In response to protests calling for police reform after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the San Rafael Police Department has rewritten its policy on using force against civilians.
The new policy was created after a series of workshops this summer in which city officials, police and residents met to discuss San Rafael’s approach to policing. It was approved by the City Council on Monday.
“It wasn’t an easy topic,” said Lorenzo Jones, a San Rafael resident who the city hired to facilitate its “task force” meetings on the policy. “It wasn’t comfortable. But our job was to get underneath our policies and I think we did a very effective job.”
The task force included San Rafael residents whom Mayor Gary Phillips said he selected “arbitrarily” from the crowd at a downtown protest in June. The group was charged with reviewing the police department’s use-of-force policies to ensure they are in alignment with guidelines proposed by the nonprofit Campaign Zero, an organization that advocates for nonviolent policing throughout the country, according to Phillips. Those guidelines include a ban on shooting at moving vehicles, a requirement that police officers give warnings before shooting and a ban on chokeholds.
Police Chief Diana Bishop said San Rafael’s policies in many cases were already in alignment with Campaign Zero’s recommendations. Among the major changes to the city’s policy are new instructions for police officers to use de-escalation tactics before using force and a ban on chokeholds unless an officer faces a life or death situation.
The updated policy also requires that officers report unnecessary use of force by other police department staff “as soon as feasible.” It bans officers from shooting at or from a moving vehicle unless “there are no other reasonable means available to avert the imminent threat of the vehicle, or if deadly force other than the vehicle is directed at the officer or others.”
The use-of-force policy has grown from seven to 13 pages with the revisions. The department’s entire policy manual now stretches to more than 700 pages. In a new preface to the manual, Bishop states that the section that guides the use of force was updated “to stress our guiding principle when using force, which is reverence for human life.”
“We instruct our officers to use the least amount of force needed to successfully resolve an incident,” Bishop’s preface says. “We take the policies in this manual very seriously and will hold all our officers accountable to them.”
According to Bishop, the department responded to 49,105 service calls in 2019 and 66 of them, or about 0.13%, resulted in the use of force. She has pledged to publish statistics on police officers’ use of force each year on the city’s website.
Damien Oyobio, a San Rafael resident whom Phillips selected to serve on the committee, called the new policy “a step in the right direction.”
“I’m proud to see San Rafael leading Marin,” Oyobio told the council on Monday.
Phillips called the new use-of-force policy “phase one” of the city’s plan for police reforms. He said the next phase will begin immediately, and will include a review of police department duties that could be taken on by other city departments, including responding to service calls related to homelessness and mental health issues. The goal of that review, he said, is “not to defund the department, but rather allocate the funding in a slightly different way.”
“If there’s a person downtown making gestures or comments or screaming and yelling, we’re not going to send the librarian. We’re not going to send the public works. We’re going to send the police,” Phillips said. “Is that the most appropriate? Maybe not. I think we, as a community, need to explore that.”
Phillips, who has announced he will not seek re-election in November, said the second phase will likely take several months. He appointed Vice Mayor Kate Colin and Councilman John Gamblin to “carry it forward.”
“I hope this is really seen as the first step,” Gamblin said.
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August 20, 2020 at 05:59AM
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San Rafael revises police use-of-force rules after protests - Marin Independent Journal
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