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Date: 10/20/2021
SOUTH HADLEY – In an effort to keep citizens engaged and informed, the South Hadley Police Department’s (SHPD) Police Access and Community Engagement (PACE) team hosted a forum about the Police Reform Legislation.
The team consists of Chief Jennifer Gundersen, Officers Cynthia Boyle, Jeff Goulet, Junior Swaby, Mark Baran and Detective Feliz Perez. While some members of the team were not able to be present for the forum including Boyle, Goulet and Perez, Lt. William Sowa, who is not a member of the forum, was included in the forum. Gundersen began by discussing the legislation that was signed into law on Dec. 30, 2020 and the ways in which the new law was being implemented at the SHPD. Residents had the opportunity to submit questions for the team ahead of time for the team to answer during the forum, which was moderated by Rev. Lori Sauder of the Center Church in South Hadley.
Gundersen gave an overview of the legislation, which is 140 pages long. She said many in the community didn’t understand the legislation and the reform within the state had “a lot of changes” with regard to the use of force. She said another significant part of the legislation is the training of the new members, while another part outlined how the department “interacts with their school districts.”
She said out of “25 bullet points” the legislation spoke to, the department already did “23 of them” in the current memorandum of understanding they had with the school. She said the few updates that needed to be changed included how information was shared. Another part of the legislation, she explained, was mandated and mandatory training around racial justice. She said they “respected the need” to have bias-free policing and the department had a commitment for the past year and a half that upheld their commitment to bias-free policing.
Gundersen went on to explain that the law around organized movements and the law, which now mandates that police departments reach out to organizers. She also emphasized the use of de-escalation within dealing with those movements. She said while she was glad all of this was “put down in paper” they needed funding to follow.
She also addressed no-knock warrants and said they could “only be issued by a judge” under very specific circumstances. This, she explained, was due to the safety involved and the potential for danger. Another aspect of the legislation was with regard to data legislation. Gundersen said prior to the legislation there was no “one entity” that collected data on police officers injured on the job and citizens injured by police officers. Soon, she said, they would have access to all that information as it would need to be reported and would be collected.
Baran, who serves as the training officer and oversees accreditation for the department discussed training and certifications with regard to the new legislation. He called the legislation “a great step forward” with professionalizing policing. He said years ago the five police academies across the state would each host their own program, however, with the new legislation, it was all standardized. He addressed part-time police officers or reserve officers. He said part-time police was “basically coming to an end” and there would be a certification process for those who had been part-time. Those officers, he said, would have to attend a bridge academy where they would not be required to attend the full 108 hours a new officer would need but would get them up to where full-time officers’ skills were.
He said the bridge academy, which would also be attended by police officers that work on college campuses, would be running for the next three years. To maintain their certification, he said, officers would need to attend yearly training. This year, he said they had a minimum of “30 hours.” However, he said in South Hadley most officers would “probably double that” amount of hours.
Sowa said as part of the reform bill, he’d been charged with compiling a list of complaints, investigations and disciplinary measures against officers. He said complaints about officers that may be working elsewhere in the commonwealth, as well as new complaints, would need to be submitted to the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Committee. Consequences for complaints had the potential to result in the loss of certification for the officer or a de-certification process. Sowa said there was a national certification index, which only five states didn’t participate in, that allowed him to look at the history of new hires to see if there were complaints filed against officers in other states. He said despite not having access to the database before, they used several other databases to check for “serious offenses” in new hires.
Swaby discussed the new use of force policy, which he said required the state to have one single use of force policy rather than a different policy for each department across the state. He said while the official language was still being drafted, once it was official the SHPD would adopt the policy. He said the legislation also focused on de-escalation, which he said was required to be written in their policy.
He went on to say the chokehold was not prohibited. He said prior to the legislation, the SHPD policy regarding chokeholds was they would not use the measure “except for the protection of the officer’s life.” He said those instances were “rare” and it was not something they were ever trained to use. However, he said moving forward the SHPD would not be using the chokehold, no matter the circumstances, and would be in compliance with the law.
With regard to shooting at moving vehicles, he said they were prohibited from doing so by the law for the safety of everyone involved in the situation. The final item he addressed was officers intervening if they “observe unreasonable force by their peers.” He said in addition to mandating that officers report any unreasonable force they saw, the legislation also protects officers from retaliation after reporting the use of excessive use of force. He said he felt confident that at the SHPD everyone would feel comfortable enough to report any excessive force if they saw such an action taking place.
Gundersen said there were “not a whole lot of changes” that needed to be made. She explained that while they’ve always had an understanding that there would not be retaliation, there was now a sentence in the legislation making it official.
The group then opened up the forum for discussion and resident Linda Young asked when the reforms would be going into law. Gundersen said while the bill allowed some to be under “emergency legislation” there were “various dates in there when things had to be done by.” She said while it would have taken “a month or two to write it into our policy,” the ban of chokeholds was “immediate.” Other immediate parts of the legislation included not shooting at moving vehicles and de-escalation. However, there were timelines given with regard to disciplinary records and training timelines.
When asked about how to access the laws, Gundersen said the entire legislation could be found simply by Googling it and the SHPD policies were all on their website. However, she said some new items, such as running new applicants for the department against a database were not part of an official policy, but the department knew this had to be done as it was part of the law.
Sauder asked the difference between defunding and reforming the police. Gundersen said she was in favor of reforming the police as defunding was the process of bringing in something entirely new. She said, in her opinion, police had been required to handle a myriad of issues they were not equipped to, such as drug abuse, mental health and homelessness. She said there had been “some missteps” along the way, though. Sauder said, “Essentially the police are absorbing what was not considered in our society.”
The final question of the night was from Young regarding how many officers the department had and how many were needed. Gundersen said the SHPD was “funded for 29,” and could always benefit from having additional offers to handle some areas such as fraud against seniors and traffic enforcement. She said the department could also benefit from additional training money. However, she said she “knew the big picture of the finances” and would be grateful to not lose any staff.