As the debate over police use-of-force and minority relations continues to be one of the major stories of 2014, the Renton Reporter is looking into police tactics, procedures and relations in our community. Part 1 of 3.

After the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., the nation once again erupted into a national debate about use-of-force tactics and police relations with communities of color.

It had been a little more than a year since the Trayvon Martin case was decided and George Zimmerman would go free after a confrontation that resulted in Martin’s death.

Then, this fall in New York City, protests erupted anew following the death of Eric Garner, who died from a chokehold applied by a police officer during an arrest, and the subsequent decision by a grand jury not to indict the officer.

Renton has not had an incident like that of Brown’s or Martin’s, but is there the potential for something like that to happen here?

Comments from the Renton Police Department suggest that the potential for an incident like the Brown case is not known, but the numbers point to a downward trend in use-of-force incidents in the city.

Following the incidents in Ferguson and New York City, the Renton Police Department has not changed any of its use-of-force or community engagement tactics. Renton’s use-of-force policies are based on case law decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Could it happen here?” said Chief Kevin Milosevich. “Those same fact patterns could happen here. An officer could be responding to similar fact patterns. How our officers would respond is difficult to say.”

A decline in use-of-force

In recent years, Renton’s use-of-force incidents and reports have been declining, according to a memo sent out by Milosevich in January 2014.

“We have a good use-of-force policy,” said Milosevich. “We have a good use-of-force reporting process, where every use-of-force is documented and that report is reviewed up the chain, including myself.”

In 2013, the department submitted 162 use-of-force reports in response to 118 incidents, where force was used against one or more subjects. Ten years earlier the number reports was greater. In 2003, there were 174 incidents and 325 reports generated from those incidents.

Use-of-force is defined by the department as one or more of the following: pointing a firearm at a suspect; using wrist locks, arm bars, or escorting force; using pepper spray, a taser, hand strikes, punches, takes downs, dog applications, baton strikes or deadly force.

Between 2004 and 2013 there was a significant decline in ‘pointing’ reports, from 123 to 22, due to a change in training philosophy Milosevich said. Basically, the policy changed to officers only drawing and pointing their guns if they intended to use them.

As to how officers in the department operate with people of color, Milosevich likes to think the mentality isn’t going from zero to 60 with use-of-force tactics.

“I’d like to think that doesn’t happen,” he said. “I think our approach to people is based on more what the information the officer has at the time. Was there a crime committed, what type of crime, were there weapons involved? Those are the things that should indicate the type of force an officer uses in the initial approach, not based on racial makeup or ethnicity.”

Training for mechanics vs. diversity

Renton Police officers are mandated by the state to receive at least 24 hours of training a year. So every month they get a minimum amount of training that falls into specific categories such as defensive tactics, firearms, administrative roles and the use of their tools.

The use-of-force is a complicated subject, according to Officer Robert Dreher, Renton’s police training coordinator.

Officers have to take an extremely complicated subject that’s been decided by courts and make analytical decisions in a short amount of time in the field, he said.

Officers train on diversity issues about every other year and they were just a part of a city-wide training on inclusivity. But in terms of marrying the two types of training in use-of-force and diversity that doesn’t seem to happen.

“An officer is going to get that someplace else,” said Dreher. “We just don’t have the time. If we go into a class and we’re teaching them how to handcuff, cultural diversity doesn’t come into that. We’re specifically going through the mechanical aspects of handcuffing and that defensive tactic.”

The same is true, he said, of firearms training. Cultural diversity comes up in their administrative blocks of training but not while learning how to shoot a rifle.

“This is something we can always improve upon,” said Milosevich of community outreach and the frequency of diversity training. “Every law-enforcement agency across the nation has the same problem and I think issues that you’re seeing in Ferguson are just kind of the effects of that, of ‘we can do better, we can communicate better.’”

Dreher believes the grand jury in the Ferguson case came to the correct decision.

“Based on what I’ve seen and their grand jury investigation that there was no impropriety on the part of the officer that’s what they’ve found and certainly they based that decision on the guidance that we have from the U.S. Supreme Court and their district court…,” Dreher said. “But certainly that grand jury was given the information regarding the court cases that we base our use-of-force policy on.”

In 2013 the majority of use-of-force incidents in Renton involved someone with a mental-health issue. There were 23 such incidents that year. Following close behind were use-of-force incidents involving obstructing at 19 incidents and assaults, felony and misdemeanors, both at 18 incidents.

There were 35 black subjects involved in use-of-force incidents compared to 69 white subjects, seven Asian, six Hispanic and one Indian in 2013.

According Milosevich, there were 85 fewer use-of-force reports generated in 2013 than in 2012 and the department is at a 10-year low.

NEXT WEEK: How the police are perceived by the youth in the community.