intervene,
13 shooting at or from vehicles, stress response and
14 management, decision-making under stress, de-escalation
15 techniques, crisis intervention and communication, signs
16 and symptoms of mental illness, cultural diversity and
17 inclusion, prevention of profiling behaviors, use of
18 firearms, deployment of conducted energy weapons,
19 application of OC spray -- oleo capsicum spray --
20 deployment of the ASP Baton, implementation of hands-on
21 control techniques, transition amongst approved force
22 options, police tactics in varied environments, police
23 performance factors, and rendering first aid.
24 The Municipal Police Officers Education and
25 Training Commission, or MPOETC, was created by the
11
1 legislature by Act 120 of 1974 to establish and administer
2 the minimum courses of study for basic and in-service
3 training for police officers and to revoke an officer's
4 certification when an officer fails to comply with the
5 basic and in-service training requirements or is convicted
6 of a criminal offense where the commission determines that
7 the officer is physically or mentally unfit to perform the
8 duties of the office.
9 There are currently 22,719 municipal officers in
10 Pennsylvania trained in accordance with Act 120. They
11 serve in some 1,066 different departments. Some of the
12 police departments are very large, while others may have
13 one or two personnel. And as you may know, many officers
14 work either full or part time for more than one department.
15 More than 1,300 officers work for two police
16 departments; 212 officers work for three police
17 departments; 48 officers work for four police departments;
18 and there are 11 officers in the Commonwealth who work for
19 five or more police departments.
20 The total number of municipal law enforcement
21 positions filled by municipal officers across Pennsylvania
22 is currently 24,684.
23 Municipal police in Pennsylvania receive their
24 basic training at one of 24 training academies across the
25 state. Five academies are operated by municipalities and
12
1 fourteen are operated by colleges or the Pennsylvania State
2 System of Higher Education. The Pennsylvania State Police
3 operates the academy in Hershey plus four regional training
4 centers, each authorized to conduct Act 120 training.
5 The basic police training curriculum teaches
6 traditional police basic skills such as report writing,
7 history of law enforcement, criminal procedures, plus
8 police officers are provided training to recognize mental
9 illness, intellectual disabilities, and autism. Officers
10 are provided proper techniques to interact with and
11 de-escalate individuals engaging in behavior indicative of
12 mental illness, intellectual disability, or autism.
13 Officers are also given instruction on services available
14 to individuals with mental illness, intellectual
15 disabilities, or autism. Trainees receive training in
16 community-oriented policing and problem solving, as well.
17 In total, the Basic Police Syllabus totals 919 hours of
18 training.
19 The current Block 3-I Use of Force in Law
20 Enforcement lesson plan is based on the in-service course
21 developed in 2016. In the basic academy, students spend
22 eight hours of the law portion of use of force, while the
23 in-service course for certified officers who were already
24 working was six hours. This course was built by a
25 committee that included a member of the MPOETC training
13
1 section staff, an officer from the Philadelphia Police
2 Department, attorneys, and a use-of-force expert.
3 The training block noted above addresses the
4 specific laws related to using force as a police officer;
5 however, the concept of legally and carefully using force
6 as an officer is reinforced throughout the academy. The
7 2020 Basic Police Training Syllabus has several training
8 blocks which apply to use of force by officers. Modules
9 such as Laws and Criminal Procedure, Responding to Special
10 Needs, and Patrol Procedures and Operations either teach a
11 specific force-related skill, skills related to
12 de-escalating techniques, or some aspect of decision-making
13 related to if, when, how, and how much force an officer
14 might be required to use in the performance of their
15 assigned duties. None of these lessons are called use of
16 force nor does the term necessarily occur in the lesson
17 plan; however, the concepts are interrelated and build upon
18 one another.
19 Trainees currently receive a 17-hour block of
20 instruction in human relations that includes Personal Bias
21 and Procedural Justice, Cultural and Religious
22 Considerations, and Perceptions of Human Behavior and
23 Communications. This training was developed directly from
24 the 21st Century Policing, the Police Executive Research
25 Forum, and other national initiatives. This was a
14
1 mandatory in-service training block initially and has been
2 incorporated into the basic curriculum.
3 The cultural awareness block is taught to help
4 the trainees identify the behaviors that foster and those
5 that harm effective minority community relations. They
6 also receive instruction in identifying issues of cultural
7 diversity that may adversely impact successful
8 interviewing. They learn the characteristics of effective
9 interpersonal communication skills, as well as the barriers
10 to effective listening. The goal is to foster effective
11 communications with those they are sworn to protect and to
12 establish police legitimacy.
13 In closing, the PSP is proud of the training
14 programs our troopers and municipal police officers
15 receive. We believe it's of paramount importance to
16 conduct -- or to continue to reevaluate our curriculum in
17 order to ensure an effective balance between maintaining
18 officer safety and the civil rights of the citizens and
19 visitors to the Commonwealth. Additionally, the basic and
20 continuing educational opportunities available to
21 Pennsylvania's police officers enable them to interact
22 respectfully and effectively with individuals from the
23 Commonwealth's diverse communities.
24 At this time, we'd be happy to answer any
25 questions you may have for us. Thank you.
15
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Questions?
2 Barry, do you have something?
3 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Yes. Thank you, Mr.
4 Chairman.
5 My question is directed to Mr. Suydam. I'd just
6 like you to touch a little bit on the additional legal
7 updates that the police officers undertake and also how
8 many other courses -- for instance, like if a detective
9 goes to legal updates, he doesn't necessarily go to patrol
10 tactics. He will go to a homicide school. Just let the
11 panel know about that, please.
12 MR. SUYDAM: Yes, sir. So each year, the
13 Commission establishes 12 hours' worth of in-service
14 training courses. The staff develops that based on task
15 analysis and input from the field. Those courses that are
16 developed by the Commission include a three-hour block of
17 legal updates that each officer has to take. That's a
18 mandatory course.
19 And over the recent years, since about 2015,
20 we've also had a program called Continuing Law Enforcement
21 Education Courses that are courses provided by other
22 training vendors that the staff reviews and adds to a list
23 of courses that municipal police officers can take for
24 credit. The regulatory requirement to take 12 hours of
25 training was established in 1988, and the officers have
16
1 taken the courses developed by MPOETC for most of that
2 time. But over the last five years or so, we've added
3 courses to that list so that some officers in municipal
4 departments take other courses other than the ones that the
5 Commission developed.
6 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Yeah. That's correct.
7 Can I ask another question?
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Go for it.
9 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: On the decertification
10 of police officers who either commit crimes or do something
11 improper, could you explain that process?
12 MR. SUYDAM: So there's -- in regulation,
13 currently there are specific criteria that are established
14 for which officers can be decertified. Those are
15 enumerated and only in those situations can the Commission
16 undertake to revoke someone's certification. That process
17 involves a notification to the Commission in cases of
18 criminal convictions, because all municipal police officers
19 have been fingerprinted and that information is filed with
20 the Commission when notified in cases where they're
21 arrested, and then we follow that progress -- that process,
22 rather, until they're convicted.
23 At the point of conviction, then the Commission
24 can undertake a process of revocation. The notification is
25 made to the officer and the officer has a right to a
17
1 hearing, and if they choose to have a hearing, then a
2 hearing is held. Following the hearing, that information
3 is taken back to the Commission and the Commission votes to
4 either revoke the certification or to not revoke the
5 certification based on the information that was provided to
6 them.
7 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Thank you. So the
8 Municipal Police Officer's Education and Training
9 Commission is the commission that certifies and also
10 decertifies police officers when there's an issue?
11 MR. SUYDAM: Correct.
12 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Okay. Thank you, Mr.
13 Chairman.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
15 Representative Rabb?
16 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 I'm curious. I wanted to follow up on that line
18 of questioning. In, say, 2019, how many police officers
19 were decertified?
20 MR. SUYDAM: I do not have that information with
21 me. I don't know off the top of my head.
22 MAJOR IGNATZ: I believe the number was 24 in
23 2019, sir.
24 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: And how does that compare
25 to other states of a similar population? Because I know
18
1 decertification thresholds are very different state to
2 state.
3 MR. SUYDAM: Can I? I think the number varies
4 widely. Pennsylvania tends to be lower in
5 de-certifications. One of the primary factors behind that
6 is that we have a very specific enumerated list of things
7 that we can revoke officers for. So if information is
8 brought to us regarding an officer but it doesn't fall into
9 the enumerated criteria for which we can revoke, the
10 Commission has no standing to pursue that any further to
11 try to revoke someone for behavior that's not enumerated in
12 the regulation.
13 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: And just for my
14 edification, what are some of the key criteria that would
15 cause decertification?
16 MR. SUYDAM: The number one criteria is a
17 criminal -- a disqualifying criminal conviction: a
18 misdemeanor of the second class or higher in line with the
19 Confidence in Law Enforcement Act. But a misdemeanor 2 or
20 higher allows the Commission to revoke someone's
21 certification. Lower-level convictions do not. Other
22 types of disciplinary issues at a department do not.
23 Permanent physical inability to perform the task or
24 permanent psychological inability to perform the task would
25 be disqualifying factors. So an individual that has a 302
19
1 mental health commitment, for example, can be decertified.
2 But those are the limiting factors for us.
3 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Would that include PTSD?
4 MR. SUYDAM: A diagnosis of PTSD would, in -- to
5 the best of my knowledge, not result in a revocation, as
6 long as it was treatable. It would take a psychologist's
7 determination that the person was permanently unqualified
8 to perform the task.
9 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: And a final question. And
10 what percentage, would you say, of the folks who come
11 before a hearing for decertification are actually
12 decertified?
13 MR. SUYDAM: The majority of them because the
14 criteria that we're limited to pursuing is fairly
15 objective. If an individual does, in fact, have a
16 disqualifying criminal conviction of a misdemeanor 2 or
17 higher, then the revocation stands in every case that I'm
18 aware of.
19 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: I see. So basically, if
20 there's a law enforcement officer who commits a crime and
21 is convicted, if it's anything under a second-degree
22 misdemeanor, then they can still carry a badge?
23 MR. SUYDAM: Yes, sir. And that's consistent
24 with the statewide Confidence in Law Enforcement Act from
25 2004 that establishes that as a threshold, as well.
20
1 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Thank you.
2 MR. SUYDAM: Yes, sir.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
4 Representative Mihalek?
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Oh, I'm sorry. I
6 thought it was -- I can't read writing here.
7 Representative Klunk. I'm sorry.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KLUNK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 I don't think I've ever been confused with Representative
10 Mihalek before. But thank you.
11 And thank you, gentlemen, for joining us today.
12 My question goes to -- I know you talked a lot about the
13 de-escalation. But my question goes to what happens after
14 you de-escalate in situations of domestic violence and
15 family issues? Is there training that MPOETC and PSP
16 provide for officers to determine whether a particular
17 domestic violence situation is lethal, in determining a
18 lethality assessment to provide for additional services for
19 those victims of domestic violence?
20 MAJOR IGNATZ: Do you want to speak to that?
21 SERGEANT FETZER: All right. Thank you, ma'am,
22 for allowing me to testify.
23 And thank you, Members of the House, for allowing
24 me the opportunity today.
25 I was recently on the Governor's Special Council
21
1 for Gun Violence, and as part of that committee, I had the
2 opportunity to work with the folks from the Pennsylvania
3 Commission -- or Coalition Against Domestic Violence. And
4 one thing that we are working on right now within the
5 department is if there's a way that we can take the
6 lethality assessment questionnaire that they use -- I
7 believe it's based on the Maryland model, and if there's a
8 way that we can pilot that out to our troops in the field.
9 A lot of the problem within our department in
10 getting that going is the varying resources available
11 within the 67 counties that we cover, many of those being
12 rural. So we are currently exploring that through our
13 Bureau of Research and Development and working with the
14 Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence to do
15 that.
16 REPRESENTATIVE KLUNK: Thank you so much. I'm
17 really encouraged to hear that. I actually have a House
18 Bill on this issue. This issue came to light with me a
19 couple of years ago after a domestic violence incident in
20 York County. One of the family members actually lives in
21 Maryland and made me aware of what they were doing in
22 Maryland and the success of that lethality assessment
23 program.
24 I know I've talked to the department and
25 individuals from MPOETC over the years about the potential
22
1 of adding this training. I know it's working in my local
2 community with my local police forces. So to hear that you
3 guys are looking into that and developing a pilot program
4 for PSP, I'm really encouraged by that.
5 I do think every police officer in Pennsylvania
6 should be trained in this lethality assessment protocol and
7 developing those relationships with our local domestic
8 violence organizations, because in Maryland, they've been
9 able to reduce the lethality in domestic violence cases by
10 a huge, huge portion. And those are lives that we really
11 want to be saving.
12 So thank you. And I just wanted to say I'm
13 willing to work with you on that issue and trying to move
14 that forward so we can protect more victims of domestic
15 violence. So thank you.
16 SERGEANT FETZER: Thank you, ma'am.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Representative
18 Miller?
19 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
20 Gentlemen, I may mix up a little bit of the
21 testimony in particular, but part-time officers -- one of
22 you guys spent a little time talking about part-time
23 departments. One of the things that concerns me a little
24 bit is the amount of support our part-time officers get,
25 both in the departments and in dealing with their personal
23
1 life. And I think one of you had mentioned -- I apologize.
2 Perhaps it was -- I apologize -- I can't see the rank --
3 Sergeant?
4 MR. SUYDAM: Mister.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Who talked? Was it you?
6 I apologize.
7 MR. SUYDAM: Well, the Major mentioned it, but I
8 (Indiscernible - simultaneous speech).
