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Date: 7/8/2020
SOUTHWICK – After the Southwick Police Department updated its use of force policy earlier this year, the Southwick Select Board approved another amendment to the policy at its June 23 meeting.
At the meeting Select Board Chair Doug Moglin read off the amendment which stated, “It puts forth a duty to intervene by any officer when another officer is acting contrary to law or Southwick Police policy.”
While the amendment officially adds the duty to intervene into the current use of force manual, Southwick Police Lt. Robert Landis said officers are trained to intervene in any situation. “It’s really nothing new, we’ve been taught this for years. We all have a duty to act as it is but the fact that it’s not incorporated in our actual use of force manual is what caused the update,” he said.
Prior to the new amendment and recent events, Lt. Landis said that there were other reasons the department updated its use of force policy.
He said, “Prior to any of the stuff that’s been going on, we knew it was time to update our policy. We had purchased some less than lethal equipment that we needed to implement into the policy to cover it. Before we could use it, we had to have policies to dictate how it was utilized.”
Landis said that the suggestion for the new amendment came from the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association considering recent events.
“Basically, the [Massachusetts] Chiefs of Police reached out to all the chiefs with a suggestion to incorporate the wording regarding to the duty to intervene into our current uses of force,” he said, “It just so happened we just did ours and it was accepted, so I just forwarded the new wording to the Board of Selectmen.”
While amendments such as these are important, he said that departments and legislation should look at ways to remove problem police officers and hire better candidates. “What could alleviate a lot of issues is by allowing us to vet our candidates better and giving. And then when you have a problem officer with a history of conduct, we would be able to get rid of that individual as well,” he said.
Landis added that he hopes that the legislation takes more input from police as it investigates more reforms in the future. He said, “Legislation is being adopted but it’s not being done that well. The legislature is talking about how they want to make police reform, but nobody’s talking to the police.”