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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1997-02-01 TranscriptionFebruary 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 1 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session 2:00 PM Council: Nov, Baker, Kubby, Lehman, Norton, Thomberry, Vanderhoef. Staff.' Arkins, Helling, Woito, Karr, Winklehake, Mitchell, Dilkes, Holecek. Tapes: 97-19, all; 97-20, all. Police Review Presentation/Overview 97-19 S1 Nov/ .... be sure that everyone hears as much as possible .... you can hear, okay. I am going to try and speak up. I would like to explain ..... this is a session without a detailed printed agenda. It has no gavel .....there is no public comment time. We welcome the public to sit and listen quietly ....We are going to start with staff presentations to the city council .... they will be recorded on television camera. Then we are going to have council questions .... We are going to go around the table... similar... council time .... We are going to take questions one at a time... allowed a follow up .... keep going around... get back to them again .... There will be no questions about specific employees. We can ask general questions about personnel issues or personnel's policies but not specific employees. Kubby/ ....so that we keep in the same subject as long as possible. Nov/The will be up the individual questioner .... Thornberry/If someone has a follow up question to an original question, can that be asked at that time even though they are out of order? Nov/Yes, follow up will be allowed but only one. Thornberry/ Nov/We have to be sure that everyone has a chance .... Mr. Atkins .... Would you also introduce any other staff members who will be speaking today. Atkins/By now council members have received a rather lengthy document which was prepared collaboratively by the staff. The major participants in preparing the document for you were the City Attorney, Linda Woito, and her office; Chief of Police Winklehake; Dale Helling, Assistant City Manager and also supervises the city's personnel function; and me. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 2 At your meeting of December 17, you issued a statement of direction to the staff. We are prepared to discuss the direction you provided us at the meeting .... involved in... preparation of the Police Citizens Review Board (PCRB) which you now have an ordinance in your hands .... In the 12/17 statement the direction was, I thought, three specific issues. 1-Compare Iowa City Police Department policies and procedures with other police departments in Iowa. 2-Summarize, secure information with respect to the training of ICP personnel ..... 3. To answer questions that were posed by the city council, directed to our attention. There were 60 plus questions and they have been incorporated into the report. It is my intent to present an overview of all the material gathered .... The information in the packet that you have, other than the questions prepared by the council ....are substantially public documents... thank all of the police departments in Iowa ....For the audience, we prepared a police review summary. It does not have ....lengthy curriculum statements ....It does have the narrative summaries by section ....We did provide a summary document for the audience. In your review you will certainly be asked to apply what you have read in that document to the circumstances surrounding the Shaw shooting incident .... I believe it is also important for you to note that much of what is taught to and learned by police officers in Iowa is identified in Statute, it is a matter of law and we have discovered that many Iowa police departments rely on training .for the field performance of their officers as well as the local policies. Each and every policy and procedure or circumstance that could be confronted by an officer is not identified in some written fashion. It is a combination, in my judgment, of training, departmental policy, commonly accepted practices and locally accepted standards. I would like to move to the first section which is devoted to police training. There are four major training activities as they relate to Iowa City Police Officers. The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, which is the basic training; the Iowa City Police Department field training, which is our in-house training initiative. There is a program called MATS which is Multi-Agency Training Systems, which is a consortium of four police agencies in Johnson County, Coralville, Iowa City, Johnson County Sheriff and the Unlversity's Department of Public Safety. The fourth called Mobile Team Inservice Training which is also a for fee participation which we participate in. That is paying our fees. It is located in the Quad Cities and Iowa and Illinois police agencies participate in the programs they provide .... Iowa City Police Department (ICPD). We have 64 budgeted positions, 63 are now filled... 56 males, 7 females. The average age of an IC police officer is 38 years .... has 12 years of service and has obtained an educational level of 15 years. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 3 The first training component. The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy is located in Johnston, Iowa .... created' by act of legislature in 1967 and is part of Iowa's Administrative Code. The curriculum and certification of police officers in Iowa are identified in that Code. To be certified you must have satisfactorily completed training at the ILEA or an approved facility .... Only sheriffs do not have to meet all of the requirements of that certification process. However are substantially the physical requirements. Shown in your document is the long course. That is 60 plus topics in a 12 week training program. For your review... we selected those course topics that we believe are relevantto the circumstances and issues at hand. We have secured the curriculum handout which you have in your packet. They involved four areas: fire arms, defensive tactics, use of force, and crimes in progress/felony calls. The first curriculum that I wish to review with you is firearms and the goal as identified in the Academy's curriculum is a basic knowledge and psychomotor abilities to enable an officer to exercise proper judgment and competency in use of deadly force and police weaponry ..... number of training issues that must be identified. They include fire arm safety as well as the exercise of reasonable force; maintenance and other issues are also identified. In '67 when the legislature created the ILEA, they mandated training requirements with respect to Iowa police officers. That is the basic curriculum for Iowa City police officers with respect to fire arms training. In that curriculum is lectures and discussion on police liability, legal and moral aspects on use of deadly force are also a component as well as the exercise of the technical skills. In your curriculum, I think, an important element is the chapter on the use of the fire arm, the decision process .... lengthy discussion on tactics, legal aspects of the decision making process. Identify that in the Iowa Code there is specific areas for reasonable exercise of deadly force are identified by law as well as the moral aspects. The next curriculum is the use of force .... I want to skip that section and come back to it when we deal with the other police departments.. comparative... The next curriculum statement is entitled defensive tactics. It is very lengthy... describes many of the methodologies and training an officer must undergo and identifies how to use those training and tactics with respect to the exercise of force and arrest powers. Notably, in that section is something called the use of force option continuum. That will become particularly relevant to you later on .... The use of force option continuum is particular critical to the issue at hand. It was identified in the internal affairs report, particularly as it related to the recommendations concerning Officer Gillaspic, whereby the staff making the recommendations .... in the Internal Affairs Report, moving from situation assessment to the use of deadly force was the improper and unjustified use of that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 4 force. And I call that to your attention... In the training and defensive tactics is something also called objective reasonableness. In here is where officers are trained to be held accountable to explain reasonableness of any of their actions. Also in this particular curriculum, the use of report writing skills... they are trained to prepare a report... to identify to the best of their ability the totality of the circumstances they face as well as their perceptions based upon training and experience of the circumstances they may have experienced. The next curriculum is called felony calls, crime~ in progress. In that section there... are several issues that are identified. I am going to move from the robbery, · the burglary, the prowler calls directly to the issue of building search whereby training and techniques are identified with respect to how to deal with this issue .... highlight a couple of points identified in this building search curriculum. These are handouts given to officers, they are used by instructors .... This was in the outline. To identify the fact that it is difficult to determine why a building, a door, a window might be open. That they are trained to check the building as if it were occupied. They must undertake an enter or wait decision making process. They are instructed that if there is any other option, do not go in. They are instructed on the use of verbal challenge. Further instructions with respect to the circumstances they have at hand, that is the gathering of intelligence and information, how to use cover .... never search a building alone, always a safe point of entry, be aware of the potential for civilian influence, interference as well as the influence on your decision making. I bring those points to your attention now because we do have a section on building searches .... Field training and evaluation .... It is a second major element. This is something that follows ILEA trainihg. It is a 16 week training program whereby an officer has successfully completely the certification process at ILEA, is assigned to a field training officer. It is an extensive curriculum. But the curriculum is intended ....to be very very specific .... ·where is the jurisdictional boundaries... where are the schools... where is the area of patrol .... what is the procedure with respect to business checks. It is an expansion and elaboration on the basic training which we hope to apply locally. The next two training programs I identified were the MATS training... a consortium of agencies. We use officers from various agencies as well as other representatives .... This training consists of 3-4 days per year .... The state law requires that a police officer must receive 12 hours per year of training or 36 hours in 3 years. We have always been able to more than satisfy that training requirement. For the course content for the 1996 schedule .... hazardous materials, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 . Council Work Session page 5 CPR, defensive tactics, cultural diversity, survival Spanish, drug recognition, child abuse and dependent adult abuse, all of which require written examination following the training program. The mobile team training, ' the final in this training section, is another consortium of agencies in which we participate. In your packet is a detailed list of all the courses that that particular training program provides. Now I would like to call your attention to second section of the report .... Use of force. There is a training curriculum at ILEA specially identified as use of force. There are substantial legal issues as well as policy matters that relate to this component of the training and policy. Much of what is identified with respect to use of force is founded in law and the training program very specifically identifies those elements. For example... states the officer's authority to use force is statutory... Section 804 of the Code. It authorizes the officer to use reasonable force in making an arrest. Also in the Code is a definition of reasonable force. Further there is a definition also in the Code with respect to deadly force. Those are matters of law. I will defer to Linda at some time later on to discuss these types of issues, particular the issue of reasonableness ..... It is notable, I believe, that the use of force training and the language in the curriculum at ILEA, the language of the law, the use of force continuu, m, all of those fit together. We have given you a summary of policies .... I think you will find that the details of these policies are substantially tied back to the curriculum and the training and the law. Many of them are quite lengthy, almost long winded .... Others use a graphic representation... others combination... Some, as in our community, we use a video with respect to' use of force training. Throughout this summary of policies, ILEA language is frequently [ncorporated into the policy... references to the State Code are very common in those policies. There are model policies that are available .... International Association of the Chiefs of Police .... we happen to believe, to be one of the better ones .... recommendationsl.. detailed discussion .... Let me give you some of the other common elements that you will find in your comparison. Administrative leave for an officer involved in exercise of deadly force... legal disclaimers .... prohibition against warning shots is virtually unanimous. Use of force continuum... virtually unanimous. Some type of report must be filed following the exercise of deadly force and general discretionary language based up on what the officer confronts. That is permitting decision making by the officer in the field is also a common language. There were some unique aspects. For example, the City of West Des Moines has a review of all reports annually .... strong protective language if an officer were to exercise deadly force .... The display, drawing of a weapon of deadly force, the City of Dubuque. Pointing a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 6 weapon at another person is not a use of deadly force according to their policy and does not require the preparation of reports, etc. Another community, just the opposite, just as strong a language. Waterloo specifically identifies a shooting review board .... specially identifies that whenever an officer believes that such force may be necessary, they must make some sort of an announcement as being a police officer. Ames has a unique characteristic... they have a specific language to protect individuals engaged in non-violent civil rights demonstrations .... Coralville has a very strong statement with respect to the display and drawing of a weapon and nothing shall prohibit the exercise of the officer discretion .... there is strong language on the display of a weapon. You have attached to your documents our policies. Unfortunately the Johnson County Sheriff would not provide us with those policies .... I was trying to draw a comparison of all of Johnson County .... I was unable to do that. The Chiefs of Police model use of force policy. Again, it is something that meets some of the recommendations... sufficiently detailed.. offers some excellent suggestions .... is written in plain English .... I think we can conclude that the use of force policies are substantially the same from community to community, keeping in mind that each can identify a particular community standard that they happen to believe is critical and can be incorporated into that policy. I would like to move to Section 4 now in building search. We contacted a number of Iowa communities and found that most did not have a formal building search policy in the form of a general order or directive. That building security checks were a common practice amongst these police departments in Iowa. We often heard that the building search procedure was substantially officer training .... The display of a fire arm is substantially at the officers discretion and is dependent upon the level of threat perceived by the officer. That is discussed also under use of force .... varies, again, from city to city. We found that the discussion of discretion, reasonableness, reasonable belief, those matters were also incorporated throughout the training and thereby... individuals relied on that training on how building searches would occur. We have relied on that training. We did find in our record research that in 1985 a memo was prepared so we can have some historical significance to this issue and that memo in '85, and it may have been a response to some Supreme Court decisions .... you would draw fire arms only under certain conditions. One of the conditions that was identified is as a personal protection in a building or area search where the officer has a reasonable belief that substantial harm might befall him or her if deadly force was not present and immediately available .... historical significance to these issues. As you know, the PD has changed its open door and alarm policy. I think we can say unequivocally it is far This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 7 more restrictive than those that we found in our research. It is not without risk. That is securing a build!ng without observing as much as you can on the inside does risk the potential if someone were hurt, were in a hostage situation .... What we found to be the most notable about building searches in our jurisdictions is the use of canine units. Well over half used dogs and they spell out in quite detail how the animal would be used in a building search. I have incorporated in your packet Ames, that policy is substantialiy the same as the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the other polices that we found in other communities .... how a canine unit can be utilized .... The next section is accreditation. I am not going to spend a lot of time with you on that. You have a selected identification of the accreditations that might apply.. there are several hundred .... With that summary, I would conclude and return the meeting to you. We are prepared to answer your questions, those that you have addressed and really any other information you might need. Nov/Thank you. We are going to start, with Larry .... 