Hyattsville's legal insurance
provider wants police supervisors to take classes on how to spot and stop
police misconduct.
Tonight, in the face of four open
federal lawsuits against the Hyattsville City Police Department, the
City Council will consider funding a new round of training programs designed to
help supervisors spot and put a stop to police misconduct.
The two-and-a-half day
training program, entitled Early Warning System: Managing Misconduct for Supervisors,
will review the history of police misconduct in the United states as well as
law enforcement ethics, police corruption, and early intervention systems to
appropriately respond to reports of police misconduct.
The training will also cover
police sexual misconduct, examining seven profiles of sexual abuse by police
and discussing prevention strategies.
The training also includes a
session on how law enforcement offices should respond to reports of
police-involved domestic violence.
The class would be led by
Steve Rothlien, deputy director for the Public Agency
Training Council, which provides a wide range of training services
to law enforcement agencies. Rothlien spent 30 years with the Miami-Dade Police
Department. By the time he retired in 2005 he was the second highest ranked
officer in the department.
The idea for the police
misconduct training session sprang from a January 2012 meeting between ranking
members of the Hyattsville police department and a representative from the
Local Government Insurance Trust, which is essentially the city's insurance
agency.
During that meeting,
Hyattsville Chief of Police Doug Holland, Acting Capt. Samuel Alexander and
Jeff Perkins, a loss control associate with the Local Government Insurance
Trust, discussed the three-year track history of lawsuits filed against the
city police department.
At the time of the meeting,
there were three active federal lawsuits against the Hyattsville
police department. Two of them involve allegations of use of
excessive force. A third-–filed by a former city police officer-–alleged racial
discrimination in the city's promotional process.
A fourth lawsuit, alleging
workplace sexual harassment in the city police force, was filed in late June,
about six months after the meeting between city police officials and insurance
representatives.
At the time of the meeting,
an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into the
workplace culture of the city police department was still open.
Perkins was told of other
police training programs conducted by the department, including multicultural
sensitivity, interpersonal communications, police ethics and verbal judo
training.
But Perkins suggested the new
round of training for managers, and urged the police department to apply for
grants to fund the program.
The grant application was submitted
to the Local Government Insurance Trust in early April. By mid-may, the trust
approved a $9,300 grant to fund the training.
The class is slated for late
August at the city municipal building. First priority goes to Hyattsville
police supervisors and commanders, with the remaining seats open for
representatives of other local city police agencies.