While Lexipol isn’t alone in promoting flexibility and discretion in police policymaking, the company has become dominant in the space, spreading the approach as a baseline for law enforcement across the country.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office began subscribing to the company seven years ago, according to agency spokesperson Rob Dillion, after finding that managing and updating a policy manual on its own was “problematic on several levels.”
“Lexipol provides framework, formatting, ease of use, and consistent and accurate legal updates for our Sheriff’s Office policy,” Dillion wrote in an Aug. 25 statement. Sheriff Eddie Engram’s staff said he was not available for an interview with The Press Democrat.
“From the beginning, Sheriff’s Office staff have reviewed and amended proposed policies before adoption, rather than accepting them as blanket policies,” Dillion wrote, “to ensure they appropriately fit the agency’s needs, adhere to current law, and anticipate pending legislation.”
Spun off from legal practice
Praet co-founded Lexipol in 2003. The company was a spinoff from his legal practice, which specialized in defending police civil cases and had developed model policies for about 40 law enforcement departments.
Praet started his career in 1973 as an Orange County police officer in various roles from canine handler to SWAT. Along the way, he faced two lawsuits himself, one of which came from the family of a kidnapping suspect he shot.
After about a decade in law enforcement he got a law degree, but he never really left policing. He first worked as an attorney for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, an officer union. He then joined the city of Orange, where he handled police litigation before starting his own firm, Ferguson Praet & Sherman where he still practices and where the concept for Lexipol was born.
Today, the company counts over 10,000 public safety agencies and municipalities in 35 states as customers. It has expanded to provide policies for fire, emergency medical services and other local government departments.
Pieper, from Lexipol, said its policies lead to better policing outcomes and less liability when coupled with appropriate action by the law enforcement agencies that purchase them. But she said the company does not track lawsuits or settlement payments made by its customers.
The company made changes to its use-of-force policy to further emphasize the importance of de-escalation in August 2020, Pieper said. At that time, protests in the wake of Minneapolis police killing George Floyd had erupted around the nation, spurring immense political pressure for enhanced police oversight.
Those changes are reflected on a website with information about Lexipol’s use of force guidelines, along with a guide for community members who want to review law enforcement policies, Pieper wrote.
“Officer discretion is a necessary part of policing, but compliance to sound policy, coupled with proper supervision and disciplinary actions, in turn leads naturally to a reduction in all risks,” Pieper wrote, “including the chance a community member may be harmed and the potential civil liability that can result.”
Izaak Schwaiger, a civil rights attorney who has sued the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office numerous times in wrongful death or use-of-force cases, is facing off against Praet in this latest case as representative for the Peláez-Chavez family.
He noted that in many of the cases he has litigated against the sheriff’s office, and won, the department ruled the incidents were within policy. “You’ve got a problem if you’re giving out millions of dollars in these cases that are within policy,” he said.
Since 2018, the department has found deputies to be in violation of its use of force policies six times, according to Dillion. Four of those violations came from deputies working in the jail, while two came from those on patrol. During the same time period, the county paid out nearly $12 million in use-of-force and wrongful death claims.
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