Monday, October 31, 2016
By Ed Runyan
MCDONALD
The McDonald Police Department has become the third Trumbull County department to adopt and implement standards established by the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board.
The others are Bazetta and Liberty. The Austintown Police Department in Mahoning County also adopted them.
The standards were designed by a committee whose goal was to strengthen community and police relations after unrest across the country over use of deadly force against citizens by police, especially against black men.
The committee, established by Gov. John Kasich, adopted the standards in August 2015. Since then, more than 90 Ohio police departments have adopted them. Ohio has nearly 1,000 law-enforcement agencies.
Among the chief requirements of the certification is that a department maintains written use-of-force and use-of-deadly-force policies. They must support Ohio Collaborative principles, indicate when a use-of-force reports will be written, and include reviews for policy compliance and annual testing of personnel.
The McDonald department wrote directives, and an assessor found the department to be in compliance with the standards, according to documents from the Ohio Collaborative Law Enforcement Agency.
“People don’t like change, but I’m OK with it,” said Police Chief Lou Ronghi. “I like transparency. We want to show people we’re on board with it. We don’t want to be the bad guys. We all have to do this together.”
Bazetta Township was the first police department in the Mahoning Valley to implement the standards.
Bazetta Police Chief Michael Hovis said his department has trained by standards similar to those of the Ohio Collaborative for about the past 15 years, “but now it’s just documented.”
The department has had one use-of-force incident since it adopted the Ohio Collaborative standards in June. An officer pulled his service weapon but did not fire it, Hovis said.