9 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Major? I apologize,
10 okay. So whichever one, I -- again, I couldn't see it. I
11 was listening.
12 So the thing that concerns me about it is the
13 number of jobs that part-time officers have to have. And
14 there's part of me -- I wrote a couple bills somewhat in
15 relation to this, with it. But in my opinion, I would
16 think that having to work multiple jobs and then trying to
17 get healthcare or trying to deal with everything else that
18 comes with those multiple jobs, jumping in between this and
19 that, is not the ideal situation.
20 And while there could be some role for part time,
21 maybe on some probationary status or something along those
22 lines, I have strong concerns that those officers, even
23 with the best of their intentions, are struggling to have
24 the support in departments, training to be able to do what
25 they need to do in addition to their work, and take care of
24
1 their personal lives in relation to appropriate pay and
2 appropriate healthcare.
3 So my question to you in this regard is would we
4 not be better off to not have so many part-time officers or
5 departments and wouldn't we better off by having more
6 full-time, fully-paid, fully-supported police?
7 MR. SUYDAM: Do you want me to speak?
8 MAJOR IGNATZ: Thank you, Representative. I
9 think -- you know, what you say has a lot of validity to
10 it. Oftentimes, part-time departments are unable to afford
11 more than having a few part-time officers, whereas other
12 agencies have the ability to employ people on a full-time
13 basis. What the answer is, I don't know. Some
14 municipalities just can't afford more than what they have.
15 And I'm certainly not saying anything bad about the
16 officers because, like you mentioned, they do try hard,
17 they work hard, and do their very best to take care of the
18 communities who employ them.
19 What the answer is, I don't know. It's an
20 age-old issue. I know I started out as a part-time
21 municipal officer, worked in a couple of different
22 municipalities at the same time, all with the hope of
23 advancing. And I think that's a lot of what we see today.
24 They're people that start out in the part-time realm and
25 they work hard and they eventually get hired elsewhere full
25
1 time or some career that, you know, their part-time work
2 has led them to as a steppingstone.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I appreciate, Major, your
4 experience in particular with it. And there's no doubt
5 that there's many fine police officers working part time.
6 I would note, I do hear stories of their pay, which some of
7 these guys or women would be better off working at Target
8 with some of the part-time pay that I've been hearing,
9 especially in my county or my surrounding county in the
10 west. So I do get very concerned about the professional
11 support that we should be giving to these officers when
12 we're trusting them with all these responsibilities.
13 Something feels wrong in relation to that.
14 But let me just -- so I can try and ask you one
15 last question on that there. Am I wrong to say that we'd
16 be better off with more full-time police? Is that not a
17 good goal for us to work towards, which is more full-time,
18 fully-supported police in Pennsylvania?
19 MAJOR IGNATZ: I would think that that is a goal
20 to work toward.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you. One of you --
22 and again, I saw -- I only heard the audio so I didn't see
23 the visual, so I apologize on who talked about it. One of
24 you talked about the training -- I think 24. Who talked
25 about the --
26
1 MR. SUYDAM: Twenty-four training academies?
2 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Yes.
3 MR. SUYDAM: That was the Major.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I'm sorry, Major, again.
5 Major, in relation to those, one of the things I've heard
6 about is the -- I guess in the old days, some past time, in
7 order to go to the academies, you used to first have to
8 have a job?
9 MAJOR IGNATZ: Right.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. You have to be
11 sent there by a department, I believe, in some -- am I
12 right?
13 MAJOR IGNATZ: Yeah. Once upon a time, that's
14 how it was.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. So what I heard
16 from some in law enforcement was that this change has had
17 repercussions and has helped fuel some aspects that maybe
18 isn't the best in relation to law enforcement statewide.
19 And so what I was hearing from them was that you're almost
20 flooding the market because there is no direct, sort of, we
21 have a job, we've vetted this person, let's send that
22 person to training, let's bring that person back home.
23 Instead, it's almost going reverse where they're like,
24 shove anybody who will -- not anybody, but a lot of people
25 who want to go in there, whether or not they have a job
27
1 when they come out or not. And then in some ways, it
2 almost seems like a -- one of the things that concerns
3 me -- and again, I talk about pay because I want officers
4 in Pennsylvania to be the best paid that we possibly have,
5 high quality -- that comes across.
6 But one of the things that I hear a little bit,
7 too, is they say, well look, I could pay $12 an hour for a
8 part-time police officer because I trip over them. And
9 that anybody who's looking for their toehold, because they
10 all go in there, even though we do not have enough
11 full-time spots to pay for them, and they end up coming out
12 with no tie to a department and there's often a lag even
13 when they get brought on after they come out of the
14 academy.
15 Is there some validity to this concern?
16 MAJOR IGNATZ: I think maybe Mr. Suydam could
17 talk to that.
18 MR. SUYDAM: Sure. Thank you for that question.
19 Each year, the training academies that do municipal police
20 training, train about 1,200 new cadets. Of those, about
21 half, somewhere around 600, have jobs and the other 600 are
22 individuals who are seeking jobs and pay to put themselves
23 through the academy. The most recent close dive that I've
24 done on that was about a year and a half ago, and it seems
25 that about 15 percent of the individuals that put
28
1 themselves through the academy don't end up getting
2 certified within that first year.
3 So you're right, to some extent, that there is a
4 number of officers that put themselves through training who
5 then, you know, to use your term, flood the market,
6 perhaps. But the majority of them do wind up finding jobs
7 here in Pennsylvania.
8 But there is, certainly, a difference between the
9 individuals who are being paid to go to the academy and the
10 individuals who are paying to send themselves there just in
11 the guarantee that they'll have a job when they come out
12 versus needing to go and look for work.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: So are we better with the
14 system we have now, or would you say that we are better
15 with the system that you had to first come through a
16 department? Which one is the better option?
17 MR. SUYDAM: I think there are limitations to
18 both. And I will only be able to give you my opinion on
19 this, but my opinion is that the advantage of a department
20 doing the background investigation and determining that a
21 person is going to meet their needs as an officer before
22 that person goes to training reduces -- would reduce,
23 overall, the total number of people that need to be trained
24 by the academy and would make it so that each cadet in the
25 academy had something to work toward, a guaranteed job on
29
1 graduation.
2 The disadvantage would be that municipalities
3 would absorb that cost up front of potentially paying for
4 someone to go to an academy for six months, only to
5 discover that they couldn't make it through the academy.
6 They didn't graduate. They would have expended resources
7 and spent a serious amount of time waiting for a cadet who
8 then never graduates.
9 So the trade-off is, the benefit to the scenario
10 that we have right now, is the municipalities are choosing
11 from candidates who have already successfully graduated
12 from the police academy. So I think there are advantages
13 to both.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
16 Representative Shusterman?
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHUSTERMAN: Thank you, Chairman.
18 And thank you for your testimony. My question
19 is, when encountering someone with autism and intellectual
20 disabilities, and de-escalating the situation, what's the
21 next step? We're starting to hear -- where do you process
22 what happened? Where do these people go? Thank you.
23 SERGEANT FETZER: Thank you for your question,
24 ma'am. And I think it ultimately varies based on what type
25 of incident they responded to. So was it simply a call
30
1 that an officer responded to where the subject was simply
2 acting out or was it a call that the subject -- or the
3 officer responded to where there was some type of crime and
4 maybe a more violent crime involved?
5 So I think, speaking from the standpoint of an
6 officer who has about 10 to 14 years of experience in a
7 patrol setting, both as a patrol trooper and a patrol
8 corporal, any time you respond to a call involving someone
9 who's acting out, maybe displaying signs of autism or some
10 other type of mental disability, what you're looking for is
11 simply to get that person, ultimately, the help that they
12 need. And a lot of times that involves calling and
13 reaching out to the county crisis intervention folks and
14 seeing what resources they have at their disposal to get
15 that person the services they need and get that family the
16 services they need.
17 And if there's a crime involved with that call, I
18 would say that normally, from an officer's perspective,
19 dealing with that crime or charging that crime is probably
20 the least worrisome aspect of that call. Really, the
21 officer is simply trying to get that person, ultimately,
22 the help they need through those social service agencies
23 that are available.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHUSTERMAN: Just a quick
25 follow-up. How about counties in areas that don't have
31
1 those resources?
2 SERGEANT FETZER: I --
3 REPRESENTATIVE SHUSTERMAN: Does the person go
4 into a holding cell? Do they go to the hospital? That is
5 my question and something that surrounding counties are
6 encountering during this pandemic.
7 SERGEANT FETZER: So my experience would be, if
8 it's someone who's displaying that they're a danger to
9 themself or others, the troopers would take them to the
10 nearest hospital and then, normally, crisis intervention
11 would step in from that point to process them in what
12 manner they see fit.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SHUSTERMAN: Thank you.
14 SERGEANT FETZER: Uh-huh (affirmative).
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
16 Representative Knowles?
17 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Thank you, gentlemen,
18 for your service to our Commonwealth. One of the grave
19 concerns that I have is, with the shenanigans that are
20 taking place throughout our country, that we're going to
21 have problem getting police officers at all. That's a
22 genuine concern of mine.
23 But I want to start by thanking you, as well as
24 all the law enforcement community for the great job that
25 you do.
32
1 Following up on Representative Miller, I served
2 as a local police officer back in the '70s. And I also
3 then -- I was a mayor and I was a councilman in a borough
4 that has a full-time police department, so I feel that we
5 were very fortunate in that respect.
6 But let's talk a little bit about the part-time
7 officers. I mean, any community, be they a township or a
8 borough, or a -- they would love to have a full-time police
9 department. The problem is they can't afford it. It's
10 just not within their budget.
11 So can we talk a little bit about part-time
12 officers? The 120 certification, that is the same training
13 that any full-time officer -- and retraining, that's the
14 same training that a full-time officer would receive?
15 MR. SUYDAM: Yes, sir. So the training that all
16 municipal police officers get at all of the academies is
17 standard. There's no distinction made when a person's
18 going through training regarding whether or not they're
19 going to be employed as a full-time officer or as a
20 part-time officer. The training is standard. Graduation
21 from the training academy is required to be employed in a
22 part-time or a full-time capacity. The officers are
23 certified the same way through the Commission. Every part
24 of the approval process to get them to the point where they
25 can work is identical.
33
1 The only distinction would be at that individual
2 department level, then, whether they work 40 hours a week
3 or one shift a week or one shift a month. And the
4 Commission doesn't really review that or pay attention to
5 that. You must be employed by a department and you must
6 work for that department to maintain certification as a
7 police officer but the amount of time that you spend there
8 or the amount of money that you make there is -- does not
9 come to the Commission for any type of review.
10 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Would I be safe in
11 saying that there is no other state in the United States
12 that has more intensive or better training than both the
13 Pennsylvania State Police and municipal police officers?
14 MR. SUYDAM: I believe that we're at the very
15 upper end of that. Yes, sir.
16 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Okay. And lastly, I'm
17 going to kind of put you on the spot. But as troopers on
18 the job, would you rather that small communities that
19 cannot afford full-time police officers -- would you rather
20 that they have part-time officers or that they have no
21 officers at all?
22 MAJOR IGNATZ: I don't believe I have an opinion
23 one way or another. We're happy to work with officers,
24 whether they be part time or full time. And it is
25 definitely a good thing for the community to see local
34
1 officers if they have them. But speaking from my
2 perspective, we are glad to work with local part-time,
3 full-time officers, regardless.
4 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Thank you very much.
5 And again, I thank you for the job that you are doing.
6 And you know, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
8 And Representative Jozwiak has a follow-up.
9 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
10 I just wanted to bring the panel's attention --
11 as you know, I sit on the MPOETC Board as the
12 representative for the House of Representatives. And these
13 men who are on this Commission are outstanding people.
14 They are very, very concerned with police training and they
15 want to do the best we can. As you had heard Isaac say,
16 we're on the upper level of the training.
17 Actually, the annual legal updates that the
18 officers to through, that's the same as a recertification
19 every year. If they don't go through that training, they
20 get decertified; is that correct?
21 MR. SUYDAM: That is correct.
22 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: And also, the time right
23 now is 12 hours, and we've had some discussions on moving
24 that to 16 hours to increase that. Now, that's not in
25 stone yet, I know, but we're looking to do that.
35
1 MR. SUYDAM: If I could speak to that for just a
2 second. One of the issues is, in 1988, when Act 120 was
3 amended to add in-service training, that time requirement
4 was set at 12 hours in 1988. And at that time, the basic
5 training curriculum had been increased from 480 to 520
6 hours. So the basic academy has increased from 520 to its
7 current 919 in the time since 1988, and the in-service
8 training requirement has not increased.
9 So I would concur with you that it's probably
10 appropriate to at least look at that.
11 REPRESENTATIVE JOZWIAK: Okay. Thank you, Mr.
12 Chairman.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
14 Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your service,
15 and thank you for being here today and being part of this.
16 And we will move on to the next panel. And you are
17 excused.
18 And that includes John English, President of the
19 Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, and Scott Bohn,
20 Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police
21 Association. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
22 MR. BOHN: Thank you.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: And I will open it
24 up to you and you may start and testify, and we'll have
25 questions after you're done.
