In her comments to the Santa Barbara City Council on October 3, Chief Lori Luhnow admitted the necessity of modernizing Santa Barbara Police Department’s Use of Force Policy. These policies lay out the ways in which police officers are allowed to use violence while carrying out their duties. She estimated that the department will produce a revised policy by the end of the year. This is an opportunity to join other progressive cities by adopting community vetted and evidence based policy.
We cannot allow this opportunity to slip past. In February, here in Santa Barbara, Bryan Carreno was killed by Sheriff's Office deputies after his family — worried about his mental health — called 9-1-1 for assistance. A few hours later deputies shot him several times. Santa Barbara is not exempt from police violence. It happens here, too.
While it was deputies of the Sheriff's Office who killed Carreno, there is no reason to believe things would have gone differently had the SBPD responded instead. Officers would have followed their policy, just as the deputies did. And SBPD’s current Use of Force Policy is virtually identical to that of the Sheriff’s Office. The Use of Force policies active in our community must be improved.