The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office is taking a closer look at its policing practices, as a measure to maintain transparency and openness in dealing with citizens.
To do so, the agency has appointed general counsel Lindsay Moore as its first constitutional policing advisor.
As part of her new role, Moore’s primary duties are to to ensure the agency follows best practices and procedures in the arena of search-and-seizure; use of force; detention operations; profiling issues; citizen contacts; arrests; and, custody operations.
She’s also responsible for regularly reviewing agency policies and procedures to ensure they align with constitutional case rulings.
If laws and case precedent change, Moore will publish alerts and coordinate trainings with members of the agency.
“These are all things that we’re already doing, but this is going to be codifying these things into one cohesive program,” Moore said.
Moore is a former associate attorney at a civil litigation law firm specializing in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases. She also is a former assistant state’s attorney with the First Judicial Circuit of Florida, where she prosecuted domestic violence cases, crimes against children, and felonies.
As an extra measure to enhance constitutional policing efforts, the Sheriff’s Office also appointed Capt. Eric Seltzer to serve as a liaison between other criminal justice system partners, including the county state’s attorney’s office efforts. He’ll also provide oversight for new training measures.
The agency is using existing resources to fund the new advisory roles.
Originally developed by the Los Angeles Police Department, constitutional policing is a growing trend nationwide where law enforcement agencies proactively work to protect the civil rights of the citizens they police.
Also known as “legal policing,” constitutional policing cooperates with the parameters set by the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions, and the many court decisions that have defined in greater detail what the text of the Constitution means in terms of the everyday practices of policing.
Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said adhering to constitutional policing should yield more prosecutable cases and fewer citizen complaints of possible unlawful discrimination and harassment by deputies.
“We have to be by the book in everything we do. We’re not just sitting back and waiting for a complaint to come in. We’re going to proactively look to make sure we’re doing everything the right way, all the time,” Nocco explained.
“It’s going to make us better deputies and better people out there serving the community,” he said.
Published April 4, 2018
