May 29, 2020

Police Chief and Human Relations Officer hold video town hall after George Floyd death

Posted May 29, 2020 10:27 AM

By NICK GOSNELL

Hutch Post

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The City of Hutchinson held a video town hall on social media Thursday to allow Police Chief Jeff Hooper to address how his department would handle situations like the one that ultimately resulted in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this week.

"We address those type of events in training constantly," Hooper said to Human Relations Officer Datjeda Moore. "We talk about the emotions that are behind those events. We talk about things like excited delerium, positional asphyxia, excessive use of force, how officers can cope with and deal with the emotion of those situations and be able to deescalate. How other officers, then, can come in and assist and if they see an officer acting excessively or acting out of bounds, other officers can come in and assist that officer, who may be emotionally charged."

Putting the full weight of your body on someone and leaving it there for an extended period of time is not proper procedure in the Hutchinson Police Department.

"It's not uncommon, or its fairly typical for an officer to place somebody on the ground in order to handcuff them," Hooper said. "We worry about having people placed on the ground, because of the position that they're in. Certainly, we never train to put our knee across the back of somebody's neck. In those situations, if we get somebody secured in handcuffs, our procedure is we set them up immediately, so that they're able to sit up and breathe again. We're not putting them in a compromising situation any longer than is absolutely necessary for safety."

Mayor Jade Piros de Carvalho asked the chief to address the implicit bias training the department receives.

"To say that you don't have any biases is naive," Hooper said. "Everybody has a bias. In law enforcement, it used to be that we'd tell our officers don't be biased. Well, they can't help but have their internal feelings. What we have to train our officers is, you have implicit bias. You have to be cognizant enough and you have to be self-reflective enough, to be able to see that you have biases. You have to be able to identify them, and then, your actions cannot be reflective of your biases. You have to treat people fair, in spite of your biases and the first step to that is realizing that those biases exist."

Officers get training on implicit bias before they go to the academy, they get it at the academy and they get it annually.