OCEAN CITY – Officials this week voted to adopt an ordinance that would allow the town’s police commission to approve changes to police department policies, but not before a lengthy discussion on the new procedure.
On Monday, the Mayor and Council had before them an ordinance amending the law enforcement section of the town code. While the change would give the Ocean City Police Commission authority to approve policy changes within the Ocean City Police Department, Councilman John Gehrig shared his concerns that policies would be unilaterally approved without the council’s knowledge.
“It just seems like three council members and a mayor shouldn’t be determining what the rules are,” he said.
Last month, officials with the Ocean City Police Department came before the Mayor and Council to present its new policy manual, which will replace the agency’s General Orders. In coordination with Lexipol – a national policy development system – policies will now be updated in real time as state and federal laws change.
To accommodate these rapid changes, staff presented the council this week with the second reading of an ordinance, which would allow new policies to be approved monthly by the police commission and annually by the Mayor and Council. Gehrig, however, shared his concerns that the ordinance took the approval process away from the Mayor and Council.
“Basically, we are signing a contract that that’s not required …,” he said. “I just don’t like it, and I think it’s going to set a bad precedent too.”
City Solicitor Heather Stansbury said the code amendment would allow the police department to expedite its approval process when making policy revisions. She added that most policy changes were not substantive.
“Some of them might be changing he’s and she’s to some other pronounce, or things like that, fixing commas …,” she said. “It was less about the substance and more about the frequency.”
She said if every policy change was brought to the Mayor and Council for approval, the Ocean City Police Department would be at every meeting.
“Candidly, the reason that there’s so many more [changes] is because the law is constantly evolving. Without the benefit of Lexipol, there was no way to keep up with the times,” she said. “So the point of contracting with Lexipol, among other things, was to make sure that these things were being updated in real time … This is more efficient, but in its efficiency the volume has increased.”
City Manager Terry McGean agreed.
“Right now, they are what we call General Orders,” he explained. “The General Orders come to the police commission and then they go to you all, and they may be changed a couple times a year. This new Lexipol process, they are changing daily. So the volume is way more than what we’ve had in the past.”
Gehrig, however, reiterated his concerns. He said the Mayor and Council would only know what policies had been approved by reading meeting minutes.
“There are crazy policies in a crazy world that we don’t probably agree with locally because we support our law enforcement,” he added. “That’s something.”
Stansbury said the police department’s command staff would review any recommended policy changes before they are brought to the police commission.
“You would trust your chief not to enforce what you have called crazy policies …,” she replied. “It’s not as though your chief is taking what Lexipol is saying and just doing it because Lexipol says it. There is a lengthy vetting process that your command staff goes through after it receives the recommendation from Lexipol.”
After further discussion, the council voted 5-1, with Gehrig opposed and Councilman Will Savage absent, to adopt the code amendment on second reading.
