Issue link: http://lawandordermag.epubxp.com/i/189636
ON THE JOB NEWS DISCIPLINE JUST HANDED DOWN SOCIAL MEDIA RANGEMASTER MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS Strategic Initiatives for Risk Management, Part 4 Focus on Foot Pursuits By Adrienne Quigley and Randy Means Randy Means is a partner in Thomas & Means, a law firm specializing entirely in police operations and administration. He has served the national law enforcement community full time for more than 30 years and is the author of "The Law of Policing," which is available at LRIS.com. He can be reached directly at rbmeans@aol.com. Minor Injuries? The classifcation of sprains and soft-tissue damage as minor may be misleading. Common soft tissue injuries, such as ACL tears, torn tendons, and meniscus damage can require Captain Adrienne Quigley is a 17-year veteran of the Arlington County, Va. Police surgery and extensive rehabiliDepartment. She has held supervisory positions in patrol, investigations and profestation, sometimes keeping an sional standards, and is a nationally recognized expert in officer safety and injury offcer out of work for a year prevention. She graduated with high honors from The George Washington University or longer. There is no indicaand her Master's Degree in Public Administration is from George Mason University. tion of what criteria was used www.thomasandmeans.com to differentiate between major and minor injuries, but it does not appear that information regarding lost work days Ed.Note: This article is the fourth in a multi-part series that focuses on risk and workers compensation losses were considered in management through improved focus on safety and wellness through strategic evaluating injury severity. leadership initiatives. Despite the fact that foot pursuits have been shown to produce injury rates similar to other useof-force encounters, law enforcement executives approach them very differently. Most departments proactively regulate use-of-force and related activity by implementing policies to govern behavior and conducting frequent in-service training. Few do the recent study done by Kaminski, Rojek, Smith same for foot pursuits. It is likely that this failure and Alpert reviewed nine years of foot pursuit data from the increases the likelihood of both offcer injury and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). The analysis civil liability. showed that 16.9 percent of all foot pursuits resulted in injury, a Foot pursuits are risky for both offcers and susrate similar to other resistive encounters. pects. In fact, 60 percent of the LASD foot pursuits Based on this data, Kaminski, et al, concluded that foot pursuits are resulted in suspect injury. Lee McCown, a retired no riskier than other use-of-force encounters and that therefore enCommander from the LASD and now the conhanced study of foot pursuits may not be warranted. However, this tract consultant for risk management in the Orange should not be construed to mean that such injuries are acceptable or County (Calif.) Sheriff's Department, was the original that agencies should not bother to implement training, guidelines and architect of the LASD Risk Management Bureau. In policies to reduce them. his work, he emphasized the need for tracking and An important fnding from the LASD study was that, even with a accountability, especially in regard to use-of-force progressive risk management bureau in place and corresponding trainand foot pursuits. ing initiatives, deputies were injured in one out of every fve to six foot The driving force behind that initiative was the pursuits. One must ask what other law enforcement activities have an high number of offcer and suspect injuries occurring injury rate that high or how much higher that injury rate would be in during foot pursuits. The goal was to reduce injuries an agency without policy or training guidelines. and lawsuits by minimizing the number of situations Kaminski, et al, described the majority of deputy injuries as minor, requiring force. Their approach included a reworking with only 6 percent of the pursuits resulting in a major injury, classiof the existing foot pursuit policy and the incorpofed as fractures, lacerations, dog bites, concussions, gunshot wounds, ration of a comprehensive reporting system that reand puncture wounds to the head, face, or groin. Bruises, sprains, quires supervisors to determine if pursuits are within scrapes, and soft-tissue damage were considered minor for the purpolicy, increasing accountability in the same nature poses of the analysis. as that required for signifcant uses of force. A 12 LAW and ORDER I October 2013