Police reform in Boulder has been underway for more than a year, and work on the Boulder Police Department’s “roadmap to reform” is still in process.
After being hired in April, Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold initiated a plan that separated reform into six categories: accountability, data, training, recruiting and hiring, use of force, and crime strategy. Since the roadmap was developed over the summer, the police department has accomplished a number of the steps, which Herold outlined in a Dec. 1 update with the Boulder City Council.
Among other things, in the third quarter of 2020, the department developed an inspections policy and process plan, hired a strategic data and policy adviser, initiated a use of force training and updated its use of force policy. In the fourth quarter, it hired a public safety information officer, selected a professional standards sergeant to investigate complaints and use of force, and began community meetings and town halls.
Although there was a national push for police reform after George Floyd was in May killed at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, Herold said she always planned to work to reform the Boulder Police Department.
“Obviously the murder of George Floyd impacted the whole country, but we would have taken these steps no matter what,” she added.
The initial push for police reform in Boulder began in March 2019 — before Herold came on staff — when Zayd Atkinson, a Black Naropa University student, was picking up trash with a grabber outside his student housing building and former Boulder police officer John Smyly confronted him and asked for identification. The incident escalated, resulting in multiple officers responding on scene and Smyly drawing his stun gun and handgun.
Smyly resigned with a city severance package after it was determined he violated police department policy. However, an independent review found no evidence of racial profiling. Atkinson settled with the city for $125,000.
The Boulder City Council established a task force that examined various models for oversight boards, and last month it approved revisions to its October 2019 ordinance that established the new model, in which an independent monitor works with a police oversight panel. This work is happening simultaneous to the department’s roadmap.
Darren O’Connor, who serves as criminal justice committee chair with the Boulder County branch of the NAACP, said it’s too early to judge the success of the department’s reform efforts, but he’s appreciative of Herold’s effort to work with the community to solve problems.
One piece that’s troubling to O’Connor is the department’s 75% reactive rate, which Strategic Data and Policy Advisor Beth Christenson shared in the Dec. 1 presentation to the City Council. The rate indicates Boulder police officers are spending 75% of their time responding to calls for service.
“In terms of the statistics, one of the areas I’m kind of focused on is the number of calls that we get to police and how the police respond basically all the time to any call,” O’Connor said, adding that it can be particularly problematic when it’s calls for suspicious behavior regarding a Black person or other person of color.
According to the Center for Policing Equity, one in five Americans interacts with law enforcement yearly. Of those encounters, one million result in use of force. Those interactions are two to four times more likely to end in force being used if the person is Black than if the person is white.
The 75% rate is problematic for the police department, too. Ideally, the department would like to get that number down to 55 or 60%, Christenson said.
“This leaves very little room for discretionary time where officers may engage in proactive policing,” Christenson said in Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “Proactive policing may include directed patrols into hotspot locations or engaging with the community on other crime prevention techniques.”
Another accomplishment in Herold’s mind is the hiring of an additional professional standards supervisor to “make sure we’re conducting robust investigations into use of force and citizens’ complaints.”
Although Boulder now has the community oversight panel and independent monitor, the professional standards staff work in tandem. Herold is hopeful that new independent monitor Joey Lipari will help give an outside eye and provide “another layer of transparency and reassurance” for the community.
Community members in open comment at council meetings have raised concerns about the idea of the “police policing themselves.” Similarly, O’Connor said he’s had trouble with Boulder’s professional standards board in the past and is hopeful the oversight panel will offer a better way.
“(With professional standards), it is almost always an unsatisfactory response, which is why when the Zayd Atkinson interaction occurred, we pushed really hard at the NAACP for a community oversight model, which we now have,” O’Connor said. “We’ll see how that improves things.”
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Boulder police continuing work on ‘roadmap to reform’ - Boulder Daily Camera
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