Policing Begins at Home

While state and national activism is of vital importance, I always try to focus some of my energy on my local community. After all, change begins at home.

Following the death of George Floyd at the knee of a Minnesota police officer, protests and demonstrations swept the world. Thirty percent of people killed at the hands of American police are Black and yet only 13 percent of the population is Black. Systemic racism and implicit (and explicit) bias continue to plague our society, causing a variety of social ills from police brutality to economic depression caused by the fact that people of color continue to be overrepresented in impoverished populations. Change must occur if we want to improve our world. One change is to policing policies.

I have lived in Longmont, Colorado, since 1998. I have volunteered with our restorative justice program, the Longmont Community Justice Partnership, which is heavily utilized by the Longmont Police Department, indicating a willingness to avoid sentencing for nonviolent crimes, especially when committed by youth. The community seems, overall, to have a good relationship with police. However, undocumented residents are reticent to call police due to concerns about deportation. While overall trust among white residents is good, people of color have a lower likelihood of relying on our police force.

I decided to do some digging to discover specific Longmont police policies relating to implicit bias training, use of body cameras, and use of force. I discovered how complaints are handled and how information is shared with the public. Overall, I think Longmont is doing a decent job for a small city of just over 100,000. However, there is room for improvement.

Police Chief Mike Butler served since 1994 and retired at the end of June 2020. Butler committed to hiring only officers and detectives who pass demanding background checks. The process of hiring is “rigorous and aims to hire mature and experienced officers. (Commander Jeff Satur) said Longmont sends investigators out of state as necessary to background candidates for officer positions.” However, if an officer is not convicted of a crime, they theoretically pass the background check. Timothy Loehmann, who killed Tamir Rice in 2014, was rehired as an officer in 2018. (Rice was a twelve-year-old playing with a toy gun in a park.) Loehmann, who shot Rice less than a minute after seeing him, was not convicted of any wrongdoing, despite the fact that he killed a child playing with a toy. He could theoretically pass Longmont’s background check, though Butler avoided hiring officers with even a hint of stain on their records.

As of April 2020, Longmont patrol officers, animal control personnel, SWAT, and detectives have body cams that can be attached magnetically. The city purchased body cameras from Axon for $280,000; an annual fee of $150,000 is necessary for maintenance of the system. The cameras are assigned by badge number and connect to assigned cell phones via Bluetooth. Once connected, the camera automatically uploads footage that can then be accessed. However, the camera is officer-controlled: they can turn it on and off. Officers report forgetting to activate the body cam, though they also express liking the idea of the system as video can be used in court and is more reliable than witness accounts.

Complaints are handled by a panel, the Police Professional Review Panel, consisting of five residents appointed by the City Manager, and four police employees, including a supervisor and a civilian employee. The panel “has full access to all investigative materials and meets as needed to review investigations and vote on whether to sustain an allegation, exonerate an officer, ‘non-sustain’ in cases that lack evidence one way or another, determine the case was unfounded, or conclude no finding.” I was unable to find a list of complaints so I do not know how many times officers have had grievances filed against them. A Times-Call article claims that “according to police department data, Longmont police annually receive an average of 87,000 calls and make about 2,739 arrests. In the past four years, the professional standards unit received an average of 52 informal complaints and launched an average of nine investigations a year” but I have not been able to verify that claim. Some departments list complaints as part of public record and others do not; Longmont does not. No officers have been cited as a result of a panel investigation.

In September 2018 the Longmont Police Department began encrypting radio conversations. Two local news outlets, The Longmont Times-Call and the Longmont Leader, have scanners capable of monitoring encrypted conversations. The police report that the encrypted conversations make it less likely that suspects flee and increase arrest rates. However, critics note that the encryption makes accountability more difficult since citizens cannot monitor scanners. Giving media access to encrypted devices is meant to ameliorate this concern.

The Longmont Police report that force is used in one percent of all calls for police aid. There have been four officer-involved shootings in the city of Longmont in the last five years.

Jesus Ramos died as a result of an officer-involved shooting in September 2018. According to news reports, the suspect, who fired a weapon and threatened to kill himself and others prior to calling 911, was running away from officers when shot by Officer Michael Kimbley. A gun was not found on the suspect when the body was searched. The Denver Grand Jury concluded that the suspect should not have been shot but that the officer’s actions were warranted because the suspect was running toward an occupied apartment building, actually breaking into it prior to expiring from the gunshot, and it was unknown if he was armed at the time he was shot.

A second officer-involved shooting occurred in the same month of the same year. Gillie Thurby, a 28-year-old white man, was wanted for failure to appear on charges of sexual assault on a child and child pornography. When officers attempted to serve the warrant, Mr. Thurby pulled a weapon. Officers employed lethal force, killing Thurby. The officers’ names were not released.

A third officer-involved shooting occurred in February 2020 at a motel near Interstate 25. Attempting to serve an arrest warrant resulted in shots being exchanged between a suspect and three officers from Weld County and Firestone, Colorado. The suspect went to a local hospital with injuries and was arrested. The investigation is ongoing and the names of the officers have not been released.

