Auburn Police Chief Jason Moen speaks at a news conference in 2019. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal
AUBURN — The City Council will host a workshop Monday on Police Department practices as Chief Jason Moen is set to announce a state accreditation.
The meeting will mark the first time city officials have had a public discussion on policing since nationwide and local protests erupted over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis during his arrest.
Moen said Friday that the timing of the conversation is based on the department’s new state accreditation, but he also wanted to brief the council on proactive policing measures the department has taken in recent years.
“I thought it would be a good time to update the council on everything we’re doing, and how we’re ahead of the curve with some things,” he said.
In a memo to the council, Moen compares some of the department’s policies to those outlined in President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities, which was signed in the wake of the protests over Floyd’s death.
He said Auburn already meets or exceeds the standards sought in the order, including a previous ban on chokeholds and other similar tactics in its use-of-force policies.
According to the memo, the Auburn Police Department is one of the first agencies in the state to achieve state accreditation through the Maine Law Enforcement Accreditation Program, which features 162 standards “to ensure that an agency has addressed the most critical of law enforcement issues in both policy and operations.”
The department has also held an accreditation from the national Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies since 2007, which must show compliance with 484 standards.
Along with the Lewiston Police Department, Auburn is one of only five agencies in the state to hold the CALEA accreditation. Moen’s memo states that just under 5% of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country have achieved it.
Last week, in a Sun Journal story, police and city officials in Lewiston and Auburn offered perspective on arrest rates for Black people in Lewiston-Auburn being roughly four times higher than the population percentage reflected to the most recent census.
In Auburn, 18% of those arrested in 2019 were Black or African American; the U.S. Census data showed Black people represented 1.3% of the population.
Moen said that because Auburn is a service center, the city’s population swells during the day, so much so that in 2018 and 2019, 54% of arrests in Auburn involved nonresidents.
“I firmly believe that racial profiling is not a factor in any enforcement action taken by an Auburn police officer,” he told the Sun Journal.
According to his memo to the council, the department also exceeds standards for de-escalation training.
State law requires that at least 20% of officers in each Maine law enforcement agency receive “mental health first aid” or “crisis intervention team” training. Auburn has roughly 50% of officers trained, he said. He added that in June, all sworn staff attended an eight-hour training session on de-escalation.
“The council is happy with how the Police Department is managed and the culture of the police department in Auburn,” Mayor Jason Levesque said Friday.
He said Monday will be a chance for the council to hear what the accreditation means for the department and Auburn residents.
Moen said he will also likely schedule a future workshop with the council to discuss the issue of police body cameras.
The purchase of body cameras for all officers originally appeared on next year’s Capital Improvement Program, but was removed during budget talks as the pandemic loomed, Levesque said.
Moen said officers are largely in favor of wearing body cameras, and that the discussion will likely resume this fall.
Lewiston officials passed a resolution earlier this month that sets the city on a timeline for purchasing body cameras for police. The city has also initiated an ad hoc committee on equity and diversity that will review the process by which public complaints against police officers and other city employees are investigated, among other goals.
The original print version of the Sun Journal story last Sunday on arrest rates in Lewiston-Auburn by mistake did not include Chief Moen’s responses; they were included in the online version. Moen’s responses will be running in full in this Sunday’s edition, along with a column by Mayor Levesque.
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