1. Baker/I would like you to expand on this policy about drawing your weapons. It is my understanding we don't have a written policy other than that memo which may or may not be well known to officers on the beat. Why don't we have a written policy? If we don't have one, how are they trained with any consistency to respond basically the same way? We have also been told that other communities have very stringent rules that when weapons are drawn, officers are disciplined. Do you know anything about that? And- Atkins/I can recall one instance where I read of a report where an individual indicated that. And we did get a copy, we looked it up. It was in Minneapolis. That if you draw your weapon, you are immediately assigned to administrative duty and that is not what we learned. That was not the case at all. Baker/So how- I guess the basic question is you don't have a written policy, how do they know what to do? Winklehake/With regards to the officer as far as drawing weapons, there is discretion for the officer based upon their perception of what they are faced with and if you look into the Coralville one, there is also a very clear statement there that there is nothing that prohibits them from drawing a weapon if they are faced with a situation that they believe is necessary to have a weapon out. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 8 Baker/I understand that. But how is that conveyed to the officers in ICPD? How are they trained? I mean if it is not written down, what guidelines do they use? Winklehake/They use the guidelines that they have from the Academy and then through the field training that we have here,. that we follow those guidelines. And the use of force when you look at the use of force model, it describes certain kinds of actions that are being done, being taken, and the officer, a proper response to that. They need to be able to articulate the circumstances that they are faced with as to why they drew that weapon. Baker/And we are- Nov/One follow up. Baker/Clarification, follow up. Are we going to have a written policy? Nov/One follow up. I said one follow up. Winklehake/I am sorry. Baker/Are we going to have a written policy on drawing weapons? Winklehake/You now have as of, I forgot.what the date is, but you have a copy in there where it very clearly points out that if you draw the weapon, there has to be a report which goes to the immediate supervisor which goes to the captain and the field operations to my office. Baker/That is separate. That is a reporting sequence. I am talking about training sequence. That is all I got. 2. Kubby/So I guess I want to continue with this use of force of drawing a weapon because it seems that the only time an officer should draw their weapon is when they feel there is imminent danger to themselves or other people in the area and it doesn't seem that many communities recognize a drawn weapon as part of that reporting process for use of force and I know that might be one of the recommendations that comes out of this discussion. Are there other communities in Iowa who consider a drawn weapon as a use of deadly force? Or it is in that continuum? It is above level II. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 9 Atkins/Yeah, it is in the continuum, Karen, and our evidence indicated, again, the substantially officer discretion. Again, relying on the ILEA training, we found that there was clearly a difference of opinion among cities with respect the drawing of a weapon. As a follow up, when we found that Minneapolis policy, for example, it clearly states that you may use the weapon as a threat. Use the weapon as a threat. Now we don't agree with that. But I think you are going to find that each town is going to approach in substantially differently. Kubby/Did any of the communities that you looked at have anything about when a weapon is drawn or after deadly force is used, that they be some down time for that officer? Atkins/Yes, virtually everyone of them. Not so much drawn but the exercise of. Not the drawing of weapons, no. Kubby/That is something, I guess, I want us to talk about at sometime, too, because if an officer feels that they are in imminent danger or that others are and they are drawing a weapon, that seems to be a situation that has adrenaline flowing and that people need a down time to go back to regular patrol. Atkins/I would encourage council- Kubby/Make a note of that. Atkins/I was going to say council members, I think, should make notes of those particular issues. We will also try to extract them from the tapes so you don't have to devote that much time to- Woito/Karen, ifI could clarify. Polk County specifically, in its policies, recognizes a display of a weapon as use of deadly force and- Norton/That it is not deadly? Woito/That it is deadly force and I think there is one other city and I can't remember. Norton/But that is not everywhere. Woito/No, but that was Karen's question. Kubby/Thank you, Linda. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 10 Nov/Dee Norton. 3. Norton/I would like a little more detail about our local training. We just have the outline and it says that, this is respect to building security checks which I understand are pretty common. You think they would be among the most common things the police patrol would get into. Therefore I would like to know a little bit more what they mean. They call out titles like emergency searches, exigent circumstances, reasonable expectation of privacy. Could you elaborate a little bit more, somebody, on exactly what local field training constitutes or what it is? Winklehake/Field training as far as building search, again the officers approach a building. You have different kinds of things that may lead to a building search. One could be an alarm. One could be open doors, open windows or whatever. And when the officer arrives there are some decisions that they need to go through. They need to evaluate the situation that they are faced with. They have to make some sort of determination of what steps to take. That includes all of the things I said, whether windows are open, doors are open, whatever that case may be. They have the training that they have had in the past and they need to rely on that training with regards to what I am going to do next. There is officer discretion with respect to how to proceed with that. in some cases you are going to have a supervisor calling. The policy that we put in place requires that there be a supervisor there. Norton/I understand that but what do they mean at that time and these were policies that were in affect. Let's talk about the ones that were in affect in August. What do they mean by exigent circumstances? It is a funny word right off the top but go ahead. Winklehake/I think what they are talking about there is I guess the term would be more unusual set of circumstances that they are reviewing, that they are looking at at that time. What is different in regards to this. There is a different meaning for what legal would look at as far as presenting a case in court. But when the officers approach, what do they see. They have to take into account everything they see and make some decisions based up on that. Norton/Is my time up? Kubby/I think Linda had an additional answer for you, Dee. I think Linda had something to say. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 11 Norton/Go ahead, Linda, do you have a comment? Woito/ Yes, exigent circumstances is a legal term of art and the officers are trained in it here locally in the field office as well as from ILEA. Exigent circumstances is a term which is used as a permission to enter a building without a warrant under the Forth Amendment. There are about five categories. One is emergency aid, one is hot'pursuit. If you are trying to arrest someone and they are running and they go into a building. Another one is destruction of contraband. If you know someone is in the house, you are trying to a~est them and they are flushing something down the toilet, then you can go in. Another one is care taking. If you try and arrest someone in a car and the duty to take care of that automobile during the course of the arrest, you can impound the car. There is also one that is recognized in some states as a security check for protection of property and in terms of Iowa and the Eighth Circuit, I am still doing research on security check for Iowa and the Eighth Circuit. I found more cases yesterday, so. Kubby/Never-ending. Woito/Right. And in terms of reasonableness, the term- Anytime you are talking about reasonable belief the law generally looks at this in an objective standard, meaning not what is in our head but what someone in like circumstances, with similar training, abilities and competence, would view as reasonable under the same and similar circumstances. It is a frustrating term. It drives all first year law students crazy but that is a term that the law officers have to deal with and they have to learn. 4. Nov/Thank you. I am going to another follow up on open doors. As I was reading through this, I found a very detailed open door policy written after this particular instance. Was there ever anything in writing before this? I found references to policies in writing but I never found it in the book. Woito/No, there weren't. Nov/We have the City Attorney who is saying no, there were none. Just so we get it into the microphone. Thornberry/That was no policies on open door? Norton/No explicit. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 12 Nov/No written policies. Norton/There are pieces in several curriculum. Nov/I was asking if there was a written policy before we had the current written policy and I was told there was not. Go ahead, Dean. 5. Thomberry/All right. The policy on open doors was changed recently and cards sent out to all business owners in the community or I don't know who the cards were sent to. I received one for my business in the south part 0ftown indicating who should be contacted in case something looks iffy, whether an alarm goes off, whether there is an open door, whether there is a broken window in a place of business. What, let's see- Were cards sent to all businesses in Iowa City or just selected parts of town? I have a follow up question to that. Winklehake/We sent cards. We attempted to send it to every business. We also found that some businesses were no longer in business and there may be one in place that we didn't have a record of and we are now in the process of having people go knock on doors, go pay a visit and see if we can get the proper information. One of the things that we did with those particular cards, we are going to ask the Chamber of Commerce to assist us in keeping that current. One of the things you find is that they never are current and it is very time consuming trying to keep it but we are going to do everything we' can because we are working with the Fire Department who does premise checks, business checks. And we want to be able to utilize that same information because they were keeping one set of information as to who to call and so were we. What we have done and I can't remember the name of- I think there were two different people in our community that had suggested because of the Fire Department and we followed up with that. They are now combined into a computer database so that we can bring that up. The dispatchers can get it by business name or by address. So that information is available. How current it is, I can't tell you because it can change at any time. Thornberry/From all of the cards that were sent out to these businesses, what, I am trying to get a idea of the community participation in this thing. What percentage of those cards and letters have been returned to you that you sent out? 10% or 80%? Winklehake/I didn't write it down and I would be making a guess. I have been told but I can't recall right now. I simply don't know. It would be a guess. Thornberry/Give me some kind of a range. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 13 Winklehake/I think we are running well over 50. Thomberry/Over 50%? Winklehake/I believe so. Nov/Will you follow up? Will you check that number and let us know next week? Winklehake/Yes. I think there were- I forgot the number but it is fairly high, the return on it. Thomberry/100% would be nice. Winklehake/It would be. 6. Vanderhoef/R. J., if you will just stay there. I have a question that follows along with what Dean is doing. I don't know that it is a written down policy but I am aware of a general practice of how the police- CHANGE TAPE TO REEL 97-19 SIDE 2 Vanderhoef/Respond to alarms that are in businesses and I think it would be nice to have that in the record of what happens when a business's alarm goes off at the station. Winklehake/The policy that we have for that is kind of follow the new one that we put out for the open doors and so on, too. When an alarm goes off, officers are dispatched to the site and they will make a premise check. They will check around the building to see if there is a location that has been entered, whatever. And if there is no sign of entry, they will then contact the business owner which is the names on the ones that we are talking about that you just mentioned. And if there is a break in, they will then have to make decisions and a new policy says that a supervisor needs to decide whether or not they are 'going to go in to the building unless there is a very obvious fact that someone broke in or someone is in there stealing the stuff, the property I should say. Vanderhoef/Okay. And just for the rest of the follow up, they charge the business owner for that. Winkelhake/I am sorry, what? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 14 Vanderhoef/A charge to the business owner for that. Winklehake/For false alarms? After so many alarms, the business owner is then charged. The first few alarms are not charged. After that they are and we also have a Crime Prevention Unit where we will try to work with people. Not so much the business but the individual homeowners on their alarm situation to try to correct those so that we don't have false alarms. Thomberry/$25 after five, Dee. 7. Lehman/R. J., don't sit down yet. I don't have a lot of questions but I think the biggest question that I have and I think it really has been answered. But were the policies and procedures of the ICPD on August 30th and basically were they similar to other cities in the country, other cities in the State of Iowa and were they generally accepted as, I guess, use the reasonable man standard. Were they generally accepted as proper policies? Winklehake/Yes to all three. Lehman/Does Steve or Linda have any other comment because I think that, to me, that is absolutely critical if our policies were acceptable, they were reasonable policies. I am not saying they were right because I don't think that is the question at all. We may have to change some policies. But I think it is very very important that we were in compliance with other police departments within the state, within the country, and that these were by our own and other cities' standards, reasonable standards. Winklehake/One other thing after saying yes. I might point out, I think Steve and Linda had both done some research. The policy that we had about open doors, you talk about community standards. That had been a community standard, I think Linda found all the way back to at least 1962 that that was the standard that was in place and we pretty well followed that throughout that period of time and it is substantially the same as other departments. Lehman/To me that is a really really critical critical question and I am kind of glad you say the answer is yes. Nov/All right, we are going back around. Larry- This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 15 Woito/The only follow to that that I will eventually have for you are some tactics that I am finding out from some of the training bodies that I know you are going to want to discuss. I am going to want to discuss with you. Lehman/But I think the critical thing is- · Woito/But basically the policies generally track other cities in Iowa. Lehman/But the critical thing is the policies in effect at that time are the only policies that are relevant. If they are wrong, we change them. Woito/Right. Lehman/But if they were in effect at that time and our employees were following those policies, that to me, is the .relevancy. If we need to change them, let's change them. Woito/Right. What I will eventually, as I said before, want to talk to you about is some tactics. For example, how you perform safe open door building search where your gun is where the finger is on the trigger. Lehman/That is not relevant. It is now. Woito/It is to me. Lehman/But it wasn't then. Woito/Well, anyway. I am learning a lot about this from various' people. Lehman/We all are. Nov/Ready? 