Reacting to unrest nationally, Greenville is taking a close look at police practices

The seven members of Greenville’s newly formed Citizen Advisory Panel on Public Safety were charged with a heady goal: review policies on the police department’s use of force, deploying K9s against suspects and in crowd control, and its use of body cameras.

Also, the panel was to look at the board that reviews complaints against officers that was created in 2012 and to figure out how the Greenville Police Department can make its workforce reflective of a diverse community.

In four months.

Since June 22, the panel members have gathered hundreds of pages of reports and notes and gone through the same simulation training officers get in use of force.

Soon, they will have the results of a survey released Thursday seeking community opinion of the Greenville Police Department. The survey asks whether an individual has had interaction with police, how it went and whether they would hesitate to call police.

It asks for residents’ opinions on when an officer should shoot, including at a suspect running away, resisting arrest or displaying a weapon and how the department can become more diverse in its hiring.

Greenville has 202 officers, and 13% of them are minorities, compared with a citywide minority population of 33%. Also, women account for roughly 50% of Greenville’s population yet about 10% of the force.

The Rev. Stacey Mills, who is chairing the citizens’ panel, said Thursday he was surprised by the disparity.

“As our community changes, public safety must reflect the community,” he said.

With the citizen panel’s report due to Greenville City Council in a month, the committee has come to a consensus on several matters, said Mills, who is the pastor of Mountain View Baptist Church and assistant vice president and executive director of the University of South Carolina Upstate, Greenville campus.

Members believe a crisis group should be empaneled to respond to any event that would affect the entire community. The group would draw from health care, criminal justice and the faith community, much like the panel itself, which includes, in addition to Mills, a former police officer, a lawyer, two community activists, a former prosecutor and a former juvenile court judge.

The idea for the crisis group would be to get in front of unrest to create healing, not tension.

The citizen panel itself grew from unrest. After George Floyd died in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck, hundreds of people gathered in Greenville’s streets to support Black Lives Matter.

City leaders decided then that an impartial group should study police policies to see if they meet the needs of citizens, not just law enforcement.

Greenville Mayor Knox White said the former police chief thoroughly reviewed policies with regard to conflict de-escalation several years ago. After Floyd’s death and the resulting marches in the city, they decided to do it again with a broader mandate.

He said all the protests in Greenville so far have been peaceful, and he attributes that to an informal group of people working behind the scenes, similar to the crisis group the panel is proposing.

Mills said among the panel members’ first tasks was to undergo simulation training in use of force.

Confronted with a virtual reality armed man, Mills said he experienced real-life response — flight or fight and the tunnel vision that comes from having a weapon drawn on you. He said he employed his taser, then the service revolver, which he fired and injured the suspect.

“It increased my awareness of the human element to responding to threats, humans making decisions about other humans,” he said.

Respect for the police force, diversity and transparency drive the panel’s work, Mills said.

The panel likely will recommend the city come up with some version of a cadet program at the county’s 14 high schools, similar to ROTC, that could help increase diversity on the police force. It’s also likely to recommend hiring a consultant who specializes in creating diverse work forces.

Another idea that seems to have panel support is to require body cameras to be turned on when an officer draws a weapon. Now, the policy is cameras on when blue lights are turned on or a taser is used.

The panel’s report is due to city leaders Oct. 11.

The report is non-binding on the city, Mills said, but officials have been helpful and open to the process.

“There has been a willingness to build that bridge to a better day, a higher ground,” he said.