Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder asked the agency that certifies law enforcement officers to momentarily leave the matrix in order to consider an individual officer’s circumstances. “On several occasions, our recommendations have deviated from what the POST matrixes indicate,” he told the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Council recently. Sheriff Winder’s remarks came at the recent quarterly meeting, in which 18 officers were either suspended or had their badges revoked for infractions ranging from drug possession to sexual misconduct.

Winder said his agency’s internal affairs officers conduct exhaustive investigations, and wondered why in-house discipline isn’t  considered enough. “In our organization we have a policy to provide rehabilitative assistance, especially as it relates to drug and alcohol usage,” he told the council. But under POST, that policy is void.

Winder says he’s worried that POST’s guidelines could create an “underground allowance,” with people afraid to seek help or report problems because they could lose their badges. POST revamped its disciplinary guidelines just last year. Under the disciplinary matrix, all felony convictions, drug possession, custodial sexual misconduct and a third DUI mean automatic peace officer certification revocations.

The POST Council has the option of ruling against the guidelines. Some disciplined officers have raised challenges to the strict guidelines, including two who spoke to the POST Council with Sheriff Winder. Winder wants a police agency’s recommendation to be part of the POST Council’s discussion as it hands out discipline.

Police chiefs in the past have showed up to council meetings to back an officer, but Winder worried about how that would be perceived by his employees. While POST does keep in regular contact with agencies during an investigation, some council members worried about being independent from a police department’s internal affairs bureau.

“It is vital and essential this council maintain a ferocious independence,” said Ken Wallentine, the Utah attorney general’s chief of law enforcement.