Package Updates Personnel Rules for State Workforce, Mirrors Private Sector

CLICK HERE TO READ THE OFFICIAL PDF RELEASE

PHOENIX – Governor Jan Brewer today signed into law a historic reform governing the State workforce, modernizing the way in which State government manages, hires and fires employees. The measure, HB 2571, was a critical component of the Governor’s policy agenda during the recently-concluded legislative session.

“The cumbersome rules of our existing personnel system serve only to discourage our best employees and protect the weakest performers,” Governor Brewer said. “With this legislation, we will increase State productivity, eliminate bureaucratic red tape and, ultimately, save our taxpayers money. I applaud the Legislature for rallying around this reform measure, and give a special ‘thank you’ to Representatives Justin Olson and Justin Pierce for making this possible.”

HB 2571 introduces a series of common sense human resources practices that have long been standard practice in the private sector. The goal is to improve accountability and performance, while making State employment a more attractive option. This is critical, as about one-third of the State workforce will be retirement-eligible within the next five years.

The legislation maintains core principles that guard against partisan political coercion of state employees and prohibit discrimination based upon race, color, national origin, gender, age, disability or religion.

HB 2571 resulted from a collaborative process that the Governor’s Office and the Arizona Department of Administration undertook over the last 18 months. Extensive research has been completed and numerous stakeholder meetings have been conducted with law enforcement and other groups in order to consider all aspects and potential ramifications of this significant change to the State personnel system.

“I would like to extend my appreciation to Jimmy Chavez, President of the Arizona Highway Patrol Association,” said Governor Brewer. “His leadership and involvement from Day One of this process have been instrumental in ensuring that public safety issues were properly addressed in the final proposal.”

Among changes incorporated as part of the new law, State managers will be able to act more quickly when it comes to hiring the most talented applicants, rewarding the best workers or disciplining under-performing employees without excessive bureaucracy and levels of unnecessary review.

The new personnel system will address a series of challenges confronting State government, namely its need to:

 Remain productive by being able to do more with less;

 Attract top talent into the workforce; and

 Discontinue providing job security and protection for inefficient and unproductive workers.

This legislation addresses these challenges with the current system and brings State government into a competitive position with other employers – attaining a position of productivity, efficiency and accountability. Simply put, this legislation is about good management and running an effective organization.

More detailed information about the legislation as well as the other provisions of Personnel Reform may be found at www.azgovernor.gov/PersonnelReform.asp.

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CLICK HERE TO READ AHPA April 2012 MINUTES – PDF

AHPA to Honor 28 DPS Officers Killed in Line of Duty with Memorial Ceremony

14th Annual event – Monday, May 7th

(Phoenix, AZ) –The men and women of the Arizona Highway Patrol Association (AHPA) will pay their respects to the 28 Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers who have been killed in the line of duty. The Annual DPS Fallen Officer Memorial Ceremony is scheduled for Monday, May 7th at 9 A.M.
This annual memorial, that arrives one week before the nationally recognized Police Memorial Week, not only honors the officers, but also the sacrifices of their families. This ceremony is a solemn reminder of the dangers DPS officers face every day as they protect and serve the State of Arizona.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), Arizona has lost 246 officers since its statehood.  Trends show most law enforcement deaths occurred primarily from gunfire or traffic accidents.  The NLEOMF will be adding five names from Arizona to the national memorial wall (in Washington) that were killed in the line of duty during 2011.

Governor Janice Brewer, DPS Director Robert Halliday and AHPA President Jimmy Chavez will speak at the ceremony.  Special performances by aviation professionals, national awarding winning vocalist Teri Tobin, Arizona music artists Arrowheart, and law enforcement bagpipers will add powerful sounds and visuals to the commemorative day.

The ceremony will take place on May 7th at 9:00 a.m. at the DPS Officer Memorial Statue located at 2102 W. Encanto Boulevard in Phoenix.

READ AZCENTRAL’S COVERAGE OF AHPA’S FALLEN OFFICER MEMORIAL HERE

READ KVOA’S COVERAGE HERE

READ KPHO’S COVERAGE HERE

READ ABC 15′S COVERAGE HERE

PHOENIX (CBS5) – According to Jimmy Chavez, the president of the Arizona Highway Patrol Association, the Department of Public Safety hasn’t hired a new officer since 2008.