36
1 MR. BOHN: Good morning, Chairperson Kauffman,
2 Chairperson Briggs, and Members of the House Judiciary
3 Committee.
4 I am Scott Bohn, the Executive Director of the
5 Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, and again with
6 me this morning is Chief John English. He is the president
7 of our association, the Chief of Police in Edgeworth
8 Borough in Allegheny County.
9 I'd like to thank you for asking us -- or
10 inviting us to participate in discussion regarding police
11 training and accreditation in the State of Pennsylvania.
12 As you know, the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police
13 Association is an association of police leaders who are
14 committed to professional law enforcement and to providing
15 guidance on best practices and policy. We are the
16 respected voice of over 1,100 law enforcement executives in
17 the state, and our goal is to achieve the highest level of
18 professionalism.
19 I submitted, on behalf of our association,
20 approximately 36 pages of written testimony. I promise I
21 won't go through all of it. I will summarize my testimony
22 to approximately three to four minutes. I'm going to defer
23 to Chief English. He's going to address training and then
24 I'll follow up with accreditation.
25 Thank you.
37
1 CHIEF ENGLISH: Thank you.
2 I want to thank the Major, if he's still here,
3 because that took care of my first page and part of my
4 second page. And so I'm very grateful that he was able to
5 do that.
6 And I also want to compliment the State Police
7 for the amount of training that they provide for municipal
8 police officers. The question came up about the amount of
9 time for the updates. I think we'd all be -- we'd all
10 welcome a little bit more, but the updates -- the
11 information they're giving us is great. I mean, it's --
12 everything that we need, we're getting in that 12-hours and
13 I would not be opposed to it being extended.
14 The question came up about part-time officers. I
15 have six part-time officers on my department. I would love
16 to have all full-time but the budget won't allow it. But
17 these guys are professional. I make sure that they are up
18 to date with everything. They have to be. And they're
19 usually pretty good officers.
20 And fortunately, we're able to pay pretty well
21 for a part-time officer in my department. And I kid around
22 with a lot of the other chiefs and I'll say -- I'll ask
23 about a certain part-timer they might have. And if he's
24 really good, I try and steal him away and bring him to my
25 department. Sometimes I get away with that.
38
1 Yeah. It would be great to have everybody full
2 time. And I spent 27-1/2 years in a department in South
3 Florida and I retired as a commander there. And we had --
4 there was -- everybody had full-time officer there. But
5 budgets are budgets.
6 And although the Major took care of an awful lot,
7 I was -- I'm so very grateful for that. I do want to talk
8 about the Pennsylvania Virtual Network, PAVTN, which has
9 been put on by the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police
10 Association. This is an online training program that's
11 available to all Pennsylvania Police Officers. And it's
12 24/7. It doesn't matter what time, what day, and it's
13 extremely cost effective. It provides a lot of
14 information.
15 There's two curriculums on this program. One is
16 our own program and the other one is MPOETC, which is
17 governed by the State Police. And these are -- for the
18 State Police, they require -- they'd have to be certified
19 officers and that's with the MPO certification number.
20 And as of July 1st of this year, PAVTN has 24,460
21 registered users, which is really -- it shows that it's
22 working. It shows that it's helped out a lot of police
23 departments budget-wise and -- because they can do their
24 updates through this process. So they don't have to pay
25 for an officer to come off-duty and go to the updates.
39
1 There's also other training that's really good. And a list
2 of the training for MPOETC and for PAVTN is in the written
3 testimony that we have there.
4 I'm very proud of this program. And as far as
5 training, the other thing is we have -- you know, we're
6 pushing very hard to get all the departments certified as
7 with the -- drawing a blank --
8 MR. BOHN: Accreditation?
9 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes. Accreditation, yeah. So
10 that's going to help also because everybody will be on the
11 same page. And that's pretty much all I have.
12 One thing I do want to mention. We're talking
13 about the police academies, 24 of them spread out through
14 this state. And the problem we're seeing -- and I'll use
15 the Allegheny County Police Academy as an example. In the
16 past, there was a waiting list to get into this academy.
17 Now, I think the last number I heard was 13 in the academy
18 class. That is a fraction of what it used to be. And this
19 is a concern. This is a concern for all of us that as we
20 talked the last time I was here, there's not a whole lot of
21 people that are signing up to take the positions of the
22 officers that are, basically, escaping. They're getting
23 out of the profession.
24 So we need some help in that area, and honestly,
25 I don't know -- besides the fact that, as I've mentioned
40
1 before, we need you guys to speak up for us and to have our
2 back and to make sure that's clear to the world that, you
3 know, there's only a fraction of our profession that's not
4 doing the job we're supposed to be doing and it makes the
5 rest of us look bad. When we can go from being the good
6 guys one day to the bad guys the next, that's pretty sad.
7 And it's rather dramatic. And so anything that you can do
8 to speak up for us, we'd be most grateful.
9 Any questions?
10 MR. BOHN: Representative, would you like me to
11 finish my testimony, then?
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Go for it. Yes.
13 Yeah. I'm sorry. I wasn't sure that you had something to
14 add.
15 MR. BOHN: Yeah. Thank you. First of all, I'd
16 like to say thank you. I appreciate just taking just a
17 real brief opportunity to give the Committee an overview of
18 the positive impacts of Pennsylvania's Law Enforcement
19 Accreditation Program. We introduced this program in 2001,
20 thus ensuring that participating agencies and their
21 policies reflect the most modern and progressive
22 21st-century policing practices that promote -- we believe
23 promote community trust and accountability.
24 You're all familiar, and there was testimony
25 prior, the Pennsylvania State Police are one of the
41
1 agencies accredited by CALEA, a national program, and they
2 are also certified by the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police
3 Association through our accreditation program. We are one
4 of 34 states in the country that has an accreditation
5 program for their states.
6 We have, and you've heard testimony, one of the
7 largest numbers of local law enforcement agencies in the
8 nation -- there's approximately 1,072; it's difficult to
9 keep track, and they come in various sizes and
10 demographics.
11 What is somewhat, and I'm sure for you,
12 incomprehensible, perhaps inexplainable, is that there
13 certainly are some agencies in our state operating without
14 written policies that may -- or policies that may be
15 outdated or perhaps inadequate for the basis of
16 decision-making. And that, as you know, serves as the
17 foundation for uncontrolled risk and liability, certainly
18 in those municipalities.
19 So since the program's inception here in
20 Pennsylvania, we've had over 300 agencies enroll in our
21 program. There are currently 126 agencies that have
22 attained or achieved accredited status, and those
23 departments represent approximately 60 percent of the
24 certified officers in the Commonwealth. It is a
25 progressive and proven way of helping agencies evaluate and
42
1 improve their overall performance, but the cornerstone of
2 our strategy is the promulgation of standards containing a
3 clear statement of professional objectives.
4 The administrators who engage in our program
5 conduct a thorough analysis to determine how existing
6 operations can be adapted to meet these objectives. When
7 the procedures are in place, a team of independent
8 professionals verify that all the applicable standards have
9 been successfully implemented. The process culminates with
10 a decision by an authoritative body, a commission, that
11 this department has achieved or is worthy of accreditation
12 status.
13 The program has a uniqueness and relevance to
14 Pennsylvania law enforcement, and that's demonstrated with
15 over 139 standards and 200 bullet points or substandards.
16 They're specific to legislated legal mandates. Now, our
17 commission, and I applaud them, have put all of those
18 standards and substandards on our website, so they are
19 available to the public and to all municipalities or
20 people, like yourself, that want to review those standards.
21 These mandates govern a wide variety of standards
22 in law enforcement including key requirements. The
23 standards include requirements for policy development,
24 training on use of force, pursuit, evidence, property
25 management, domestic violence, and a multitude of issues
43
1 that will have a policy impact on that particular agency.
2 This framework requires agencies to develop, train,
3 implement, and more importantly, provide proof of
4 compliance with agency directives.
5 Accredited agencies -- or accreditation agencies
6 must be completed annually, and I think that's really
7 important is this is not a one-and-done. So on each
8 consecutive year, departments must continue to be
9 reaccredited after the awarding of that original status.
10 The loss of accredited status by an agency for failure to
11 meet those defined standards is rare but does happen. It's
12 approximately 10 percent who have lost accreditation
13 status. There are high expectations and defined outcomes
14 and they're inherently part of this program.
15 To summarize, for citizens, citizens here in the
16 Commonwealth, they win because their agency, their law
17 enforcement agency, has taken the initiative to comply with
18 a set of objectives and peer-developed standards.
19 Standards compliance creates an agency that is more open
20 and responsive to citizen input. Citizens appreciate
21 representatives from the outside looking at their
22 respective agency and they view transparency and
23 accountability as something positive, but I think we all
24 do.
25 Citizens have a greater sense of confidence
44
1 knowing their agency has met stringent standards by
2 establishing a quality set of rules, guidelines,
3 regulations, policies, and procedures which address
4 operational readiness issues. Law enforcement officers
5 benefit as established guidelines exist and they address
6 many of the conditions an officer may find him- or herself
7 in. Most officers want to do the right thing on their
8 jobs. Exacting standards and effective modeling of
9 solutions assist in achieving this objective.
10 So in closing, accreditation is a symbol of
11 quality. It shows that the organization meets specified
12 performance standards and supplies an opportunity for that
13 organization to evaluate their operation against national
14 and statewide standards. Further meeting standards
15 promotes research, exhibits broad thinking, and attention
16 to detail.
17 As the Chief --
18 And thank you.
19 As the Chief was testifying, the standards that
20 are promulgated in the accreditation standards and process
21 include all of the 8 Can’t Wait tenets that has been
22 subject for discussion and proposed legislation here in the
23 House and in the Senate. It addresses: warning shots;
24 shooting at moving vehicles; shooting from a moving
25 vehicle; authorized less-lethal weapons; medical aid;
45
1 reporting for force, which is mandated and required in our
2 standards; annual training, in addition to the training
3 that the Chief and the Major had testified to; annual
4 in-service training on use of force; deadly force;
5 de-escalation; and the duty to intervene.
6 As I'd mentioned, the less-lethal weapons,
7 empty-handed control, arrests, defensive tactics occur on
8 an annual basis and there must be proof of compliance.
9 Additionally, we have and we've required accredited
10 agencies to incorporate, in addition to the training,
11 de-escalation strategies into their written policy.
12 We, on an annual basis, as our commission meets
13 quarterly, review these standards to make sure that they
14 meet not only the standards in the law here in Pennsylvania
15 but certainly across our country. We would like to believe
16 that in Pennsylvania, we are leaders in this process, and
17 certainly, I think that. And we encourage and try to
18 incentivize agencies to engage in this process because we
19 do think it's a symbol of quality.
20 Thank you.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
22 Representative Mihalek?
23 REPRESENTATIVE MIHALEK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 And this might be more directed toward Chief
25 English on the training front; although, I will shout out
46
1 to my local police chief in Peters Township that they were
2 recently accredited this past year. That's Chief Grimes.
3 He actually used to be part of MPOETC.
4 CHIEF ENGLISH: Uh-huh (affirmative).
5 REPRESENTATIVE MIHALEK: I think today we're, you
6 know, gathering testimony on the training of our police so
7 that there's uniformity across the Commonwealth. And I
8 just don't want it to get lost in the task at hand that
9 the, you know, police we're talking about are human beings
10 and those humans come with flaws, and more often, I think
11 that they come with profound courage, the kind of courage
12 that we saw on 9/11 and the kind of courage that we
13 certainly saw this past weekend from that officer in
14 Compton who was able to rescue her partner while she was
15 still bleeding and in danger herself. And the kind of
16 courage that I think it takes every day for officers to put
17 on a badge and go out and protect a community that, you
18 know, certainly might not respect or appreciate the service
19 that they're providing.
20 So as we sit up here and sort of determine what
21 best police practices and training is for, you know, police
22 that are walking the beat, and most of us, I think, with
23 the exception of Representative Jozwiak and Knowles, to my
24 knowledge, most of us have never walked a beat.
25 My question for you is how do you maintain a
47
1 connection for those officers on the ground, so to speak,
2 so that there's, you know, not a disconnect between what's
3 being trained, either at the academy or in the continuing
4 training, from what's relevant to what they're seeing on
5 the streets as to what they're receiving in training? Or
6 do you have people on the board who are just the
7 rank-and-file officers or how do you just
8 maintain relevance in that regard?
9 CHIEF ENGLISH: Well, if I'm understanding your
10 question, the -- one of the programs that every department
11 has is the FTO Program. When the officer is hired, brought
12 onto the department, he is put with a seasoned officer
13 who's a trainer and he'll get hands-on experience before he
14 goes out on his own. It is an excellent program. It
15 works -- small departments, big departments, it doesn't
16 matter. It works. And if that's what you're referring to,
17 more training, I would point to that.
18 I should have brought it up earlier but that is a
19 very strong training process, and it makes or breaks a new
20 officer, you know, and he'll be put -- he or she'll be put
21 with several trainers during that period of time. In my
22 department, it's three different officers that a new
23 officer will be put with.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MIHALEK: So it's like an
25 apprenticeship, sort of? You're with a senior officer?
48
1 CHIEF ENGLISH: I'm sorry?
2 REPRESENTATIVE MIHALEK: You're with a more
3 senior officer then for --
4 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MIHALEK: -- a certain period of
6 hours?
7 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes. Right.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MIHALEK: Okay. Thank you.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
10 Representative Rabb?
11 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 And thank you for your testimony. I actually
13 want to follow up on the issue of courage. I think it is a
14 foregone conclusion, or should be, that it requires a lot
15 of courage to be in law enforcement and that's taken very
16 seriously. We say the same thing about the men and women
17 who serve honorably in our military. And I talk a lot
18 about courage with my sons and I tell them that courage and
19 bravery is not the lack of fear; it's the determination to
20 fight through it and not let it rule you.
