Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Austin Police Monitor proposed rule changes to discourage officer discourtesy

When one digs into the details of complaints at most police departments, the category that stands out by volume isn't "use of force" but "rudeness," or some variant thereon. But most police-oversight discussions focus on beatings, shootings, etc., not the nasty, personal interactions that generate the greatest volume of grassroots antipathy.

So Grits was pleased that Austin's Office of Police Oversight in September put out recommendations to upgrade APD's Personal Conduct policy regarding officers' maintaining an "Impartial Attitude and Courtesy" in their interactions with the public. 

Like most newsworthy items coming out of Austin's OPO, local media have ignored these recommendations, which among other things, would impose more discipline for sustained rudeness complaints, including for officers who "ridicule, mock, taunt, embarrass, humiliate, belittle, or shame." For such violations of "tact, vulgar language, and diplomacy," the proposed changes would increase the lower threshold of punishments on the disciplinary matrix, "aligning discipline with the seriousness of the violation."

The biggest suggested change: racist or prejudicial comments previously had no punishment specified on the disciplinary matrix, leaving the supervisors free to punish these incidents disparately. The OPO recommended setting a disciplinary range for this offense in writing, with a minor suspension as the lowest punishment and indefinite suspension possible for the worst offenders.

Grits would add that APD supervisors should use dash-and-body-cam video more widely for training purposes in response to rudeness complaints. Pick several interactions and walk through them with the officer to show how it could have been handled differently.

In fact, doing this in group settings - the way professional football players review film in position meetings - may be an even better approach. This adds a mild, pro-social shaming effect, but mitigated substantially by using negative incidents as a training opportunity for everyone as opposed to isolating and belittling one person. In a group setting among cops, the takeaway isn't so much "John is bad," but "John made a mistake and now that I know what it is, I don't want to make the same one."

Your correspondent worked on the original 2001 legislation that required most Texas police cars to have dashcams, and one of the goals when we pitched it was that the video could be used for exactly this sort of individualized officer training. But much to my chagrin, things didn't pan out that way. To my knowledge, the video hasn't been used that way on a widespread basis, though I've heard of isolated examples.

Given that rudeness and its variants are the most common type of complaints, the topic deserves this level of focus. Reducing vulgar and discourteous treatment of the public through more aggressive oversight by supervisors is, in the end, the only way to address it. And supervisors can only enforce the rules on the books. So I'm glad to see the OPO paying attention to these "minor" violations and looking for ways to reduce them. These proposed changes deserve support both from Austin's city manager and its City Council.

See also Grits' earlier discussion of OPO recommendations related to Austin police supervisors who inject their personal opinions into the disciplinary process in lieu of departmental policies. Related: See KXAN's coverage of the OPO's recommendations. They added the news that APD did NOT accept key OPO recommendations.


Sam said...

You want LE and/or laws to not focus on minor violations like POM, but your fine with APM focusing on the most minor of LE conduct violations such as discourtesy? For the sake of the question, I understand both of the above have or had high numbers. To me, courtesy or a lack thereof is more subjective than most other complaints.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Criminal punishment and employment rules are completely different things. One can be fired for breaking employment rules, but not prosecuted or jailed over them. Though the law may not make treating people rudely illegal, as an employer concerned with customer service, making sure police officers don't routinely do so should be a priority for government.

Anonymous said...

This is a wonderful concept when applied in elementary school. We used to call it discipline until our progressive friends decided it was to harsh to demand good behavior from our children. Now you want to clean up the mess on the other end of life. The public with whom the police are interacting were raised without respect for rules, themselves, and certainly the police, or authority. When confronted with an uncomfortable encounter both groups revert to their childhood training. Oh wait they didn't have any!!

Gritsforbreakfast said...

But the police DID receive training, 6:41, and their employer is entitled to require that they follow it or face punishment/dismissal.

Even if everything you say about "the public" were true (and that's not my experience in this era of incredibly low crime), you don't fix the problem by having the police model poor behavior.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many instances of rudeness escalate into something more.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

@8:34, that's 100% what happened with Sandra Bland, isn't it? Start with racial profiling and rudeness, end in needless arrest and tragedy. All preventable.

Unknown said...

I think this was covered by local news, just took a little longer and they focused on how APD disregarded it.