BOSTON, MA- The busybodies are at it again in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST) has developed draft standards that would impact how Massachusetts police officers interact with youth in the state, reports Governing.
The new standards, created by a commission primarily comprised of social workers and attorneys, would cover everything from transporting youths to arresting their caregivers.
POST was established in 2020 and is designed to develop minimum certification standards for police agencies.
Only two members of the commission have experience in law enforcement. That will become obvious when you see what they have planned.
Last month, POST released draft standards that were embraced by some but condemned by others.
For example, Strategies for Youth, a national policy and training organization that focuses on youth-law enforcement interactions, has applauded the effort.
That draft will likely be converted into draft regulations soon, after which the POST commissioners will decide whether to present them for public comment.
“We’re really pleased to see this first-in-the-nation, first-of-its-kind Juvenile Operations Standard in a POST in the U.S.,” said Lisa Thurau, executive director of Strategies for Youth, noting the group’s proposals were incorporated into the draft standards.
“It’s really got a lot of the key pieces we want.”
One group that isn’t excited about the draft standards is the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association (MCOPA), which believes the standards go too far and that POST exceeded its scope.
Retired Chief Michael J. Bradley, executive director of MCOPA, said that while many of the draft standards align with current practices in place across commonwealth police departments, other portions of the draft proposal are either too vague or open-ended for officers to follow. In contrast, others will be difficult to implement.
“These prescriptive mandates exceed the concept of minimum standards and encroach upon areas traditionally governed by municipal chiefs, town policy, and collective bargaining processes,” Bradley wrote in a letter to POST commissioners.
“The draft regulation imposes significant new mandates that will be difficult to meet for many law enforcement agencies, particularly those in smaller municipalities or with limited personnel.”
Governing notes that currently, Massachusetts police agencies are increasingly holding youth in custody, partially driven by officers in the state responding to misdemeanors with arrests.
Those arrests are likely being driven by the failure of Massachusetts to take law enforcement seriously and its status as a sanctuary jurisdiction.
If the draft standards pass as proposed, they will be finalized into new regulations, leading police agencies to adopt new policies to comply and forcing an unfunded mandate upon municipalities to facilitate compliance training.
Thurau rued the fact that most jurisdictions nationwide lack youth-specific policies, aside from some federal rules, and officers receive limited training in dealing with youth.
Thurau said there is a “power disparity” between police and young people, and teens’ brains are still developing, with severe mental health issues manifesting during adolescence, Thurau said.
Note that many on the left believe this age group is mature enough to make life-altering decisions about “gender-affirming” care and surgeries.
Yet, police officers are expected to treat them differently because their “brains are still developing.” Thurau said officers need to be able to distinguish between youth behavior and criminal behavior, or “irritating or strange” behavior.
The draft standard also stated that youngsters may be less likely to understand when interacting with police officers due to a lack of life experience, and they may be “more easily intimidated or coerced” than adults.
That, the draft says, is why police officers need to “modify” their approach when engaging with teens and children.
The standards state that police officers need to be aware of developmental differences and the impact of their presence, as well as their potential for misunderstanding legal proceedings.
Officers should also explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, tell minors their rights, and advise how to file complaints or raise concerns.
Police are instructed to use tactics and techniques that are “developmentally and age appropriate; trauma informed, racially equitable; culturally relevant; and not intimidating, coercive and/or threatening.” [emphasis added]
Then there is the DEI clause–black youth are five times more likely to be arrested than white peers, while Latino youth are three times more likely, per the draft.
The draft, however, does not explain the rate of offending among these two groups, which would seem to be an important factor underlying those statistics.
The draft standards also parrot the talking points of the left concerning interaction between police officers and non-English speaking youth, noting that someone may not be complying with police instructions because “they don’t understand English well or because they’re terrified and do not trust the police,” Zuniga said. [emphasis added]
The draft standards address a gamut of policies involving police and youth, including arrest, transportation, and holding in temporary custody of youth, along with searching their homes and arresting their caregivers.
Police agencies will be required to establish procedures for receiving complaints, produce annual reports that analyze trends in policing youth, and ensure that officers receive the necessary training to comply with the new mandates.
Some portions of the standards are relatively standard, including the requirement for police agencies to establish procedures to inform parents of the location where officers are taking their children when transporting a child elsewhere.
Other standards are wide open to interpretation.
One, for example, mandates officers “take the least intrusive and most effective action available to minimize any harms that may flow from a youth’s over-involvement with policing and the criminal justice system.”
This appeared to clearly have been written by one of the attorneys on the POST commission.
The above is one of the areas of concern to Bradley, noting that the definition of “least intrusive and most effective” action is wide open to interpretation and is setting up officers who misinterpret the intent of that language.
That issue is a subject of discussion between POST and the Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC), which sets minimum training standards for police in the Bay State, and which prefers clearly defined rules, according to Zuniga.
However, she says “fluidity” is essential because officers need to be able to adapt to the different situations they encounter.
Bradley asked POST to provide “practical definitions and interpretive examples” to help agencies and their officers avoid any landmines, as well as model policies to assist agencies that will have to develop new policy documents.
One area of particular concern for Bradley is the requirement that youth should be transported with “at least one officer whose gender identity matches the youth’s gender identity.”
Bradley said that requirement is well beyond the scope of POST, and smaller agencies, of which Massachusetts has many, would have difficulty achieving it.
For example, some agencies may have only one full-time chief and several reserve or part-time officers, particularly in Berkshire and Franklin Counties in Western Massachusetts.
For some, the draft standards, while a start, do not go far enough. Shelley Jackson, Strategies for Youth’s law enforcement policies attorney, complained that youth who appear disobedient or defiant may have an underlying disability or be experiencing a mental health crisis.
Jackson also came out of left field regarding sexual relationships between officers and 16-or 17-year-olds, due to “power disparities,” noting the standards should include guidance for such relationships.
Such a policy would seem redundant given that Massachusetts General Laws already appear to make such contact illegal in the state.
Jackson also wants to mandate how officers interact with youth during investigatory stops, which may or may not end up in an arrest.
“There’s a lot that can happen in that interaction,” Jackson says.
“There’s a lot of research that even if a youth is not arrested or later taken into custody, then what happens in that investigatory stop and those questions on the street can really have an impact.”
Comments