With calls for police reform escalating around the country, Marin County’s law enforcement agencies are reviewing policies on how and when to use force.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday it will be prohibiting the carotid restraint, a technique often referred to as the “sleeper hold” maneuver. The hold incapacitates a suspect by restricting blood flow in an artery in the neck, causing loss of consciousness.
It’s different than a chokehold, which restricts airflow. That maneuver is already banned by the Marin sheriff’s office and many other departments.
Some agencies have also already prohibited the carotid restraint because, when it is misapplied, the windpipe can be blocked or crushed, strangling a person, sometimes fatally. The former Minneapolis officer who used a version of the restraint last month — kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes — is now facing a murder charge.
“I recognize the community’s concern regarding this technique,” Sheriff Robert Doyle said of the decision to prohibit the move. “Quite frankly, I can’t remember the last time the restraint was ever used by a deputy.”
A plan to prohibit the restraint among officers statewide has been endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Doyle said he is certain there is enough momentum for a statewide ban soon: “I could see the handwriting on the wall, so why wait?”
The indignation over this and other police policies were brought to focus again earlier this month when an activist campaign called #8cantwait shed light on eight use-of-force policies that are recommended to reduce harm caused by officers.
The organization recommends banning chokeholds and strangleholds, including the carotid restraint; requiring de-escalation; requiring warnings before shooting; requiring that officers exhaust all alternatives before shooting; requiring officers to intervene to stop and report excessive force by other officers; banning shooting at moving vehicles in all cases; restricting “the most severe types of force to most extreme situations”; and requiring comprehensive reporting.
Over the past two weeks, Marin police agencies have received hundreds of emails requesting that they comply with the recommendations.
The sheriff’s office was the only Marin agency scored by the organization. According to the report, the sheriff’s office’s policy manual was compliant with only one of its recommendations: the requirement of de-escalation.
Top officials from several departments, including Doyle, responded with statements outlining how their policies match up with the suggested policies. None of the departments’ policies were exactly the same as the recommendations, but they were close.
Police chiefs also explained the training each officer undergoes before patrolling the field. Across Marin, officers are trained in racial bias, mental health and de-escalation in addition to use of force.
Officers are also equipped with body-worn cameras that are activated when they interact with the public. The footage is periodically reviewed. Use of force is reported for each instance. Sheriff’s deputies also must report when they draw their weapons, even if they are not fired.
Deputies also benefit from a training simulator where they can learn de-escalation techniques and use of force.
Doyle said there appears to be several errors in the organization’s reporting, as many of the sheriff’s office’s policies and practices are close to the recommendations.
For example, there is no policy at the sheriff’s office that explicitly requires a deputy to warn a suspect before firing a weapon. However, in the use-of-force training manual, deputies are coached on giving warnings before shooting.
It has become practice to warn before shooting, Doyle said. He said his administration staff is reviewing the policy manual for potential updates.
“At the end of the day, I think we will be making some modifications,” he said.
Doyle said he believes the agency is practicing fair and equal law enforcement. He pointed to recent citizen complaint reports that show one or fewer complaints against the agency per quarter. None of the complaints was for use-of-force concerns.
“We’ve always prided ourselves in communication with the community, so it’s been pretty disheartening to see these emails with requests from people who don’t know about our organization and what we do,” Doyle said. “If you look at the history of policing and the number of citizen complaints, it tells a different story.”
San Rafael plans
In San Rafael, Mayor Gary Phillips announced at a recent Black Lives Matter rally that he was forming a task force to review and potentially update the city’s police department’s policies. The committee includes himself, council members, city staff, the police chief and members of the public.
Phillips said he hopes to schedule meetings with the group within the next two weeks.
The existing policies of the department show there is a requirement to warn suspects before shooting and a requirement of an officer to intercede when another officer is using excessive force. The agency is also compliant, with some variation, with the other recommended policies. The carotid restraint is listed as an acceptable use of force if an officer has been trained in the technique. However, the move is prohibited by default because San Rafael officers are not trained in the maneuver, according to the department.
“I have no complaint about our police chief, our officers or the department. They’re fantastic,” Phillips said. “I do think this is a good opportunity to have the community go through and see where we are at with our policies.”
San Rafael police Chief Diana Bishop said the work of the group will be shared and discussed at public meetings.
“The San Rafael Police Department and the city of San Rafael are committed to finding solutions to address systemic racial injustice that permeates our society,” Bishop said. “We recognize that San Rafael is not immune to the social and economic challenges that disproportionately impact not only our black community but all people of color.”
In 2019, San Rafael police responded to 49,052 calls for service. Fifty of those incidents required use of force by police officers. In 2018, there were 49,113 calls for service in 2018 and 37 reported use-of-force incidents.
There were no officer-involved shootings in 2019. There was one police shooting in 2018. Before that, there hadn’t been an officer-involved shooting since 2001.
Novato changes
The Novato police policy manual is also closely matched to the recommendations. One exception is that the agency allows neck restraints only “when deadly force would be reasonable,” according to the policy.
The technique was recategorized as deadly force after an incident in 2019 when an officer used the move to restrain a suspect. The officer released the suspect when he stopped resisting. The suspect was uninjured.
Novato police Chief Matt McCaffrey said that over the past two years, force is used in less than 1% of all incidents.
Out of the 39,647 calls for service in 2019, Novato officers only had to use force in 22 incidents, including one instance of using the carotid restraint. The prior year, there were 46,373 calls for service and 25 incidents of force. There were no incidents of deadly force.
“We are looking at all aspects of use of force and how we can do things better,” McCaffrey said, noting that the administration is considering changes to department policy. “One takeaway is that a lot of these recommendations we have already instituted. And that’s the theme we’re trying to set with our response. We didn’t wait for a big uproar to put these policies into effect.”
McCaffrey said, “You have to have the rules in place but you also have to make sure you’re holding people accountable for those rules, which I think we’re doing a pretty good job on that.”
Fairfax policies
In Fairfax, the police department is nearly compliant with each of the eight recommended policies, Chief Chris Morin said.
One deviation — which also includes the sheriff’s department, San Rafael and Novato — is a rule about shooting at or from a moving vehicle. At each agency, the policy says it’s allowed “when the officer reasonably believes there are no other reasonable means available to avert the threat of the vehicle, or if deadly force other than the vehicle is directed at the officer or others.”
Morin was among the police chiefs who were inundated with email complaints and requests from the public to review and adopt new policies, he said. He issued a statement listing the department’s policies so the residents could be the judge and for transparency, he said.
“In my opinion, it’s almost exactly in line,” Morin said. “The fact that these policies already exist in Fairfax is evident, I think, that these suggestions are not out of whack and are in line with common-sense policing. And you have to set your policies with the best practices. You can’t set yourself up for failure.”
The Bay Area News Group contributed to this report.