Dear Editor,
Last September, San Marcos City Council began accepting applications for members of the Use of Force ad-hoc committee: 15 community members who would review the SMPD’s Use of Force policy and make recommendations for potential policy changes.
I was among those 15 residents appointed to this committee. I joined because as the daughter and friend of individuals who have been victimized by law enforcement, I wanted to ensure representation for the perspectives of those who have had negative experiences with police officers. However, I was quickly disappointed with the language of the policy, and even more disappointed with the unwillingness of Chief Stan Standridge to make meaningful changes to it.
For example, the document is now missing language under the section that addresses reporting use of force. The original document stated that officers who use force must submit a report prior to the end of their shift describing the incident. However, it also stated that their supervisors should use “discretion” when delaying the form as the Sympathetic Nervous System “fight or flight” response (yes, I’m quoting the document directly) can result in amnesia, and thus allows the officer two sleep cycles before giving a final written report.
SMPD has given our community a slew of reasons to second-guess their transparency and trustworthiness. It took Chief Standridge over four months to notify council that Sergeant Ryan Hartman had ended the life of Jennifer Miller after crashing into her car while a 24-ounce can of Dos XX sat in his cup holder — and only notified them because her life partner, Pamela Watts, was ready to raise hell about this injustice and they would have found out either way. For this and many other reasons, I do not fully trust our police department, and found this section to be nothing short of a loophole that allows officers time to get their story together before submitting their use-of-force report. As a reasonable compromise, I therefore suggested officers submit one report prior to the end of their shift, and a second report after two sleep cycles should they recall additional details to what they were able to provide immediately after the incident.
The entire section that discusses this “fight or flight” amnesia has been removed from the document because rather than amending the section, Chief Standridge addressed my concerns by simply removing the language altogether. Keep in mind, we were simply working together to come up with *recommendations* to council, and then let them decide what stayed and what didn’t. Chief Standridge would not even allow this recommendation to go before council, which stunned me because other members of the committee seemed to agree with my recommendation and I thought we were supposed to work together as a committee, not be managed by Chief Standridge. This must be the same reason literally one third of the committee stopped showing up after the first meeting and only half of us saw it through to the end.
The way Chief Standridge ran our committee meetings began to make more sense to me when I learned that it was he who called for its creation. I realized what this committee really was: a Use of Farce committee, created with the sole purpose of allowing Chief to eventually proclaim “Look at us! We brought the community together and worked jointly to bring change to our Use of Force policy!”
As a committee member who attended far more meetings than most, I’m here to tell you it is all meaningless. No substantial change will come from this committee. The changes we made to this document would not have protected John Kelley from being tased and kicked on the ground for being deaf, nor would they have saved Rescue Eram’s life from SMPD’s bullets earlier this year. (If you do not know who these individuals are, I strongly urge you to Google their names; their experiences with our police department are horrific.) The entire document basically says anything goes, including tasing and chokeholds, as long as officers can claim they feared for their lives.
I write this letter to the editor as a community advocate who feels it is my duty to let the public know the truth behind this Use of Farce committee — it’s a pathetic attempt to convince the people of San Marcos that issues in policing can be addressed by bureaucratizing advocacy efforts into committees led by an untrustworthy police department.
Sam Benavides San Marcos
San Marcos