8. Baker/I will start with Steve and R. J. may have to follow up on this, going back to the drawn weapons policy. My original questions were about training and now I want to talk about reporting those incidents. I look at the city council questions and I am going to go back and review all of them. But 7, 21, and 31. The answers to those questions seem to me to be almost contradictory. Atkins/Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 16 Baker/We have a policy since 1991 that requires the reporting of a discharged- Atkins/In the case file, yes. Baker/A drawn weapon. But you have only got statistics for 1996 and clarify how were records kept, how are records kept, why do we only have them for 1996 and to me, this is the comment, the figures seem low. Atkins/I will comment on what I can comment on.for you. The question posed three years. We apologize, we could only get one year. Just simply the work involved. If you wish to get additional years, we would be happy to do that. But as you saw from the answer, it required hand sorting 64,000 calls for service, 11,000 case reports and the case identified the actions on the part of an officer and that is (can't hear) information that was culled out. Baker/There is not a computerized record? Atkins/There is now because we have a specific use of force report, a separate document, a separate everything. We have 11,300 cases that are somewhere identified in a computer. But they have to be pulled out case by case to pull out that particular item of information. Atkdns/Okay. Now what was the other one you wanted to go into? If you wish to have additional years, folks, I mean it is just a matter of we will have it done. Yeah. Baker/ On the question of how often weapons are drawn for 1996, you are telling us it happened 31 times. That seems to me to be an unrealistic figure and that is just subjective judgment on my part. Atkins/And I think R. J. will have to answer that. That information verifies it. Could there have been circumstances, I don't think there is any doubt that there could have been that was not officially recorded. Baker/Are officers required since 1991 to report every time they pull their weapon? Winklehake/Not when they pull their weapon, when they use the weapon. There is a difference most departments make between simply drawing the weapon and using it. The ones that you have here reported are going through the 64,000 some calls This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 17 where we have been able to verify that someone did something with that gun at that time. It is in the body of the report. That is the reason it is so difficult to find them. You have to read the report. The requirement was to have it in the body of the report. And that is what they did. The reports we now have put in place is a separate report. You are going to be able to get it with a computer. We can go back and look at '95 and '94 as well. As'far as only 61 times, I agree, because whenever there is an alarm, I would think that an officer drew their weapon. You are not going to see that in the reports though. Baker/Explain the difference between drawing the weapon and using the weapon. Winkelhake/The drawing of a weapon, I guess in my perspective, what I would look at is if he used it as if there are people there and I have it out and you are seeing that weapon. That to me is using it. Norton/Seen by others in other words? Seen by others is what you mean by displaying it? Winklehake/That is my perspective of it, yes. If I go to a bank alarm and I draw the weapon and there is nobody there, I have drawn the weapon, that would not necessarily have been reported. And I think that is in some of the other policies as well. Baker/Okay, so they are not required to report anytime they draw their weapons. It is just when they draw their weapons with the potential of interaction with- Winklehake/Now they are. The policy that I have changed says that if you draw the weapon, you write this report. Baker/Regardless of the- Winklehake/Doesn't matter. You draw it. A policy, I think, is in here. You should have a copy of it and it says drawn weapon. Nov/And that is the green sheet that is in here? Winklehake/I- Is that where it is? It is in the green, yes. Baker/And I think in there somewhere you also talked about how there is going to be a year end report on information like this. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 18 Nov/We are going a little too far here. Let's worry about year end reports in a different question. Baker/All fight, fine. Nov/Let's move along. Thornberry/A follow up question, right. Baker/I can always come back. That is all fight.' Thornberry/New subject, right. 9. Kubby/So I think that I just heard that the least- The information we have about what our open door policy was on August 30, '96. That we can trace it back to '62? Woito/Yes, as an unwritten practice. Kubby/Okay. And were there any changes made between that time' and August 30th? Woito/The only thing that'we know was the memo fromHarvey Miller in 1985 that was uncovered by one of the police officers. It wasn't available in my office. It wasn't available in R. J.'s office. Kubby/So, it is curious because a lot of business owners have said that they and even Jay Shaw had said that when there was an alarm, he had been called in the past and that there was a different protocol going on. So where does this difference in how different open doors are treated come from? That inconsistency.. If it wasn't an official change of policy whether it was written or unwritten. Winklehake/There was no change in January of'96. I am not quite sure what everybody is talking about because they haven't given me an incident what that was. There has always been options available for officers, such as depending on situation, they may well call somebody. But that doesn't mean the building wasn't searched. It doesn't mean the building wasn't checked first. I don't know the circumstances that were talked about. So I really can't give you a good answer other than to say it has always been an option to call the owner. If we go on alarm and the building is secure, we are going to call an owner. If we find a building that is not secure, the officers may well have checked it and then called the owner. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 19 Kubby/Okay, so it may be a circumstance that this policy of open doors which seems like it should be written because it is such a common incident to happen in a community with lots of commercial areas. That there can be inconsistencies and there is not a set protocol because it wasn't written down or trained specifically based on that protocol. Winklehake/I think one of the concerns you would have is a set of circumstances the officers have when they arrive. They still have to be able to make some decision based on what they are faced with. Nov/Thank you. 10. Norton/R. J., this may very well be for you. It is- Are you really fully satisfied, I am assuming you are familiar with. Are you really fully satisfied with the training at ILEA, at the Academy, in this general area? That is their concern about different techniques, safer techniques, more patience, great care with a gun because once you get the gun out, things are escalated. In your mind, even where there are no observers around, your options begin to be limited? Are you satisfied that the Academy is doing the right kind of training? And I suppose that follows on about our field training. Are we checking on whether people understand those delicacies? Winklehake/Let me start with the field training. When people are through with the field training, our field training officers will sit down and give me a recommendation whether or not we should continue their employment. We have terminated. We have- people have resigned because they were not going through the field training and progressing as we thought they should be able to. When they get through with the field training, I feel fairly comfortable that they are able to go out in the street in a squad car, provide police services. That doesn't mean that they're not very closely supervised. When you get through with this first year, the first year of training, it would normally be the Law Enforcement Academy, then our field training. That's going to be almost 26 weeks worth of training. The following, we have one year's probation. The folio.wing 26 weeks, they're working under fairly close supervision of a supervisor that's on the department. We increased the supervisory staffa year or so ago which really does allow us to keep closer eyes on how these people are working. From that standpoint, when they're through with our field training, we feel fairly comfortable. As far as the law enforcement curriculum, there are always things that I think can be improved. Much of the curriculum is set by a council. And that council does receive input from various police chiefs and so on in other areas across the state. Their training is based on all different kinds of departments. Our field training goes directly to us. One of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 20 concerns that I've always had and if you look back in your budget, you'll find that I spend quite a bit of money for training, is I'm always concerned about the quality of training that we're doing and the need for more of it. And we send people to quite a bit of training including the Quad Cities, because that's one of the few places that we can get the training that I think we need on a more regular basis because the Law Enforcement Academy does not provide much of the training that I would like the officers to have. That's the reason we spend our money at the Quad Cities. IfI could get that in Iowa, I'd be more than happy to do it. Nov/I think I'm going to pass this time and let somebody else carry on on that training if they want to. Norton/Go ahead- 11. Thornberry/I'm going to try and put you on the spot, the three of you, Steve Atkins, Linda Woito, and R.J. Winklehake. And I'd like each of you to respond to this one question if indeed you do have a response. At~er reviewing police procedures for this length on time, are there any policies that you've come across that you felt are Jify or should be changed? / (Can't hear). Thornberry/Regarding the police department. Atkins/Are there policies that should be changed? Yes. Kubby/There are 22 of them outlined in your report. Lehman/It's in the back of the report. Thornberry/Why? Atkins/Why? One is that I think we have a community standard here that we have to recognize that has to be articulated. It has been a practice. It needs to be spelled out specifically. I think that will help represent our officers that much better when they're out and about in the community. I think it will help them be better represented when we end up in court. I think that there are number of things that can be changed. But I can tell you about lots of departments, lots of changes we can make. But yes, I think there are things we should do.. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 21 Thomberry/As a follow-up, as half of my follow-up question to Linda, are there any policies do you feel- Woito/You are not going alphabetical? Thornberry/Are there any policies, police policies, that you feel are illegal? Woito/No. I mean, the way you have asked the question is like when did you stop beating your wife. Do I think any of the policies written as of August 30, 1996 were illegal? Thornberry/Or before. Woito/Or before. I find none of them illegal per se, as such. As you know I have expressed some concern with the building check policy. I am still doing research on it. It looks like Iowa may have well adopted just recently this last year a health and safety emergency entry into a building which might include protection of property for like an open door. What I do have concern about is some tactics that were carded out in the Shaw incident that I think we need to talk about and we need to explore how some of those tactics and training can be improved. If you are going to choose to have a policy on continuing to be able to go in on an open door without a warrant and without consent, I think we really need to.talk about tactics. Thornberry/Well, I wasn't asking necessarily about tactics. Woito/I know you weren't. I know you weren't. Thornberry/I was asking regarding the policies and it is sort of a follow up to Ernie's question. Were any policies that Iowa City had or have regarding anything since they are- you have said previously that they're widely accepted throughout all cities in the State of Iowa. Are there any that other cities should be looking at that are explicitly illegal or would find problems in the court with any of the policies, especially in the Iowa City Police Department? Woito/I think the experience that Iowa City has gone through recently is an experience that will be re-visited by most of the cities in Iowa. I just sent a letter to Bill Sueppel who is the President of the- Or he is the legal counsel for the Iowa League of Cities because as you found in your materials, the responses from the city attorneys in terms of even knowing about this unwritten practice of open door searches. None of them knew that such a practice existed. They had never This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 22 reviewed it. They had never heard about it and obviously, if they hadn't heard about it, I asked Fourth Amendment questions of them and they couldn't answer me. And so my- I think as a task for the mayors and the city manager professional group and city attorneys, we are all going to be much more cognizant of things like this because walking into a building does call into question Fourth Amendment questions. And in terms of the practice in Iowa and the Eighth Circuit, I still haven't gotten through all the cases that I need to read to give you a real firm answer on that. Thornberry/And that will be forthcoming? Woito/That will be forthcoming just as soon as I can get it done. Kubby/And we did decide that information would be made public as soon as we got it? Thornberry/Yeah. Woito/Yes. I see no reason for it- Kubby/Just FYI. Woito/My entire document and some of the people I have talked to. One of the gentleman who is a trainer from the ILEA, he wants a copy of my memo. I mean, other people have expressed they want copies of this because we are breaking new ground on this unfortunately. Thornberry/Are there any policies, R. J., that you would like to see changed or think that there might be a problem with? Winklehake/As far as policies, we are continuously looking at what we do and how we do it and reevaluating it and making whatever changes we may need to because we are, we have the court decisions, we have local court as far as how we can deal with things, for instance, domestic violence. These kinds of things. There is always a review of these policies. How can we deal better with that and that is an ongoing kind of thing. So, to sit there and say this policy or that policy, we routinely will take a look at the policies that we have after a couple of years just to see ones, if they need to be updated and then if there is a new law, Linda's office makes us aware of something, we are going to change that. So there is constant review. Nov/Dee- This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 23 12. Vanderhoef/R. J., I don't want to beat this one down but I heard you answer Larry about the drawing of the sidearm and what you described as using the force with the drawn sidearm and we had this new form to fill out and I am curious whether we have a written procedure about filling this out that describes what we are going to be measuring when they come to the box that says drawn sidearm. Winklehake/Which box are we talking about? Vanderhoef/Right in the middle. You said- Winklehake/Type of force used? Vanderhoef/Under physical force, non lethal weapons, drawn sidearm. Winklehake/Baton, is that what you are talking about, PR-247 Vanderhoef/No, I am talking about the sidearm which I presume is the gun. Atkins/Is it a definition, Dee, of the term drawn? Vanderhoef/It says drawn in that context. Okay, and you stood and told Larry in an answer that to you, to draw it and go to the bank and find no one there, that wasn't a reportable. Winklehake/No, no. I think I was using the term the difference between what I thought was use and not using it. In this policy, you draw that weapon out of the holster, you report it. Vanderhoef/Everything? Lehman/For whatever reason? Vanderhoef/For whatever reason? Winklehake/Yes. Vanderhoef/Okay, that is what wasn't clear and that is what I wanted to be sure was clear. When an officer had this in their hand and said all right now, I didn't use it- This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 24 Winklehake/No, it says draw which means you remove it from the holster. It does not mean- Vanderhoef/That is anytime. Winklehake/When you are on the firing range. It does not mean when you take the gun out, unloading it and downstairs putting it in the locker. That is not what I mean here. I am talking about you're working the street, you are outside.' Vanderhoef/Okay, that, s- So we know what we are counting is what I mean. Winklehake/This is a separate report that is very easily retrievable. We don't have to go through 60 some thousand reports to find that. Vanderhoef/No, I understand that. It was just the definition of what you were going to be counting. Lehman/Don't sit down yet, R. J. 13. Nov/I want to clarify one thing. This is not just a report of drawn weapons, This is a use of force report. So that even double locking handcuffs is reported on this form. Norton/Anything over Level II. Winklehake/The difference between this double locking, not to confuse you. On a number of arrests, there is on the arrest sheet where the person is charged, we have that code where they can mark it on there. This is if there is additional force that is necessary where they have to fight somebody. You mark it on here because there was additional force that was used and a follow up is- Just about every time we transport somebody, you are handcuffed. That is a matter of safety for yourself and the officer as well. And that does require handcuffs and we require double lock. Double lock means you can't squeeze them together to hurt your wrists. 14. Lehman/Well, my last was probably one of the most important questions as far as, I am concerned personally, as far as our policies'being consistent. I guess my next question and probably just as important, did we follow our own policies in the case of Eric Shaw? Winklehake/I think we followed the policies to the point that Officer Gillaspie had that gun go off. There is some variances in there. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 Febmary 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 25 Lehman/But I think those two questions, for me as a council person and I think, you know, as an elected representative for the people of this community, those are the two most important questions I have. Were our policies correct? Did we follow those policies? Now I understand that we had an officer who made an error in judgment. Is that correct? Winklehake/Yes. Well, yes, it was a mistake made. Lehman/But aside from that, we have followed our own policies. Winklehake/The policies that are in place, there are a whole list of things you can do. Lehman/Right. Winklehake/And I think the term has been used is whether or not he did anything wrong or could we have done it better. And I think that is probably the term. Lehman/But aside from this error in judgment, were the rest of the things that we did from the time of the incident until the DCI arrived or whatever, were these all according to our own policies? Winklehake/From the time of the incident to the time DCI arrived? Yes. Lehman/Thank you. That answers my question. Nov/Larry. 15. Baker/Let me shit't a little bit here and this is a question, I think, probably for R. J. Part of the reason for having this discussion is to understand policies and procedures of the Police Department so we can try to clearly understand if indeed there is responsibility for actions, who is .responsible for what. So with that, I want to talk about the chain of command within the Police Department. A few days before the Shaw shooting, there was a potentially comparable incident across the street at the Dodge Cleaners. It has been reported, R. J., that you did not know about that for a week. Why not? What is the chain of command? Because when I look at question #26 of the Council Questions, the answer given is that part of your daily routine is review of incidents, prior day incidents. Why wouldn't that have qualified as an incident? Was it? Who knew about it? Would you discuss the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 26 chain of command and your daily supervision. How much you know about the daily activities of the department? Winklehake/The chain of command, obviously, the Police Chief, and then the way the departments are set up, we have two divisions. Administrative Services which is headed by a captain which at the present time is vacant'. And the other one is Field Operations which is also a captain. And then beyond the.captains you have lieutenants. There are 3-4 lieutenants, one in charge of investigation and one in charge of each of the three patrol watches. Each of the patrol watches also have two sergeants assigned to that watch with a varying number of officers. There is another sergeant in investigation and another sergeant in planning and research. And I think you said it was two days before this? Baker/A few days. Winklehake/When I come in in the morning, as in here I think, we talk about different ways that I find out different things. There is a print out, a chronological print out of everything that happened in the last 24 hours. I review that. There is some very basic information, assault case, alarms, open door, whatever that is listed out. Location, where it is, officer, the time and the date, the time that the call came in and who handled it, that kind of thing. In addition to that, the captain and you are talking about incidents, he will also have that. The watch commander, depending on what the situation is, will brief the captain. Somebody had asked me the date that the captain knew about that and that was just asked the other day and I can't tell you, the captain is not here right now. I can't tell you what date he knew that. He told me that there was that situation. I can't tell you exactly that date. I don't know the date. Baker/That was not part of a written summary? Winklehake/Pardon? Baker/That incident was not part of a written summary that you would have gotten? Winklehake/That particular one, there was a report written, that I did see that. I can't see that. I can't tell you what date I saw that. I know it was after the individuals there had come into the station and talked to the captain. Baker/Okay. But when I read the answer to question 26, I read it as you get a daily report of what happened the previous day. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 27 Winklehake/Yes. Baker/And if that was in a daily report, then you would have known about it the next day. Winklehake/The daily report that I was talking about here would have something and I could probably get the report to tell you exactly what is said. But it probably had something like an open door at such and such a location. There is very basic information there. It is just a chronological. It is not a written report of several pages on each case. Baker/And so you didn't know the details of that report until several days later? Winklehake/I don't know how long exactly that was. I know you said a week. Baker/It is not in this report. Winklehake/Then I am not sure. I can't tell you. I don't know because I didn't talk to the captain. I cannot tell you what date that was when I knew about that. Baker/All right. When you did find out about it, was there any other follow up investigation or going back through the chain of commend then, especially since the individual involved was concerned enough to contact either you or the department? Winklehake/Yes. Baker/How did you follow up on that? Winklehake/Captain Harney had discussion with the individual who make the complaint. He was following through with that, talking to the supervisors and to the officers that were there on the scene. Then somewhere in between we ended up with the media and an attorney involved in that. We haven't heard from the people since that time. We did review what they did. In fact, it was even a discussion I had with county attorney on that particular issue and it was decided that given the set of circumstance that they had at that time, that the officer was correct at drawing the weapon. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 28 Baker/All right. So in the chain of command, if you only got some sort of a bare bones description of an incident, that is a decision made by the person that prepares that report that that is all that you need to know? Winkelhake/I am not quite sure. Nov/Larry- Baker/Now wait a minute, this is- Nov/I understand that he gets a listing- Not a report. Baker/ I am trying to determine responsibility in the chain of command for what turned out to be a sort of, in the minds of many people, an exemplary incident of poor judgment and that is what I am trying to determine. Why you wouldn't, who makes the determination that you know X about an incident and in this case, the judgment was that it wasn't important enough and sort of- Winklehake/No, I received the written report of what occurred. It was alter the captain became aware of it and the reports were prepared and I did see those. I can't tell you whether that was two days or three days or if you said a week. I don't know. I don't recall. Baker/Would you follow up on that and get us a clear chronology? Winklehake/Sure. 16. Kubby/I want to go back to field training officers and I guess I am interested to know how many field training officers we have? How long have they been on the ICPD force and how- Well, I guess that is the important part. I guess I really want to know how old they are, as well. That may indicate experience. R. J., I asked how many field training officers we have and what is their level of experience in police work? Winklehake/The number of officers vary because alter we train them they will do the field training for a couple of years and then they don't want to do it any longer. So we continually train people. We have four being trained within the next 30 days again and that will be four different ones. Kubby/So there are four at a time? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 29 Winklehake/No. We train them whenever we can. This time we have an opportunity to send two to one school and two to another. So we are training four of them because through the promotion process and other assignments, we have depleted pretty well the number of people we had doing field training before. And what we try to do is keep, particularly with the turnover that we had, just be new people coming on in the department and retirements, we are doing field training almost consistently and people get very tired of it. They get burned out, I guess that is a better word to use, doing the field training. We try to replenish our supply with new people as we can. The average age of the officer, I would have to go check on the individual officers. It would be strictly a guess if I tried to tell you how old they are right now. Years of experience will vary. There are some officers that don't want to do this and suddenly when they are on 15 years, they decide, hey, I want to do something like that. We some officers that are 20 year veterans that they are doing it. We have other officers that are fairly new. It depends on what-how they are doing their job. It is more based on performance than it is you have to be on the department X amount of years. Just because somebody is not in the department let's say 20 years, you may have one year's experience repeated 20 times. Or you may have somebody else that has been there four years that does an excellent job and you may well want to use that person as a field trainer. Each person, when they have field training, are exposed to different field training officers. Part of that is so that you have different points of view of how you are handling the call. Some people are very good at sitting down and talking. Others may be by the presence and so on. But you can pick and choose what is going to work best for you and hopefully by having 3-4 people explaining how to do things, you will see how say Larry does something and maybe that is going to work for you versus the way that Ernie may do it or the way you may do it. That is the reason we try to expose them to at least 3-4 field training and we do keep training new people. Kubby/Is there a way we get feedback about our training from our field training officers or maybe why some people choose not to do it? Winklehake/Yes. Some people have chosen not to do it because they are going back to school and they don't want to go do field training while they are attending the University. They will attend courses. Others simply I don't want to do it anymore. I have done it for three years, I don't want to. Kubby/Do we have- I am sorry, I didn't ask my question very well. Do we get feedback our field training from people who are field training officers to make amendments in how we do our field training? Or from people who observe field training officers This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 30 who have chosen maybe not to be a field training officer because they don't want to or don't like the training? How often do we update that? Is it based up on officer- Winklehake/This training was updated probably within the last 18 m6nths. Sergeant Lalla is in charge of our field training and she updated this before the group that we hired with the Law Enforcement Grant. That would have been, we hired them August of'95. So this was updated probably through the summer of'95 1 would think. Kubby/Was any of that update based upon officer feedback? Winklehake/It is based upon a various training models that we have for field training. A component of that is Sergeant Lalla also deals not only with the officers who are being trained but the field training officer as well to be able to update and clarify anything that needs to be changed. Kubby/So the answer is yes? Winklehake/So that part is yes, that it would be. 17. Norton/I guess this is again maybe for you, R. J. Who controls or authorizes the duty time for officers? Winklehake/Officers are assigned regular scheduled days off and that is for an entire year. You can go in and take a look and find out who is going to be working what days for the entire year. Norton/What about if somebody wants to work extra? Who controls that? Winkelhake/It will vary depending on what that situation is. We have cohrt time that is assigned through the court system. They have to appear in court. They need to be paid for that. We have no control of that. Other case, you work on a case, you have to complete the case, that is individually. There are others that we post. If you want to work overtime, here is a list of overtime available, and then we would use equalization within the pay periods to be able to do that. Norton/Are there limits as to how much a person can do in a particular week or month or whatever? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 31 Winklehake/No, there is no policy in the city that limits that. 18. Nov/When we are talking about a new officer who was in training, you said there was a probationary period. Was that one year? Winklehake/The probationary period for a new officer is one year. Nov/Okay. Winklehake/From date of hire. Nov/Okay, Now they had some experience on their own before the end of the year..How many are staying? How many are leaving at the end of the year? Do we have people who have been there for a whole year and then decided not to do it anymore? Winklehake/No, the only people that have left are those that we have chose to initiate their leaving. Nov/Thank you. Lehman/That was a nice way of saying it, R. J. 19. Thornberry/Um, geez, I don't know how to put this delicately. Lehman/Dean, you don't put anything delicately. Thornberry/Maybe I ought to have somebody else ask it. How closely and how often does the Police Department and or the City work with Pat White? In other words, the County Attorney read a statement or made a statement regarding the incident under question and there has been some criticism, a lot of criticism, regarding that statement being that the perception is that Pat White works very very closely with the ICPD and the Iowa City staff and administration. Does he, in fact, work on a daily, weekly, monthly basis with the city and the Police Department? Winklehake/As far as the Police Department, he is a county attorney and any prosecution for state charges has to go through his office. So there is a necessity for the officers to deal with it. That is true. Thomberry/How often does this happen? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 32 Winklehake/It depends. It could be daily. In some cases, investigations, they will ask for his review on cases or somebody from the staff. It could be daily. Thornberry/So perhaps that the charge that the county attorney is in bed with the ICPD is accurate? Winklehake/I would not say that. Thornberry/Okay. What would you say? Winklehake/I have been in Iowa City for 8 years. I don't thihk Pat White would ever stop and not file charges for any reason that he may know somebody. I simply don't think that he would do that. Nov/Dee. 20. Vanderhoef/Okay. R. J., we have had an opportunity, a few of us at least, to see the new firearms training systems know as FATS and I would like to hear your assessment of what you think this could do for the training of your officers. Winklehake/It would certainly enhance it. We do not have a firing range. If we are going to fire a weapon, we need to go to Cedar Rapids. We need to make arrangements with Cedar Rapids to use the range. The firearms training system not only is something that we would have here that we are able to utilize on a regular basis, but it also gives you actual scenarios to go through and those scenarios can be changed so that the officer may have the same beginning but they are going to go all over and you can escalate the use of force or de-escalate the need of it. I think it is a training and the more that we have read or more that we are aware of and I think Linda will look at training as well. That the better you can do things such as scenarios to make it as close to real life, the better you are. I think it is only an enhancement. Vanderhoef/Okay, as a follow up then. How often would you expect your officers to use this system? Every month? Every two months? What would it look like as far as- Winklehake/If we had it here, I would expect that we would use it at least monthly, everybody. Vanderhoef/Everybody? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 33 Winkelhake/Yes. Vanderhoef/Okay, thank you. 21. Lehman/Don't sit down, R. J. I hate to pick on you. Obviously this council and a lot of folks in this room care very very much about the quality of our law enforcement folks and I think we all care about you. Now we have heard a number of comments and a number of questions regarding the number of times officers have drawn their weapons. How o~en do they fire those weapons, not counting the shooting of an animal that has to be destroyed or whatever? Just how many times do our folks fire their weapons, number one? And number two, how does that · compare to other cities in the State of Iowa? That is probably not a fair question. I should have given you some lead time. Winklehake/When you talk about firing their weapons, using deadly force? Lehman/That is right. That is right. Winklehake/How many times have we? Lehman/Right. Winklehake/In the almost 8 years I have been here, one time. Lehman/How does that compare to Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Waterloo, Davenport? Do you know? I don't know. Winklehake/No. No, I don't. I do not know. I have no idea. Lehman/Well, I guess I am not nearly as concerned with how frequently an officer draws his weapon because I think that is discretionary. He does what he believes to be the right thing. I am really concerned with how often he fires that weapon and over your tenure and I think you can go back a lot of years, very very few shots have ever been fired by an Iowa City police officer at. any human being. Winklehake/I probably just answered your question. Because when I said how many times they have fired it, there have been four incidents where guns have been fired. One time where somebody was hit. The other time was a warning shot and two other times on an accidental discharge at the range. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 34 Unknown/In all cases, officers were disciplined. Winkelhake/Yes. 'Lehman/In any event, I guess the thing that I would like to ascertain and reaffirm in my own mind is that I believe that we have a very very fine police department. That we may have had this tragic accident that resulted in a horrible death. But overall we have got a fine group of officers, well trained. And if we fired one time at somebody in 8 years, two accidental discharges don't count, a warning shot which we can't do anymore, doesn't count. Now we are in a city of 60,000 people. You hear the news and you watch the news, you see what happens in other cities in the State of Iowa. I think you people do a magnificent job. Winklehake/For the warning shot, it was not appropriate when that was shot either. Lehman/It is illegal now. Winklehake/I agree with you as far as the officers in the community. I think it is a great community and I think we have a good police department. Nov/We have a request for a council break. I declare a five minute break. Council members who brought their calendars, I have a little chart that I want to discuss. [Council Break] 22. Baker/Okay, I think this is a question for Linda and possibly R. J. In the Council Questions and Answers, #18. about what the DCI was doing. Part of the process outlined in that answer said "a search warrant was prepared to conduct a search of the crime scene." This was about at 5:00 in the morning. What was the crime? And is this sort of post-action warrant issuing? CHANGE TAPE TO REEL 97-20 SIDE 1 Winklehake/The warrant request was made, I believe, by the County Attorney and the DCI. Karr/Do you want to adjust the mic, R. J. Thank you very much. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 35 Winklehake/The DCI requested and the County Attorney requested that a search warrant be obtained. That is normal policy. As far as I know, normal policy for the DCI to do that. That when they are going to go in and do a search. Baker/Whenever they investigate, standard policy? Winklehake/Whenever they have worked on a shooting incident here, that we have always gotten search warrants and that is on the advice of the County Attorney's Office. Baker/Okay. First question, what was the crime? It is called a crime scene, what was the crime? Winklehake/The crime, it was an investigation of a homicide. Baker/Okay, thank you. Nov/Karen, go ahead. 23. Kubby/I want to go back. Larry touched upon it but I am not sure I heard the complete answer. I am looking at question/37 in the back and/327. The answer to #27 when asked about accurate records of how often officers draw their weapons, it says that the 1991 policy on use of force required a report and I assume this means require a report of drawn weapons. Is that accurate, that part of the answer to question/327? If it is, then why don't we have full records for 1996 on how often guns are drawn? The answer earlier today was that we may not have all of those recorded because it wasn't required when a weapon was drawn. Winklehake/The problem you have with the 1991 was that it was required in the body of the report which requires reading all of the reports. Kubby/Okay. Well, then in 1996 when we answered question/37 which has to do with keeping stats on drawn guns including the use of those weapons, we were just told earlier today that you went through all of those case files and read all of the reports and that we might not have- In the body of the report, officers may not write that down. So they may not all be recorded and I know Larry said this before, that it seems contradictory. Can you help me through that? Winkelhake/The report of drawing weapons, we talked about if it is used, where it is displayed, somebody sees it. Where we talked about drawn on all of them is if you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 36 have the gun out and we went to an alarm and nobody was there. They would not have that in that report necessarily. Kubby/Okay, so your definition of drawn means in the presence of a body. Winklehake/At that point, yes. The policy we have put in place does not say that. It says you draw it, period. Kubby/Okay, thanks for going through that again. And in the body of this question and also of question #7, it also asks and since we only got one year, I would hope- Basically, the question is not answered. In looking at who are the individual officers who are drawing the weapons, what is their. years of experience on the force and their training history. Will we be receiving that? Winklehake/We realize that that answer is not complete because we only answered what we were able to gather in that period of time. Atkins/We intend to take this and answer it completely, Karen. It will take some more time. But the identification of trends, yes. We intend to prepare a more comprehensive answer for you. Kubby/Do we have any kind of a time frame on some of this? Atkins/How long did it take for that other? Winklehake/This one? Atkins/Yeah. Winklehake/We started that about 3-4 weeks. Atkins/Okay, so it takes about 3 weeks to get through all of the calls. Kubby/I assume that we have the officer's name so that we don't have to go through 64,000 of 1996 to get that information for the previous one. Atkins/Give us a target of about 30 days, I will get back with you. We are intending to give you a complete answer. It is just that hand searching took a lot of time. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 37 Kubby/Because it kind of goes back to Ernie's comment really that it may be that there are all- that all officers are drawing their weapons at some point in time which may be expected. But there may be certain officers who are drawing them more often than others. Maybe it is their experience, maybe it is their training. We don't know that until we have that kind of information. It will help us focus on what our next step as a policy body. Thank you. Nov/Thank you, Karen. Moving on. 24. Norton/I am not sure to whom this should be directed. But what aspects of the Quad CRies Policing Model have we now seem inappropriate to this community and if so, why did we adopt it in the first place? Have we seen the light or something? Winklehake/First of all, when you talk about a Quad Cities Policing Model, I am not sure what that is. The only thing- Norton/Well, it is referred to here in the report. Winklehake/I know but there are two different things there. The only thing that we have. ever used with the Quad City Model is use of force. I don't know what the Quad CRies Model Policing is in the question. Norton/Was the aspect- Let's focus on the one you know about then. Was that a model that we now have rejected? Why did we adopt it in the first place? Winklehake/What we did was we had a 1991 model before ~us, it was training that was offered through the Mobile Training Unit that we attended. We had all of our officers attend. City Attorney's Office attended it. And a decision at that time was that that was a good model to use. It was being developed for 73 other agencies that were going to be using this model. And it was decided that that was a good model to use and we did adopt that. In reviewing this situation, City Attorney, City Manager, and I have all looked at these things and we agree that the model the International Association has gives a better explanation and gives more detail and is a better model. What we are looking to do, what I am looking to do is utilize our use of force, the pictorial part of it into the model that the Chiefs of Police recommend. Norton/Can you or somebody characterize that model a little bit more clearly for my benefit and that of the listeners? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 38 Winklehake/Which one? Norton/The Quad Cities Model with respect to the use of force without going into a long session. Just characterize it. Winklehake/Okay, it is in here. What that does, it's a fairly short order that says here are things to remember and then it gives you a graphic for five different levels of force. It explains what the level of force is and a proper response to that level. It is a basically graphic model. Many models are either narrative or graphic and this one is very much graphic. It gives you a graphic illustration of it. Norton/Does it permit progressing up that ladder too rapidly or something? Winklehake/No. Kubby/That may indeed be a community standard question, too. Nov/I understand that they are not differing in the way they are using force but in the way they are training to use this force. I am still not quite understanding this one. Come back. How does the Quad Cities Model use of force different from the recommendation of the Police Chiefs Association other than diagrams versus narratives? Is it a different style of training? Winklehake/No, it is not a different style of training. There simply is different format for presenting it. There is more narrative to the International Model than there is to the Quad City Model. As far as the International Model, you can or do not necessarily have to have a graphic of the use of force but you can. Nov/But the progression on use of force does not change from one situation to another. It is just better explained? Winklehake/I believe that is probably from the legal standpoint. Leave her answer that one. Woito/The model of a continuum with a colored charts requirements some explanation. The video that was prepared by Matt Johnson and Tommy Widmer and Anne Burnside is a very good video. I don't know if any of you have seen it on training and use of force. However, that graphic does not contain the plain English language out of the three major U.S. Supreme Court cases on use of deadly and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 39 excessive force. And it is not difficult to say, it is already included in the International Chiefs and I would just prefer to use plain English. Nov/So you could use that narrative, you could use the same video, you could use the same diagrams? Woito/Right. It is just using both instead of just one or the other. Actually all three, the narrative, the diagram and the video. Nov/Thank you. 26. Thornberry/In today's Press Citizen, the United States Attorney, Don Nickerson is quoted as saying I want to get this moving along to get this matter resolved. It is best for the Shaws, for the Iowa City community and for everyone else involved. Mr. Nickerson said he would push the Department of Justice to quickly consider his investigation into the death of Eric Shaw. The investigation by the United States Attorney, was that the FBI investigation? Was that an investigation by the FBI? Woito/ It is an investigation that was initiated by the U.S. District Attorney's Office in the Southern District which is where we are and apparently he chose to bring in the Department of Justice and the FBI to assist in the investigation and people here in the community have cooperated with the investigators and we have made people available to them if they wanted to interrogate them. Thornberry/Okay, so not only was the DCI investigated-was the first investigating team on the scene of this incident but then the FBI has also investigated the incident? Woito/More recently, yes, I think that has starte'd a couple of months ago. I can't remember when the FBI got involved. Thornberry/They weren't just following up on the DCI, taking their reports and going through it to see if there was anything left. They did their own investigation? Woito/They are doing their own. I mean, anybody that does an investigation, if someone has already done some work, you are not going to reinvent the wheel. You will read what they have done. Then you will go out and you will have your own questions and you will get those questions answered. Thornberry/Okay, now this was turned in to the Washington, D.C. Is that correct? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 40 Woito/Yes. Thomberry/This report just recently? Woito/That is what I understand and my only understanding of that is from the newspaper. I know that they have been talking to people in the community because Jeff Gillaspic, I know, was interviewed by one of the investigators. Thomberry/It was mentioned that Don Nickerson was going to Washington to try to push this thing to a conclusion more rapidly than letting it languish on somebody's desk. Who will be drawing a conclusion from the FBI investigation? Woito/ The decision will be made by someone from the Department of Justice which is basically someone who works under Janet Reno who is the Attorney General for the United States. I mean it is that Department of Justice. It is the legal department for the federal government. Thornberry/Will there be somebody in contact with Don Nickerson, the United States Attorney? Woito/Yes. Thornberry/On a ongoing basis so that we can get an answer as soon as possible? Woito/Anybody that can get an answer quickly out of Washington, you know, God help them. God praise them. Lehman/Or any attorney. Woito/Yes or any attorney. Nov/It is something we can't answer. Thornberry/I would like to know as soon as they know. Woito/Well, we all would. I agree. Thornberry/Okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 41 27. Vanderhoef/With our open door policy being' changed, I would like to know since this is a deviant to what is common practice in Iowa as we have seen in the things you have gotten from other cities. Then I would like to know from a policing standpoint how you feel about the new policy in respect to the safety and execution of the policy by the police officers themselves. Winklehake/I think the policy is very reasonable and can be followed without a great deal of difficulty. Otherwise we probably wouldn't put it out. Vanderhoef/Do you see some disadvantages? Winklehake/Yes. Vanderhoef/Would you like to elaborate on that, please? Winklehake/One of the concerns is if you secure a building, you still don't know what is inside. You could have an owner in the building who, something could have happened to him and you are not going to be going in there. You are going to try to reach that person by phone. So there is a down side to that. That is a concern and officers have expressed that concern. They are very much concerned that they will respond some place, an alarm has gone off and they are not going to go into a building because they can't get a hold of an owner at that point and there is no obvious break in, sign of a break in. They are concerned about that because there may be somebody in there that is hurt and we are not going to go in. That is a down side, very much so. Vanderhoef/Thank you. Woito/But we have knowledge that someone is in there and it is an emergency situation, that is one of the exigent circumstances that would permit entryway into a burning building or whatever. Vanderhoef/I understand that. However, there are times that there is someone there that you cannot hear, you cannot see them, you have no way of knowing. 28. Lehman/Well, I guess that probably is relevant to the question I have. As I read through this huge report, I read the, you know, the State Training Manual. I read the Iowa City Policies and whatever and I can read in any of those that we should not enter a building without announcing ourselves and two pages later it says you announce yourself as a police officer. We give the police officers a certain amount This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 42 of discretion which I think that is, I mean I think that is absolutely necessary. But in reading our own policy and those of the state, they say two different things. I mean we can go in unannounced and then two pages later it says you don't go in without announcing yourself. What is an officer to do? No I think one of the questions came, why wasn't there a warning to Eric Shaw? I don't know the answer. But in reading the policies, the officer was right and he was wrong by our own policies and by the same policies put out by the state. I think there is a contradiction there that really really needs to be corrected. Kubby/Are you saying that Iowa City's policies says give a warning, a verbal warning that an officer- That is not how I read our policies. Lehman/I think it says both things. Thornberry/The training does. Norton/The Training Manual (can't hear). Kubby/Maybe you could clarify this. Nov/We need to clarify this. Lehman/But I find that to be confusing. Nov/Okay, R. J. might be the person who trains. Would he be a better person to answer that? Woito/I don't know. You are right, in the building- Lehman/Is that correct? Woito/ You are not missing anything at all. The building search section of the ILEA Handbook lists a number of things that the training officer and I talked to him yesterday, that he talks about. And I say I have read 15 cases on open doorsl 15 or 20 cases from all over the country and many of the officers announce to identify themselves and he said well, I go over that in the training but what you lose is the element of surprise. Talk to one department, they say "we always announce because we want to give the person the opportunity to surrender." You talk to another department and they say "we don't announce because we don't want to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 43 lose the element of surprise. We want to have that on our side." And I think you need to have that discussion because it is a tough one. Lehman/I think there needs to be resolution'of that both for primarily for the sake of the officer. Woito/For the safety of the officer, I agree. )' Lehman/He knows what he can do and what he can't do and the way I read this, ifI am an officer, I can go blasting my way in there, announced, or I can stand outside and yell Iowa City Police, come out with your hands up. I can do either one. Woito/I think that is true. Norton/There are other options. Lehman/I think that they are conflicting. Woito/ And that is why I think we need to spend some time on training tactics and- because there are different tactics of a way to go into a building that I am finding out and those need to be discussed and you will be hearing about those. I mean there is a crouch position where you point the gun at the floor and your finger is not on the trigger, and there are different ways of doing it and if they impact on the safety of our officers and the safety of our community, then we have to have a look at those tactics. Lehman/Thank you. Nov/R. J., did you have anything you wanted to add to this business of announcing? Winklehake/Announcing is always an option and each officer at the present time there is a discretionary call to make with regards to what they believe is safety. Nov/Larry. 29. Baker/I want to go back to something that Dee and Naomi raised which is the Quad Cities Model and the changes we are making for. this other model. It is a change in how officers are trained. Is it a change in how they behave after the training? On other words if we had done recommendation 21, made the changes in the training, on the particular night in question, would the officers options been more This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 44 restricted? Would they have been unable to do things that they did that night? I mean, when you make a change like that, one of the expectations you are setting up in the public's mind is well, you are going to do things differently and what happened in the past wouldn't happen in the future because the circumstances will be governed by new rules. I am not clear yet on the difference other than the way people are trained, the difference between how it affects behavior. I need somebody to talk about that. Winklehake/Are you talking about #217 Baker/Is that the recommendation #21 on the Quad Cities Standards? Norton/Yeah. Winklehake/Use of force. Baker/Also, does that change search and entering buildings? Winklehake/The use of force that you are talking about, #21, ifI remember the recommendation is the change it to the International Association. That is basically replacing the use of force order we now have. It is the other things that you are talking about, entering a building and so on, is an additional training issue that we need to be able to address. I think that is what Linda also said. If we had made this change prior to August, would the officers on the scene that night been required to behave differently or would their options have been narrower, more narrow? Winklehake/If we are talking about #21, there options would not have been narrow. There would not have been that impact on behavior, not with this model. Kubby/The open door policy would have been. Baker/The open door policy, that is different. 30. Kubby/I am going to switch subjects and I am looking at question #4, the Council Questions. And it has to do when an officer is involved in the use deadly force, directly or indirectly. I want to talk a little bit about why one of the officers was allowed to stay on the scene for so long and to be able to interact with the scene and with other officers and with bystanders who came up, including the Shaws. And that it makes sense to me that part of the answer was the DCI may have needed this officer there to clarify what happened, to step them through the scene This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 45 as he perceived it. But to have that officer able to help monitor and secure the scene did not make sense to me. It seemed that the supervising officer who was them a minute and a half after being requested, either the officers themselves or the supervisory officer maybe should have said you need to stay here for the DCI but maybe you should need to be in a squad car and not interacting with the scene or potential bystanders. And I guess I want some explanation of why that scene is okay? There is no suggestion for change in policy about an officer who is involved directly or indirectly with the use of deadly force. To be able to have free access to the scene. That there is a way to have them on the scene to be a resource without free access. Winklehake/The officer did stay there for a period of time and originally we thought he was going to be there until the DCI came. Once it became apparent that they were going to first come over to the station, he was removed from the scene. He was not necessarily interacting with everybody. He was off to the side outside of the taped area that the officers, the supervisors have arrived. He had 3-4 different supervisors that were there. He was off on the side. Contrary to some people, he did not interact with anybody. He was off on the side. Kubby/I am hearing different "factual" information then. Winklehake/I spoke with the officers. Norton/Did he move some things around? Winklehake/What he moved when he first went in, that was for basically to check Mr. Shaw. And he did help put a screen up because people were stopping and that was to shield Mr. Shaw from onlookers. That did occur. When other people arrived, he was outside of that immediate scene area where they had put their plastic police line down. Kubby/So did that officer interact or not interact with members of the Shaw family? Winklehake/To the best of my knowledge he did not. Kubby/The Shaws indicate otherwise when they have been here to speak with us. Winklehake/I spoke with the officer and the officer indicates, he did not. That he was there and other officers had said they were the ones that were interacting. That is · the only information that I can give you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 46 Kubby/Do we know, indeed, how long Kelsay was on the scene because he was taken back to the station by another officer? Winklehake/In the- Kubby/Is it 457 Norton/About 45 minutes. Winklehake/If you look in the internal affairs, there is an interview in there, I believe. We have what time it was when he left. Kubby/Okay, I can go back and look it up. Norton/12:30. Kubby/So is it, then, the policy in the field of the ICPD that if an officer is involved, directly or indirectly, with the use of deadly force, that they will not be interacting with the scene. Winklehake/Oh, okay. They will be- They may be there so they can answer questions. For instance, if it is an investigation we do, they will be there to tell us what happened. With the DCI, we left him there pending their arrival so that he could tell them here is an overview of what happened which is what they would need. Kubby/They are not part of the team that helps secure the scene or monitor the scene. Winklehake/Originally when you are there, you will help. Say if you got to get the area cleared so people don't come in here and that is taken over immediately by the supervisor that was there in a minute and a half. There was a supervisor there. Nov/Dee. 31. Norton/This is a rather broad question and directed to anyone of the three of you I expect. But- and perhaps to ourselves, any of these questions after all, are directed to ourselves as well. I guess I am curious about why, and surprised, about why we have not been in the past more systematic in having our legal staff review and sign off on police policies, general orders, and so forth? I am not sure who should have This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 47 initiated that. Certainly we could have. Anyone of us, any one of you three could have, I am sure. But how did that happen to be the situation at the moment? Winklehake/I think if you are looking at the recommendation? Norton/I am looking at it before the recommendations. But I keep wondering wow. What were we doing before? Winklehake/The recommendations say make sure they are listed on a distribution list. The reality is if there is a general order, those are, in fact, were given down to city legal or whoever our representative in their office would be to look at those. Since I have been here, those orders have gone there with the exception of one that perhaps says this is a written directive system that we will use. Use of force, pursuit policy, those kind of things are in fact reviewed by somebody at the City Attorney's Office. Norton/Systematically? Winklehake/I give her every one. Norton/Okay. Woito/The general- You, I presume, have copies of the general orders which is the big blue books and the rules and regulations which is a little blue book. Those were all reviewed by my office. The Field Training materials I had not seen and of course the unwritten practices I, you know, we don't know about. Norton/In other words, this business, to just follow up. This business of search of a building, everybody calls a search and everybody assumes somebody is in a building. I call it building security. That one had not, though, is that right? Even though that it manifestly involves legal aspects. Woito/Yes, that is right and I, in talking with all of the various attorneys that I called about "do you have a building search or an open door policy." They all said I don't know, except one and that was in Des Moines. And so they had- None of them had written policies on open door searches because- Well, it is just a tradition in the society and there is a treatise by a gentleman named LaFave who is a professor and he has a treatise on search and seizure and for years and years and years, since the early 70's, his statement is and I am sure this is why Iowa communities have relied on this, that society expects the security and safety of commercial buildings and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 48 they want this done. And so, but now, it is important for the community to decide if you want it done or my preference if we are going to do it is to get consent. Implied consent. When a gentleman I talked to yesterday suggested when a new building comes to town, you do three little calls, show up and find out who the manager is, what their hours are, where their safes are, keep a record. Then you could find- have them sign implied consent or something like that. But then it goes back to the old beat cops. It was just traditional. It is traditional in our society. Winklehake/I want to add just two things. One, when you talk about policies..It really is not a written policy. It is a practice. : Nov/Come closer to the microphone. Winklehake/You are referring to a practice rather than a written policy and as Linda indicated, there really aren't very many departments at all that have written policy. The other one is when we talked about who looks over some of our procedures, our policies. For instance, in that- what she refers to is the big book. There is a whole statement in there about policies. These are the policies of the Police Department. That was reviewed by our Human Rights Commission. That was given to them for their review and input into that. This is how we ope.rate and they reviewed that. Nov/That is some interesting piece of information that we didn't see in this. Kubby/When is the last time that the Human Rights Commission reviewed the blue book? Winklehake/I would have to go back and look at it. I think it is within the last three years, though. Atklns/It has been at least two if not three years. Winklehake/Three, somewhere in that area. I don't know the exact year when that was done. 32. Nov/I want to change the topic a little bit. In question//23 about police officers receiving complaints, of police departments receiving complaints. It is listed many departments that had complaints handled by watch supervisors. Does Iowa City do anything like that? Winklehake/Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 49 Nov/Can you explain how that works? Winklehake/The watch supervisors are traditionally watch commanders who are people who use different terms. Lieutenants, sergeants, and in some places, they may be captains. It is a person that is in charge of that particular group of people that are on duty at that particular time. Most complaints by most police departments come to those folks and this can be anything from I didn't deserve that parking ticket, the officer didn't listen to me when I got that speeding ticket or he hit me. It can be a wide range of things. Most of those complaints are dealt with by the supervisor. From there a number of complaints are not resolved to anyone's satisfaction at that level, then they will proceed on to some other group within that department and in our case, it goes to an internal affairs where it is written down and investigation is done. And that is usually done through the captain in field operations. Nov/Okay. The answer we received said 14 internal affairs investigations. Could you check and let us know how many investigations were handled by watch supervisors? Winklehake/Yes, I can do that. Nov/Please, go ahead. $3. Thornberry/In retrospect of the incident, I feel compelled to say as one individual, as one city councilor, that I don't think I necessarily did what I could have in the at~ermath of the Eric Shaw shooting. We, as a council, and I can't speak for the rest of the councilors. But for myself, this has been a learning experience as it has been I am sure for a lot of us. Knowing what I know now, I would have asked some harder more detailed questions earlier on. But I, for one, felt like I was doing as I was instructed or thought that I was being instructed. I was- I have never been in this situation before. And didn't know what to say. Didn't really know what to do. So I asked a lot of questions from the City Attorney, from the City Manager, from other councilors more experienced than I and none of us have really been through this situation before. It was learning experience for all of us. But to come out with information early on regarding all of these questions that were asked and have been asked from the rest of the public to us, to be answered by staff and others, I felt took some time. Not everything we did was wrong. Most everything we did was right except perhaps if the investigation could have gone a little quicker and gotten some answers quicker without jumping to conclusions, that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 Febmary 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 50 would have been more- would have been better, more ideal. But most of the information that was dispensed or not dispensed was at the request of the City Attorney and I would like for her to answer if the instructions to us would be any different in retrospect, in hindsight, than we were given after the incident occurred. Woito/ In retrospect, I think all of us would have done things differently. I think there was some misunderstanding that you were told not to speak with the press. That was never my- I should have called you all myself and talked with each one of you personally. That was my error and I will accept responsibility for that because I will never tell anyone. The only people I told not to talk to the press were Kelsay, CAllaspie and Zacharias. Always, when you talk with the press, I just expect that you will speak the truth only because truth is an absolute defense in terms of any concerns. In terms of liability, there were a lot of things that could have been said early on and we all acknowledge that in terms of an apology. Some communication with the family and some acknowledgment that indeed the city was responsible without having to say we were legally liable. I mean we acknowledged that something went very wrong and to the extent that I may have contributed by not calling you all individually and say and making clear that I did not tell you not to talk to the press, I will accept full responsibility for that because I have never told my clients not to talk to the press. Always to use your judgment. In terms of what I would do differently, also, I would make a different call in calling in the DCI. Not all departments do that, and I would not have done that knowing their strategy in terms of their circumspect and total control that they insisted on from the get-go. That they have control over the entire investigation. That totally hamstrung me in my ability to do my job for my clients which was the city council. It was very frustrating. Thornberry/One quick follow up question in answer to your response. Who would you have called in other than the DCI if anybody and why? Woito/I would have called in department, a law enforcement department that I knew and trusted and that is all I am going to say right now. Kubby/So another outside law enforcement agency? Woito/Yes. Baker/We have that option? Norto~ Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 51 Woito/Yes, we have that option. And some of the policies that if you read in there, you will find the various cities and counties do it differently than we do. Kubby/And the other option we have as a council and maybe one of the things that we should add to our list of possible changes is some kind of emergency response for us. To get some training in that because- Thomberry/Well that goes back to Dee Norton. He is responsible for that emergency preparedness. Kubby/Although maybe it is not so different. I know when I got back into town and called staff to ask what was going on because there was no response in the paper from us as individuals, it was we can't do this, we can't do that. So my response was well, what can we do and we can explain what we can do and what we can't do. To explain why the DCI was called in, how that changes the situation and if it were another kind of incident and explain to people what the different kinds of investigations were, how they impact our ability to respond to the public. We could have done that the next day actually. The soonest we could have done it was the next day. Thornberry/I was finding that I didn't have much information. Norton/I disagree with that because I think we should have gotten together, no doubt about that. But my problem and I asked this question and part of the question came back as the answer. It is not my turn. Nov/That is right- Kubby/This is a work session. Council/(All talking). Thornberry/I was very frustrated and have been very frustrated fi'om the get-go on this one. Baker/Dean, let me take some disagreement with you. Nov/We are going to get back to it in a minute. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 52 Baker/There is a key word here. There is a key word here and that is instruction. We were instructed to do such and such. Thomberry/Be very careful what you say was- I mean that was- Baker/I never took it as instruction not to talk. Thomberry/I did, too. Baker/Steve Atkins told me volatile situation- He points out the obvious. Be careful about what you say. It is common sense. At no time did Steve instruct us to be silent. Thornberry/Absolutely not. Nov/Let's- Okay, let's let Dee Norton talk because I try to do things in order. Council/(All talking). Kubby/It is also a work session where we need to work on some things as well as round robin questions. Norton/I just want to say in looking for a briefing on, in my judgment, it should have been on Saturday the 31st or September 1 st or September 3, sometime, Monday, Tuesday. But we were getting no information. My question that I had posed early in September was why shouldn't responsible officials be given factual information early and often as it becomes available. Then how, without that kin~t of information, you cannot respond appropriately. Nov/We will get to that. Please, let's give Dee her turn. 34. Vanderhoef/I will just follow up a little bit with that because of the conversation that is going on here and one of the of the things that there was a caution on and perhaps you can explain how this works a little bit for the city. But it has to do with what they call the cooperation clause in our insurance policy. If you would like to say a little bit about that, please? Norton/Very appropriate. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 53 Woito/Yes. Another thing that was hamstringing my ability to be more candid with you because basically I knew all the information as of, the basic story, pretty early on. The insurance carders administrative services attorney cautioned against passing that information on to you because they doubted whether you could keep those confidences. And so that is not a very good reason but that is frank and an answer to your question. Vanderhoef/Thank you. Nov/Ernie. Lehman/I will pass. Nov/You're up. 35. Baker/I want to follow up on what was begun. I am going to combine two questions that I have in one and they are both for Steve concerning roles and responsibilities. In the question, the council question, I think it is page 4 where you and Linda and R. $. were asked to sort of walk through what you did immediately after the shooting. One of the things that you talk about is any information distribution which we could either legally or practically disseminate would be difficult. I want you to explain why that was a problem and did you make that decision yourself or were others involved? What sort of information are we talking about and finally, following up on that, are there any documents relating, in the possession of the city now, relating to the Shaw death that have not been released to the public? If so, what are they? Why not? And of the stuff that is released, has it been edited? Will the gaps be filled in. I can repeat that. Atkins/Yeah, you are going to need to repeat that. Let me just deal with mine up front. I think I can say to you unequivocally when I spoke with any of you on the telephone and I hope that you would concur, that I answered your questions completely and as fully to the best of my ability with the knowledge that I had. Thornberry/That is a fact. Atkins/I have found in my relationship with all the councils that I have worked for, complete candor is the best way and I think I was completely candid with you. I will share with you my frustrations. I think Linda articulated it rather well. That when the investigation is assumed by an outside agency, even the little subtleties, even the little things that you could normally find out- If, for example, were This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 54 conducting our own investigation, I would have not hesitated to share those with you. I told you what I knew, when I knew it and I feel very comfortable about that. As far as other documents, to my knowledge- Let me, before I go to that, Larry. The people that I consulted were R. J., Linda, Pat White and Dale. And I spoke with these people on a regular basis and I think they spoke with me on a regular basis because little bits of information would occasionally get out. As far as the documents are concerned, to my knowledge there are documents that have not been released and to my knowledge they are substantially controlled by the County Attorney's Office. And if there are documents that were cleansed, the gaps, to my knowledge that information still rests there. Baker/The documents that we have control over have been released? Atkins/I cannot say in absolute certainty. I can tell you in the preparation of this report, we dug everywhere and tried to get everything. And if we missed something, I can only apologize but I think we got everything out there that can be out there. Baker/I go back to the original quotation. Any information distribution which we could either legally or practically disseminate and would be difficult. Let's at the moment- Now does that mean there was information that would have been legal and practical to disseminate that was not disseminated? Atkins/I think there was information that we became aware of in time that we dealt with you in executive session and some of the circumstances you all went through. It is now common knowledge of the attempted suicide. You were aware that we dealt with that I think in a forth right manner and what we'were attempting to do. There may be other documents, again, Larry, that I am just simply not aware off. 36. Kubby/I do want to follow up on that. Maybe this is for Linda. How can we play a role? Is it legally possible or is there a process that an individual citizen or- CHANGE TAPE TO REEL 97-20 SIDE 2 Kubby/To help release part of the DCI report that has not been released to the public or that is- and that is in the hands of Patrick White, the County Attorney? Woito/You know, I haven't checked with Pat lately. Last time I talked to him, he was waiting to hear word from the Attorney General's Office for the State of Iowa on whether- because they would be the DCI's legal counsel. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 55 Kubby/Who was that? I am sorry, state that again. Woito/The Attorney General, Tom Miller. And whether they were still going to insist on the confidentiality of the DCI report. Pat White said that he had found the case law that I had found, you know, a long time ago in October when I released the internal affairs report. He said in terms of- Ifa question of police misconduct is raised, the courts will weigh that confidentiality of the politic officers or DCI report, and I don't know if the Attorney General has decided to waive it or not. I don't know if Pat White has decided to stop fighting it. But it seems to me that a Freedom of Information Act request could be initiated by a city, a citizen at any time to the Attorney General or the DCI. Kubby/You are saying that Patrick White does or does not want the Attorney General to release the full DCI report. Woito/It was always his position that he wanted to release the entire DCI report. I don't know that that- I just don't- I haven't talked to Pat about that for several weeks. Norton/Is that his call? Is that his call to release it? Woito/No, it is not his call to release it. No. It is Tom Miller's call. Kubby/Is it possible for a local government to file a Freedom of Information Act and to speak with the Attorney General about releasing the full DCI report? Woito/Yes. Sure. Kubby/I guess I would put that on another- I am having a continuing list of things over and above the 22 actions that we may choose to take. That might be one of them. Nov/Dee, you had a follow up on the release of information. 37. Norton/I found it very difficult not knowing the situation and the details of it or else to make a decent statement. I think we managed to do so on September 10th but there was certainly time in before that that we might have done a better job had we had a little bit more information. I want to change the subject just a bit and ask, this is directed to you R. J. I am curious, what is the nature of your contact with patrol officers as distinct from true commander? What is the nature of your direct contact with patrol officers? Do you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription Of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 56 meet with them on briefings, new policies, issues of concern? Individually or collectively? Winklehake/There are a number of different ways that we deal with officers. Our union president is back there. There is a method where we can have department meetings and those are- We ask whether we need to have one and if there are items that they want to discuss. So there is that kind of interaction there. As far as the policies, procedures, general orders, when we put a new one out, we deal with the supervisors. Here it is, review it. Generally they will review it before it is ever put out and after they have reviewed it, it then goes down to legal. We get everybody's input and then it is put out. They, in turn, use that at roll call. Here is the order, this is what it means and they will review those. Periodically they will review orders that are in place. Just don't forget. This is what that order means. That is that kind of interaction. As far as my personal contact with officers, I have contact with just about everybody in the Department at different times. I will be in the building at different hours, night and day. Last week I think it was in the building at least three different times where I talked with people that were on late nights. People that work from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Different times, day and night. I am in here at various hours talking to supervisors, officers, dispatchers. So there is that kind of contact. I don't know if that is what you- Norton/I guess I was thinking about do you ever sit down with a heart to heart to all of the troops and say here is an issue, let's get straight on it? Winklehake/We have Department meetings which we haven't had in some time because the issues that usually- here is what we are going to be doing for the next year, these kind of things. We haven't had one of those in a period of time. That is where everybody is invited. They are not ordered to attend that. More often it is different groups within the Department making up concerns. Whatever that issue may be, we talk to different people. Nov/Go ahead. I think I will pass this time. Thornberry/I think I will pass. Vanderhoef/So will I. Lehman/I have no more questions. I have a couple of comments but no more questions. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 ' February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 57 Kubby/Could'I make a suggestion because it is 4:40 and I know that Naomi had given us a chart to fill out in terms of possible meeting dates for the next meeting to talk about these areas and that it would be really great to be able to state now when our next meeting is. Thomberry/Good idea. Kubby/That we could take a few minutes break, we stay here and look at our calendar, fill this out and try to find something. I hate for us to walk away and then have to- Lehman/Well, we are going to meet again Monday at~ernoon. Nov/I would like us to be able to do that. If there are other questions, I think those should take precedence. We can stay a few minutes at~er 5:00 if needed. Baker/Are we going to announce Monday when the next meeting is going to be? Lehman/Well, I don't have my calendar but I would have this ready. Nov/Okay. Thornberry/I must not have a life. I just put any. I am available any time night or day between now and the 20th. Lehman/You don't sell suitcases. Thomberry/A lot of hamburgers though. Nov/Yes, he just sells hamburgers. Thornberry/They could fit in a suitcase. Nov/Larry, do you have any other questions? We are kind of back to you. 38. Baker/Yes. The first set of questions that I asked were basically broad policy questions. I am now into specific questions about that night. So, Linda or anybody else who thinks that the question might be inappropriate or concerning especially personnel, let me know. Referring to question 21 of the Council Question Answer packet, you say that stacks of boxes, we are talking about the crime scene itself. Stakes of boxes near the windows obstructed the view of officers. One of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 58 question is why didn't, why wasn't there more knowledge of what was going on inside? The answer here is that the windows were obstructed and that they did indeed, Kelsay and Gillaspic both did attempt to look through the east and north windows. And you also say that later those obstructions were not present when the press or other people were at the scene. Do you have photographs or somO sort of substantiation of the obstructions and do you have any witnesses to that fact other than the Iowa City police officers involved? Because we are clearing up now some, what I think, potentially misconceptions by the public about the incident. Winklehake/The people we refer to in this answer are Iowa City police officers, including the supervisors that were there. And in preparing this answer, we did not talk with other people that may have been there, media folks. Baker/How about the DCI, people like that. Winklehake/The DCI crime people took pictures and the DCI report has not been released to me. To tell you they have 2, 3, 4 pictures, I can't do that. Baker/Have you seen the pictures? Winklehake/No, I have not. I have not seen the DCI report. Baker/So you don't know if pictures would substantiate whether or not the windows were obstructed? You are assuming that. Winklehake/Take a look at the newsreel. It is there. I mean you see it. Baker/Okay. Nov/Linda and I were both at the report from Pat White. he had a news conference. Didn't he have some pictures of some sort? Do you remember? Kubby/It was mostly focusing on the door and how far the door and the marks on the door. Woito/Yeah, he had some photos but- and diagrams. Kubby/At the time of the photos, the windows were covered. Woito/We have never seen any pictures. I am sure the DCI has some. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 59 Baker/So sooner or later we can get that resolved. But it is the testimony that the windows were obstructed? Woito/Yes. Nov/I do remember some exterior pictures but I don't remember they answered that particular question. Baker/Okay. 39. Kubby/My question is to council as well as tostaffand that is we are talking about community standards with some of these issues and I guess I have a couple of ideas on what I want us to develop community standards around. There are four areas at this point. One is our use of force policy. Second one is the type of ammunition and firearms that we use. The third one is the open door policy and the fourth one may be related to these two things in terms of specifically announcing police presence or not. And I guess I don't feel able to say right now I know what the community standard is. I know how the community wants to be policed. I don't want to sacrifice effective police services. But I don't know what the community standards are and I guess I have some personal ideas on how we can go out into the community to get some feedback about some specific areas we may agree on that we want to create community standards around. And I guess I want to hear what council members think about going out into the community to find out how do people want to be policed in our community and want some feedback from staff on that. Baker/Let me suggest that that question might be premature to answer because I assumed we were going to have another meeting atter this to talk about the beginnings of change in policies and procedures based on what we learned or gathered here today. The concept of involving the community, nope, I don't think anybody is going to disagree with. But how to specifically answer that today, just seems premature. Norton/We've had a lot of input on it already. Baker/But the specifics on what Karen's talking about, we need to set up, say here are some things that we wanted to discuss in particular with the public. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 60 Thomberry/I would suggest in answer to your question is that we are the community. We are part of the .community. We're very diverse council and to go out and take a survey of the community. We are the community, so to speak. Kubby/Let's never have a public hearing. I mean. Council/(All talking) Kubby/And your answer may be we will decide that, and that might be your answer. Atkins/May I make an observation for a minute please, because that was a topic of discussion by your staff and one of the conclusions that we did reach is that the community standards rest with you. I mean that ultimately is your responsibility. You can get 1,000 recommendations, but four of you are ultimately going to decide what the standard is going to be. I think there are a number of process questions that can be discussed and debated. One of the thoughts we had was reconvening the Citizens Committee as part of our task force. I mean it would help define the mission. I think there's any number of ideas and I talked to many of my colleagues throughout the state and throughout the nation about these types of circumstances. I would think the most important thing is, if you can get us an agenda on what you believe to be the pertinent issues, you four, Karen, and plus the others, we'll do some research and come up with some ideas and bring them back to you and let you decide how you want to go after the thing. But we really need that agenda from you. Kubby/I guess by bringing it up now, is that I want'to throw out to you at this point about what I'm thinking and to the community to say is that inappropriate and if not, what are the other (can't hear)? Lehman/I think some of the things you brought up though we would, at least I would want the comments of the Police Chief and whatever on. Kubby/Of course. Lehman/For example, how do we choose the type- I don't want to ask my- I got a 34 year old son who is a very bright young man. I got the greatest respect for him. I don't want him telling me what kind of bullets police should shoot. But I do want R. J. to tell me. So some of those things I think are technical. Some are policy. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 61 Kubby/I do agree because I think there are policy implications about why certain caliber and certain types of bullets are used. That, you know, in terms of stopping power. How do you want to be policed? Do you want potential suspects to be stopped in that manner or not? There are choices. Lehman/Karen, I don't want- Kubby/I am not saying I don't want the Police Chiefs opinion. Lehman/No, no. I don't want somebody- Nov/We are not going to decide this tonight everybody. I am sure you realize- Lehman/Shooting and missing and killing you. Baker/We are getting away- Nov/We are really not here to make that decision today and- Norton/My turn. Nov/Yes, your turn, Dee. 40. Norton/I, with respect to that issue, I certainly think there is considerable feeling. We have heard it from the community already and we have heard it from ourselves. Substantial changes in those areas and possibly others are in order. What I would prefer to do is draft some possibilities. I much prefer to have people react to proposals even though you may get input in various ways before that. I think we should, in the light of what we have already heard, draf~ some proposals, maybe alternatives, and then add p.h.s on it as we ordinarily do. We also have to think about the role of the PCRB for continuing changes in this area. But we certainly need a serious mechanism for looking at this. I don't know how long it has been since the council, this council or previous councils, have looked in serious ways at police procedures. Clearly that is a mission of considerable consequence. Lehman/Well, Dee, thank God we haven't had to. Norton/But we have to do some-proactive. Lehman/No, no, we do now. There is no question in my mind. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 62 Norton/And periodically therealter. Lehman/I think exactly right and I think we have an absolutely total commitment to do this. But thank God we haven't had to before. Kubby/Do you have another question? Norton/No, go ahead. Nov/Does anyone else have another question as we go around here? Some people have passed but if they have though of another question along the way, I would like them to ask it. Thomberry/Do you have anything? No~No. Thornberry/I would like to publicly thank Steve Atkins in light of this incident. The information that was given to me and to us as a city council was accurate, was timely and was right on the money and I, in the past, have been critical of our city manager in several aspects. But I have come to the realization and conclusion that geez, even I could be wrong. Lehman/Oh, no. Thornberry/And, you know. I criticize when I feel that it is necessary personally. I am known for speaking my mind and throughout this incident I feel personally that Steve Atkins and R. J. Winklehake have been exemplary in their dealings with us as a council and me individually. Thank you, gentlemen. Norton/And ladies. Nov/Is there anyone else who has a question or a comment before we adjourn? 41. Vanderhoef/I have one question. In the literature here and I can't tell you who it was. This is R. J.'s question. What is a shooting review board? Have you ever worked with one? Who would be sitting on it? What does that look like? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 63 Winklehake/The shooting review board is a group, usually within your department or outside people. I shouldn't say outside people. For'instance, Legal staff. Who would review each incident where shots were fired as to whether it was justified, was it appropriate, that kind of thing. Vanderhoef/Have you ever worked with one? Winklehake/Not called a shooting review board, no. We have review boards for all kinds of different things, yes. Nov/Is this basically similar to an internal review? Winklehake/Similar but you could have other people on it as well. Nov/Ernie, do you have another question? Lehman/I have a couple of comments in regard to what you said, Dean. I think that we have had some accusatorial remarks as far as our City Manager and Police Chief are concerned regarding this matter and I, for one, and I would certainly hope that the rest of the council would reaffirm our confidence in these two individuals. I think there is absolutely no empirical evidence of any kind that there was any misconduct in any fashion by these two gentlemen. None of us are happy with this situation. This is an awful situation. I can't remember a day since the 30th of August that I haven't thought about the Shaws and I don't think probably any of the rest of you couldn't say the same. We all feel the same way. In large respect it is like throwing a rock in a pond. There is a big splash where the rock hits but the ripples affect all of us and they really affect the entire community. It is incumbent on us and I think this afternoon's meeting is a great start. we need to start this healing process. We need to make whatever changes are necessary, if any, in the policies and procedures of our Police Department and I sense a real commitment on the part of all of us to do that. You know, I think it is human nature when something goes wrong that we have to blame somebody. Sometimes and I know there was a committee formed for justice for Eric. You know, there will not be justice for Eric. What happened was unjust. And I really don't know how, I don't know how we can- obviously we can't change thatl But almost anything that we do would be another injustice. I think we have to learn with the fact, learn to live with the fact that this awful thing happened and that it was a tragedy, it was a mistake. And if we want to blame anybody, we blame all of you. You ask us to have policemen, you ask us to protect your children, your grandchildren, your wives, your property and we do that and we know right up front that policemen This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 64 are human beings and human beings make mistakes. We insist that they carry guns. Whenever human beings carry guns, there is a chance for a mistake. I think that it is incumbent on us and I think we are accepting this challenge to see to it that chances of this are less, less, less and less with training or whatever. But this is a tough pill to swallow. But I think we have to swallow this pill. Enough preaching, I am done. Nov/Any other preachers here? Actually Larry is the one. Go ahead. 42. Baker/I may have comment later, preachy or not. But I got questions right now. Nov/You still have questions. Okay. We would like to adjourn as soon after 5:00 as possible. So we are going to wind down. Please, go ahead. Baker/ All right. I have got a list of questions, a lot of them I will admit are very precise and probably not going to change a lot of- that important to the public debate. One of the things that I think we have been doing here the last three hours is not only talking about policy but clearing up events of that night, at least the best we can. So I have on specific question about Council Question and Answer #17, about the conflicting reports about Gillaspie's behavior, his actions at the moment of the shooting. There have been conflicting stories and the answer we get in the packet from staff to me seem, I said this to Steve privately. I will say it publicly. Seems evasive because it describes what Gillaspie said. But the question was what did other say who were there and describing his actions. And I would like to get some clarification on what the reports say happened that night at that moment so at least we can start to get some precision about the actions. In particular it has been said in more than one time in the newspaper that stories changed and that Gillaspic stood up, stepped back, raised his arm and fired which would indicate premeditation, forethought. When I read the- Thomberry/Why? Baker/Stood up, stepped back, raised- That is not a flinch. Thornberry/Is that premeditation? Baker/That is not a flinch. Thornberry/Is it premeditation? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 65 Baker/That is not a flinch. Thornberry/You said it is premeditation. Baker/ I will, in my opinion, that is forethought and premeditation. Yes. Now wait a minute. Dean, the important point is, did it happen. That is what I want to get clear. Atkins/Let me try because we did go through that as an exercise. I am going to call out certain- again, these are statements. The first one I am going to read from is the statement ofDaran Zacharias from August 30 and you will understand. You don't want me to read the whole thing but I am going to try to get on point with you, Larry. "As Gillaspic was opening the door I took a step closer getting ready to follow him in. Gillaspic opened the door slowly. About a third of the way and was inching his way in. Gillaspic did not throw the door. He would have been in the door frame. Gillaspic seemed to, all in one motion, stand straight' up and fire his weapon into the building. I could not see what was in the building due to the wall and the door were in the wayS' That is Daran Zacharias's statement about that. From the Internal Affairs Report I tried to find references by other individuals to- that similar circumstances. And I am reading Sergeant Jackson's comment that morning and he says "Troy said he had just discovered the door ajar and called for uniformed officers to investigate. Gillaspic and Zacharias arrived to assist him. Kelsay stood by as the two uniform officers prepared to enter the building. Gillaspic had drawn his firearm prior to making the entry. Gillaspic said- Kelsay said as Gillaspic pushed the door open, he heard a shot. He saw Gillaspic double over and thought Gillaspic had been shot. When Kelsay got to Gillaspic, Gillaspie's gun was on the ground. There was a subject lying in the doorway." That is Sergeant Jackson. This is the incident report from Troy Kelsay. "As he pushed the door open a gun shot was heard. It was fired. Gillaspic dropped his pistol and began to back away from the door while bobbing up and down at the waist and exclaiming a profanity. I was not certain whether Gillaspic had fired the shot or had been shot himself." This is the Internal Affairs Investigation of the 19th. Again, Kelsay. "I never saw a muzzle flash. I never saw him pull the trigger. I never-I don't know who had fired a shot. I heard it and immediately Jeff' started to back away from the door. He was kind of bobbing up and down at the waist." Baker/If you got one more Steve, that is enough. Atkins/You understand? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 66 Baker/I understand. Woito/(Can't hear). Baker/Have you got it there with you, Linda? Woito/(Can't hear). Atkins/There is the incident report and then there is the Internal Affairs. That is where I was trying to read the two of them. Woito/(Can't hear). Here and here. Atkins/Okay. I don't know how fast Jeff was opening up the door. The door was about a third of the way open and he was right in about the door frame when all of a sudden it seemed to me he stood up and fired one shot. He backed away, his gun came out of his hand, he seemed to be almost there, you know, brought up his hand and he goes on about it. Then he dropped his weapon. Baker/ Let me clear this up. I have gone through those reports over and over again trying to find out the sequence where someone specifically says he stepped back and raised his hand or raised his weapon and to fire. It is there, I guess, somebody needs to help me find it so I can go from there. I just can't remember. Atkins/I don't recall. I gave you a half a dozen examples we used when we talked about that issue. Baker/What were you going to say, Karen? Kubby/I was going to say that I have, it is not exactly what you are looking for. But from the next morning report or incident report from Sergeant Jackson saying I asked Gillaspic what happened. He said he shot the guy. He said as he opened the door he saw someone, saw their hands and something in the hands being raised. Jeff said he saw the object and shot. Jeff said the object turned out to be a telephone. That is not really what you are looking for. That has a difference flavor than- Baker/ They are all variations on a action which, when I read the training manuals and stuff, Gillaspic is walking probably crouched somehow, stepped back. But it is where the gun is pointed in the very beginning that is unclear and if there is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 67 evidence that it was down and then up, I would like to find it. So that is just a public call. That is the specific question. Nov/I agree with you, Larry. That answer would be significant. Just don't have it. Thornberry/Still from all of that, Larry, I can't come to any stretch that it was premeditated. Baker/I am trying to establish whether it happened and then we can argue whether it was premeditated. That is what I am trying to do. Nov/Karen, did you have any more questions? 43. Kubby/I do have more questions but I guess I am interested in that we- I know that we are going to schedule more meetings. I- There are a couple of requests from people that I want to make out loud. One i's a request by myself that at some point, before we conclude in late February if we are still on that time frame on all of these meetings, that some section of a meeting be open to the public. I am not quite sure what the best format would be or the time frame but after hearing this and any maybe further discussions about Fourth Amendment issues that we have with Linda and the community has a chance to look at this information on the Fourth Amendment information. But some point have some open section of a meeting. Nov/Yes, I agree with you. It would be something that I thought about and.!f council will agree, I would prefer that we look at this in terms of do we want more changes than those are proposed and then have public Comments on whatever changes. I also want some public comment on the PCRB, the new review board and this may be our best way to review policies. We may say we will have public comment on how this review board will operate and then we can say the review board should recommend policy changes if they have any in addition to what we have. So there are various scenarios and we could do one or all. of them. I want everybody to feel assured that no one on the city council has considered a settlement of the Shaw claim as finality in this area. We have all said this is a beginning. This is a first step. We are going to review policies. We are going to have a review board of citizens to review future police complaints. Thornberry/I think this was a chapter of the book that we could go on from. To this point when the City Attorney tells us be careful what you say because of pending litigation. If we go into executive session because of pending litigation. All of these things are pending litigation. Now that the pending litigation is no longer an issue, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 68 that is a dosed chapter and we can go on to finish the rest of the book. As Larry knows, there is more than one chapter to a book. Kubby/I still have sotne other things. I wasn't quite finished. Nov/Can you save anything for another day? Kubby/The two other things that have been requested- Thomberry/What did you say, Naomi? Kubby/No. The answer is no. There are two other things I would like to say that I do not want to leave for another day. We have been asked publicly by the Citizens For Justice and Accountability in the Death of Eric Shaw to answer the complement of questions that they gave us, many of which I think were answered today, although maybe not in the detail in which they were asked. And I just want to remind that we were asked to do that. And secondly we were asked very specifically, and this may need to be put on a list of things to discuss, whether or not we would want to have a resolution asking Pat White to change his stance and have this case, in terms of criminal charges, go to the Attorney General. And at some point out of respect, because it was a request by an organization, whether or not you want to do it. To at least acknowledge that request and say yea or nay and talk about why we would say yea or nay. Nov/Next time. Kubby/But I want to not have that be lost in all of this conversation. Nov/I have to say we did not lose those questions. We just didn't have time today to do everything. Baker/Before we pat ourselves too much on the back today, we have not and I don't think we can, but we have to acknowledge we have not resolved the basic question that seems to be hanging in the air which is the status of certain city personnel. What I would like to know is when can we unequivocally, at least from our point of view have an opinion about those two individuals and express it. When is this council ready to make that statement and I would urge you don't do it today but you do it- that we do it very soon. Thornberry/Which two individuals were you talking about? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council Work Session page 69 Council/(All talking). Thomberry/I have made my statement. Kubby/I thought that we had agreed that we would be done by the end of February in terms of talking about policies and training and detailed questions about the shooting of Eric Shaw and personnel. Those are- Norton/Certainly not today. Kubby/Some people may have already (can't hear) kind of expressed that they have already made up their minds. But that is the time- Baker/I would hope that we would settle the personnel question before we resolve the procedural and policy question. we ought to be able to do that soon. I have strong opinions but- Norton/Before or a~er Linda- Baker/Three hours and ten minutes into a meeting, I think we need to have those opinions expressed when more people are- the audience are still with us and we are fresh, too. Norton/Before or a~er Linda's presentation? NovPA~er is my preference. A_~er is my preference. Baker/I don't think we need Linda's presentation to evaluate those two individuals. Nov/Maybe not. Council/(All talking). Karr/We can't hear if you take off your mits. Nov/We have promised that we will not talk about personnel issues today. Baker/My point is when? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197 February 1, 1997 Council. Work Session Kubby/Are we still in agreement- Nov/Check your calendars. Baker/I did. Nov/Okay. Turn the checked calendars into Marian and anyone who does not come back with a checked calendar by Monday better have a note from your mother. Atkins/Before, someone mentioned that you are having a meeting on Monday afternoon? Nov/Monday night, 7:00 PM. This is a meeting on he budget. All we are going to do is the budget. Atkins/I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't- Thank you. Council/(All talking). Kubby/So the reason the Monday meeting was talked about was that one will finalize and announce when our next meeting on this set of issues will occur. Is that correct? Nov/That is correct. We are going to have a calendar session. Marian is going to say these are the dates that are available for most people and we are going to pick one. Kubby/Thank you, staff, for answering our questions .and thank you, public, for witnessing this discussion. Adjourned: 5:10 PM p~e70 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of February 1, 1997 WS020197