“We’ve gone about four years since we put a new officer through the Academy,” Chavez said.

Chavez said DPS is down at least 100 officers.

“Plain and simple, it comes down to budget,” he said.

Chavez pointed out it isn’t because there aren’t any qualified people out there, but because there simply isn’t the money to hire them.

According to this year’s proposed state budget, that equals about 20 percent of the jobs at DPS that are open.

And they aren’t the only ones. The attorney general’s office shows a 27.2 percent vacancy rate. The Department of Environmental Quality shows more than 50 percent of jobs are open.

A spokesman with DEQ said cutbacks are to blame, but that they’ve absorbed the work and are moving forward.

CBS 5 News reached out to the attorney general’s office. They didn’t want to comment until after the budget was finalized.

To see the rest of the departments vacancy rates, click here and scroll to the spreadsheet at the end of the report.

Copyright 2012 KPHO (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.

Dear Police Supporter,

We love this great state.  We love our profession.  We feel supported by the citizens we serve.

However, Arizona is becoming the next victim of a nationwide movement.  Out-of-state and foreign entities are dictating what type of police services local residents should receive. Police employees are in disbelief that big, wealthy corporations are manipulating their hometowns. The Arizona Highway Patrol Association (AHPA) is asking you to help protect the integrity of law enforcement.

Across the U.S., political non-profits are attempting to reorganize government operations. Large companies are funding this movement to privatize public amenities, like public safety. Those behind these efforts claim their business successes can work for every industry – including governmental entities.

However, law enforcement cannot be generalized with other occupations.

When police make traffic stops, enter homes or have to use lethal force, it is impossible to compare our profession with anything in the private sector. Law enforcement handles sensitive information and must act according to strict laws. Few qualify and are entrusted to perform our work.  Integrity is measurable in law enforcement and it is demanded by our justice system. Rightfully, we sit in judgment by Arizona taxpayers. It is an honorable testament that all DPS employees, sworn and civilian, want to be accountable to a higher standard than anything available in the private sector. Police have a “business model” via current Arizona state laws- and it works!

From the scientists in our nationally recognized crime lab to the highway patrolmen and narcotics detectives, all DPS employees face danger and criminals together. However, introduced legislation impedes the ability for our organization to protect the livelihoods police, staff and their families.  The Arizona Highway Patrol Association’s (AHPA) primary duty is to provide legal representation after critical incidents, like pursuits, shootings and Taser™ usage. When police can be the subjects of criminal, civil and administrative investigations for doing their jobs, AHPA is there to provide assistance through all the checks and balances.  Police associations provide an essential service that helps protect the integrity of public safety services and aid in due process.

We are also involved in our communities through various charitable programs.  We sponsor and participate in, such charities as Arizona Special Olympics and Christmas Patrol Bear Program.  Our members, who are your friends and neighbors, understand the importance of being involved in the community.  It is that community involvement that promotes a stronger relationship between citizens and law enforcement.  We all have the common goal of safe communities for our families.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety is one of the finest police agencies in the nation due to our honorable and courageous employees.  AHPA members want to maintain law enforcement’s elite standards.  Current Arizona reform legislation is based on generalized private business practices and will not work for police work. Big money wants to impose their political agenda on Arizonans, while compromising optimal public safety.  National and foreign businesses should not dictate how police services should be rendered to local residents. DPS employees are the investments of the Arizona taxpayer.  Citizens, not outside political interest groups, should have greater input into their public safety needs.

We ask that you stand with law enforcement and oppose police reform legislation or any legislation that is brought forth by organizations that do not truly represent you as citizens of our state.  Our elected officials should listen to their constituents and not to groups who claim to “represent the taxpayer.”

Sincerely,

Jimmy Chavez, President
Arizona Highway Patrol Association

READ IT IN THE PEORIA TIMES

READ IT ON AZCAPITOLTIMES.COM

READ IT ON U OF A’S STUDENT NEWS

Should civilian shooters get the same treatment as OIS survivors?

