AMERICAN FORK -- With the drafting of a mission statement, the police department has begun to implement the recommendations of the independent audit done on the force.
But Capt. Steven Cornia said the recommendations written by ombudsman Rick Webber were ideas the department had wanted to implement anyway. They were not implemented partly because of two years of intense scrutiny over alleged police misconduct and unfair treatment after complaints by a small group of residents, he said.Cornia is now second in command to newly appointed police chief Terry Fox, who was appointed to replaced former police chief John Durrant. Durrant resigned in October to take a teaching position at an Orem computer company.
Cornia hopes the police department and the city can move as one now that the report, released two weeks ago, found no wrongdoing among the department.
"Our position is to move ahead with several of the recommendations," he said.
The report by Webber, a law enforcement instructor from the University of Utah, simply calls for better public relations from the force. Webber furnished a number of suggestions: a police department mission statement and a citizen's academy and community-oriented policing.
Cornia had an embossed plaque of the department's new mission statement delivered to him Monday. It says the goals of the department are to "build community, enforce with equity and serve with honor."
Those three statements come directly from the law enforcement code of ethics.
The department will begin by offering a citizen's academy beginning in February. It will put members of the community through training similar to what officers complete.
"It opens the doors for the citizens to see what we do," Cornia said.
Cornia said the department hopes all its new goals as a force will reintroduce the confidence of the residents to the police department that was tarnished during the investigations.
"For people to respect a police department, they first have to have confidence they will be treated equally," he said.
Their efforts may to be paying off. City Councilwoman Juel Belmont complimented the police department and Fox at Tuesday's council meeting because she has noticed more police patrol.
Cornia said residents also need to know that even though the department will discipline members of the force if they do wrong, the officers are also entitled to due process, something he believes they did not get during the past two years of inquiry.
"No one ever came directly to us with their complaints," he said. "It was all rumors and accusations."
Cornia said the new direction of the department is not a matter of retraining officers who already know the law, but a focus to be more community-oriented.
"I don't want to say kinder, gentler, but more aware of the public and not so focused on the law," Cornia said. "When they encounter an officer, I want people to remember not the uniform, but the face."