Police Adopt 100 Proposals for Improving Officer Safety

The San Diego Police Department has adopted 100 safety recommendations that include purchasing equipment, greater use of two-officer patrol cars and training police on new safety tactics for situations involving two or more officers.

The recommendations also include the filming of a re-enactment of two officers being shot to death in an attempt to prepare patrol officers for the increasing dangers of police work.

An 85-member task force, formed by Police Chief Bill Kolender after the March 31 slaying of Officer Thomas E. Riggs, 27, and the shooting of Officer Donovan Jacobs, 29, issued 127 recommendations in all. The Police Department is refusing to discuss all but a few of the proposals for safety reasons, Deputy Chief Norm Stamper said.

The task force spent five months discussing reasons why police in San Diego suffer the highest per capita mortality rate among departments in 51 large U.S. cities. Nine San Diego officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty since 1977.

The group’s final report is expected to be delivered to Kolender within a week. A copy also will be given to City Manager Sylvester Murray and the City Council will be briefed later, police officials said.

Stamper said the police department has decided to accept 100 of the recommendations, reject 22 and continue to study the remaining five.

The 13 recommendations that police officials accepted and were willing to disclose include:

- New high-technology training techniques that will place officers in simulated life-threatening situations to determine their reactions. This could include purchasing simulators and lasers to stage settings in which officers engage in police combat shooting.

- A scientific study of “survival characteristics” of veteran patrol officers in San Diego who have not incurred injuries. “We think it would be terribly useful to develop a profile of a safe and competent police officer,” Stamper said.

- Programs aimed at upgrading physical fitness and “human relations” for current officers and safety training for new officers.

- A full-time hostage rescue team consisting of hand-picked sergeants and officers who will be trained to become “surgical shooters.” The department has already formed a “Special Response Team,” one of 25 proposals that have already been instituted.

In addition, The Times has learned through police sources that the department has adopted proposals to purchase a variety of equipment including holsters and high-intensity spotlights for squad cars. So far, the department has been granted $250,000 to purchase lightweight, bullet-proof vests for officers. Expenses for other new equipment recommended by the task force will be included in future police department budgets submitted to the City Council.

According to police sources, the department also has accepted recommendations to use two-officer patrol cars during more hours of the day and to train police on new safety tactics for enforcement situations involving two or more officers.

The new strategy, called “contact and cover,” calls for each officer to take specific responsibilities when he routinely stops and questions one or more suspects. Under the plan, one officer is put in charge of talking to the suspects and handling paper work while a second officer steps back and keeps a watchful eye on the movement of the suspects.

Earlier this year, the department filmed a reenactment of the Sept. 14, 1984, Grape Street Park murders of Officers Timothy Ruopp, 31, and rookie Kimberly Tonahill, 24, to illustrate the potential use of “contact and cover.” The film and an accompanying training segment are being edited for use in two-hour seminars for all 1,500 sworn officers beginning early next year.

The film shows how the three officers shot that day spent their time leading up to the shootings. It shows that the events surrounding the shooting might have been altered had the officers used the contact and cover strategy, according to sources who have viewed the film.

(The suspect in the shootings has not yet faced trial.)

“We have an enormous duty to the living as well as the dead to get this out as quickly as possible,” said Lt. John Morrison, who produced the film using homicide reports, statements from witnesses and the department’s video equipment. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to save a lot of lives.”

Police administrators refused to discuss “contact and cover” or any other recommendations related to officer safety. Because a majority of the proposals involved purchasing new equipment for patrol officers, police officials agreed to make public only 13 of the 100 recommendations they accepted.

One of the 13 recommendations calls for the Police Department to stop releasing information that would “unnecessarily jeopardize” the safety of officers. Stamper said that task force members strongly opposed recent newspaper articles on the mandatory use of protective vests and the kinds of bullets that could penetrate them. He said the department provided much of the information.

“There are certain issues that are police business only,” Stamper said. “We’re not trying to stonewall the public, but we’re saying very clearly that we will not disclose any information that in our opinion . . . would create a risk for our officers. . . . We don’t want to hand information to crooks who study police behavior.”

Deputy City Atty. Susan Heath, who sat on the task force’s philosophy committee, cited an exemption in the state’s public records act that permits police officials to withhold information on “security procedures.” Heath said she advised police officials that they could keep secret any recommendations they interpreted as safety issues unless they were taken to court and a judge ruled against them.

But Terry Frank, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said that police officials may be relying on a far-fetched interpretation of the public records act. Frank said he could not understand how the city could justify withholding information on items such as spotlights.

“That’s just nonsense. That’s just indefensible logically,” Frank said. “If you’re getting down to the point where you’re talking about the risk to an officer, there’s nothing secret about the power of a spotlight. . . . If this rule is applied across the board on this kind of rationale, you could defend secrecy on all kinds of police procurements that make cops more effective . . . improved radios, faster cars, helicopters.”

Frank added that by keeping the information secret, police prevent the public from knowing whether officer safety has actually improved and whether the new equipment is cost effective.

The Police Department also refused to discuss many recommendations that were rejected or are still under study. Two major recommendations being considered are four-day work weeks and black-and-white patrol cars. Many San Diego police officers believe that the current all-white squad cars do not stand out in the community and thus weaken police presence.

Police sources also said that the department rejected a recommendation to replace the .38-caliber revolvers used by patrol officers with 9-mm automatic pistols. Stamper said that department policy prohibits any discussion about the nature of police firearms.

Among the 22 proposals turned down by the department, officials agreed to discuss four.

- The task force recommended that police no longer respond to minor calls for service as a way of reducing stress and workloads. Stamper said to cut police services further is wrong.

- The task force’s steering committee rejected the recommendation to conduct psychological testing of officers after four years of service. “To retest incumbents is insulting to our officers and our officers don’t need to be insulted,” Stamper said.

- A recommendation to create a committee of patrol officers to meet periodically with Kolender to convey concerns of officers who patrol the streets was also rejected by the steering committee.

- Task-force members, who expressed widespread concern that the department is more sympathetic to complaints registered by the public than the rights of officers, recommended that the department stop investigating anonymous complaints. “We studied it very thoroughly and we’re very happy with the way we handle complaints,” Cmdr. Mike Rice said. “The basic bottom line is we think one of our strong points is our reaction to complaints. We will continue to . . . investigate any legitimate complaints. We will not ignore anything. We want to know what the public thinks of us.”