Thanks to Force Science

Ray Meyer, a retired sergeant of the California Highway Patrol, emailed this note to Force Science News:

Don’t jump to conclusions on what I believe, but here’s a question. We always treat the officer involved in an OIS as if it’s a good shooting. Assume a citizen involved in a shooting has a concealed firearms carry permit or was acting in self-defense on his own property and based on his initial statement and initial review of the evidence the shooting appears justified.

What would you do if the citizen says he’ll give you his firearm when he gets another one on and he tells you he will provide a full statement after he gets 2 sleep cycles and has his attorney present?

Do you give him a ride home to change clothes before taking him to the station for questioning and/or letting the press see him? Whatever you do for an OIS, would you do the same for a legally armed citizen? Is a team like an OIS team assigned, or are the on-call homicide detective and the standard CSI crew used? Should we care when a citizen with a concealed firearm carry permit is involved in a self-defense or threat-to-life shooting?

Retired after 32 years in law enforcement, I am authorized to carry a concealed firearm and I have a non-resident permit from the state where my daughter’s family lives. So I’m curious about how I will be treated.

Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute, offers this response:

A legally armed civilian and a sworn peace officer are not comparable in the context of a shooting situation.

An officer is acting under the color of law and is generally performing his assigned role as society’s representative when a shooting occurs and will likely continue in that role in some format after the shooting – subsequently the replacement of a professional instrument that is a required tool of the job. Further, as part of his selection process, he has been assessed on the basis of background checks, mental health and fitness evaluations, and training. His job performance is supervised and evaluated. He has a track record that is known to his department. He operates under a special duty and special regulations.

A civilian or retired law enforcement officer, even if legally armed, is likely not acting under color of law and may be an unknown entity to the investigating agency. In both cases, the shooting must be thoroughly and fairly investigated. But where an on duty officer is involved, a more specialized investigation is likely to be appropriate.

Because of the probability that it will be involved in a civil lawsuit, the department has a particular interest in the nature of an OIS investigation, apart from concerns about criminal violations. There may be Garrity issues, union and policy matters, media and community perceptions, and training considerations that don’t apply to civilian actors.

Are officers really treated with the special sensitivity that Sgt. Meyer suggests?

They should be, because of their special status. But unfortunately, they still are not in many jurisdictions, given the same level of consideration of a citizen. To get rest, shower, change clothing and legal consultation prior to giving a statement, for example, all a civilian needs to do is invoke his Miranda rights. The citizen, if they choose, could come back sometime later with their attorney and give a formal statement. For officers on many agencies who feel they are trapped in a pressurized and coercive environment after a shooting, that would be a procedural improvement!

%$!# the pain: Latest research on the benefit of foul language

Thanks to Force Science

Swearing can help you better tolerate physical pain, provided you don’t do much of it in your ordinary daily life.

That conclusion comes from a British research team reporting its latest findings on the analgesic benefit of cussing in The Journal of Pain, the official publication of the American Pain Society.

Back in 2009, Dr. Richard Stephens of the psychology school at Keele University in England experimented with volunteers whose hands were submerged in ice-cold water. He found that those who swore aloud could tolerate the painful discomfort longer than those who spoke “neutral” words.

Now with Claudia Umland he has repeated and refined that research. This time they had 71 volunteers, ranging in age from 18 to 46, fill out questionnaires on how frequently they swear in everyday life before being put through the icy-water test.

Results: Nearly 75% of participants were able to keep their hands in the water longer if they repeated a swear word. However, people who do not swear much during a typical day (not at all or “just a few times”) were able to endure the water challenge for twice as long when they repeated swear words than when they shouted out neutral words. Yet those who swear frequently (up to 60 times) every day “derived no greater benefit from swearing” during the test.

“The higher was the daily swearing frequency, the less was the benefit for pain tolerance when swearing,” the researchers report. “Our hypothesis is that by swearing, the speaker experiences an emotional response due to breaking a taboo, and the emotional response is sufficient to set off…an adrenaline surge…and increased pain tolerance…. Swearing seems to activate deeper parts of the brain more associated with emotions” than normal speech.

