Photo courtesy of the Long Beach Police Department.
The Long Beach Police Department, under the oversight and direction of Chief Jim McDonnell, has created an advisory committee to address the Department’s use of force, including officer-involved shootings (OIS), and to generate community feedback on best practices. The committee is composed of a yet-to-be-released-list of community members and leaders, representatives from the ACLU, and both internal and external use-of-force experts.
LBPD has been involved in 20 OIS this year, more than any of the past five years, a point McDonnell frankly acknowledges. OIS numbers include accidental discharges involving any armed city employee, animal shootings, and shootings that include or exclude a hit, lethal or otherwise. This year, of the OIS which included a hit, six were fatal and five were non-fatal.
“The piece that is missing is more than numbers,” McDonnell said. “The increase means that we have put our police officers—more this year than any—between a threat and the community. That’s not a bad thing; that is why we have police officers.”
McDonnell and Department personnel already individually go through each case that involves use of force, a process which begins within 72 hours with a briefing that investigates the incident immediately, rather than waiting nine months for the County’s Use of Force Review Board to get back to the Department.
After all, not only the department but the officer involved face massive implications, including not only potential job loss, but also the possibility of facing litigation and monetary losses. Such a blow, should an officer’s judgement in using force be determined to be improper, could debilitate an organization that has already faced massive cuts; in the past five years, the size of the LBPD has been reduced by 22% or roughly a loss of 200 officers. Additionally, the civilian support arm of the department has been reduced by 25%.
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“We tear apart [OIS and UOF] cases—we have to,” McDonnell said. “Subject matter experts approach us in the investigation to address multiple issues: What are we doing? What do we do out in the field? Is it consistent with policy procedure training and tactics that we teach?”
According to McDonnell, the goal of LBPD’s new advisory committee, as opposed to a review board, is to not just gain a consensus about what could be done to decrease such incidents, but rather to mainly do one of two things: either validate the department’s use-of-force incidents as being in line with “best practices” among the nation’s police departments or, falling short of that, provide LBPD with ways to improve upon their practices.
The LBPD has received, to date, around 600,000 calls this year, approximately 172,500 of which were dispatched after screening. Of the 26,000 calls that have resulted in an arrest, 385 (or roughly 1.5% of all arrests) involved use of force. Use of force involves any resistance on behalf of the subject being arrested and does not always include injury. Additionally, the department has received around 250 complaints, generated both from the community and within the Department.
“To think that anyone in the community believes an officer purposefully goes out there to put him or herself on a pedestal for critique, in a place with increased danger, with the possibility of a lawsuit, the possibility of retaliation against their family,” McDonnell said, “well… That’s disheartening and just not the reality of it.”
McDonnell says he hopes the committee encourages anyone wanting to learn more about the Department’s procedures to do so.
“Given the rise [in OIS cases],” McDonnell said, “I want to be able to say to members of the community, ‘Hey, come into the police headquarters, we’ll give you a presentation on our police, our practice, our procedures, our training, as well as the equipment we use.’ It acts as a kind of quick training, if you will, for members of the community—not to mention we can get their reaction to the question, ‘Is what [the LBPD] doing appropriate?’ And if they see a better way of doing it, to get their input on it as well.”
The committee, which has already met twice, will continue to meet throughout next year.
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