When protests against police brutality and racial injustice rippled across the nation in June, the Palo Alto Police Department swiftly responded by banning officers from using the carotid hold, a grappling move that shuts off blood flow to the brain.

But as the City Council prepares to adopt broader police reforms on Monday, the department is pushing back against some of the proposals on the table. These include a proposed policy that would ban officers from using any tactics that restrict blood flow to head or neck and another that requires officers to exhaust "all alternatives" before firing their weapons at someone.

Both changes were recommended by the city's Human Relations Commission, which last month reviewed department policies for consistency with 8 Can't Wait, a platform for police reforms issued by Campaign Zero. Both are modeled after recommendations from Campaign Zero, a police-reform movement that was formed after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Both are facing resistance from Palo Alto police, which is proposing alternative language that would give officers more flexibility.

Among the biggest disagreements between the commission and Palo Alto police is the proposed change to the department's chokehold policy. The agency already trains its officers not to use chokeholds and strangleholds, and it added the carotid hold (in which pressure is applied on the carotid arteries in the side of the neck) in June.

While the department supports making the ban on strangleholds and chokeholds more explicit in its policy manual, the Human Relations Commission recommended on July 22 that the city go further and also ban "vascular neck restraints, chest compression and other tactics that restrict blood flow or neck."

Various other police departments have already adopted broader policies on strangulation. The Human Relations Commission proposal largely mirrors the policy already in place in Miami, Florida. New York City established the crime of "aggravated strangulation" for an officer who is involved in "criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation, or uses a chokehold or similar restraint, and causes serious physical injury or death."

Police Chief Robert Jonsen said that while he supports explicitly banning chokeholds, strangleholds and other techniques that create pressure in the neck area, he does not support a broader prohibition on actions that restrict breathing. He told the commission that under its proposed change, an officer may fall on an individual during a fight and restrict oxygen flow just by virtue of their bodyweight. This, he said, should not constitute a policy violation.

"When you're in a fight, there are many things that happen — some intentional, some unintentional," Jonsen said. "But you're really going to restrict an officer's ability to defend themselves if they're concerned about every part of their body potentially restricting oxygen."

Commission Chair the Rev. Kaloma Smith and Commissioner Steven Lee both favored the broader restriction, with Smith pointing to the 2014 killing of Eric Garner in New York City as an example of why the city should take a more explicit stance against blocking oxygen flow during arrests.

Responding to Jonsen's objection, Smith said that anyone reviewing an incident in which an officer falls on another person and restricts that person's breathing will likely be able to tell that the restriction is not intentional.

"We've seen several high-profile cases where chokeholds were used," Smith said. "I'd love to see this language in the policy to show people that this is detrimental action and that even in a scramble, it's not something that we advocate for."

The commission also recommended that Palo Alto follow San Francisco's example and adopt a policy that allows officers to use deadly force "only as a last resort when reasonable alternatives have been exhausted or not feasible to protect the safety of the public and/or police officers." During the July 22 hearing, Assistant Police Chief Andrew Binder suggested that this would be "a reasonable policy" and that the department already trains officers to exhaust all other options.

"We want the officer's mindset to be that their first option is to de-escalate," Bender said. "As a natural flow, they would exhaust all that is feasible before using deadly force."

Despite its general alignment with the commission's view, the department is proposing language that would give officers more latitude. Under the department's proposed language, officers would be required to "evaluate each situation in light of the particular circumstances in each case and use other available resources and techniques when reasonably safe and feasible to do so."

The department also proposes allowing officers to use deadly force when they "reasonably believe" that its use is necessary.

In other areas, the Police Department and the Human Relations Commission are largely in agreement. Both believe that the department's existing policies on reporting of force and on issuing warnings before shooting are already consistent with 8 Can't Wait. Both have also concluded that the department's policy on de-escalation should be expanded to include specific examples of de-escalation techniques.

According to a report from the Community Services Department, the revised policy will have "clear explanations and guidance for officer actions related to de-escalation tactics to improve decision making, reduce situational intensity, and provide opportunities for outcomes with greater voluntary compliance."

"Such de-escalation tactics should include self-control, effective communication that attempts to identify possible reasons why a subject may be noncompliant or resisting arrest, creating time and distance from a subject, requesting additional resources, and other alternative options that decrease the likelihood of the need to use force during an incident and increase the likelihood of voluntary compliance," the report states.

The council's discussion of revising Palo Alto Police Department policies to better comply with the 8 Can't Wait platform is part of its broader conversation on police reform. In late May, Mayor Adrian Fine formed ad hoc committees on police operations, accountability in the Police Department, diversity and alternative service models. Each committee is scheduled to make its first report on Monday night.

While the council's actions are, by and large, a response to the national movement in favor of police reforms, Palo Alto is also facing its own accusations of police brutality stemming from arrests at Buena Vista Mobile Home Park in February 2018 and near Happy Donuts in July 2019. The city has already paid a settlement of $572,000 to Gustave Alvarez relating to the Buena Vista arrest, which has also prompted the Santa Clara County District Attorney to launch an investigation into retired Sgt. Wayne Benitez, who was the supervisor during the arrest and who can be seen on home surveillance cameras slamming Alvarez into the hood of a car.

The city is also facing a federal lawsuit over the arrest of Julio Arevalo, who suffered a facial injury when he was flipped to the ground by a Palo Alto officer near Happy Donuts. Neither Alvarez nor Arevalo was charged with any crimes relating to incidents that led to their arrests.

Palo Alto is also already on track to adopt other reforms, some of which are required by state law. This includes the collection of demographic data on police stops, including race, age and gender of the person being stopped, the reason for the stop and actions taken during the stop. The Racial and Identity Profiling Act, also known as AB 953, requires law enforcement agencies with fewer than 334 officers to collect this data for police stops beginning Jan. 1, 2022. The department plans to start collecting the demographic data one year before state law requires it, according to a memo from police Capt. April Wagner.

Collecting demographic data won't be new for Palo Alto. The city did so for a decade, starting in 2000 before halting the practice in 2010. During this period, the department faced numerous allegations of racial bias, most notably in 2008, when former Police Chief Lynne Johnson responded to a string of robberies near the downtown Caltrain station by directing officers to stop and question Black individuals wearing do-rags. After Johnson's comments triggered community outrage and her abrupt resignation, the department redoubled its efforts to train officers in identifying and combating implicit bias.

In February 2010, the city's Independent Police Auditor Michael Gennaco lauded Chief Dennis Burns, who succeeded Johnson, and department leadership for making "significant strides in educating themselves on the concerns about bias-based policing and then developing a plan to ensure fair and impartial policing." He also issued a series of recommendations, the first of which called on the city to "continue to collect stop data and promulgate results of that data to the city's Human Relations Commission." The data, Gennaco wrote, should also remain publicly available.

Despite the recommendation, the city halted the practice of collecting the data later that year, when the Police Department eliminated a crime analyst position during a period of budget cuts.

"That decision was made knowing it would mean the end of formal demographic data collection, as City leadership was confident that, through our robust internal review processes and the fact that we had an additional layer of oversight from the Independent Police Auditor, the spirit of the data collection would be maintained," Wagner wrote in the July 21 memo, which the city released last week.

In addition to considering revisions to police policies, the City Council is set to hold a broader discussion about race and equity. The council had already commissioned a Black Lives Matter mural and directed the Human Relations Commission to prepare a report about Palo Alto's Black and brown communities. It is also preparing to consider different police models, including ones that transfer some of the Police department's current functions to other departments.