But habitual cursing tends to blunt and neutralize the pain-easing effect. Frequent swearers simply don’t feel the same emotional response from cussing. “If you swear too often in everyday situations, the power of swearing won’t be there when you really need it,” Stephens explains. For infrequent cursers, however, “swearing can be an effective and readily available short-term pain reliever if you are in a situation where there is no access to medical care or painkillers.”

Stephens and Umland offer no “recommended daily swearing allowance” and say it “remains unclear” whether certain swear words are more effective pain-relievers than others. “We are just scratching the surface” about the effects of swearing, Stephens says.

AELE: Beware the legal risks of spreading gory scene photos

You wouldn’t do it, but let’s say an officer of your acquaintance uses his personal cellphone camera to record the gore of a fatal traffic smashup and emails the bloody photos to some buddies and from there they eventually get posted forever on the internet. Any legal problems with that?

It’s a good question, given the growing profusion of electronic recording devices–and their occasional irresponsible use–among LEOs. A new report by Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, the leading source of legal information and training for officers and their agencies, provides the cautionary answer.

You can read AELE’s full documentation of the issue free of charge at http://www.aele.org/law/2012all02/2012-02MLJ501.pdf. The article highlights, among other things, officers’ liability for privacy violations under such circumstances, administrators’ obligation to prevent unauthorized file sharing, and questions about whether officers should be allowed to wear personally owned mini-cams.

Particular attention is focused on a precedent-setting civil suit brought by survivors of an 18-year-old female who was decapitated when her car crashed into a West Coast tollbooth at 100 mph. She was so gruesomely mangled that the coroner wouldn’t permit her parents to see her body.

“For pure shock value,” 2 officers emailed 9 “grotesque images” from the scene to friends and family members as a Halloween prank, The photos were passed around and ultimately spread across the internet “like a malignant firestorm, popping up in thousands of websites,” such as www.bestgore.com.

An appellate court panel ruled that officers involved could be sued by family members for inflicting “extreme emotional distress” by violating the “common law privacy right in the death images of a decedent.” AELE notes, “Liability can attach even if [disturbing] photographs or videos are viewed only by curious coworkers.” Links are provided in the article to various pertinent cases.

The report also discusses wearable video cameras and provides reasons pro and con for departments permitting such devices that are personally owned vs. those that are department-issued.

Potential language for policies pertaining to mini-cams and audio-recording devices, both personal and professional, is also discussed.

In addition to its access through AELE, the article will also appear in the Law Enforcement Executive Forum for March, 2012, and in the IACP Net database.

Note: Visit the AELE.org website to register for free monthly email journals on law enforcement and corrections legal issues and for detailed information on the organization’s popular training seminars.

New study confirms health/safety dangers of LEOs’ poor sleep

Union reps, trainers, and human behavior experts who have been campaigning to get police fatigue recognized and addressed as a critical professional and public safety problem have been given an armory of ammunition for their battle by a comprehensive and complex new study of cops and sleeping disorders.

A team of 13 sleep specialists, headed by Dr. Shantha Rajaratnam of the Sleep Medicine Division at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, surveyed a broad range of nearly 5,000 U.S. and Canadian LEOs through online questionnaires or on-site screening and found that:

• 46% had “nodded off or fallen asleep while driving”;

• over one-quarter reported that this occurs 1 to 2 times a month and more than 6% said they typically fell asleep at the wheel at least 1 to 2 times a week;

• over 40% tested positive for 1 or more sleep disorders, most commonly (33.6%) obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a potentially fatal affliction that causes the airway to close, leaving the victim choking or gasping for breath.

• by 1 screening method, more than half (53.9%) of officers working nights tested positive for shift-work disorder, which involves excessive wake-time sleepiness, moderate to severe insomnia, and repeated awakening during a sleep cycle.

• In most cases, the disorders, which also included restless-legs syndrome and narcolepsy with sudden muscular weakness, had not been previously diagnosed nor treated.

During 2 years of monthly follow-up monitoring, those identified with specific sleep disorders revealed significantly higher incidences of:

• important administrative errors;

• falling asleep while driving and during meetings;

• fatigue-related safety errors or violations;

• uncontrolled anger toward suspects or citizens while on the job;

• citizen complaints;

• frequent absenteeism; and

• mental and physical health problems, including depression, occupational burnout or emotional exhaustion, and increased likelihood of cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal problems, anxiety disorder, and diabetes.

