SALT LAKE CITY — The use of force by police officers and how those cases are investigated went under the microscope during a hearing on Utah's Capitol Hill Tuesday.
Use of force policies at police departments across the state are basically the same, according to the Utah Attorney General's Office.
But investigations into the use of force by officers are not.
On Tuesday, the Utah Legislature's Administrative Rules Review Committee invited local police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and members of the Department of Public Safety to answer questions about police use of force — including deadly force — and the investigations that accompany those incidents.
The hearing, originally scheduled for an hour, lasted three hours as lawmakers asked many questions, and law enforcers, agreeing that there is a need for public dialogue, detailed the numerous challenges of doing their jobs.
Due to the high publicity surrounding three fatal, officer-involved shootings in Utah this month and 14 more in 2014, Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, invited a number of law enforcers to testify before the committee. He said the purpose was not to "call out" police officers, but rather to educate the committee about the training they receive and how police shootings are looked at.
At the end, the committee approved a motion to be passed onto the Judiciary Committee calling for the creation of a task force to look at many aspects of law enforcement in Utah from training to peer groups to revenue generation.
All officers who testified Tuesday pointed out that despite the high amount of press that officer-involved shootings receive, an extremely small percentage of the millions of contacts officers have with the public each year result in use-of-force situations. But the chiefs also conceded that even one officer-involved shooting is too many.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Spencer Austin, along with Ken Wallentine, a longtime law enforcer in Utah who now works as a police consultant, spoke on behalf of the attorney general's office.
Utah statute governs when deadly force can be used by police, they said. Local police departments can have their own more restrictive policies than state statute, but they cannot have less restrictive policies, Wallentine said.
And while most police departments in Utah have the same policy when it comes to when deadly force can be used, the training and investigations of such incidents are widely varied, he said.
A lot of that has to do with budgets, Wallentine said. Making resources more available on a statewide level, especially for the smaller departments, would help in use-of-force investigations, he said.
Paul Boyden, executive director of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors, said county attorneys, particularly in smaller jurisdictions, will look solely at whether criminal charges should be filed when reviewing an officer-involved shooting, but they will not review whether department policy was followed.
"Despite decades of turbulence in major cities in the United States, we know remarkably little about how to reduce police shootings," Austin said in his prepared comments.
But Wallentine said he has found from his research that better training and greater accountability are the best ways to reduce incidents when police use force. He also advocated the use of body cameras for promoting police accountability and improving officer behavior.
When asked by committee members about Crisis Intervention Training for officers to be used in cases when, for example, an officer comes across a mentally ill suspect, Wallentine praised the work done by the Salt Lake City Police Department to give all of its officers such training.
Some of the strongest words of the day came from Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank, whose department has been put under the microscope again following the fatal shooting of James Barker on Jan. 8.
Burbank told the committee that the officer who shot Barker was hit seven times with a snow shovel before shooting. The officer's Taser was also knocked off his utility belt by the shovel.
The chief reiterated that he holds his officers to an extremely high standard. But he also expects the public to show his officers respect in return.
"What makes someone believe they can hit a police officer seven times with a shovel?" the chief asked.
But while his officers are held to a high standard, Burbank said they cannot be held to an "impossible standard."
Officers cannot pick and choose which 911 calls they want to respond to, he said. When an officer makes contact with a "suspicious" person, Burbank said his officers will respect that person while they figure out what makes them suspicious. But that person has to respect the officer's duty in return.
Burbank knows that not every person will be happy with how their interaction with law enforcement turns out. But justice and satisfaction are not the same, he said.
"Our criminal justice system is not set up to satisfy everyone," Burbank said.
He asked the committee to keep everything in perspective and to look at the number of times a Salt Lake police officer comes in contact with a member of the public versus the low number of complaints he receives each year.
Peace Officer Standards and Training Director Scott Stephenson was quizzed by the committee on the type of training every potential officer receives from POST. He said cadets receive basic training in the skills they are mostly likely to use. For cadets to receive specialized training in every possible area, he said it turns into a time and money issue. The officers will receive more specialized training, such as Crisis Intervention Training, but from the individual departments that hire them. He also noted the low pay police officers receive, which affects recruiting.
Sean Hullinger, a former police officer and current defense attorney, called for more independent review boards to look at officer-involved shootings, noting that his clients would love to have the chance to investigate themselves. He said "disinterested third parties" and even police adversaries were needed on review boards to bolster public trust.
He said the relationship model between the government, police and the public that has been used for 100 years doesn't work anymore.
"It's time to redefine the relationship," he said.
Wallentine stressed to the committee that the overall use-of-force issue is much more involved than simply saying police need more training. He encouraged them that if they were to make changes, "I hope you don't do it in 45 days."
Email: preavy@deseretnews.com
Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam