SOUTH BEND, Ind. –– City leaders in South Bend are still fine-tuning and tweaking an updated use of force policy for South Bend police officers.
At a virtual meeting of the City Board of Safety Wednesday afternoon, Mayor James Mueller laid out some of the changes that have been made to the policy, which included a lot of rewording and clarification to make the policy easier to understand and interpret.
“We’ve taken another look at 300.4, which is the deadly force section, and made some clarifications,” he said to the board. “There was the use of imminent threat, imminent risk, and imminent danger throughout the document and the thought there was to combine it to ‘imminent threat’.”
The changes also add and subtract some language on what the proper use of deadly force may entail given certain “rapidly unfolding conditions that (officers) are confronting.”
Faith leaders in South Bend say they are appreciative of the transparency that that mayor’s office has shown in formulating this use of force policy.
“A lot of conversations,” Mueller said. “I think every member who is interested in this policy has a deeper understanding of what we can do and what we can’t do.”
Before it can be fully rolled out, the board plans to revisit the policy at its next meeting in May.
