Moses Lake police chief discusses proposed police reform legislation

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake Police Chief Kevin Fuhr recently met with other chiefs and sheriffs as part of Rep. Dan Newhouse’s newly formed Law Enforcement Working Group.

Fuhr and fellow law enforcement officials discussed pending federal legislation, particularly the Democrats’ Justice for Policing Act, regarding major reforms to policing in the United States.

Proposed reforms include creating additional requirements for bias and de-escalation training, easier prosecution of officers whose actions contributed to a suspect’s unjustified death and establishment of a national registry of officers’ discipline records and misconduct complaints, among other things.

The legislation would also grant more power to the Department of Justice to investigate misconduct and use of force by the police, ban chokeholds and similar techniques, end no-knock raids in drug cases and limit the transfer of military hardware to police.

The end of “qualified immunity” as it’s currently interpreted is among the more controversial portions of the proposed legislation. Qualified immunity provides certain protections for government officials, including police officers, from lawsuits over actions taken in the course of their duties. The legal standard for use of force would be reduced as well from a standard of “reasonableness” to “only when necessary” to prevent serious harm. Deadly force would be allowed only as a last resort.

Fuhr said Congress’ look at police reform, painting with a wide brush, doesn’t account for the fact that a lot of the reforms they’re looking for were enacted two years ago in Washington when Initiative 940 passed.

I-940 addressed a number of reforms to police training and accountability in the state, including removing restrictive language that made it virtually impossible to bring criminal charges against an officer suspected of the wrongful use of deadly force.

“Instead of focusing on law enforcement in the nation, they need to be focusing on individual states that may be lacking the best practices that should be in place for law enforcement,” Fuhr said.

Changes to the policy of qualified immunity could present some issues, Fuhr said. With qualified immunity, he said, an officer who acts in good faith is protected from a lawsuit against his actions. Without that immunity, even if an officer follows best practices, they’d still be at risk of legal action.

“Who in their right mind would serve in this job, with all that comes with law enforcement, and be able to take the risk that, if you make a mistake, you could lose your house, your job, your retirement?” Fuhr asked. “Who’s gonna do that? And that’s the issue. We’re given that qualified immunity because we’re asked to make split (second) decisions that other professions aren’t asked to make. And, occasionally, because we hire humans, occasionally humans make mistakes.”

Fuhr said hesitancy in those split-second decisions for officers could possibly prove costly. Officers are vetted with a background check, polygraph exam and psych exam before joining the department, Fuhr said. At the end of the day, he said, they’re still only human.

“Human beings make mistakes, sometimes unintentionally, and sometimes intentionally,” Fuhr said. “You take this case from Minneapolis. This was a problem officer who’s shown a propensity for having this kind of an issue. Why wasn’t he dealt with earlier?”

Weeding out these issues completely isn’t really possible, Fuhr said.

“I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to fix the human elements out of this,” he said.

The focus, Fuhr said, should remain with states and agencies that aren’t following the best practices, not targeting the ones doing things the right way. Fuhr questioned whether the agencies where controversial and polarizing cases have come up recently are holding their people accountable for their mistakes.

“You should be able to correct, train, discipline, and if it comes down to it, get rid of,” Fuhr said. “If you hold people to a high standard and hold them accountable to that standard, then you should be able to weed out bad officers. It’s like any profession, not just law enforcement.”

Fuhr said if an employee with any agency isn’t following that organization’s values, they should be held accountable, or removed. Fuhr said, ideally, agencies across the country would be held to the same rules and guidelines across the board.

With everyone on the same page, Fuhr said, you can begin comparing “apples to apples.”

“If you look at all the changes in our profession that came out of I-940, we are head and shoulders above a lot of other states in this nation,” Fuhr said. “Having been in Idaho for nearly 10 years as a chief there, the requirements on our officers here far, far outweigh the training requirements that the officers in Idaho had to go through.”

Regarding the use of chokeholds or similar techniques by officers, Fuhr said the tactic he’s familiar with is called “lateral vascular restraint.” Fuhr specified this tactic is not deadly, if used correctly, and isn’t allowed by the Moses Lake Police Department unless it’s a deadly force application.

Fuhr said none of the agencies he’s worked for or led have allowed the tactic, but that he does know agencies that use the tactic and swear by it.

“In Washington, we learn that if you have somebody on the ground, if you put your knee on somebody’s back it can prevent them from rolling so you can handcuff them,” Fuhr said. “But, once they are restrained, you put them up. You don’t leave pressure on somebody for seven minutes on the ground.”

With the current legislation, much like when I-940 was proposed, Fuhr said there are biases on both sides. Fuhr said the goal is finding the common middle ground, which can be difficult.

“You’re gonna have groups that say no force, period,” Fuhr said. “And, of course, we’re gonna say, OK, if there’s no force, what’s that gonna look like? At what point are we able to step in and fix the problem?”

Fuhr said his department is lucky to have the support of the community in Moses Lake and Grant County. Comments and conversations with protesters who marched alongside him were very positive, he added.

“That’s because we at the police department have built a relationship with our community, the sheriff’s office too, that we can work together on these projects,” Fuhr said. “It’s not an us-versus-them mentality.”