21 And the opposite of courageous is cowardly. And
22 cowardice can take lives. And when I see cases -- and this
23 is less so on the street, but in the courts where an
24 officer said, I was afraid for my life, and they put aside
25 all the training that accredited agencies provide them and
49
1 they use that as an excuse to do things that they were not
2 trained to do, particularly when some of that fear is borne
3 of unarmed children, most of whom happen to be black. And
4 you compare that to folks who do not seem to have any fear
5 with vigilantes with AR-15s. And we're not seeing the same
6 type of carnage with folks who are far more dangerous than
7 unarmed children.
8 My question is actually related to training,
9 therefore, and tools for officers who feel particularly
10 afraid of people who disproportionately, looking at the
11 statistics, inhabit black bodies, whether they're armed or
12 not. And their response, if this is litigated, is that
13 they were afraid for their lives. What type of training
14 are we providing so that is no longer an option and what
15 type of tools do they have?
16 In other words, if someone is called out for a
17 mental -- due to a mental health call and the person has a
18 sharp object, not a gun, when is it appropriate to shoot
19 someone, right? What are the other tools you have through
20 training, through an accreditation, that give people
21 options so that if they are overcome by fear, and that is
22 ultimately their excuse, to avoid taking lives?
23 Because we see the statistics. This is not
24 opinion. This is fact. And there's a strong racial
25 disparity in terms of the victims, overwhelmingly so, not
50
1 just in Pennsylvania but nationwide.
2 CHIEF ENGLISH: Well, there's a lot of training
3 that is available and it is provided to the officers. But
4 any officer that says that he's never been afraid out there
5 is lying to you.
6 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Sure.
7 CHIEF ENGLISH: I mean, that's -- I've been an
8 officer for 46 years, over 46 years now. And my time down
9 in South Florida, I can guarantee you, there was some very
10 fearful moments, but you work through those things. And
11 each incident is unique unto itself, because someone might
12 have a knife in their hand and they come at you. It all
13 depends on how much time you have to deal with that. It
14 could be seconds, or it could be a half an hour or an hour
15 where you're trying to de-escalate the problem.
16 You just can't -- you can't put it all in one
17 basket and say, okay, from now on, you're going to do this,
18 this, and this. You have to adjust. And I've been in
19 really bad situations in Florida and I made it through
20 that, but it's just -- you just can't put it all in one
21 basket and say this is how you're going to handle it.
22 We often have to make split-second decisions that
23 are life-and-death decisions, and it's -- you look back on
24 it afterwards and hopefully it worked out for you. It did
25 for me. I was very fortunate because I'm here, you know,
51
1 and I was in situations where I might not have been here.
2 So that's the best way I can answer that.
3 We are giving really good training where the
4 officers -- the State of Pennsylvania really has a very
5 good program compared to a lot of other states and I think
6 the training is outstanding here. But you know, it's --
7 when it's all said and done, especially in, you know, what
8 you see a lot on -- you know, through the media and so
9 forth, a lot of folks are jumping to conclusions before all
10 the facts are in and that creates a problem also for law
11 enforcement and for everybody.
12 Now, I hope that was a good answer.
13 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: I appreciate that, and I
14 appreciate you sharing your own experiences in law
15 enforcement. I don't take this lightly. This job is not
16 for everyone, and if you sign up, you need to be prepared
17 for those situations, and a lot of those situations, over
18 time, can be dire. My concern is the disparity that exists
19 that has been documented from the FBI all the way down in
20 terms of the responses to folks on the ground as it relates
21 to race.
22 And you know, this is -- again, this is borne out
23 in statistics for decades that the responses to black and
24 brown folks is different in terms of how the officers
25 respond to certain situations. And part of that is
52
1 training, much of that is training, and it's also the tools
2 that they have.
3 So in Philadelphia, the new police chief thought
4 it wise to use rubber bullets and tear gas. I have
5 problems with that. Obviously, they're not rubber bullets;
6 they're lead with coating. What other tools can be made
7 available because, like you said, every situation is
8 different so it's not always going to be one thing, but
9 beyond a gun, what are the things you can do to restrain or
10 de-escalate while also protecting the life of law
11 enforcement agents? Because that's important. They should
12 not be sacrificed for anyone else's benefit. They're
13 human, too.
14 What are ways that you all are pushing training
15 and providing tools beyond the usual? I know about Tasers.
16 I know about tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bags, batons,
17 et cetera. When I see trainings of police dogs and they're
18 training on a fake perpetrator or whatever, the person is
19 covered in cushions or whatever. Is there a smaller, a
20 thinner version of that so that -- much like Kevlar, so if
21 you know you're going into a situation, that you have
22 greater protection than just the vest, a shield, that sort
23 of thing. Because I find that the things that we're
24 seeing, that are anomalous but are consistent, that are
25 documented on social media and mainstream media are showing
53
1 what I consider unnecessary lethal responses to threats
2 perceived on the ground.
3 CHIEF ENGLISH: I believe that a lot of what
4 you're seeing is during some of these demonstrations and so
5 forth, trying to control the demonstrations. And what has
6 gotten lost in the last few months is a peaceful
7 demonstration turning into a mob, a riot mob and -- that
8 are bent on destruction, and that's not the purpose of the
9 demonstration. And it's usually brought on by people from
10 the outside coming in to agitate and to do this.
11 And I think there was just a -- I think the FBI
12 just did a -- finished a study on that concerning who was
13 really doing -- you know, starting all those problems. And
14 that's where you're going to see the tear gas and the
15 rubber bullets and all that stuff.
16 But there has to be a way to, you know, not stop
17 the demonstrators. They're allowed to do the protest. You
18 want to protest? Fine. You have to stop the people that
19 are creating the problems that are physically and verbally
20 abusing all the police officers there. And you can't take
21 away all the tools they have in order to try and stop the
22 bad guys from breaking out windows and burning businesses.
23 That has to stop. I mean, you have to use everything
24 possible to stop that type of thing.
25 But as far as dealing with -- most of my career
54
1 in South Florida was spent in a predominantly
2 African-American community. There was one road there, it
3 was called Rosemary Avenue, and it was probably one of the
4 most violent streets in South Florida. And that was my
5 beat and -- but what I learned over the years of being
6 there, and I've -- they made me a training officer there
7 also because they figured if they couldn't make it on
8 Rosemary, they're not going to make it anywhere, so -- but
9 anyways, I found the community was filled with great
10 people. Good mom-and-pop stores, churches, just really
11 good people, but all that was overshadowed by the violence
12 from Rosemary Avenue and another street called Tamarind.
13 But I learned the culture that was there. It was no
14 different from the culture where I grew up. The folks that
15 lived there, they wanted the same thing for their kids that
16 I wanted for mine.
17 But the bad guys that were there – that I put a
18 lot of them in jail, and they even gave me a nickname.
19 They called me Cowboy for some reason, I don't know why,
20 but the -- it was a really good place and I loved the
21 people that were there. I was even asked to go and speak
22 in numerous churches, which I did on a regular basis.
23 But we didn't -- I didn't have to use any of that
24 stuff that you're talking about. I don't even remember
25 using -- we had mace back then. I don't remember using
55
1 mace.
2 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: But Chief, isn't that the
3 norm that most law enforcement agents -- officers don't use
4 their service revolver? Like, that's the norm.
5 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yeah.
6 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Isn't that fair to say,
7 even in some of the more violent neighborhoods?
8 CHIEF ENGLISH: Right.
9 REPRESENTATIVE RAPP: So really what you're
10 talking about, which again, I really appreciate -- you're
11 giving your own personal and professional experience -- is
12 intercultural competency. You were not of the same ethnic
13 group that you patrolled. But you understood them as
14 decent human beings who wanted the same thing for their
15 families that you want for your own.
16 CHIEF ENGLISH: They were the same as I was. I
17 mean --
18 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: And that's training.
19 That's the type of cultural competency training that
20 everybody needs, including legislators, I think. I think
21 that benefits everyone. And that's really the type of
22 training, I think, that can address the type of racial
23 disparities that we see in law enforcement that is pushing
24 people -- so many people out on the streets to talk about
25 racial injustice as it relates to policing. So your
56
1 examples are exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.
2 So I want to thank you, Chief.
3 MR. BOHN: And if I may, just to close, and we've
4 had this conversation, Representative. You know, as
5 society evolves, so must police departments because the
6 fabric of our culture is such, and you know, the people
7 that we're bringing on to these jobs and training, and
8 perhaps -- and I believe training very well, come from the
9 very society that we're talking about. So you know, I
10 think it's critically important.
11 We appreciate the invitation today to roll up our
12 sleeves. And certainly, if we're going to enact
13 legislation, that legislation should have not only a
14 positive impact on law enforcement, certainly a positive
15 impact on the communities that we're serving.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
17 And Representative Miller?
18 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
19 Thank you, gentlemen.
20 In relation to the training -- sir, I think, in
21 particular, you were talking about high-quality training in
22 Pennsylvania -- what type of metrics are done in between
23 the training to measure the effectiveness of it?
24 CHIEF ENGLISH: The effectiveness of the
25 training?
57
1 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Yes, sir.
2 CHIEF ENGLISH: That usually comes out in the
3 officers as they're coming up through the department, when
4 they're going through the FTO training, and after we've put
5 them out on their own. We'll pick up real quick as to
6 whether the training they received, and we know the
7 training that they receive, had an effect on them.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Let me ask you, then --
9 thank you. Is it that there is no formal forum that you
10 guys have that say look, I want you to check this off as
11 your training on these requirements, make sure this is
12 still on the -- that this is still in compliance? Is that
13 formality in some way done or is it that you're just
14 relying on the supervising officer of some type to be able
15 to give you, as a chief, the report -- or yourself,
16 perhaps --
17 CHIEF ENGLISH: Right.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- as what you observed
19 the officer do, or something like that? Is it a formal
20 metric that is done that you have or is it more the
21 informal where you're based on what you pull together?
22 CHIEF ENGLISH: Oftentimes, that relies on the
23 size of the department. If it's a small department, you
24 don't normally have to do a yearly evaluation. The big
25 departments, yes. You have to. And I came from a big
58
1 department, and that was a very important thing to do every
2 year.
3 But in a smaller department, a lot of them do it,
4 and some don't. Because of their size, they know exactly
5 what every -- I know what -- exactly what every officer's
6 doing out there. I know --
7 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: But there is no
8 requirement that they do it?
9 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yeah. The things that they're
10 are required to do, the reports they're required to do, how
11 they handle a call. I review all the calls for service.
12 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I apologize. But I think
13 I understand --
14 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yeah.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- where to go. Because I
16 know I won't have too long here with it. In relation to --
17 you mentioned your team; I think you said you had part-time
18 officers, a part-time department.
19 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Just so I understand the
21 world that you're living in, do the majority of your
22 officers -- or do most of your officers have other jobs, or
23 is this their job that they do?
24 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes. The majority of them,
25 part-time officers, do have other jobs.
59
1 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: And when you say part
2 time, can you give me a range just so I understand the
3 range of hours? Are you talking 20 to 35? Are you talking
4 10 to 26?
5 CHIEF ENGLISH: It's broken down a little bit
6 differently. I'll have a part -- in the six part-time
7 officers I have, some of them are more -- they're more able
8 to do more time than some of the others. I've got two
9 senior officers and two ex-troopers that want to stay in --
10 stay on the job but only do it part time. And they're able
11 to do more time than some of the other ones that are doing
12 three different departments.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. So you have a
14 couple that may do two or three departments? Okay. Out of
15 your six, how many of them get healthcare from you?
16 CHIEF ENGLISH: None.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. If they are -- and
18 I hate to bring this up but I'm just kind of wondering,
19 survivor benefits. Let's assume, God forbid, they're in an
20 accident, something happens in the line of duty, how does
21 that work?
22 CHIEF ENGLISH: There's insurance on every
23 employee.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Is that in the same -- do
25 they get the same benefit that a PSP benefit would provide
60
1 for their family?
2 CHIEF ENGLISH: I don't know what the State
3 Police do but they get the same benefits as my full-time
4 officers, yeah.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay.
6 CHIEF ENGLISH: If they're physically hurt or --
7 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Let me ask, would you
8 consider it that -- in most cases, I've been told that the
9 PSP had the highest -- not necessarily the highest overall,
10 but are a great, from top to bottom, supported unit with
11 healthcare, survivor benefits, and everything else; a great
12 rule-of-thumb for people to gauge as to what could be a way
13 to appropriately support officers and their families.
14 Would that generally be something that you would
15 agree with? Are they going to be near the top of their
16 supports for the officers and their families?
17 CHIEF ENGLISH: Are you talking about the State
18 Police again?
19 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Yes.
20 CHIEF ENGLISH: Honestly, I can't answer for
21 them. I can tell you what I'm getting and what my
22 full-time officers are getting.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay.
24 CHIEF ENGLISH: I get full healthcare and a
25 pension, and you know, it's just -- it's a really good
61
1 package.
2 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Right. But your officers
3 don't get a pension?
4 CHIEF ENGLISH: My full-time officers do.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. And I apologize.
6 Out of the six -- you have six part time and you have other
7 full time?
