CSPD Chief concerned about wording of restraint bill

(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Chief Adrian Vasquez with the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) spoke at a press conference on Thursday, March 28, to discuss his concerns over a proposed bill restricting how police officers can restrain a resistant suspect.

HB24-1372 was introduced on March 11 and aims to prohibit officers from using “prone restraint” to subdue a subject, except in cases in which the use of deadly physical force is justified. Prone restraint is a method of immobilizing a person, by restricting their movement, often pinning them to the ground.

The bill specifies that officers would be required by law “to immediately reposition a person to facilitate breathing” after the person is placed in handcuffs. The bill would also create a private right of action against a law enforcement agency that failed to adopt prone restraint policies, train officers to adhere to those policies, or report policy violations.

Chief Vasquez is against the bill as it is currently written, and said his concerns are for the safety of officers and community members. He said prone restraint is something officers use on a daily basis, and argued that if officers were only allowed to utilize it when deadly force was justified, it could lead to dangerous situations for officers and for potential subjects.

“The timeframe that we would use something like this is when the officer is confronted with an individual who isn’t being cooperative, who maybe has run from the police, who has weapons on them but isn’t necessarily brandishing the weapon,” said Chief Vasquez. “What this bill is requiring, is that if it’s not a deadly force situation–in other words, the officer can’t pull their weapon and shoot the person or they can’t take a deadly force action–the officer cannot get them down in that prone position.”

Chief Vasquez said this would jeopardize the safety of both the officers and subjects. If the officer were required to bring the suspect immediately back up to their feet or on their knees after handcuffing, that would make the suspect more mobile.

“It creates a dangerous situation for the individual because if they do something now, the officer has to escalate their use of force. They might have to go to a taser, OC [irritant] spray, or hands-on, and get in a fight with the person. So it creates a dangerous situation for that officer and for the individual,” said Vasquez.

While against the bill as it stands, Vasquez did address the intent of the bill, which is to keep suspects from asphyxiating or suffering other stress-related health conditions due to being put in a prone position. He said CSPD already has policies in place to ensure officers are trained to evaluate the well-being of suspects during an arrest and place them in a recovery position as soon as it is safe to do so.

Vasquez said he would not be against the legislation if the wording were to be amended to remove the requirement that only a deadly force situation would allow prone restraint, and if the bill were simply addressing training procedures for recognizing a subject in distress, he and other law enforcement agencies would support it.

“Let’s have some policy around requirements for training, requirements for observation, requirements for understanding what distress might look like, whether it’s positional fixes or other kinds of medical distress, ensuring that we get medical attention to that scene as soon as possible,” said Vasquez.

The bill will be heard at the Colorado State Capitol on April 2, and Chief Vasquez said he would be testifying against the bill as it is written.

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