“Two hundred eighty-seven participants reported being in a motor vehicle crash during the follow-up period,” the researchers report. Not surprisingly, crashes occurred more often among those who reported falling asleep while driving.

In some categories, cops with sleep disorders were more than twice as likely to experience negative consequences than sounder sleepers.

“We have great treatments for sleep disorders, we have great screening tools, the technology is there,” said Dr. Michael Grandner of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology in an interview about the study by Reuters Health news service.

Sleep apnea, for example, can be treated with a breathing machine and mask used while sleeping, and insomnia, another common police complaint, often responds successfully to behavioral therapy.

But in law enforcement, as in much of society generally, there’s a “cultural attitude [that] sleep is for the weak,” Grandner observed. “When you’re in an environment where signs of weakness are particularly discouraged, there may be a social pressure to not address sleep problems or to shrug them off.”

Which, he pointed out, leaves not only sleep-impaired officers endangered but the public as a whole at risk because of the adverse effect of fatigue on tired cops’ decision-making and performance.

A brief abstract of the study is available free at: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/23/2567.abstract. The full 12-page report, “Sleep Disorders, Health, and Safety in Police Officers,” which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. (JAMA), can be ordered for a fee at that site.

Of the officers participating, most were male and white, averaging about 39 years of age and nearly 13 years on the job. More than two-thirds were patrol officers who worked predominately for municipal, county, and state agencies. About 25% were assigned to rotating shifts, with nearly 60% working at least some nights. Nearly a third (31.3%) worked shifts of 11-13 hours and a noticeable minority (14.5%) put in 14-16 hours per tour. Second jobs were reported by roughly 1 in 5.

The vast majority (94%) thought themselves to be in good to excellent health, although a great many (79%) were overweight. “Given that obesity is a major risk factor for OSA…the high prevalence” of that disorder among the study pool “could be anticipated,” the researchers noted.

Interestingly, a block of study participants came from the Massachusetts State Police, and those subjects showed a lower prevalence of OSA and a lower mean body mass index when compared to another bloc of officers from a major U.S. metropolitan PD.

Among factors that might have caused the differences, the researchers suggest, are a departmental fitness program by the State Police that “provides fitness facilities and the opportunity to exercise at all stations during paid work time,” plus an emphasis on regular physical fitness tests as a part of that agency’s job performance standards and bonus system.

“It’s an impressive program and perhaps a model for the nation,” one of the researchers told a reporter.

In commenting on its findings, the study team offers several important observations:

• Almost 90% of North American cops “regard drowsy driving to be as dangerous as drunk driving” and vehicle accidents are known to constitute a significant percentage of line-of-duty deaths. Yet excessive sleepiness at the wheel is “common in police officers.” The risk of a vehicle crash is heightened 2- to 3-fold among individuals with OSA, the most common sleep disorder discovered in the study.

• The increased frequency of “actual and near-miss administrative errors and safety violations” among officers with sleep disorders should be considered in this context: “The loss of even 2 hours of nightly sleep for 1 week is associated with decrements in performance comparable with those seen after 24 hours of continuous wakefulness…. [L]ong work hours are also associated with decrements in performance and attentional failures.”

• Uncontrolled anger toward suspects and citizens, as well as increased complaints reported against officers with sleep disorders, may be tied to changes in the brain’s amygdala that make sleep-deprived individuals less able to “appropriately govern behavioral responses to negative emotional stimuli.”

• Otherwise healthy individuals “scheduled to eat and sleep out of phase from their habitual times,” such as rotating shift workers, tend to experience higher rates of “impaired cardiometabolic responses,” which may “at least in part explain the increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes” among shift-work officers.

• Depression associated with OSA and insomnia may be a factor of “significant implications” in the risk of suicide among LEOs.

More research is needed to explore the subtleties of sleep deprivation in public safety workers, the study concludes. But a pertinent question right now, notes a JAMA editorial, is “what police departments will do with [the] new information” this study already conveys.

