HCD in Practice - VicPol’s Operational Safety Principles The type of situation on display in the video of the second shooting near Ferguson last Tuesday is all too familiar to police forces everywhere. Mentally disturbed people make up a large proportion of police shooting fatalities, often the majority. However, there has been a concerted effort to find alternative ways of dealing with such situations that lead to a better outcome for everyone. One police force that has been grappling with this challenge is Victoria Police, and many of the methods they have developed are good examples of the principles of HCD being applied in practice. During the 1990’s VicPol went through a period where the number of police shootings rose to an alarming rate. In response Project Beacon implemented some radical changes in the way situations involving mentally ill people were dealt with. As a result the number of shootings dropped by half. Further reviews were conducted in 2005 and 2009, which have served to create a much better understanding in how to handle such incidents without the use of force. The first key lesson involves the use of time. In the St Louis video officers are pulled into a lethal confrontation also immediately on arrival. This fits the pattern with deadly shootings, which generally take place very quickly (OPI p.31). Incidents with a safe and successful outcome on the other hand, have a much longer duration, often several hours. The challenge for officers arriving on scene is to de-escalate a potentially explosive situation as quickly as possible, establish a cordon to contain the incident and maintain public safety, and allow time for specialist personnel to arrive. This also allows for a risk assessment to take place, good situational awareness to emerge, and proper command and control arrangements to be set up. An important shift in the thinking around incidents involving mentally ill individuals has been to redefine the desired outcomes of the police response. In the words of Project Beacon, ‘the success of an operation will be judged primarily on the extent to which the use of force was avoided or minimised’ (OPI 2009 p.18). This lead to the adoption of VicPol’s 10 Operational Safety Principles, which are, 1. Safety first – the safety of police, the public and offenders or suspects is paramount. 2. Risk assessment – is to be applied to all incidents and operations. 3. Take charge – exercise effective command and control. 4. Planned response – take every opportunity to convert an unplanned response into a planned operation. 5. Cordon and containment – unless impractical, adopt a ‘cordon and containment’ approach. 6. Avoid confrontation – a violent confrontation is to be avoided. 7. Avoid force – the use of force is to be avoided. 8. Minimum force – where use of force cannot be avoided, only use the minimum amount reasonably necessary. 9. Forced entry searches – are to be used only as a last resort. 10. Resources – it is accepted that the ‘safety first’ principle may require the deployment of more resources, more complex planning and more time to complete. It is not hard to see how the application of these principles would have lead to a very different method of approach in St Louis, and most likely a much more positive outcome. They would have informed the officers arrival on scene, including where they pulled up their vehicle and the intent behind their first actions, which above all would have been directed at avoidance of a confrontation and de-escalation. Acceptable options would have included holding back, walking away, attempts to negotiate calmly, or simply awaiting the arrival of specialist personnel, in the meantime implementing the principles of effective incident management. Repeatedly shouting commands and expecting a rational response was one of the least successful approaches (OPI p.31) None of these principles eliminate the risk to safety situations like these involve. Fatal police shootings remain a problem in Victoria. However, what is possible is to avoid the chain of events we see in the St Louis video, where the outcome was all but inevitable from the moment the police officers pulled up at the scene. Up to this point, the officers were in full control of their actions and had a number of options open to them, once they had arrived these were reduced to simple ‘kill or be killed’. The key point HCD has to make is this, ‘don’t put yourself in such a position’, and VicPol’s OSPs have much the same intent. (Office of Police Integrity Report, ‘Policing people who appear to be mentally ill’, 2009, Victorian Government printer 2012)
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 05:25:11 +0000
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