8 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. All right. So --
10 right. Okay. Let me ask you this. Obviously, my belief
11 is, and please correct me. My belief is that if you wear a
12 badge --
13 CHIEF ENGLISH: Right.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- and you take the
15 courage that I think was referenced earlier for your job,
16 you take the risk, and whether you work 12 hours, 24 hours,
17 42 hours, and I do think there's a point where you probably
18 work too much, absent emergency situations, but the
19 healthcare for you and your family should not be a concern
20 in an ideal setting. Would you agree with me on that?
21 CHIEF ENGLISH: Right.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Would you agree, too,
23 that the benefits should be well established, that no
24 matter where you are wearing that badge, that if you made,
25 in some way, the ultimate sacrifice that you should be
62
1 treated the same, no matter what department you're in as to
2 how your family is taken care of at the end?
3 CHIEF ENGLISH: Yes. I agree.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. What concerns me a
5 bit, obviously, with it is that what I heard, and I know
6 you're very -- I appreciate your testimony. You've made
7 references, even earlier, about the differences between big
8 departments and small departments.
9 CHIEF ENGLISH: Uh-huh (affirmative).
10 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Earlier, one of my
11 friends brought up the difference to say like, well look,
12 the choice is between part time and no police. I
13 appreciate that, but that's not really the options.
14 There are two other options. Either one, we
15 expand state police. And I know in big portions of the T,
16 for example, my district, we don't have state police
17 coverage at all. We're paying for it. But in our
18 district, we don't really have it. We cover it for
19 everybody else.
20 And then the other option, of course, is that the
21 state find a way that if you're going to continue to have
22 your officers that we don't treat them differently because
23 they had the audacity to work in a town that's financial
24 situation might not be what it needs to be.
25 And what bothers me, sir, is that what I get --
63
1 keep coming back to me is, well, this is what we have to
2 accept. This is the budget. This is what we have to do.
3 I get tired and tired and tired of hearing that because of
4 the inabilities of a smaller department to be able to
5 balance out the budget, we therefore have to treat that
6 officer, that he has to work two -- or she works two or
7 three jobs, doesn't have the healthcare for her family,
8 doesn't -- may not have the same survivor benefits that
9 somebody in a larger department may have, as if their life
10 is worth less because they had the audacity to work in
11 Fayette County instead of Allegheny County.
12 So I just wanted to reference that and I believe
13 that that -- if we were to focus on that as an issue, we
14 can help with training because -- I'll be honest with you,
15 I appreciate with all respect that your department may be
16 fantastic. I appreciate that. I'm not quite sure that
17 everybody would feel that every part-time police officer in
18 every department is having the same level of support in
19 training and in the personal side as, perhaps, your
20 department is.
21 Last question. Accreditation.
22 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Oh, my God.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: If I got this right -- I
24 took a quick note -- we have about 120, roughly? I kind of
25 ballparked it.
64
1 MR. BOHN: A hundred and twenty-six.
2 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. A hundred and
3 twenty-six. Why so little?
4 MR. BOHN: It's a very good question. I can't
5 answer it specifically. There's a number of myths that
6 surround our accreditation program that perhaps it's for
7 larger agencies, perhaps that it is too costly, all of
8 which are inaccurate and incorrect. There's certainly a
9 reluctance on the part of some chiefs or executives across
10 the state to engage in a process.
11 We're certainly not going to minimize the effort
12 that is required, because they're standards. They're
13 professional standards. We believe it's the model. What
14 we've encouraged, and certainly we're encouraging our
15 legislature work closely with PCCD, since this is a
16 subsidized program, is to incentivize agencies, thus
17 ensuring that the standards all across the state are
18 consistent and professional --
19 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Can I ask you, though, on
20 that --
21 MR. BOHN: -- and I think that would go a long way
22 into correcting many of the issues that we have.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- but when you say
24 incentivize, the problem is -- let's look at the good
25 gentleman here who's doing the best he can on the budget
65
1 that he has.
2 MR. BOHN: Uh-huh (affirmative).
3 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: When we say
4 incentivize --
5 MR. BOHN: Uh-huh (affirmative).
6 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- I mean, are you saying
7 that we make it so that in order for you to get State
8 support, you have to be accredited? Or are you saying that
9 in order for you -- that if you produce X, or that we
10 develop a grant program where the State would be funding it
11 entirely so that the small departments in particular, who
12 are not on this list, amazingly, how -- I mean, how many
13 departments, but all departments have a real chance of
14 being on it, how would you do the incentivizing in a way
15 that doesn't penalize but helps people who are sitting
16 there, like that gentleman, going, I'd like to have
17 healthcare benefits for all my guys but I can't afford it.
18 So how would you do that incentive?
19 MR. BOHN: Well, I think it's also going to
20 become part of the public expectation, if it is not now, in
21 terms of accountability for law enforcement agencies.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: But what do you need?
23 MR. BOHN: Well, one of the bills that was
24 proposed was by, I believe Brewster, and he was looking to
25 incentivize by providing funding to help support this.
66
1 It's been floated, and I don't either agree or disagree
2 that perhaps the passage, after 50 years, of the radar bill
3 to agencies that happen to be accredited as an opening may
4 be a way of incentivizing agencies across this
5 Commonwealth.
6 So there's a number of ways to do that, in
7 addition to us promoting that to the areas, as you've noted
8 in the handout, that have -- well, they have certain
9 counties that have zero participants.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Oh, I saw it, too. So
11 thank you very much with the questions. Look, I looked
12 into accreditation a bit and I'll be honest, the number one
13 thing I kept coming across was time and money. And the
14 concern I was picking up from the chiefs who I talked to
15 was that they were saying like, look, I've got to get a
16 certain person to monitor this almost like a part-time job
17 through a series of work. I spent 14 years with my fire
18 department. We are accredited.
19 MR. BOHN: Uh-huh (affirmative).
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: That was a full-time
21 component for us for several months in order for us to get
22 where we needed to be. I'm assuming it's somewhat similar.
23 Maybe it's a little bit less. Maybe we did it a little bit
24 harder. Maybe we don't need to work as hard as we did.
25 Maybe that's all the case.
67
1 But again, what concerns me is not your level or
2 what it could mean to help and support officers and
3 communities by accreditation, but it's a continuing theme
4 that we get back which is small departments don't have the
5 money or the resource to do it. And without us making a
6 commitment to support those departments and support your
7 men and women, then I feel like we get lost in doing
8 nothing.
9 MR. BOHN: Well, just --
10 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: But thank you.
11 MR. BOHN: -- if I may, the cost for the
12 application is $250.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I did see that. I heard
14 that the problem is the staff time, again, that gets
15 allotted to compliance for it. But again, you would know
16 it better. I'm just telling you what I heard.
17 MR. BOHN: And I appreciate that. And the
18 liability, or the resultant liability of not having the
19 appropriate standards or policies, as I testified to, is
20 enormous for municipalities. Yeah.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: But that could be two
22 different parts. You still have 1,600 police departments
23 who are not accredited in this state.
24 CHIEF ENGLISH: But the -- another point --
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: All right,
68
1 gentlemen. We need to move on.
2 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Chairman.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: I appreciate it.
4 I've given a lot of latitude.
5 And fortunately, I -- or unfortunately, Elizabeth
6 Pittinger, Executive Director of the Independent Citizen
7 Review Board -- she was not able to make it today. Her
8 testimony is in the packet.
9 And I appreciate you gentlemen and your help here
10 today, your testimony.
11 And so we're going to move on to Les Neri,
12 President of the Fraternal Order of Police for the
13 Pennsylvania State Lodge.
14 And Les, thank you for being here, and I'll open
15 it up to you.
16 MR. NERI: Good morning. My name is Les Neri.
17 I'm the President of the Pennsylvania State Lodge Fraternal
18 Order of Police, representing the interests of 40,000 law
19 enforcement officers throughout the Commonwealth. I also
20 have the honor and privilege of serving as the National
21 Second Vice President of the Fraternal Order of Police,
22 representing 350,000 police officers nationwide.
23 I'd like to thank the Committee chairs and the
24 entire Committee for the opportunity to be here today and
25 speak with you and share our views on training and
69
1 accreditation.
2 I believe everybody has a copy of my testimony
3 and I won't just sit here and read it to you. I've heard
4 an awful lot today that I wasn't really prepared to hear
5 and I would like to comment on some of it because I think
6 it's important.
7 As far as the area of training and accreditation
8 goes, look, it's the cornerstone of our business. We have
9 to train. We should have standardized policies and
10 procedure through the accreditation program. And the
11 program that the Pennsylvania chiefs have put together is
12 phenomenal. It's specific here to Pennsylvania with our
13 laws, our legislation, our departments, our agencies.
14 I was really involved in police work from the age
15 of 19. Grew up in the City of Philadelphia in the Hunting
16 Park section. My teen years, moved out to Delaware County,
17 and right out of high school, went to work for the
18 Springfield Police Department as a dispatcher, and stayed
19 in the field until I retired as a detective in Tredyffrin
20 Township in 2008.
21 Tredyffrin Township is where I have a lot of my
22 basis of information, and our township was a second-class
23 township in Chester County, the first second-class township
24 in Pennsylvania to be accredited by CALEA, which is the
25 international accreditation agency.
70
1 I was part of that process back in the -- I guess
2 it was the late '80s. And it was extremely intensive and
3 expensive. Fortunately, I worked for a police department
4 in a municipality that had quite a lot of money. So we
5 were able to go through that. And training in my agency
6 was extremely important. As a patrolman there, we train 10
7 hours a month, every month -- 10 hours a month.
8 You know, unfortunately, when you look at the way
9 Pennsylvania is set up from a policing standpoint, we have
10 almost 1,100 police departments. And as we heard here
11 today when we were talking about part-time officers, money
12 is a factor in having full-time officers and it's also a
13 factor in training. With the amount of police departments
14 that we have, almost 20 percent of them have five or less
15 officers, and that's full or part-time. Another 25 percent
16 have 10 or less. So almost half the agencies in the
17 Commonwealth have 10 or less police officers, and that
18 affects the budget and the ability to provide training.
19 A mandatory training, of course, is provided by
20 MPOETC that does an outstanding job, and as we've heard
21 here today, we have the top training almost in the country.
22 So we do a very good job in training cadets coming in and
23 putting them on the street.
24 But over the years, our continuing education, you
25 know, kind of has lagged behind. It's only 12 hours are
71
1 required, and of that 12 hours, you have a mandatory update
2 in criminal law, a mandatory update in traffic, a mandatory
3 update in rules of criminal procedure, which doesn't leave
4 a whole lot available for other areas like implicit bias
5 training that we heard about today, cultural diversity,
6 prevention of profiling behaviors. And the less resources
7 an agency has, I guarantee you, the less training they're
8 going to provide.
9 So I think we have to look at -- what I've heard
10 here today, talking about part-timers -- is the structure
11 of policing we have here in Pennsylvania. And I think
12 we're going to have to address how we do our policing at
13 some point in time.
14 The FOP has always been a proponent of
15 regionalization to make police service more affordable and
16 also that would make more training affordable. We also
17 encourage more full-time police officers, which we are also
18 a proponent of. Now, we have members that are part-time
19 officers, and these officers are some of the finest in the
20 state. But they're working in agencies, or multiple
21 agencies, more than 40 hours a week, sometimes 60 and 80
22 hours a week in two, three, and four different departments
23 to provide police services.
24 So I think we have to look at the whole structure
25 of policing when we're looking at the component of factors
72
1 that affect training, and also, as we heard today with
2 accreditation, standardization of policies and procedures.
3 1,100 police departments means 1,100 different use-of-force
4 policies, if they even have them; 1,100 disciplinary
5 policies, if they even have them; 1,100 internal
6 investigation policies, if they even have them.
7 So I think we have an awful large package to look
8 at when we're talking about policing going forward and how
9 we're going to accomplish the goals of training and
10 standardizing policies and through -- I'm sorry -- policies
11 and procedures through the accreditation type programs.
12 I'd like to thank the Representative for the
13 comments in reference to California to a very difficult
14 thing to see, and it affects not only myself emotionally
15 but every police officer and, I'm sure, every decent
16 citizen in this country. You know, we know we've got a
17 hard job to do when we go out there. We pin on that badge
18 with no thoughts in our mind that it's a guarantee that
19 we're coming home to our families each and every day. We
20 know that. And we're willing to put it on the line to
21 protect and serve.
22 Police work is a noble profession and it's a
23 calling. It's not a job; it's a calling. And our members
24 go out with that thought, and when tragedy strikes or
25 officers are called upon to make supreme sacrifices, as
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1 hard as it is to take, we know it's part of the job. But
2 what isn't part of the job is what I saw last night on TV
3 of people standing outside of the hospital and chanting we
4 hope they die.
5 And I got to tell you, it's even tough for me to
6 say it. And every police officer is watching that
7 nationwide. How do you train somebody not to let that
8 affect them? I don't know. I don't know how you do that.
9 And I think, you know, we've got to start realizing that
10 we've got a human problem here. We can train all we want.
11 You've heard a lot of information here today. You see
12 topics that we're trained on.
13 I know, Representative, you were talking about
14 use of force and can you do this and can you do that, and I
15 don't know what your experience is or the experience of the
16 rest of this panel, but you can see something static on
17 paper. You can read, oh, well they have use-of-force
18 training, de-escalation, and this and that and words that
19 just keep going on. And I know we've got statistics that
20 can prove your point, Mr. Representative, and that can
21 prove a point that law enforcement has that differs from
22 yours. But we have to really learn to understand and
23 trust, and those things can only happen if you experience
24 them and you earn them.