Suggestions include on-the-job screening for sleep disorders, restraints on overtime and extra-long shifts, and mandates to assure that officers with sleep problems get help. Officers would have “a much better time doing their job if we were able to take better care of them,” says Dr. Grandner.

[Sound of applause rising from the ranks!]

Is prone positioning really riskier for suspects? No, says new study

An exaggeration of the sudden in-custody death problem is generating “persecution and prosecution” of LEOs and their agencies and is resulting in “reactionary changes in policy and procedure that may well be based in conjecture rather than fact,” according to new findings by a Canadian research team.

In particular the study group challenges the widely held belief that simply placing a subject face-down in a prone position after a use of force creates a substantial threat to life. In fact, the only subject who died in more than 1,200 consecutive force encounters that the team meticulously analyzed was lying on his side, a position commonly advocated for its presumed safety.

“[S]udden in-custody death,” the study concludes, “has more to do with the features of the individual” than with his or her positioning. Even among suspects supposed to be at high risk–the drug and alcohol intoxicated and those with mental illness–there appears to be no scientific basis for believing that prone positioning is as dangerous as its reputation suggests, the researchers report.

“The true understanding of use-of-force events will come from comprehensive, scientific protocols such as this one, which was carried out under the rigorous conditions of a scientific medical study and supervised by the Institutional Review Boards of the universities involved,” Hall told Force Science News.

“Rather than focusing solely on 1 type of force or another, the goal of the study is to evaluate all use-of-force events to better understand which subjects and situations may represent particular risk.”

The investigative team was headed by Dr. Christine Hall, an emergency room physician and a medical faculty member at the University of British Columbia and the University of Calgary. An internationally recognized expert on excited delirium syndrome, Hall is also on the faculty for the certification course in Force Science Analysis conducted by the Force Science Institute.

ORIGIN OF CONTROVERSY. Concern about the relationship between suspect positioning and death first arose in the early 1980s after a medical examiner in Washington State analyzed 3 cases in which prisoners were transported while hogtied and concluded that such positioning was associated with sudden in-custody death because of the suffocating effect on breathing and the inability of the subjects to shift to a different position.

More articles warning about “positional asphyxia” and “restraint asphyxia” followed in medical journals and law enforcement publications and positioning became a widespread training and policy issue.

Hall points out that the medical examiner’s original work on the effects of positioning was shown to be “fraught with methodological errors,” and that other, more sophisticated studies disputed alleged adverse findings. Nonetheless, the debate about suspect positioning “gradually translated into the unsupported idea that any and all prone positioning for any length of time is immediately dangerous.”

Moreover, prone positioning came to be regarded “without scientific evidence” as “particularly dangerous” to restrained suspects who are “under the influence of intoxicants such as alcohol and/or stimulants, experiencing mental distress, or in the agitated, incoherent state known as excited delirium,” as well as those who have been Tasered.

“When a cause of death cannot be found otherwise, positional asphyxia is often suggested to have [played] a role…,” the researchers note.

As the bias against any form of prone positioning intensified, Hall perceived that what was lacking in the debate was a broad-based, detailed examination of real-life incidents to determine exactly what variety of physical positions restrained suspects end up in after force encounters with police and what association there might be between each of these positions and ultimate unfavorable outcomes.

FORCE POOL. With the cooperation of police executives in an unnamed Canadian city with more than 1,100,000 population and nearly 2,000 street cops, Hall and her team collected a vast statistical database across a recent 3-year period. (The city is anonymous in their report to protect privacy, an ethical consideration required by the universities involved.)

Without officers being aware of the researchers’ interests, certain study-related entries were embedded in the department’s standard electronic form that must be filled out after any use of force above soft-hand control. Among other things, officers had to specify the apparent cognitive condition of the subjects they encountered and their “final resting position…once physical control had been achieved…and while awaiting further disposition”: i.e., either prone (face-down) or not prone (face-up, side-lying, sitting, kneeling, or standing). The department involved does not specify a favored position in policy, so there was no motive for officers to shade their responses, Hall points out.

