6 American Police Beat: January 2018 New rules for protests Legal judgments costing cities an arm and a leg as officials seek to limit certain police practices I n St. Louis, local legislators are con- sidering putting new limits on the way the St. Louis Metro- politan Police Department handles protesters follow- ing events like a contro- versial police shooting and the aftermath. The proposed rules are based on an ordinance already in place in Wash- ington, D.C. that seeks to limit damages from lawsuits involving the controversial tactic known as “kettling.” “This bill starts to de- velop a comprehensive protest response plan for the city of St. Louis. It’s one of the calls for action for us under the Ferguson Commission report,” one of the pro- posal’s sponsors said. If the new rules become law, there will be some serious changes. First off, police would no longer be allowed to order everyone at a protest to leave unless there was an occurrence of violence. If officers do order pro- testors to disperse, they must give people a clear path to leave. In addition, the new rules would limit the use of chemical agents like pepper spray and impose penalties should protestors and activists be stopped from filming police activity. The legislation is sim- ilar to changes demand- ed in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Missouri. Those changes impact- ed the way in which the police department dealt with protests following the Jason Stockley verdict. “It is a false dichoto- my to say that we can either have safety and policing that is empow- ered to protect individ- uals from violence and criminal activity, or we can have robust First Amendment rights,” ACLU of Missouri ex- ecutive director Jeffrey Mittman told St. Louis Public radio. But as reluctant as police may be to make these changes, by no means do they ensure a differ- ent dynamic. Alderman Joe Vaccaro, D-23rd Ward, questioned the effectiveness of Green’s proposed changes considering the kind of manpower that’s brought in during protests from multiple agencies. “We aid the county, the county aids us. What about the Highway Patrol – what happens when they come in? Do we check them at the border?” he said. “These things need to be done in a much larger area.” In other words, St. Lou- is Police could simply rely on other agencies that aren’t bound by city ordinance to engage in tactics that generates the lawsuits. As is usually the case with all things that fall under the header “crim- inal justice reform,” it’s unclear if these new rules will even come up for a vote. I was reading a recent issue of American Police Beat about the emotional impact on the police when they have to take action that harms someone or takes their life and wanted to respond. As a physician, I often grapple with the possibility of unintentionally hurting people. My colleagues and I attend to trauma and criti- cal-care patients, and we constantly make judgment calls based on incomplete information and educated guesswork. I am haunted by emergency decisions that, despite my best efforts and intentions, caused a patient harm. It is widely acknowledged that this type of guilt is a contributing factor to burnout, a growing problem in the medical profession. But, beyond resilience training for residents, there is no clear solution. It’s comforting to know that this is not just a struggle for those in medicine but an experience shared by all people who have accidentally changed another’s life for the worse. – David J. Berman, Baltimore, Md. That kind of stress is a cops and doctors thing ★ ★