El Dorado Police Department amends use-of-force policy

By Tia Lyons

Staff Writer

EL DORADO — The El Dorado Police Department amended its regulations manual to keep up with evolving standards and practices in law enforcement.

The changes were approved earlier this week by the El Dorado Civil Service Commission. The commission also voted on revisions to the regulations of manual of the El Dorado Fire Department.

Police Chief Billy White said much of the work that was done to the EPD manual was to clean up language, update information, dates and signatures, and eliminate redundancy.

Some of the revisions reflect events that are affecting police departments nationwide and that require attention to better protect officers and the citizens they serve, White said.

For instance, the department’s use-of-force policy was amended to allow officers to fire at a vehicle that is occupied if deadly force is justifiable.

White said the change was made because of an increasing number of incidents across the country in which suspects are using vehicles to charge officers.

There have also been reports of officers being injured and killed by drivers who are under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

Such a tragedy befell EPD investigator Scott Harwell, whose left leg was severed below the knee in 2008 when he was struck by an intoxicated driver while standing at the rear of his patrol unit.

Harwell and another EPD officer had just worked an accident in which a car struck a deer, and Harwell had gone into the trunk of his patrol unit to clean his hands after having removed a dead deer from the roadway.

He was struck by a drunk driver who was traveling just above the speed limit on North West Avenue, just north of the U.S. 167 juncture.

“Prior to (the policy revision), it was just prohibited period, but we felt like we needed to change it with more and more officers getting hit by vehicles,” White said.

Another amendment pertains to the EPD’s response to a deadly-force incident that is carried out by an officer. One word was changed to reflect that an officer shall be placed on administrative “furlough,” rather than “leave,” the term that was previously used in the manual.

With the chain of possession and storage of evidence, the EPD added a clause that allows evidence to be stored in a secured location other than an evidence locker or the patrol supervisor’s office.

“That’s for evidence that’s too large to be maintained in an evidence locker, and evidence that we need to secure overnight,” White said.

A new procedure regarding body cameras, or body-worn recorders, was also added to the EPD manual. The procedure requires officers to report improperly functioning equipment to their immediate supervisor.

The use of body worn recorders has spread to many of the nation’s police departments following widely publicized deaths at the hands of police in recent years.

Many departments adopted the practice to ward off concerns of officer misconduct and to capture encounters, including shooting incidents, between police and the public.

The EPD slowly rolled out its body cameras in 2015, starting with the purchase of two.

A select few officers were then provided with the cameras so the department could get a better feel for how they worked, said Capt. Kevin Holt, EPD public information officer. The entire patrol division is now equipped with body cameras.

“Body cams have come a long way since we got our first ones. The technology has changed, the storage capacity, and the size has changed. They went from big and bulky to smaller and more easy to handle,” Holt said.

One thing the EPD must still contend with is day-to-day wear and exposure to the elements, which can affect the functionality of body cameras, he said.

The equipment is utilized by officers and citizens in investigations and complaints filed against the EPD.

Holt said body cameras are subject to policies in which footage is reviewed randomly by EPD supervisors and when citizens file complaints regarding police conduct.

Citizens have often requested to view the footage captured by body cameras, and Holt said some have even withdrawn complaints afterward.

“Several decide that their complaints are not valid enough, so they drop it, and they realized that it was not what they portrayed to us,” he said.

The fire department revised its dress and style policies to include three different uniforms that are issued to firefighters.

Mosby said the department now has Class A, B, and C — formal, traditional (usual worn during speaking engagements), and daily duty/casual, respectively.

White and Mosby said Mayor Frank Hash would have the final stamp of approval on the policy revisions.

Tia Lyons may be contacted at 870-862-6611 or by email at tlyons@ eldoradonews.com.

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