25 Now, I heard today that there's a plan for this
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1 Committee to attend some training with the State Police. I
2 think that's great. I think this Committee has to
3 experience that. You know, it's kind of like you can go to
4 a class and someone can tell you, this is how you play a
5 guitar -- and I picked that because I'm a guitar
6 player --and these are the strings and this is how you tune
7 it and you turn this and your fingers go here and you form
8 a chord. And you can hear all of that like you're hearing
9 it from us today. But you don't understand it until you
10 pick that guitar up, until you hold it in your hand, and
11 you start to play it.
12 Now, in use-of-force training, we don't just sit
13 in a classroom where someone goes through the code in
14 Pennsylvania. You know, you have to worry about your life
15 or the wife of another in jeopardy, fear -- you know,
16 that's all great. That's the intellectual part of it, but
17 there's the experience part of it.
18 And I don't know what training the State Police
19 have outlined for you but we're working on one at the FOP
20 and it's a use-of-force experience that we're going to
21 invite the legislature to come. And we'll run it as long
22 as we have to run it, as many times as we have to run it,
23 where you will stand there and you'll get the basic
24 understanding of the use of force that we're allowed to
25 use. And we're going to put a gun on you and it's going to
75
1 be a Simunition-type weapon. And we're going to have
2 people that you will deal with and we're going to let you
3 know what it actually feels like for someone coming running
4 at you with a knife.
5 You know, a lot of people think that, you know,
6 well, you can do this and can -- then, can't you shoot him
7 in the finger? And you would not believe the ridiculous
8 things I hear. But they're not ridiculous to those people
9 because they don't understand. It's not -- it's actually
10 not even fair for me to think that way.
11 But it's a whole lot different when you stand
12 there and someone's 14 feet away from you, as close as you
13 and I are. And I'll tell you right now, Representative, I
14 can get to you with a knife before you can draw your weapon
15 and stop my action. Guaranteed.
16 But there are things we can do to improve.
17 De-escalation is, you know, the way we go. That's where we
18 have to go. And there's different techniques and different
19 tools that we have to explore. I wish we had suits like
20 you describe. I actually wish I had a button I could push
21 and it would put a force field around me.
22 But although we don't have those tools, we
23 certainly have other tools that we can use, and just like
24 all policing is local, the use of force is local to that
25 particular area and the type of force being used. Someone
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1 with an edged weapon in the City of Philadelphia -- you may
2 have eight officers that can surround that individual.
3 Maybe somebody, you know, has a net or there's other
4 devices that are used. But you may be able to handle that
5 a lot differently than someone from Western Pennsylvania
6 who's nearest backup -- or a state trooper. His nearest
7 backup is 35 minutes away. And it's him and a person with
8 a knife. Well, that situation's going to be different.
9 So I would hope that as soon as we get this
10 finalization of this process that we're trying to create,
11 and it's only to give you a better understanding of what it
12 is that officers on the street are really experiencing, and
13 you'll have the real feeling. I've seen this training done
14 in the western part of our country, and believe me, it made
15 a dramatic difference. It's not to say that we're always
16 right.
17 I guarantee you, until we stop picking police
18 officers from the human race, we will not be infallible.
19 We will make mistakes. We will forever have our own biases
20 and our own experience because that's who we are. We're
21 human beings. We have to be aware of the ones we can
22 control and we have to do the best job that we can do so
23 it's not only a safe outcome for the officer, it's a safe
24 outcome for whoever we're dealing with.
25 I don't care if it's an innocent, you know,
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1 victim who's being misunderstood or if it's the baddest
2 person on the planet, my wish -- every day when I left my
3 house, I said a prayer, please, God, let me come home to my
4 wife and children and please, God, don't make me have to
5 take a life. They were the two things I asked for every
6 day when I went on the job.
7 So I guess I could keep on going forever but I
8 know that you're all very busy. And I hope that as soon as
9 we get the training finalized, we're going to bring it to
10 the legislature, and please consider participating.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: We'd love to.
12 Thanks, Les. I appreciate it.
13 Any questions or comments, very briefly? Because
14 we are about 45 minutes behind the schedule.
15 Well, what do you know.
16 Thank you, Les. I appreciate your service and
17 especially the service of the men and women you represent
18 here today. Thank you very much.
19 MR. NERI: Thank you. Thank you very much. And
20 I am available to any member of this body at any time.
21 Just reach out to our office. I'll come and meet with you.
22 Whatever I have to do. So thank you very much.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Sure thing.
24 And next, we have Steve Shelow, Executive
25 Director of the Pennsylvania State University Justice and
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1 Safety Institute.
2 Steve, welcome.
3 MR. SHELOW: Thank you.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you for being
5 here.
6 MR. SHELOW: Thank you.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: And I'll open it up
8 to you.
9 MR. SHELOW: Thank you very much. And good
10 morning, Mr. Chairman and honorable members of the
11 Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee.
12 Thank you for inviting me here today. My
13 testimony will be brief. I will underscore that. And will
14 likely be somewhat duplicative of some of the testimony
15 which has already been received regarding these incredibly
16 important topics.
17 Law enforcement training as well as accreditation
18 are very broad topics and each is uniquely complex, yet
19 both are extremely important to successful policing in this
20 great Commonwealth.
21 So as you've heard, my name is Steve Shelow. I
22 have over 27 years of law enforcement experience, having
23 previously held supervisory, management, and leadership
24 positions. And for the past five years, I've proudly
25 served as the Director of Penn State's Justice and Safety
79
1 Institute or fondly known as JASI.
2 JASI is a part of Penn State University's
3 outreach organization and the institute is principally
4 involved and -- principally focused on -- sorry -- and
5 deeply involved in training, especially law enforcement
6 training.
7 JASI was formed in 1971 to meet the specific
8 professional development needs of law enforcement and
9 public safety professionals. And since then, hundreds of
10 municipal, county, state, and federal police agencies have
11 entrusted JASI to train thousands of law enforcement
12 professionals in a variety of training topics.
13 Interestingly, JASI also provides extensive
14 training to law enforcement personnel and child support
15 enforcement personnel right here in the Commonwealth of
16 Pennsylvania. In doing that, JASI works very closely with
17 two state agencies as we carry out that part of our
18 mission, including the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and
19 Delinquency, or PCCD, as well as the Pennsylvania Bureau of
20 Child Support Enforcement.
21 In addition to those efforts, JASI also provides
22 very specialized training to law enforcement leaders
23 including supervisors, managers, chiefs of police, and
24 other police executives right here in Pennsylvania, as well
25 as in approximately 20 other states. For example, JASI has
80
1 provided supervision, management and executive leadership
2 training to officers in the Philadelphia Police Department
3 for the past 14 years. Additionally, JASI has worked
4 extensively with the Newark Police Department, as well as
5 the John H. Stamler Police Academy in the state of New
6 Jersey, having provided a variety of law enforcement
7 leadership training to members of those two agencies.
8 In addition, JASI has done some extensive work in
9 conjunction with the International Association of Chiefs of
10 Police, as well as the Federal Department of State with a
11 handful of law enforcement agencies in several countries
12 outside the United States. These other countries include
13 Morocco, Trinidad and Tobago, and Nigeria.
14 For example, in 2016, six members of the Nigerian
15 governmental police force made the nearly 6,000-mile
16 journey across the Atlantic Ocean to seek JASI's help in
17 improving its police training for its police officers.
18 That particular JASI training initiative was aimed at
19 helping those officials obtain specialized knowledge and
20 apply modern police training methods, and even develop a
21 reform plan for improving their police training system in
22 Nigeria.
23 What we found is that most law enforcement
24 leaders today clearly know the business of law enforcement,
25 but we've also found that some lack the expertise to apply
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1 the recognized best practices of effective community
2 policing, organizational change, program management, and
3 performance management.
4 JASI offers best-in-class justice-related
5 training, education, and organizational development
6 programming to improve justice services and to also promote
7 Penn State as a thought leader. And we believe JASI is
8 uniquely positioned to fulfill unmet needs which the
9 members of this distinguished Committee identify in the
10 course of today's hearing and other hearings which might
11 follow.
12 JASI's mission statement is simple and it reads
13 as follows: JASI has an unwavering commitment to
14 furthering its role as a recognized leader in
15 justice-related training, education, and organizational
16 development.
17 JASI is dedicated to cultivating partnerships
18 with client agencies and to working collaboratively with
19 individuals, with government agencies, with communities,
20 and others. JASI prepares individuals in those agencies to
21 be effective leaders and to substantially improve their
22 knowledge, their skills, and their expertise in a variety
23 of specialized topics.
24 We know that agencies with whom or with which
25 we've worked over the years come to us or come back to us
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1 repeatedly for four main reasons. The first is quality.
2 JASI places a great deal of emphasis on delivering training
3 programs which are relevant, which are current, and which
4 have excellence as their cornerstone. Additionally, our
5 dedicated team of subject matter experts is comprised of a
6 diverse representation of both current and retired law
7 enforcement officers from across the entire country.
8 The second reason we've found that agencies come
9 to us and then return to us is to maintain an important
10 level of consistency. You've heard a great deal today
11 about field training officer programs by a number of the
12 previous speakers. Certain agencies require field training
13 officers, or FTOs, to learn that training and utilize field
14 training materials from their department. JASI's FTO
15 program is a unique -- is unique in that it focuses on both
16 the Reno model, as well as the San Jose model, and that
17 JASI's program also offers a blended approach for teaching
18 FTOs. This approach provides those FTOs with the
19 opportunity to devise a tailored FTO program based upon
20 their individual department's specialized needs.
21 The third reason that we've found that agencies
22 use us and then come back to us is for promotional
23 considerations. We have a number of agencies with whom or
24 with which we've worked who have come to rely upon JASI
25 training programs as a prerequisite for promotion within
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1 their agency.
2 And lastly, what we believe we've found is that
3 JASI training programs help contribute to creating
4 transparency and community trust.
5 I've included in my written testimony a list of
6 our current training topics which we provide, and I'm not
7 going to read over that. In fact, in my written testimony,
8 I've provided a brief overview of some of our programming,
9 and in my appendix, I've provided a great deal of
10 information on each of our dozen or so programs. And so I
11 won't read that this morning.
12 What I will do in closing is simply say this.
13 The JASI team is keenly aware of the complexity confronting
14 the Pennsylvania General Assembly. National incidents
15 require some thoughtful strategies and very creative
16 solutions need to be explored. As is often the case, this
17 will require more than one single solution, we think.
18 JASI is hopeful it can be a part of a broader
19 statewide solution going forward as JASI remains committed
20 to being a partner in efforts to promote modern,
21 professional law enforcement training which serve the law
22 enforcement officers, as well as Pennsylvania's 12 million
23 constituents.
24 Thank you for this opportunity to testify and if
25 there are any, I'll be happy to respond to any questions.
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1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
2 Any brief comments or questions?
3 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Miller.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Representative
5 Miller. Please make it brief.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
7 Sir, most law enforcement leaders today clearly
8 know the business of law enforcement, but we have found few
9 have the experience, the expertise to apply the recognized
10 base best practices and so forth. You know the sentence --
11 (indiscernible - simultaneous speech).
12 MR. SHELOW: Yes. I do.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Yeah.
14 MR. SHELOW: Yes, Mr. Representative.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Why have you found that
16 few are -- have that expertise? What is the reason that
17 they do not?
18 MR. SHELOW: Yeah. I think it's a fair question.
19 And I don't know that I know the answer for sure, but think
20 about it this way. What we find in this industry, if you
21 accept that policing is an industry, is that folks get
22 promoted through the ranks. Often what you see are good
23 police officers become good supervisors, good supervisors
24 become good managers, good managers become outstanding
25 police chiefs.
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1 They fully understand their business and there
2 isn't anybody that understands their business any better.
3 But along that promotional trajectory, where do they learn
4 about budgeting, for example? Where do they learn about
5 risk and risk management and mitigating risk? Where do
6 they learn about dealing with the media?
7 And those are the kinds of programming
8 initiatives that we think, while they know their business
9 and we're not going to step in and try to teach them their
10 business any differently, we're going to help them navigate
11 through some of those complexities and some of those
12 ancillary subjects such as the one I just mentioned.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: You also included
14 community policing, organizational change, and performance
15 management in your sentence --
16 MR. SHELOW: Sure. Sure.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- as areas where you have
18 found few have the expertise to appropriately manage those
19 scenarios.
20 Just so I understand, and I apologize just
21 because you --
22 MR. SHELOW: No.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- did provide a lot of
24 information, is it that your -- are -- well, let me just
25 say this. Are you aware of what -- how they can gain this
86
1 in addition to whatever you may do? How are those who are
2 finding success -- what is the distinguishing component to
3 them in relation to meeting success in those areas?
4 MR. SHELOW: Yeah. I think that's a very fair
5 question. And again, my position is that we think we can
6 be a part of that. But I think it's complex, right? I
7 think you heard today about accreditation. You obviously
8 researched accreditation extensively so you understand that
9 having sound policies and procedures could help toward
10 managing, for instance, police misconduct, as an example.
11 We have a course that kind of dives into that as well,
12 right?
13 I don't think there's any one particular training
14 initiative that satisfactorily addresses the very complex
15 concerns such as the ones you're illuminating, but what we
16 think is that insofar as there are multiple initiatives
17 that could be aimed at preparing, or better preparing,
18 police chiefs and executives to confront those issues, we
19 think we could be a part of that.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: My final --
21 MR. SHELOW: That's really all we're asking for
22 today is --
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: My final question for you
24 for you --
25 MR. SHELOW: Sure.
87
1 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- is that I know you
2 said -- I think you detailed like 27 years of experience.
