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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCitizen Review Board - Minutes - 08/09/2023CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD (CiRB) REGULAR MEETING Wednesday, August 9, 2023, at 5:30 PM 222 Laporte Avenue, Colorado River Room (Main Floor) This information is available in Spanish or other languages at no cost to a person who would like this information translated or communicated in Spanish, or another language. Please call (970)416-4254 or titlesix@fcgov.com to make a request for information in other languages. Esta información está disponible en español u otro idioma, sin costo para la persona que le gustaria esta información traducida o comunicada en español u otro idioma. Favor llame al (9709)416-4254 o a titlesix@fcgov.com para solicitor información en otros idiomas. Auxiliary aids and services are available for persons with disabilities. TTY: please use 711 to call (970)221-6753. 1. CALL TO ORDER – Called to order by Shamera Loose @ 5:30 PM 2. ROLL CALL: Board Members Present: Shamera Loose, Beth Grant, Mike Ruttenberg, Mike O’Malley, Allison Dineen, Sally Lee Board Members Absent: Melissa Rosas (excused) Staff Members Present: Lieutenant Jeremy Yonce, Jessica Jones 3. AGENDA REVIEW—Shamera Loose 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION a. Public Input – 5 minutes per individual (None) 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES a. Shamera Loose moved to approve the July 2023 minutes, which was seconded by Beth Grant. July minutes approved by all who were present at the July 12 meeting: Mike O’Malley, Beth Grant, and Shamera Loose. 6. NEW BUSINESS a. Training: Firearms Training/Orientation: Police Sergeant Paul Wood is a firearms training sergeant and assistant supervisor for the Police Academy. He has been with the City of Fort Collins since 1997 and is responsible for the issuance and collection of weapons to FCPS staff. This training is brought to the board from the Citizen Academy, which is held several times a year to provide education and networking to the Fort Collins community. CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD (CiRB) REGULAR MEETING People are protected by the Fourth Amendment, which provides protection from the government infringing on a person’s due process rights. When deadly forced is used by an officer, this is considered to be seizure by the government. Deadly force must always be used to defend. If there is no way to arrest a person through nonviolent means, they are authorized to use force to detain them. When training police officers, the use of deadly force is framed as a response to resistance, in order to connect this idea to the concept that if resistance decreases, force should also be decreased. The use of deadly force by an officer is governed by Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-1- 707, which states that in order to use deadly force, a police officer must be defending themselves or another person, and then Section 4 of the statute applies. Chokeholds haven’t been allowed by FCPS for more than two decades. Using a firearm is always considered to be using deadly force. A taser is considered to be a nondeadly weapon, in the same category as K9, straight batons, mace, and pepper-balls. A pepper-ball is similar to a paintball gun, filled with OC, which can cause injuries. 40mm batons use a projectile so that officers can keep a distance from people with knives or other short-range weapons. Case law states that the officer needs to have a reasonable belief that a person is going to cause serious bodily injury to him or another person, but whether they die or not does not call in to question whether the use of deadly force was needed. They no longer use bean bags. To avoid errors, patrol officers have one round of pepper balls and one round for the 40 mm baton. They no longer use shotguns for the same reason. In other cities, there have been incidents in which there was confusion over whether the ammo in a shotgun was deadly or nondeadly, so they have phased out the use of FCPS for patrol and the only officers who use them still are the SWAT team, in order to break down doors, etc. FCPS officers have two manufacturers to choose from for the gun that is issued to them, and the only difference is how the guns fit in the officer’s hand. Escalation is the conscious/controlled effort to increase force to decrease resistance. De-escalation is the conscious/controlled effort to decrease force CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD (CiRB) REGULAR MEETING after resistance had decreased. Police officers are trained on skills such as the constant evaluation of tactics, communication, whether to engage or disengage, transition of weapons, use of cover and radio, and incident transition. The purpose of the use of force is to gain compliance, affect arrest, and protect self or others. It is impacted by speed of decision, influence of perception, and objective standard. Force must be objectively reasonable according to another officer in the same situation, who is well-trained. Camera footage is useful but doesn’t pick up slight motions and expressions which are obvious in the moment. Being in a community that allows for conceal and carry of guns does not impact police officers’ ability to gauge who is carrying a gun legally because responsible gun owners will usually communicate the fact that they have a gun quickly when they are involved in an incident. This is one reason that it is so important to comply with police commands. It can be difficult for officers to gauge who is the attacker in any situation. Officers would typically have their weapons drawn and would use their independent judgement as to where their guns were pointed, if a person is acting in an intimidating manner and either has a gun or does not have their hands visible. Example shared from another City, in which there was a lot of media attention around the fact that officers had shot a 16-year-old who was running away while holding a gun, after the media examined a video and established that at the time the person was shot, he was dropping the gun. In an escalated situation, the brain cannot process so much information all at once, so there is no way that a human eye could have seen this prior to utilizing deadly force. The Supreme Court has ruled that it isn’t fair to judge officers on facts found out after the situation had deescalated; only the information that could have been reasonably known at the time can be used. FCPS officers are required to train 24 hours per year which is well above the national average. They have to qualify twice a year, but FCPS places more emphasis on the importance of training, since that is where they get to practice situations that require real time decisions. If they fail to qualify, they have several opportunities to make up the test; after that, they go through remedial training. To encourage officers to exceed the FCPS training requirements for firearms, FCPS allows officers to attend open range sessions, giving the officers CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD (CiRB) REGULAR MEETING ammunition and time off of work to practice firearms skills. Many officers have never shot a gun prior to being hired by FCPS, now that the City has its own Police Academy. They have the opportunity to train officers from the ground up. FCPS has three women firearms instructors and it was noted that women are often more easy to train then men. There is an opportunity for board members to observe training of police and attend the FCPS Citizen Academy. Those that are interested should contact Jeremy Yonce for details. Larimer County sheriffs receive less frequent trainings for longer blocks of time, but they are a smaller agency with less resources to devote to training time. CSU offices are state police, and FCPS often works in conjunction with them. FCPS will often respond for more serious emergency calls that occur on the CSU campus. b. Discussion about CiRB Work Plan: Please review list of trainings to see if there are any additional trainings that could be added. Board members received copies of the 2024 CiRB Work Plan, and will review and return next meeting with any suggested changes. c. Voicemail: None d. E-mail: None 7. UNFINISHED BUSINESS a. Allison Dineen requested an update about where to locate prevision decision memos. Boards and Commissions is looking into this issue and Jessica will provide an update at next meeting. 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS-- None 9. OTHER BUSINESS— a. Jeremy Yonce will not be in attendance next month; Sergeant Kim Cochran will provide representation for FCPS. . b. Next month’s training will be the School Resource Officer presentation, and October’s meeting will be a Meet and Greet with FCPS Executive Leadership. CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD (CiRB) REGULAR MEETING 10. ADJOURNMENT-- Shamera Loose moved to adjourn, seconded by Beth Grant @ 7:12 PM.