Spurred by calls for reform in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, two bills were signed into law Monday by Gov. Tom Wolf.

One aims for mental health evaluations for law enforcement members across the state, and the other calls for greater background checks for new hires at law enforcement agencies.

The bills, which passed the state's House and Senate, were introduced in June after Floyd died while in the custody of Minneapolis police. “A little over a month ago, I met with leaders of Black communities in Philadelphia and Harrisburg to discuss ways we can improve law enforcement to make our commonwealth safer for every Pennsylvanian,” Wolf said in a prepared statement. “Today, I am signing two bills that will take steps toward achieving this goal.”

House Bill 1841, sponsored by Rep. Harry Readshaw, D-36th, seeks to shed light on a potential law enforcement officer's history by requiring a thorough background check before they can be hired. The bill also requires law enforcement agencies in the state to disclose employment information. A hiring law enforcement agency must explain its reasoning for hiring an individual with troubling past behavior such as being cited for harassment or excessive force.

House Bill 1910, sponsored by Rep. Dan Williams, D-74th, aims to address the mental health of those in law enforcement. It requires mental health evaluations with a focus on PTSD as a condition for continued employment. The evaluation can be made through a law enforcement officer or a police chief or within 30 days of an incident involving the use of lethal force. The bill also requires training for police officers on “trauma-informed care, use of deadly force, de-escalation and harm reduction techniques, community and cultural awareness, implicit bias, procedural justice and reconciliation techniques.”

Training costs money

Conrad Pfeifer, a Middlesex Township police officer, said an increase in training is helpful, but he noted that training requires time and money. That is a combination of resources smaller police departments may not have.

Pfeifer said he wasn't speaking as a representative of the Middlesex Township Police Department, but from his experience as a law enforcement agent. He said for about 12 years he's trained local law enforcement from various agencies in the use of force, including the use of deadly force.

“It's nobody fault for the time and budget constraint,” Pfeifer said. “Small municipalities just don't have the money. It's just inherent in the system.”

Like Pfeifer, Saxonburg Police Chief Joe Beachem agreed that training always helps, but he also said budgetary limitations restrict the amount of training that can be given.

Saxonburg's budget for training is between $1,000 and $2,000, with extra funds coming in from nonprofits.

“Thankfully, we've been supported with training,” Beachem said. “It's important in the use of violence.”

Types of training

Middlesex Township does not have any police officers of color, but Pfeifer said the demographics of a department do not change the type of training every police officer goes through.

One important piece of training, in his eyes, is engaging with people in dialogue, or, as it's commonly known within law enforcement, “verbal judo.”

“I'd love to take every officer and say, 'Here, take a verbal judo class for four hours,” Pfeifer said.

The longtime officer said training in a plethora of areas can become overwhelming,

“But think about what it takes to get somebody proficient with something, let alone use of force where you might injure somebody,” Pfeifer said.

Beachem said once coronavirus restrictions are lifted, his officers will be trained by a martial artist in Sarver. That kind of training, Beachem said, is done four times per year.

“Then, there's training for parade, traffic control,” Pfeifer said. “It's so much training.”

In an ideal world, Pfeifer said officers would train for eight hours per month on legal proceedings and case law.

“We give (officers) the authority to take away someone's freedom, someone's life,” he said. “That's a big-time responsibility.”

At the same time, officers are inundated with memos on new procedures.

“You don't pay us for what we do; you pay us for what we might have to do,” Pfeifer said. “I guarantee if you have someone kicking in your door in the middle of the night, you'd pay anything to have four police officers there.”

What went wrong

In regards to Floyd's death, Pfeifer said it would be impossible for him to diagnose the problem since he wasn't present during the arrest.

“People can watch a video over and over with narrative, with editing, but unless you're there, you don't know,” Pfeifer said. “You would have to have been there.”

He said an officer has seconds to make a decision in a dangerous situation.

“You have what's before you and that two seconds,” Pfeifer said.

And amid calls for police reform are demands to defund the police — the two, he said, run counter.

“They want to take away our funding, but we're trying to get more for training. We need more funding for training, not less,” Pfeifer said. “Take one officer — we want you to learn a new car camera, write citations, firearms qualifications and, oh by the way, do some bias training and use-of-force training.”

Beachem finds calls to defund the police “absolutely ludicrous, especially in high crime-rate areas. A lot of Americans can't believe what they're seeing — people advocating for anarchy.”

Beachem said he sees widespread reforms as “reactionary” and doing “nothing to address the issues.”

Instead, he said, reforms should be done on a department-by-department basis.

“I don't know any officer who has condoned what happened in Minneapolis,” Beachem said. “So reforms that go through in Minneapolis won't work here.”

He said talks of reforms are examples of “grandstanding politicians pretending they're solving a problem. I think politicians are just being politicians, and they're not doing a whole lot.”

In Wolf's announcement, he promised to push for continued reforms on policing with the help of the state's Legislature.