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Proposed POST Board rules professionalizing police would help recruit new officers [1]

['More From Author', 'February', 'Michael Friedman']

Date: 2023-02-10

A much younger cousin on my spouse’s side of the family thought he was ascending the ladder of first responder careers by becoming a police officer in his small Colorado city. He resigned from the profession after less than three years.

The reason? He was sometimes partnered with a more senior officer who, shall we say, didn’t play by the rules for engaging with the public. On the nights the cousin had a different partner, he liked his job overall. On the nights he had the problem partner, he was anxious, highly vigilant, and just hoping to get through without major consequence to himself or others.

As a relatively new officer in the small department, he assumed that complaining up the chain of command was pointless, and perhaps setting himself up for retaliation. It’s not like he would be revealing anything that management or anyone else in the department didn’t already know.

Here in Minnesota, police are struggling with recruitment and retention, and some are blaming too much regulation and oversight. Although more oversight may have moved some long-termers into early retirement — if not PTSD claims — the problem of too little regulation and oversight may have had a greater impact on the widespread shortage of available police personnel. And continues to clog the recruitment pipeline.

The political rhetoric of “taking the handcuffs off police” is often presented as a helpful move for lessening the declines from attrition while encouraging new applicants. While the proposition, to my knowledge, hasn’t been studied, the public relations crisis of policing seems to me far more damaging. After all, the handcuffs were certainly off for the Memphis police, particularly its so-called Scorpion Squad. The exposure of what horrifically resulted will foreseeably reduce the numbers of those interested in police careers across the country.

As for Minnesota, potential recruits may not fear that they will have anything in common with Derek Chauvin. (Or so we hope!) But they might fear sharing a squad car with someone who similarly has never been held to account for wrongful on-duty behavior, and therefore become at risk of having something in common with Thomas Lane or Alexander Keung. Those are the two rookies who were unable to summon the necessary courage to stop a senior colleague from an act of murder, no matter their recent training that instilled that exact expectation. Potential recruits may wonder how difficult it would be to report problem colleagues, and whether the department managers would support whistleblowing or retaliate.

A Minnesota Senate bill with bipartisan sponsors SF477, protects police whistleblowers from management retaliation. But it cannot address the more subtle pressure from colleagues to remain silent about bad behavior.

The Minnesota Board of Police Officers Standards and Training Board aims to help.

The POST Board has taken substantial steps to enhance the regulation of police, stepping in for the historic failure of too many police chiefs unwilling or unable to make employment conditional on abiding by necessary standards of conduct. Their revised standards for all licensed officers, while not yet final, have already passed several milestones. A review of proposed changes at a special meeting Thursday will likely lead to Gov. Tim Walz’s approval next month and implementation by the end of June.

First off, the POST Board substantially revised and expanded upon the standards already in place, including for the first time the establishment of minimum requirements in a number of policy areas that all police agencies must maintain. (Examples: use of force, officer conduct complaints, racial profiling, public assembly/First Amendment.)

Then, they established their own authority to discipline a licensed police officer (which may include license revocation) for a range of conduct, most importantly adding the failure to report another officer’s excessive force to their police chief within 24 hours or any violation of the POST Board’s newly enhanced standards to the POST Board within 10 days.

In short, a newly clarified duty to report — and not just to one’s own police chief — as a condition of holding a license.

Once implemented, future young police officers who might now feel intimidated about reporting senior officers for misconduct will have the excuse that they have no choice. This also will allow young officers who find themselves in situations like my family member, or Lane or Keung, to know that they can raise critical concerns outside their own department and, in combination with SF477 if it passes, know that they are twice protected from retaliation: By a very specific law, and by the fact that a state regulatory agency is watching.

While the change represents a hopeful and radical departure from past practice, we ought to be surprised it’s not already the norm. A duty to report others or face licensing consequences is typical in many professions in which safety can be at risk, and is not even controversial in other professions. Lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, social workers, psychologists and others who report a colleague, or someone in a more powerful position, are allowed the excuse that they had to report or suffer their own risk. They can claim to have reluctantly reported them. Sorry.

That police have for so long operated differently has reflected their disinterest in operating under professional norms, and instead preferring the values of the criminal operations they run up against, in which all sides have no rules they must abide by (no “handcuffs”) and snitching is a dishonor.

Whether the old-timers like it or not, the professionalization of policing is advancing, making it safer not just to encounter a police officer but to become one.

The next step for the professionalization of police will be to establish the legal mechanism for individualized malpractice insurance, even if – like most professionals — the premiums are paid by the employer.

In Minneapolis, a group called the Committee for Professional Policing tried to move this forward a few years ago, but failed because it was ahead of its time.

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[1] Url: https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/02/10/proposed-post-board-rules-professionalizing-police-would-help-recruit-new-officers/

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