SANDY — Scott Stephenson, the director of Peace Officer Standards and Training in Utah, said he recently received a letter from Sen. Mitt Romney asking if certain areas were being taught at its training academy.
“We were able to check every box,” Stephenson said.
That included training on racial bias and de-escalation tactics. But while Stephenson said Peace Officer Standards and Training is doing all that is being asked of the organization, “I feel like there’s still more to build upon that foundation and make it better.”
Stephenson has proposed that each police officer in Utah undergo additional training in some areas, particularly in light of the nation’s heightened awareness of policing and calls for reform following the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Those areas include courses on implicit bias and procedural justice.
The Peace Officer Standards and Training Council is comprised of 17 members ranging from police chiefs, sheriffs and citizens from across the state. The council meets quarterly to, in part, review allegations of misconduct by officers and hand down discipline. That discipline can range from a letter of condemnation to revoking an officer’s certification. All sworn officers in Utah must be certified by the organization.
In a recording of the council’s June 17 meeting, Stephenson proposed that each cadet be required to complete an additional 30 hours of training over the span of three days. That training would include a 12-hour course on implicit bias and procedural justice.
Stephenson said the division already teaches a course on conflict resolution. His proposal is “not going to take away anything but add to it,” he said.
In today’s climate of the public questioning police methods, Stephenson noted part of the problem is there are laws that the public doesn't generally understand. Procedural justice, or the way police treat people while doing their jobs, is vital, he said. And it’s important for both officers as well as the public to understand what that is.
“We definitely need to increase our defensive tactics program,” Stephenson said, explaining that program would take up the remaining 18 extra hours of training.
Specifically, Stephenson believes cadets need to undergo the same training scenarios for many more hours in order to develop “muscle memory.”
In watching videos of police in action over the past few weeks, he said he’s “seen a lot of videos where officers just panic because they don’t feel comfortable using their hands. And so they go right to the tool belt.”
While more training won’t completely eliminate the problem, Stephenson hopes to train future Utah police officers to be “more comfortable using their hands when people are resisting.”
The motion to add 30 more hours of training was passed unanimously by the council. It must now approve the changes in a second vote before they become final.
Continuing with the theme of holding officers accountable and increasing the public’s trust, Stephenson also raised concerns with the council about officers who are caught lying under “Garrity.”
“I am concerned about the message we are sending law enforcement,” he said.
Garrity protects law enforcers who are being investigated for incidents like officer-involved shootings, from making statements that can be used against them criminally. The expectation is that Peace Officer Standards and Training can interview an officer who will respond truthfully to determine whether any training standards were violated.
The typical penalty for lying under Garrity is revoking an officer’s certification. But Stephenson said there have been five cases recently of officers proven to have lied under Garrity, but the council voted on a penalty other than revocation. Stephenson told other council members that he is concerned that the message they're sending is that some lies are more egregious than others.
“We shouldn’t accept lying, period,” he said. “The whole point of Garrity is we want the truth.
“I think we really need to recalibrate and define our message that’s being sent to our profession about being honest and telling the truth,” Stephenson continued. “We should expect officers to be telling the truth regardless of what question is presented to them, as long as there’s a nexus to that complaint.”
The Peace Officer Standards and Training Council was also updated on a bill passed during the just completed Utah legislative session that amended the responsibilities of the group regarding disciplinary action against police officers and dispatchers.
The most significant change requires law enforcement agencies to notify the division of a pending investigation into an officer, even if that officer resigns before the investigation is completed. In the past, some officers have resigned from their departments while under investigation for wrongdoing, which resulted in the internal investigation being stopped and the division never being notified of the allegations. Those officers then got jobs with other law enforcement agencies — and with clean records.
While members of the council said they were in favor of the change, some also noted the new legislation didn't have any teeth. So if an agency fails to disclose that an officer who quit was under investigation, that department still wouldn’t face any serious penalties.
During the June 17 meeting, 15 former or current officers had disciplinary action issued against them by the council. Their violations ranged from intoxication to shoplifting to domestic violence. Two officers had their certifications revoked, meaning they can never be a peace officer in Utah again.
The case that sparked some of the most debate involved a veteran Unified police officer who accessed records from a restricted police database after reading a news story regarding slain University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck, who was still listed as missing at the time.
State law does not allow officers to look up names, addresses and other information in the Bureau of Criminal Identification’s database unless there is a legitimate police reason. Officers who have been disciplined in the past for violating the law have used the database to look up people who they believed their spouses were having affairs with, as an example.
Officer Bobby Rogers had read an article on KSL.com about a search warrant served on Ayoola Adisa Ajayi’s home, though at the time, Ajayi had not been arrested and was not named in the story.
Rogers, who was not part of the Lueck investigation and was not asked by Salt Lake police to assist, looked up the address where the warrant was being served in the database and was able to determine that detectives were focusing on Ajayi.
Two days later, Ajayi was arrested and later charged with murder for Lueck’s death,
Rogers said while he accepted the council’s discipline and understands the law passed by the Legislature, he believes what he did was all for legitimate police purposes.
“I’m asserting that law enforcement professionals should have access to information on murder suspects,” he said. “I don’t believe BCI is so narrow and restricted that an officer can’t run information on there and yet not violate the BCI policies. ... I just feel that me running a murder suspect does not violate BCI.”
Rogers argued that because Ajayi was still free, there was the possibility that he may come in contact with Ajayi or that Ajayi might travel into Unified’s jurisdiction, and as law enforcer, he needed to know that.
At least one council member commended Rogers and said he shouldn’t be disciplined at all.
But another said the issue raised red flags about random officers inserting themselves into cases they’re not assigned to or cases that aren’t even being investigated by their own department just because they read a news article.
The council ultimately voted to give Rogers a letter of condemnation, the lowest possible penalty.