Oversight needed or we may have too many Rambos!

I imagine many of you saw the YouTube tirade of the Chief of Gilberton, PA.  After his profanity laced tongue lashing, he shows himself firing three different types of fully automatic weapons.  The interesting part of this is he’s the only cop in this borough of 769 people.  The news articles say he bought the weapons with his own money and donated them to the town.  The town council acknowledged that they approved this donation.  An unanswered question is, “What the hell does a town of less than 800 people and one cop need with this armory?”  Other unanswered questions are whether the Chief has been trained and certified to use these weapons and whether the town has any written policy covering their use.  You and I know that the answers are no and, again, no! 

A few years ago I conducted an audit of a 40-officer police department in Georgia.  The first thing that struck me as unusual when I initially visited the agency was the large black van with ‘SWAT’ painted on the side positioned the parking lot in front of the agency so everybody passing by could see it.  I later found that the Chief had also taken possession of an APC (military armored personnel carrier).  I asked him whether it had ever been used.  “Not officially,” the Chief answered.  What did happen is a couple of his officers on the graveyard shift took it out one morning and filmed themselves riding in it which they then posted on YouTube.  Again, training and policy was lacking.  No one from City Hall apparently had objected!  This agency had the use of the County SWAT unit by just a phone call.

I’ve referred you to an interesting site for constant updating of what’s happening throughout the country in the arena of police misconduct – PoliceMisconduct.net.  The CATO INSTITUTE runs this site.  Another publication of this group is the 2006 report “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America” by Radley Balko.  You can download it from this site.  You might not like the subject matter, but you should be aware of this line of questioning occurring throughout the country.

My good friend Harry Dolan, retired Chief of Raleigh, NC, gets on his soapbox when the issue of officers wearing BDUs comes up.  “Now they want to wear them black pajamas!” he retorts.  I remember the fight by field officers to eliminate wearing police hats during the 1970s.  But when baseball caps suddenly appeared everyone wanted to wear those. 

Now there’s a need for all of these police tools and tactics.  The problem, however, is that often they are done without some detailed thought.  What’s the problem these tools and tactics are going to resolve?  What’s the risk management potential?  Do you have reasonable written policies, training and supervisory oversight?  Until these questions can be answered reasonably the Chief, city officials and the community being served must say no…or at least slow down the process.