CPD holds annual “Response to Resistance” training with citizen review board

The Columbia Police Department and the Citizen’s Police Review Board spent Saturday morning going over the department’s “response to resistance” policy.

“We do not use force,” instructor Andre Cook said. “We respond to resistance.”

The instructors went over the legal ways an officer can and can’t use force on a citizen. From the U.S. Constitution to state statute and down to each agency’s individual policy.

CPD’s policy says “officers shall use only that amount of force that reasonably appear necessary given the facts and circumstances at the time of the event to accomplish a legitimate law enforcement purpose. The reasonableness of force will be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene at the time of the incident.”

The department holds these annual meetings with the CPRB so they can better understand what’s going on in an officer’s mind when they are faced with using force.

“It’s important to get the information out there so people can understand that we’re human beings,” CPD instructor Rick Horrell said. “The methodology of thinking through a process and using force, which is a response to someone’s resistance, should be clear and understandable for the general public. It requires a certain level of thinking and sometimes things happen very, very quickly and that’s part of the challenge that we face.”

In a handout given to the CPRD, the evaluation of reasonableness must allow for the fact that officers are forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force that reasonably appears necessary in a particular situation with limited information where circumstances are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.

The officer may use reasonable force when the officer reasonably believes such force is necessary to make an arrest or to prevent an escape of custody.

The meeting also discussed factors used to determine the reasonableness of force. An officer is trained to consider the totality of the circumstances of each particular case. Some of the factors include the immediacy and severity of the threat to officers of others; the conduct of the person being confronted; officer or subject factors including age, size, strength and exhaustion; the subject’s mental state or capacity; the proximity of weapons; the availability of other options and their possible effectiveness; whether the person appears to be resisting, attempting to evade arrest by flight or is attacking the officer.

One of the board members, Cornellia Williams, said she was surprised to learn all the things an officer has to consider before using force.

“There is a lot the CPD does in order to combat use of force and it really needs to be out there more in the community what CPD does,” Williams said. “That was something that really stood out to me, how much of an effort they do to make sure there is no use of force here.”

CPD says the officer is allowed to use deadly force to protect him or herself or others from what he or she reasonably believes would be an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

The instructors also discussed how imminent does not immediate or instantaneous. According to CPD, an imminent danger may exist even if the suspect is not at that very moment pointing a weapon at someone.

After the instructional part of the meeting, the board members were allowed to experience simulated situations in real time so they could test their own decision making skills.

“My simulator experience was fun, but also it let you know in any given situation, less than a split second can change the whole dynamics of what happens,” Williams said. “Someone on the outside looking in may not have the full story.”

The board members were told about how long it takes your brain to register what’s happening around you versus how fast a trigger can be pulled and how many bullets can be shot.

“It takes your brain about three-quarters of a second to register what’s happening,” Horrell said. “He could have stopped doing whatever he was doing, but it hasn’t registered to me yet, and I can fire off six or seven more rounds before my brain registered he’s stopped.”