Task force ideas include police training, public reporting system

PINE BLUFF — Extended training, a publicly accessible online reporting system for complaints and changes to the decertification process are among ideas floated during a meeting of a task force that will recommend changes in law enforcement.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced the task force June 9 in the aftermath of nationwide protests calling for racial justice after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man whose death under the knee of a white police officer roused worldwide protests against racial injustice.

He said the Task Force to Advance the State of Law Enforcement in Arkansas will study and analyze the best practices and procedures for recruiting, training, and maintaining law enforcement officer and make recommendations on building trust and establishing changes “needed to enhance the profession of law enforcement to ensure compliance with standards.”

At its second meeting, the task force heard and discussed findings of four subcommittees looking into issues and standards for training, accountability, community oriented policing, and recruitment and retention.

Jimmy Warren — who presented the first subcommittee report, “standard one,” a review of the adequacy of training, policy and operations related to cultural, racial and community relations — said the work will likely lay the groundwork for future generations to build upon.

“We have to think further than today,” said Warren of Conway. “We are indeed planting seeds that our children or our lineage may end up harvesting, because it won’t be an immediate

change as it’s been talked about and elevated. It will be something that is consistent and ongoing.”

Warren said for officer training to be more effective at the state level, the committee is considering training be extended both in length as well as in the amount of content presented. He said another recommendation is for an outreach budget for Arkansas State Police to produce videos educating people on how to conduct themselves during a traffic stop to minimize the chance of an encounter going bad.

“We want to increase uniformity in the state of Arkansas, so we want people to know exactly what they need to do from these videos,” Warren said, noting educational videos could be used for a variety of messages, from how to avoid negative law enforcement interactions to what to look out for when an Amber Alert is issued.

“How great would it be when you have an Amber Alert saying a ‘97 Altima has kidnapped a child,” he said. “you now have a video showing exactly what a ‘97 Altima looks like that is flashing across social media?”

Warren said another component to bringing communities together with police is to sponsor community meetings with police.

“It’s no big deal, nothing formal,” he said. “It’s just removing that line that exists between the community and the police.”

Warren also said a major training initiative undertaken by police departments, field training officer training, where new officers are paired with a training officer while they learn the fundamentals of how the department functions in the community, should be uniform across the state.

He added smaller departments lacking the capacity of larger departments could consolidate training programs.

He said the recommendation to mandate all disciplines included in field training officer training be included for all departments, ensuring officers from Texarkana to Blytheville to Dumas to Bella Vista receive the same training.

“What that does for the community is that I know, no matter where I am in the state, each officer has the same training and I can have the same expectations from that officer,” Warren said.

Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, asked what annual training is mandated for law enforcement officers.

Jami Cook, secretary of the Department of Public Safety, said police officers in Arkansas are required to complete 24 hours of continuing education annually as part of their certification.

“Two of those hours are to be racial profiling and two are to be firearms qualifications,” Cook said. “The remaining 20 hours are left to the departments to decide what those trainings should be, so long as they are certified, based on the needs of those departments.”

Flowers asked if de-escalation training has been discussed as a mandated area of training.

“It seems like for how we even came together and what you are trying to flesh out, broadly and specifically, it seems like that would be a really strong point of focus for this committee,” she said.

“Absolutely,” responded Warren. “Some of the training we have mentioned in our committee, implicit bias, racial bias, cultural competency, de-escalation, and one more we have not written down, we have certainly talked about mandating those.”

Craighead County Sheriff Marty Boyd, chairman of the subcommittee tasked with accountability issues and decertification of officers, said his committee explored the feasibility of a public online reporting system for complaints of misconduct. At this time, he said, Arkansas has a robust decertification process.

“We are at a point where as a state, the nation can look at us and say we are doing something right,” he said. Boyd said, however, while the state database does list decertifications, it does not have the ability to take public complaints and is not a public database.

Boyd said a topic of discussion dealt with officers in the process of being decertified, but are still in that process, which he said raises issues of privacy and due process. “It does take time,” he said. Boyd said the committee voted to recommend decertification hearings by the Law Enforcement Standards Commission be increased from four annually to six.

Fred Weatherspoon, deputy director of the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy and chairman of the task force, said the end goal of the task force is to promote greater understanding between communities and officers serving them.

“We’re doing all this to be able to make recommendations to Gov. Hutchinson on hopefully, programs dealing with training reform, community relations programs, a series of things that we as a task force feel will benefit the communities and the law enforcement community as a whole,” Weatherspoon said.

He said the task force is slated to wrap its work up and present those recommendations to the governor by the end of the year.