In the City of De Pere, we fully welcome and support any voices who wish to ensure our country and community are places everyone can live with dignity, abundant opportunity and free from fear. Moreover, we support everyone’s right to attend a planned protest march today starting at VFW Park addressing the Black Lives Matter movement.

“True social justice has been underserved, and systemic racism in our nation and community continues to exist. So for those coming out now or in the future to peacefully and thoughtfully protest this profound issue, make no mistake: We are here to listen to you. We support you. We unequivocally stand by you and want to create solutions with you. As part of this, today and long after, we will welcome additional dialogue with citizens that have questions, concerns and ideas. We sincerely and eagerly look forward to working with the community, our elected officials and staff to continuously improve; together,” said Mayor James Boyd.

To facilitate a better path forward, the De Pere Police Department is also eager to proactively listen and receive feedback from the community so that it can continue to improve and adopt policies that will help ensure safe, fair and equitable response for all members of our City.

To that point, there have been recent questions coming into the department requesting information on existing tactics and how our police staff currently train. In an effort to aid transparency and an informed dialogue, the below items are what is currently in place for the De Pere Police Department, and, again, a conversation with the community is welcome on these parameters:

🔹 Chokeholds: Chokeholds are not a trained technique nor is it in our Use of Force policy to allow for its use.
🔹 Use of Force Training: Officers are trained on a regular basis by trained use of force instructors.
🔹 The training curriculum and techniques follow the standards set forth by the WI Law Enforcement Standards Board.
🔹 Wisconsin uses a progressive disturbance resolution model and not an older force continuum model.
🔹 De-escalation is trained to each officer and is contained in the department use of force policy.
🔹 Duty to Intercede: Although not in a policy, the officers are instructed to intercede if another officer is not using force appropriately. This will be added to our policy to formalize it for accountability.
🔹 Officer Involved Death: All deaths of a person involving an officer in any way are investigated by an outside agency and not our own investigators per WI state law.
🔹 Hiring practices: Officers are hired for their ability to think, problem solve and for their demeanor. We strongly encourage minority applicants and believe in the benefits of a diverse workforce serving our community.
🔹 Body Cameras: The City instituted the use of body cameras in May 2018 in order to be transparent and open with our citizens.