Orem Residents,
Over the past week, I have been contacted by many individuals who are concerned with the recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Most of the questions I have fielded are in regards to whether something like that could happen here in Orem and what we, as the Orem Police Department, are doing in order to deter these kinds of situations.
First, I can assure you that the Orem Police Department is an extremely professional organization with great officers and great leadership. I feel strongly that our constant training in the use of force, options for less-than-lethal force, and training in de-escalation help our officers better respond to and de-escalate situations quickly and safely. Do we ever have people who fight or are violent? Yes, we do, and there are times where less lethal options are not an alternative for officers. But I do feel strongly in saying that I am proud of the way the officers in the Orem Police Department treat the public and officers who use excessive force are promptly dealt with. I will follow with some of the things we are doing to maintain public trust and train our officers:
1) Body Cameras – We have one of the best body camera programs in the state which include mandatory body cameras for all patrol officers and body cameras available to plain-clothed detectives. Utah state law is very strict in mandating when body cameras must be activated and when they can be de-activated. We use the Taser/Axon body cameras as well as in-vehicle dash cams. The recordings have high-integrity as officers are not able to add, delete, or modify recordings.
2) De-escalation training – The Orem Police Department trains officers on a regular basis. Teams train in use of force, firearms, de-escalation, and many other topics regularly, but time is set aside specifically every two weeks for training. The Orem Police Department is highly active with Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) which includes training on dealing with the mentally ill and people experiencing emotional crisis. While this may not seem to coincide with the current racial themes, the training includes a lot of verbal de-escalation tactics that apply in all types of incidents. Our goal is to have 100% of our officers trained within two years of being hired. Currently, we have about 80% of our force certified in CIT
3) Community Outreach – The Orem Police Department takes great pride in its Community Outreach, particularly in regard to racial and ethnic minority groups. Our community consists of larger populations of Latino and Polynesian residents, but there are many more minority groups that we work with. Particularly, we have been working closely with the Black Student Union at Utah Valley University. We currently have many minority officers including Hispanic, Polynesian, Indian (India), and African American. We try to be very transparent and have become good at using social media as a community-building tool. Currently, we have over 58,000 followers on our Facebook page.
4) Policy on Profiling and Implicit Bias training – The Orem Police Department does have a policy in place which prohibits inappropriate reliance on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, economic status, age, cultural group, disability, or affiliation with any non-criminal group. This is enforceable by the Department and violation of the policy could include termination from employment. In addition, officers with the Department receive training on implicit bias. Currently we are sending officers through a regularly scheduled program in conjunction with Utah Valley University along with the Black Student Union.
5) Use of Force review – by policy, the Orem Police Department reviews ALL uses of force by way of an internal review of each incident by Administrative-level staff. The staff member will rely on officer reports, public complaints, body and dash-camera footage, as well as any other evidence to review. If any issues are found, officers may receive additional training or maybe disciplined, if necessary. Once the review is completed by the staff member, the situation is presented to a command-level board with its findings as well as any recommendations.
I feel that the Orem Police Department is in a much better situation that many departments around the country and our cultural climate here is also very different. It sometimes is frustrating to me when our officers are grouped in with one or two bad officers in other parts of the country who may not be taking the same steps we are here in the City of Orem. I can assure you that there is no one who dislikes a bad cop more than good cops.
I hope this answers some of your questions and can put many of you more at ease that we are doing everything we can to keep situations like what happened in Minneapolis from occurring here. We will continue to progress and reach out to the community and we are always willing to sit at the table with groups anytime to discuss issues or concerns.
Chief Gary Giles