3 MR. SHELOW: Yes.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Obviously, you referenced
5 the aspects of your institution. As far as when you say
6 few have, so that means -- in my mind, I'm thinking, that
7 means, you know, the majority do not. Without getting into
8 proportionality for it, can you give just a little bit more
9 so I can understand what you meant when you say few? How
10 great is the challenge for us to help those who don't have
11 it? How big of a component is that who are -- you found to
12 be lacking?
13 MR. SHELOW: Yeah. I understand the question and
14 I cannot quantify it today. I can simply say, anecdotally,
15 we think it's a majority that would benefit from this kind
16 of work.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Chairman.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
19 I don't believe there's anything else, so we'll
20 move on to our -- thank you very much for being here.
21 MR. SHELOW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: And we'll move on to
23 our last on the agenda, Emanuel Kapelsohn, President of The
24 Peregrine Corporation. And you may come and make your
25 presentation. Thank you for being here today.
88
1 MR. KAPELSOHN: Good morning. And I want to
2 thank you for inviting me to be here. I'm not here
3 representing any organization. I'm here as a law
4 enforcement trainer, as an attorney, as an expert witness
5 in police use-of-force cases.
6 I've been a use-of-force trainer on a nationwide
7 basis for 40 years. I've been an expert witness in state
8 and federal courts nationwide for 36 years, including in a
9 lot of the high-profile cases that you've all heard about.
10 I'm in the process right now of being hired in Kenosha,
11 Wisconsin in that case that resulted in massive rioting for
12 days. I've lived in Pennsylvania for over 30 years, first
13 in Berks County and now in Lehigh County. I taught at the
14 Allentown Police Academy; I taught the segment entitled,
15 Use of Force in Law Enforcement, for eight or nine years
16 there.
17 The gentleman from the State Police talked about
18 MPOETC and how it has established a curriculum that's used
19 at the ACT 120 academies statewide. I'm one of the handful
20 of people that wrote the use-of-force and firearms
21 curriculum that's been used at the academies throughout
22 Pennsylvania for about the last 12 years or so. I was one
23 of three people who wrote the program called Police Use of
24 Force that was mandatory in-service training taught to
25 nearly 25,000 police officers in 2016. And I've been a
89
1 reserve deputy sheriff here for 22 years. It's called a
2 special deputy here in Pennsylvania.
3 So I have a firsthand knowledge of these things
4 we're talking about, coming at it from many different
5 directions, from that of a trainer, from that of a
6 sometimes law enforcement officer, from that of an attorney
7 writing use-of-force policy, and from that of an expert
8 witness coming in after there's been a use of force when we
9 have to deal with it in court, whether that's criminal
10 court or civil.
11 One thing I didn't hear today, so far hear, was
12 any discussion of what the standards are for use of force.
13 We heard that MPOETC makes standards, and you know, this
14 organization or that organization will help with policies
15 and with accreditation. There's a standard and if any of
16 you know it, I'll -- please forgive me for mentioning it.
17 I'll mention it only briefly.
18 Use of force by law enforcement officers is
19 governed by the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment
20 prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Shooting
21 someone is a seizure. Hitting someone with a baton, tasing
22 someone, arresting someone -- those are all seizures under
23 the Fourth Amendment.
24 A U.S. Supreme Court Case called Graham vs.
25 Connor in 1989, is the landmark case on this subject and it
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1 has been cited in thousands upon thousands of other court
2 cases since that time. Graham vs. Connor says that an
3 officer's use of force must be objectively reasonable under
4 the totality of the circumstances facing the officer. And
5 it is to be judged by the perspective of a reasonable
6 officer on the scene, not legislators, not lawyers, not
7 instructors back at the academy, but the officer who's
8 actually at the scene, the one who's having the mentally-
9 disturbed person with the knife coming toward him or
10 whatever else is going on there.
11 And the Supreme Court went on to say that the
12 calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the
13 fact that police officers are often forced to make
14 split-second judgments in circumstances that are tense,
15 uncertain, and rapidly evolving about the amount of force
16 that is necessary in a particular situation. So that's the
17 standard.
18 Now, you can make a more restrictive standard.
19 You can say that here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
20 police officers can only shoot people on Tuesdays and the
21 other six days of the week, they can't, but you can't make
22 a less restrictive standard than the constitutional
23 standard. So that's where we start.
24 In order to understand what the perspective of a
25 reasonable officer at the scene is, you have to know the
91
1 things that that officer was trained to know and has
2 learned from his or her experience. So I think it's
3 terrific when I hear that you're going to actually spend
4 some time at the Pennsylvania State Police Academy watching
5 some police training in progress because that's how you
6 understand what that reasonable officer knows.
7 Officers know things about the threat level of
8 different kinds of weapons, time versus distance, human
9 factors, action versus reaction, and I'm going to
10 demonstrate one or two of those things very quickly and
11 briefly to you here. I know I'm the last witness and
12 you're eager to go.
13 I'll mention for a moment the subject of
14 objectively reasonable force because remember, I said the
15 Supreme Court says the officer's use of force must be
16 objectively reasonable. And you say, well, what is that?
17 What does that mean?
18 The state of California just recently
19 legislatively set about to change that standard from
20 objectively reasonable to that the force used by the
21 officer must be necessary. Might say, well, what's the
22 difference between those two things? They're just words.
23 What's the difference in those words?
24 So I'll give you the case I worked in just a
25 couple years ago in Camden, New Jersey, where a
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1 17-year-old, probably emotionally disturbed, was coming
2 with a barbecue grill fork, one of those long two-tined
3 forks that you turn the steak over with -- he was coming at
4 an officer, police officer, and a group of bystanders with
5 this barbecue grill fork and he was yelling, eff the
6 police, eff you, I'm going to kill you.
7 And the officer had his gun drawn and was backing
8 up until he couldn't back up anymore and he had the group
9 of bystanders behind him. And they backed up onto the
10 front porch of the house in Camden, and he backed up until
11 his heels hit the steps leading up to the porch. And he
12 kept yelling, drop the weapon, drop the weapon. Police.
13 Stop. Drop the weapon. And finally, he fired.
14 That was ruled to be objectively reasonable. Was
15 it necessary? Here's the difference. Let's say, instead
16 of drawing the gun and saying, stop or I'll shoot you, the
17 officer had fallen to his knees and said, please, please, I
18 have a wife and children at home, and I like dogs and cats,
19 and I go to church every Sunday. Please, please don't hurt
20 me. And if the suspect had then dropped the fork, then I
21 guess shooting him wasn't necessary, was it?
22 We will only know whether something is necessary
23 or not after the fact and usually we'll never know. And so
24 federal courts, and more than one of them, have said to
25 require some use of force to be necessary is an impossible
93
1 standard to impose on a police officer because he can never
2 know what will be necessary unless we try everything and
3 then one of them works, and then we know anything more
4 severe than that wasn't necessary. So objectively
5 reasonable is the standard.
6 Now, you need to have -- as a Committee, you need
7 to have some knowledge, like a police officer has,
8 specialized knowledge, in order to understand what is
9 objectively reasonable or not for a police officer to do
10 when using force. So I'm going to do two quick
11 demonstrations for you, if I will.
12 Is Mike Fink here? I've never met him.
13 Oh, great. Well, you could --
14 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (Indiscernible - away from
15 microphone).
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: -- you could -- I'm volunteering
17 you, then. Okay.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: If any member would
19 like to volunteer, you're welcome to --
20 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Will you be using a mask,
21 sir? Will you be using a mask?
22 MR. KAPELSOHN: Excuse me?
23 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Will you be using a mask if
24 you're not social distancing?
25 MR. KAPELSOHN: I don't think we're going to be
94
1 not social distancing here. We're going to be like this.
2 Okay? Is that okay with you? Okay.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Carry on.
4 MR. KAPELSOHN: Okay. So I have here two orange
5 plastic guns from Wal-Mart and -- choose your weapon. You
6 get this one.
7 MR. FINK: Okay.
8 MR. KAPELSOHN: Okay. And all these do is they
9 go click. Try it. Try the trigger. Okay. Good.
10 You're the officer. I'm the suspect. I'd like
11 you, please, to point the gun at me with your finger on the
12 trigger, which is not good or even smart.
13 MR. FINK: (Indiscernible - away from
14 microphone).
15 MR. KAPELSOHN: Okay. And if I do something
16 life-threatening, like point my gun at you, I want you to
17 just pull the trigger once, as quickly as you can. Extend
18 your arm so that everyone can see the gun, okay?
19 So you're going to start by saying, police, don't
20 move. And then if I do something life-threatening, just
21 pull the trigger once and you'll hear me pull the trigger,
22 and you'll see how my reaction relates in time to his
23 action.
24 So start by telling me not to move and then be
25 ready.
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1 MR. FINK: Police. Don't move.
2 MR. KAPELSOHN: (Shoots toy gun)
3 MR. FINK: Okay.
4 MR. KAPELSOHN: No. Come on. Let's get a little
5 wittier now. Let's try again.
6 MR. FINK: (Indiscernible - away from
7 microphone). Police. Don't move.
8 MR. KAPELSOHN: (Shoots toy gun)
9 MR. FINK: (Indiscernible - away from
10 microphone).
11 MR. KAPELSOHN: Well. Come on. I want you to
12 actually shoot.
13 MR. FINK: Okay.
14 MR. KAPELSOHN: Pretend your life's at stake.
15 MR. FINK: All right. Police. Don't move.
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: (Shoots toy gun)
17 MR. FINK: (Shoots goy gun)
18 MR. KAPELSOHN: So what's happening? At best,
19 we're each getting a shot.
20 Okay. Now, you're still the officer, I'm still
21 the suspect, but I'm rifling through the cash register.
22 You're going to give me the order and be ready. And if you
23 see me do something life-threatening, I want you to shoot,
24 okay?
25 So go ahead. Give the command and be ready.
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1 MR. FINK: Police. Stay still.
2 MR. KAPELSOHN: Excuse me?
3 MR. FINK: Police. Don't move.
4 MR. KAPELSOHN: (Shoots toy gun)
5 MR. FINK: (Indiscernible - away from
6 microphone).
7 MR. KAPELSOHN: You're not a very good
8 (indiscernible - away from microphone).
9 MR. FINK: Yeah (indiscernible - away from
10 microphone).
11 MR. KAPELSOHN: You need to shoot if you want to
12 stay alive.
13 MR. FINK: Okay.
14 MR. KAPELSOHN: Do you understand that?
15 MR. FINK: All right.
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: Okay.
17 MR. FINK: Police. Don't move.
18 MR. KAPELSOHN: (Shoots toy gun)
19 MR. FINK: (Shoots toy gun)
20 MR. KAPELSOHN: Okay. And then let's do it one
21 more time. Okay. Be ready and give the command.
22 MR. FINK: Police. Don't move.
23 MR. KAPELSOHN: (Turns around. Hands are up.)
24 Okay. An officer probably would have fired when
25 I whirled around. And it would have been justifiable
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1 because he announced he was the police, he told me not to
2 move, it was a circumstance where I'm likely to be armed,
3 and I whirled around in that likely situation.
4 All right. Put the gun down.
5 And what you saw just now is what is taught at
6 police academies worldwide, not just in Pennsylvania, which
7 is action beats -- excuse me -- action, his movement,
8 beats reaction by me. By definition, reaction must follow
9 action, right? And a way of demonstrating the importance
10 is just this, if you will follow with me.
11 Put your hands about a foot apart for me, please,
12 if you would. And when you see me go to clap my hands, I
13 want you to just clap your hands, okay?
14 (Claps hands)
15 (Audience claps hands)
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: Let's try that again. Could be a
17 little faster.
18 (Claps hands)
19 (Audience claps hands)
20 MR. KAPELSOHN: So you see. You can never beat
21 that. You can only follow it because your eye must
22 perceive the threat, your mind has to process it, and then
23 you have to send a nerve impulse down your arm either to
24 pull the trigger or to bring your hands together. And by
25 the time that happens, I've clapped already.
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1 We're going to do one other demonstration. For
2 this, I will put on the mask because we might get a little
3 closer.
4 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (Indiscernible - away from
5 microphone), Mike.
6 MR. KAPELSOHN: What I'm going to use for this
7 one is a rubber knife, and you can see it's just a rubber
8 knife. It can't hurt anyone. And a timer. And I'll turn
9 on the timer and then I will -- this may buzz. There. I'm
10 going to set a (indiscernible - away from microphone) time
11 on the timer. Or if nothing works. Well, I'll give it one
12 more try.
13 Okay. The timer is not working but we'll do the
14 demonstration anyway.
15 What I'd like to do -- just step out one step.
16 Good. Thanks. I'm going to measure off five yards. So
17 I'll start here. One, two, three, four, five. Ignore
18 that. An average officer, if he can draw and fire his or
19 her pistol in anything less than one and a half seconds is
20 very unusually fast. One and a half seconds is good,
21 competent time for an officer to draw and fire.
22 Now all I want you to do is just stand there. In
23 fact, take one step over that way. Good. You're just
24 going to stand there.
25 And you time the time. Okay. So when I start to
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1 move, start your timer, okay? When you see me take a step,
2 you'll start it, and I'm going to rush over there toward
3 Mike as fast as I can and touch him with the rubber knife.
4 Okay? And if we think one, one-thousand; two one -- that's
5 about a second and a half.
