Mt. Lebanon Police Chief Aaron Lauth and Mt. Lebanon’s Ward 2 Commissioner Steve Silverman confirmed in September that they would be publicly releasing the Mt. Lebanon Police Department’s (MLPD) Use of Force policy this month. It now seems like this decision is being reversed. Publicly releasing this internal document has the full support of all the Mt. Lebanon commissioners.
Rather than publicly releasing their current policy, which they said was in an unsuitable form for release, the municipality hired Lexipol, an outside, for-profit company, to write a new Use of Force policy. However, Police Chief Aaron Lauth says that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the MLPD’s timeline, and it will now be issued “sometime in the Spring of 2021.”
Chief Lauth continued, “once our officers have become acquainted and we are operational under these revised policies, we will have further discussions regarding public release of the documents.” There are two major red flags in this statement.
“Further discussions” is a far departure from a confirmed release. There are so many reasons why #TransparencyMatters and why we set this goal in August 2020. We have the right to know what it contains. The MLPD claims it is progressive, but how do we know for sure? Does it commit to protecting and preserving life? Are there equitable policies to combat an officer’s implicit bias that is committed to protecting and preserving the lives of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)? We won’t know until the MLPD’s Use of Force policy is public. Part of being a progressive police force is acknowledging community members’ right to know how their police force functions.
Delaying progress until the officers have become acquainted and are operational is an obvious delay tactic because this is an immeasurable goal. If they don’t release the policy, then we will never know if their officers have become acquainted or when all of these policies are fully operational. The MLPD could use this excuse to not publicly release their Use of Force policy forever if they’re continuously training officers on these policies. That is backward thinking. As residents of Mt. Lebanon, we will be subjected to these new policies, written largely by a distant for-profit company, without even knowing what they are. This isn’t a football team’s playbook—this is the game’s rulebook and apparently, the civilian team isn’t allowed to know how to safely play.
Keep Learning
- Donna DiNardo, “Defunding the Police Might Keep Grandma Out of Handcuffs” (Oct. 31, 2020). Mt. Lebanon Organization for Racial Equity.
- Imani J. Jackson and Frank LoMonte, “Policing Transparency” (Jan. 6, 2020). American Bar Association.
- Brian Forst, “Improving Police Effectiveness and Transparency: National Information Needs on Law Enforcement” (Feb. 12, 2008). Bureau of Justice Statistics
- Neill Franklin, “Time for a ‘code of transparency’ in policing” (Mar. 1, 2017). The Baltimore Sun.
- Hannah Knowles, Mark Berman, and Shayna Jacobs, “Police are using the law to deny the release of records involving use of force, critics claim” (Sept. 25, 2020). The Washington Post.
- “Integrity and Transparency“. College of Policing, UK.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.
