A Criminal Justice Reform Task Force appointed by Salisbury Mayor Jake Day in 2020 has returned with detailed recommendations for the city’s Police Department that include the return of community policing, improved training and adding social workers.

During a recent City Council work session, Day said he and city staff members have reviewed the 69-page report, assessed what measures are already in progress and what needs additional investment. Others may require enacting legislation before they can be implemented.

Developing the report was “a long hard process,” Eileen Johnson, Task Force Chair, told council members. Meetings were held remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the task force was able to solicit advice and information from numerous sources.

Task Force members included a range of professionals including a prosecuting attorney, a public defender, addictions counselors, youth counselors, community organizers, a pastor and youth social workers.

“It was a really diverse group of people,” Johnson said.

The city is already doing about one-quarter of the recommendations, or there is enough information available to start doing them, she said. About half of the recommendations are medium- to long-term goals.

The remaining are outside the scope of the city and include outside agencies, Johnson said.

The Task Force was formed as part of the Trust Rebuilding Initiative drafted in 2020 following several officer-related incidents of misconduct.

Among them were thefts from the department’s Evidence Room that put thousands of criminal cases handled by the Salisbury Police Department over the past 23 years in jeopardy.

Since then, Chief Barbara Duncan has pledged to correct problems in the evidence room and instituted other changes, including the creation of the Criminal Justice Reform Task Force.

The group’s creation also followed the “racial reckoning” brought on by the murder of George Floyd and other killings of civilians by police officers.

Among the task force’s recommendations are: 

•       Bring back neighborhood policing units and boost the number of officers within each patrol unit.
•       Increase the number of officers in the Community Relations Team to four to six, and expand their reach. (The team now has two officers.)
•   Require officers to exit vehicles and pair up with other officers to walk a beat, at least one time per day shift.
•       Return to the practice of bringing newly graduated officers into the immersion program to learn about the neighborhood they will serve; research the neighborhood; contact business owners, tenants, and homeowners; learn interview techniques; review de-escalation; and model community interactions.
•       Bring back community police substations, starting with one.
•   Invest in more effective, meaningful implicit bias training.
•       Hire a team of unarmed civilian responders to help address a wide range of public service work not requiring an armed officer.
•   Incentivize officers to internally report bad behavior.
•   Pass a city ordinance on officer failure to intervene in cases of excessive force.
•   Increase the number of mental health clinicians available for calls.
•   Work toward a cultural shift to police as advocates for others partners with agencies.

There were also recommendations on how to recruit and retain officers with a focus on minorities, and officer wellness including mental health support.

The report is now in the hands of the City Council which will need to review it and then hold a series of meetings to determine how to proceed, said Council President Jack Heath. Any discussions will likely be held after the council adopts a city budget for fiscal 2023