Forms involving suspects at least 18 years old and all “general police duty” uses of force beyond merely “a bent wrist or straightened elbow to gain compliance” were then parsed for particulars. “We did not pick and choose between subjects, events, or outcomes,” Hall says, “but included all uses of force over 3 consecutive years.”

The pool the researchers analyzed ended up being 88% males. Some 40% appeared drunk at the time of police contact; 10% were judged to be drug-intoxicated; 9% seemed mentally distressed; and 28% demonstrated some combinations of those states.

In all, out of 1,566,908 interactions between police and subjects across the study’s 3 years, force was used in only 1,269 contacts.”[C]ontrary to current suggestion that police use of force is rampant, 99.92% of all police-public interactions [recorded by the agency studied] did not involve police use of force,” the researchers report. “This finding did not vary across 3 years of study.”

RISK OUTCOMES. In terms of positioning, nearly 43% of subjects ended up prone in their final resting pose after their force encounter. About 57% were not prone. All were handcuffed, but none was leg- or ankle-restrained or hogtied. “[E]ven though prone positioning was very common,” the researchers noted, none of the “hundreds of subjects in the prone position” died.

Indeed, with only 1 death [a not-prone subject] discovered in the entire study, statistically “there was no [significant] difference in the death rate between prone and not-prone positions.”

Suspects with drug/alcohol intoxication, mental illness, or some combination thereof were essentially evenly distributed between prone and not-prone positioning. Despite the prevalent suspicion that such individuals are at greater risk, “no subject died in the prone position even with a large number of abnormally behaving individuals” in the force pool.

Of the large number of subjects against whom a Taser was used, about 29% ended up prone, 25% not-prone. Again, positioning did not determine how these suspects fared, the researchers emphasize.

The 1 subject who died during the study “was an individual who was assessed by officers on the scene as having both drug intoxication and mental distress, had undergone a single contact stun exposure with a CEW, and had many abnormal characteristics before and after police involvement at the scene,” the study report says. “This subject was placed in the side-lying position at the conclusion of the use-of-force event, prior to cardiopulmonary collapse.

“[He] displayed multiple features of excited delirium. The details…are strikingly similar to other in-custody death occurrences both in and out of the prone position and…with and without CEW application.”

BOTTOM LINE. Hall points out that this is believed to be the “only study to document the incidence of sudden in-custody death across all use-of-force modalities” in a major urban police agency.

Besides dispelling some persistent myths about the risk of prone positioning, she feels the findings are important for confirming the overall rarity of sudden in-custody death. It’s “profoundly low in the real-world environment of police use of force which includes many abnormally behaving individuals in varied circumstances.”

Media publicity of in-custody deaths without an appreciation of their context “results in the presumption of a falsely elevated prevalence” of these occurrences, she writes in the study report. “This, in turn, generates persecution and prosecution of individual police officers and police agencies at great personal and societal cost, fear and mistrust for the police in the public eye, and results in reactionary changes in policy and procedure that may well be based in conjecture rather than fact.”

RECOMMENDATIONS. Hall acknowledges that all research studies have some limitations. Because hogtying was not used in any of the encounters her team studied, the researchers could not assess its specific danger to prone subjects, if any, for example. Also, while they were aware that “weight force” was very likely applied to the back of some of the proned subjects, they were not able to determine how often that occurred. That variable will be evaluated in the future.

“[R]egardless of the low incidence of sudden in-custody death, further study is required,” the team reports. Hall’s objective is to “determine what, if anything, can predict sudden in-custody death in order to improve the outcomes for people undergoing police use of force.”

Meanwhile, the researchers caution that suspects restrained in a prone position–any position, actually–should not be abandoned “for protracted lengths of time.” Suspects always bear close observation.

“[T]he best way for non-medically trained pre-hospital personnel to monitor the [well-being] status of any human being is through observation of the face…,” the researchers suggest. Therefore it is “advisable to assign 1 officer to monitor the restrained subject’s face for signs of distress/difficulty.”

This study was funded by the Canadian Police Research Center. The results appear in the latest issue the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, under the title “Incidence and outcome of prone positioning following police use of force in a prospective, consecutive cohort of subjects.” Click here for a brief abstract that’s is available free of charge. The full 7-page study paper can be ordered for a fee at that site.