S.D. Police to Update Lessons on Rapport

A proposal to revamp the human relations training of San Diego police officers, spurred by the department’s sagging image in the black community, was approved Monday by the San Diego City Council.

Exactly what changes will be made won’t be known for 45 days, while the department and a task force work out the details.

As the basis for revisions, the department will use a report prepared by consultant Vickie Romero & Associates of Phoenix, which recommended abolishing the department’s traditional human relations training and replacing it with cultural awareness, cultural literacy and community orientation programs.

If everything goes according to schedule, changes in the human relations curriculum will be in place for the Police Academy class that begins training in December, Police Chief Bill Kolender said.

Councilman William Jones, who represents the largely black Southeast area and who had urged postponement of the recommended reforms last month because of questions about the consultant’s report, said he was generally satisfied but stressed that he wanted the City Council to be involved in the final changes.

“I take this subject seriously . . . there are some problems out there and I don’t think we should underemphasize it,” Jones said.

Kolender acknowledged that the report’s major finding was that the current human relations training that officers receive in the academy and later as veterans “wasn’t adequate.”

Among the recommendations in the report was the creation of a task force to help put the changes in place. Such a task force, consisting of 13 people, including two members of the citizens police-community relations advisory board, minority police officers and educators, is already in existence and has had four meetings, according to Police Cmdr. R.J. Thorburn.

Kolender said the task force’s recommended human relations program will be presented to the City Council Public Services and Safety Committee, on which Jones serves, in 45 days.

Relations between police and the black community have deteriorated in the wake of the Sagon Penn case. Penn was accused of killing a police officer, severely wounding another and wounding a civilian ride-along after he was stopped for an alleged traffic violation in Southeast San Diego.

Penn was found innocent of first-degree murder by a jury in June. The basis of his defense was that police attacked him and provoked him with racial taunts and slurs.

At a community-police meeting in July in Southeast San Diego, residents criticized police for a lack of sensitivity in dealing with blacks.

Among the recommendations in the 41-page consultant’s report is that the traditional 16-hour human relations course taught at the academy be dropped. The course involves spending two days meeting with various ethnic minority leaders and organizations. Romero, the consultant, said this was an example of a program once considered innovative that is now becoming “antiquated.”

Instead, Romero said, what is needed is a move to a more “specific, cognitive type of instruction of how you deal with ethnic groups.”

The restructuring of the training program would involve the introduction of courses such as cultural awareness, defined in the report as those that “focus on cultural universals, cross-cultural similarities and differences, and the development of understanding, sensitivity and appreciation for the variety of groups which make up American society.”

The proposed cultural literacy course would provide both those in the academy and those in the department’s Advanced Officer Training Program with classes on individual ethnic groups and their “attitudes, beliefs and social conventions that might impact on day-to-day contacts the officer has with each group.”