A fourth officer-involved shooting occurred early in the morning of July 10, 2020 when officers responded to a 911 call reporting a man “harassing” a woman. Police arrived to find the man standing in the parking lot of an apartment complex and asked if he was armed. He indicated that he was not and initially complied with officer directions. However, he then is reported to have pulled what appeared to be a gun from the waistband of his trousers and pointed it at police. Officers employed lethal force, injuring the man. The suspect is not dead: he is in stable condition at a local hospital. He has only been identified as a “26-year-old Black man from Illinois.” The weapon is a BB gun designed to look like a pistol. The two officers who fired are on administrative leave as of this writing. Their names have not been released.

Two of the four officer-involved shootings in Longmont included men of color. The race of one suspect is not known and the fourth is white. The use of lethal force is reserved for instances when officers feel that they, or bystanders, are in danger, but determining when danger is real can be exceedingly difficult. Ramos was reported to have a gun but did not when he was killed. Thurby pulled on officers but did not fire his weapon before being shot. The unnamed suspect in the February 2020 incident is said to have “exchanged fire” with officers, indicating that he or she did fire a weapon. The 26-year-old Black man from Illinois appeared to have a weapon but did not fire it before being shot and the weapon turned out to be a non-lethal toy.

The book The Black and the Blue by ATF officer and CNN correspondent Matthew Horace details how use-of-force policies vary by department. Reading this book made me realize just how lenient the use of lethal response can be: an officer can just feel threatened to be legally justified in pulling, and firing, their weapon. According to these loose guidelines, all four of the Longmont shootings seem justified according to policy.

The Longmont Public Safety Office prides itself on providing ongoing training to officers. In their own words: “we provide our officers with on-going and consistent training in the communications, de-escalation, use of force, case law, and the different applications of force with an eye toward safety. More than 55% of our officers have completed the Crisis Response Team (CIT) training, and we have a very robust Co-Responder (CORE) Program which pairs a mental health clinician with a police officer and paramedic.”

The Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement (CORE), is a “specialized unit which is comprised of a behavioral health clinician, a paramedic and a specially trained police officer, who respond to 911 calls for services that indicate a mental illness or substance use issue.” There is no mention of CORE being utilized in the events detailed above. In particular, Ramos should have had mental health care response. Suicidal ideation is a symptom of a mental event, but Ramos was treated as a threat from the outset.

It is unclear if implicit bias training and information about racialized profiling is part of the required continuing education. Longmont has directed its officers to avoid profiling people who may be undocumented; officers only access citizenship status if that is required for an investigation. Under Chief Butler, Longmont adopted the following policy: “City of Longmont public safety will NOT participate in the Homeland Security 287(G) program which trains local police officers to assist in the identification and detention of undocumented immigrants.” This policy is designed to ensure that residents in need of assistance will not fear deportation if they dial 911.

As I researched this piece, I reached out to the Longmont Public Safety Office four times. I contacted two people on the communications team via email and contacted the communications specialist by email and by phone. I received no response.

Questions remain. How many complaints do officers receive each year? How many of those complaints are lodged by people of color? What is the nature of those complaints? While technically possible that all of them had good reason for dismissal, outside oversight seems important. Longmont should make complaints public.

Furthermore, it is unclear if Longmont officers receive any training on racial profiling and stereotyping. If they do, the quality of those trainings is also of concern. Undoing a lifetime of white supremacist messages takes time and dedication. An afternoon seminar isn’t going to do the trick. Chief Butler alleges that Longmont has a reputation of being a difficult city to get a police job in because of the extensive background screening it takes to get hired. The police department seems to think that a “George Floyd incident” would never occur here. But what about Ramos? Admittedly, he’d fired a gun and made threats, but he is still an unarmed man of color shot in the back while fleeing.

I was also unable to locate a record of the race/ethnicity of the arrest reports. Sixty-seven percent of Longmont’s population is non-Hispanic white, about 17 percent is Hispanic, and the rest are other people of color. While people of color are likelier to be low-income and impoverished, and poverty leads to higher crime rates, how overrepresented are Longmont’s residents of color in arrest records?

My biggest questions surround the policy that allows officers to fire on suspects if they simply feel in danger. In only one of these incidents – February 2020 – does it appear that a suspect actually fired a weapon. Thurby (the one white man) is the only one, in my read, that even comes close to justifying lethal force as he pulled a real gun. Ramos was never seen with a gun and so obviously didn’t fire one at officers. The Black man with a BB gun appeared to have a pistol but he never fired it. Shouldn’t officers wait to be fired upon? I realize that’s a big ask, but taking risks is kind of their job. Unless it’s an assault rifle the likelihood of being hit is pretty slim. This is yet another reason that “defund the police” should include salaries commiserate with the risks we’re asking officers to take, extensive training similar to that of a master’s level degree, and policies that place lethal force as the absolute last option.

Longmont’s belief that a man of color could never be murdered by police is a fantasy. Immediately, the city needs to increase funding and utilization of CORE, upgrade the body cameras to automatically record as soon as an officer calls in, and release data on white versus nonwhite arrests. We also need to ensure that the next police chief is dedicated to the public service aspect of the job and committed to high quality, ongoing training for officers. And that should just be the beginning.