6 Okay. So you're ready to time. I'm going to
7 rush over there. Are you ready?
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: I'm ready.
9 (Rushes over and touches Mr. Fink with rubber
10 knife)
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: 1.6.
12 MR. KAPELSOHN: 1.6. Boy, I sure rushed over
13 there, didn't I? No. What did I do? I walked over in big
14 steps and covered five yards and touched someone in the
15 amount of time it would take him or her to draw and fire.
16 Now, let's do it one other way. You get the
17 knife. Take two paces, big paces back from where you are.
18 One, two. Good.
19 And when you see him -- but I want you to run
20 past me. You don't have to stop. Just run past me and
21 touch me with the knife, as long as you don't trip. Okay.
22 And when you see him start, start the time.
23 And you're going to just start on your own
24 without warning and come at me with the knife. I'm just
25 going to stand here. Just run past me and touch me
100
1 whenever you're ready.
2 And you're ready to start the time.
3 MR. FINK: Okay.
4 (Runs past Mr. Kapelsohn)
5 MR. KAPELSOHN: That's not much of a run. What
6 did we get?
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: 1.75.
8 MR. KAPELSOHN: 1.75. Okay. It's good enough.
9 Thank you, sir.
10 So what you just saw -- these are kinds of things
11 that police officers are trained in and know and
12 understand, and I'll tell you that a man from a standing
13 start can cover 7 yards, 21 feet, in about 1.5 seconds. In
14 other words, when you hear or see on the news, oh, that
15 person was 14 feet away from the officer; he couldn't have
16 possibly been a threat to the officer with that knife in
17 his hand. The officer understands that from 14 feet, that
18 person can get to him in less than one second.
19 Okay. So these are just action versus action,
20 threat versus distance versus time. These are kinds of
21 things that are specialized knowledge that police have and
22 that's why, as a Committee, you have to be very careful to
23 leave the actual specifics of standards-setting to MPOETC,
24 the State Police, people like that who are trainers, who
25 understand that, rather than doing what the California
101
1 legislature seeks to do which is replace those people with
2 themselves and say, well, we think police don't really need
3 pepper spray. We think police should use a necessary
4 standard rather than an objectively-reasonable standard.
5 One area that I know is coming up before this
6 Committee, if not right now but very soon, is the area of
7 neck restraints and choke holds. And you should understand
8 that every kind of neck restraint in the world is not a
9 choke hold. There are neck restraints that have been used
10 for decades by the Secret Service, the FBI.
11 The National Law Enforcement Training Center in
12 Kansas City has taught neck restraints, which are called
13 lateral vascular neck restraints. It's not a choke. It
14 doesn't cut off the air supply. It temporarily restricts
15 the blood flow to the brain and causes a very violent
16 subject to become unconscious for a few seconds, long
17 enough for an officer to apply handcuffs.
18 That's been taught by the National Law
19 Enforcement Training Center in Kansas City, and over 800
20 agencies are certified in it. And over a 40-year period,
21 there has not been a death or a serious injury resulting
22 from it. And I won't bother to demonstrate on Mike, but
23 I've demonstrated it in courtrooms. I've testified in neck
24 restraint cases. And this is just another area where
25 specialized knowledge is a good thing, is necessary.
102
1 I'll just mention a couple quick other things
2 before I close. I think departmental accreditation is a
3 great idea. To require it is a great idea. There's a
4 problem with requiring it of a two- or three-man department
5 because they may just not have the manpower to handle the
6 paperwork and the standard setting and the testing that
7 larger departments can do.
8 I've heard mention by other witnesses that there
9 are departments here in Pennsylvania that don't have any
10 use-of-force policy or any firearms policy or any vehicular
11 pursuit policy, or whatever it may be. And I've run into
12 some of those departments, and it's true. And they need to
13 have policy on those issues, absolutely.
14 I also run into many more departments that have
15 policies but they're terrible. They're out of date.
16 Typically, the use-of-force policy comes about in this way.
17 The chief says to his whatever -- lieutenant, sergeant,
18 whatever -- hey, we really need a use-of-force policy. Can
19 you get something together for me?
20 And that person goes to the next township over
21 and says to the guy he knows; can I take a look at your
22 use-of-force policy. And then he borrows one from another
23 township on the other side, and then they get those
24 together and kind of scramble them together. And then the
25 chief says, well, this says this but I think it'd be better
103
1 if it says that, and you wind up with a mishmash of policy
2 that is neither legally supportable, current, or proper.
3 So if there's some way that you can impose on
4 departments that they have a policy, that's great. And if
5 you can do something like accreditation or at least some
6 kind of statewide standard, that's great too, because it'll
7 solve those problems.
8 The importance of a written policy primarily is
9 to provide guidance for the officer so that they use force
10 properly. Secondarily, it provides a standard for the
11 department so they can discipline or terminate officers who
12 don't follow the policy. But guidance is the primary
13 purpose of the policy.
14 And I think I'm going to stop there and ask if
15 there are any questions for me.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you very much.
17 I appreciate it.
18 Representative Rabb?
19 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
20 Very interesting demonstrations. Could there be
21 any alternative between shooting someone with a gun and
22 kneeling in front of them and saying, please don't shoot
23 me?
24 MR. KAPELSOHN: Oh, of --
25 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Are there other means? So
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1 are those the only two options in your --
2 MR. KAPELSOHN: Of course, there are other
3 alternatives.
4 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Reasonable. I'm sorry.
5 MR. KAPELSOHN: Yeah.
6 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: I should have said
7 reasonable options other than shooting someone?
8 MR. KAPELSOHN: It depends. And Chief English, I
9 think it was, said when someone is facing you with a knife,
10 it depends a lot on the time and the time depends a lot on
11 the distance and whether there are intervening obstacles.
12 Whether you've been able to put a table between you and
13 that guy with the knife or a car or the guardrail along
14 the --
15 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Right.
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: -- the roadway, whatever --
17 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: What about training?
18 MR. KAPELSOHN: -- whatever it is. Training, yes.
19 Because if the officer can maintain distance, he's at less
20 threat. The problem you have to understand is if the
21 officer increases the distance, he's also decreasing his
22 level of control over that person with the knife, so if
23 that person decides to run around -- turn around and run
24 back into the house where his wife and children are, and
25 that's the reason the officer was called here in the first
105
1 place, the officer loses some control.
2 The other technologies that we have like Taser
3 and pepper spray typically are not appropriate or
4 tactically sound if someone is at fairly close range with a
5 knife coming at you. We all, all of us, ascribe to the
6 idea of de-escalation. Unfortunately, there are many
7 situations where that just isn't possible.
8 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: And I guess my follow-up is
9 why is there a disparity with regard to use of force based
10 on race in this country?
11 MR. KAPELSOHN: Well, you've said that and you've
12 said that the statistics show that. I can tell you that
13 statistics that I've seen show that not only do white
14 police officers more readily shoot black suspects, but they
15 show that black police officers also more readily shoot
16 black suspects.
17 And to the extent that there's a disparity, what
18 I see is that more black suspects or subjects are shot
19 proportionate to their percentage of society, and
20 similarly, more African-Americans are incarcerated relative
21 to their percentage in society, but it's also true that it
22 is proportional to the percentage of violent crimes
23 committed by African-Americans and Hispanics, so I think it
24 takes a lot --
25 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: So you're saying the
106
1 shootings are as a result of that person committing a
2 violent crime? Because none of the --
3 MR. KAPELSOHN: Often (indiscernible -
4 simultaneous speech) --
5 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: -- displays you're talking
6 about, like --
7 MR. KAPELSOHN: Excuse me?
8 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: I guess what I'm saying is,
9 if you just look at unarmed assailants, if you want to --
10 even want to use the word assailant -- but unarmed. Are
11 you saying there's not a racial disparity?
12 MR. KAPELSOHN: I'm saying that it needs to be
13 studied much more carefully and I'm not sure there's a
14 racial disparity. The fact is very often the media and the
15 public say someone was unarmed. What I heard was, in
16 Lancaster a couple of days ago, a police officer shot an
17 unarmed teenager and it turned out that the person was 27
18 years old and had a huge knife so they weren't unarmed at
19 all.
20 I hear that a subject of color was unarmed when,
21 in fact, what they were armed with was a vehicle that they
22 were driving in.
23 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Right. I'm not referring
24 to media accounts. I'm talking about the FBI. Would you
25 trust the FBI's statistics around this and the Department
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1 of Justice?
2 MR. KAPELSOHN: To the extent that the statistics
3 show the things that we need to study. It's a complex
4 situation, I believe.
5 REPRESENTATIVE RABB: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
7 Representative Zabel?
8 REPRESENTATIVE ZABEL: Thank you.
9 Thank you for your testimony today. As an
10 attorney myself, I can appreciate a good expert witness
11 demonstration.
12 Just more for the sake of balance and
13 understanding, can you give me an example of a time where
14 you concluded, in your expert opinion, that the use of
15 force was unreasonable?
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: Yes.
17 REPRESENTATIVE ZABEL: You don't have to do
18 identifying details, but --
19 MR. KAPELSOHN: Well, for instance, I've worked
20 as an expert witness as an expert consultant, for starters,
21 three times for the district attorney of Milwaukee in the
22 last four years. In one of those cases, I concluded that
23 the officer's use of force was justified, and after a
24 year-long investigation, the Justice Department concluded
25 the same thing. And that was Barack Obama's Justice
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1 Department.
2 I concluded once that it was too close for me to
3 call, after I watched the video tapes about 300 times.
4 And most recently, I decided that a female
5 officer's shooting of a black suspect was unjustified and
6 was an excessive use of force. He was huge. She was small
7 but she had a male partner with her also who was not small.
8 He had gone onto a city bus, put the wrong amount
9 of change in the coin box, asked for a transfer slip. The
10 bus driver said, we don't give those out anymore. We don't
11 have transfer slips. It was a female driver. And he
12 started to swear. And he sat down right behind the driver
13 and was swearing and -- including into a phone at someone
14 he was talking to.
15 The driver was scared. She pulled up next to --
16 well, close to two police cars who were window-to-window
17 talking to each other, as officers do, and she blew the
18 horn. And finally, the officers came over, and it's all on
19 video because the bus had about five cameras on it pointing
20 in different directions.
21 She explained the situation, and the female
22 officer said to the very large African-American, young man,
23 the driver says you have to get off the bus. You have to
24 get off the bus. You're frightening people and upsetting
25 people. And he said, I'm not getting off this effing bus.
109
1 And the officer said, let me explain it. If we
2 have to take you off the bus, we will arrest you and it's
3 a -- I think she said a $670 fine for disorderly conduct,
4 or you can just get off the bus and go home. And he said,
5 I'm not getting off the bus.
6 They took him off the bus and started to struggle
7 with him and he was this wide, about 300 pounds, and the
8 male officer tripped him to the ground on purpose but they
9 all went down hard. And as they struggled on the ground to
10 try to get him handcuffed, he tucked his hands under him.
11 The female officer drew her gun, put it to the
12 center of his back, and pulled the trigger and put a .45
13 caliber bullet into his back. And you can hear one of the
14 passengers on the bus before the shot was fired say, “Good
15 Lord, she's gonna shoot him.” And then you hear, bang.
16 Her justification was he put his hands where I
17 couldn't see them. I was taught at the academy that if a
18 suspect puts his hands where you can't see them, he can
19 kill you.
20 My position was half the suspects you're trying
21 to arrest who don't want to be arrested who are on the
22 ground tuck their hands underneath them so that you can't
23 handcuff them. You can't just shoot everybody who tucks
24 his hands under him. This suspect never displayed a
25 weapon, never threatened that he had a weapon, never
110
1 physically threatened anyone. He just said, I'm trying to
2 get home and I've put my $2 in the bus and I'm not getting
3 off this bus.
4 You can't shoot him. And I wound up testifying
5 her -- against her at a criminal trial. I can give you
6 more, but that's one.
7 REPRESENTATIVE ZABEL: No. That's helpful.
8 That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Thank
9 you.
10 MR. KAPELSOHN: So that's a kind of situation, I
11 guess, where that officer, in my view, needed to be
12 criminally prosecuted, and maybe before that point, the
13 officer needed to be better trained.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: And what was the
15 result of that criminal prosecution?
16 MR. KAPELSOHN: It was a hung jury and the State
17 decided not to re-bring the prosecution, but it was a hung
18 jury.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Was she removed from
20 the police force?
21 MR. KAPELSOHN: Absolutely. And I think part of
22 the agreement was she would never be a police officer again
23 anyplace, but to me, that's not quite a good enough
24 solution to that situation.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you.
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1 All right. Well, I thank you for your expert
2 testimony here today. Appreciate it very much. I think
3 it's been very helpful in demonstrating some of the
4 challenges out there. And who knows, we may call on you
5 again, if you don't mind.
6 MR. KAPELSOHN: I would welcome that.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN KAUFFMAN: Thank you. Thank
8 you very much.
9 And with that, thank you all for your attention.
10 It went long but I think it was a good and fruitful
11 discussion. Thank you very much.
12 With no further business before this Committee,
13 this meeting is adjourned.
14 Thank you.
15 (Hearing adjourned 12:00 p.m.)
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1 C E R T I F I C A T E
2 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
3 are a true and accurate transcription produced from
4 audio on the said proceedings and that this is a
5 correct transcript of the same.
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