State. Police head notes image change By Bill
GrHet
Preu Police Reporter
Idaho State Police officers are being asked to put on "vests of goodness and honesty" as part of an effort to improve their image and make ISP the most professiona l law enforcement agency in the Northwest, ISP Superintendent Thomas Proctor told a North Idaho State College audience Monday. Proctor, who served as an instructor for the L.A. Police Academy and the FBI Academy before taking over as ISP Superintendent a year ago, told how the ISP is working to become more proT p fessional and to change Us om roctor image. He then talked briefly of his experience as a fonner member of the Los Angeles SpecJal Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team. As a first step in becoming more professional, police officers must be "morally correct," Proctor said before a crowded classroom as featured speaker for the North Idaho College Popcorn Forum. He said 90me people In law enforcement are "not completely
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moral. " By being moral, people g.iin strength from having a " clear conscience," he said. " If we were to wear the vests of goodness and honesty, we'd be successful," be said. "Police officers are called the garbage men of the world. The police officer sees all the garbage and without goodness he becomes cynical, and appears to be sullen. Police have a tough job." Idaho does not have a "totally professional law enforcement agency" because it hasn't demanded lt, he said. " You' re poisoning your own well," he said. "You don't pay police more money because they have a college degree; that's a crime. Generally, you get what you pay for. But we have some professional, active officers working for peanuts ln this state." Proctor said be felt the ISP "needed a change of image" when he be took over as Superintendent a year ago. Since then, the ISP has replaced the Idaho patches on Its uniforms with a new design, ordered new flat-brimmed 'smokey' hats, new button.,, and new "high quality, embroidered stripes" on the uniform trousers. Officer's also are getting new speed loaders and new break-front holsters that will enable them to load their guns faster and make It tougher for a criminal to take their guns away. Proct.or said fn percent of ISP's guns, many of them over 20 years old, were in need of repair when be came to the aepartment. He made arrangements with a
California company to trade the old guns for new model 65 stainless steel .357 handguns. Because some of the ISP guns were so old they had gained value as collector's items, the state police actually made $8 on the trade. Proctor said. All of the changes made so far in the ISP's uniforms and guns has cost the state $48, Proctor said. The agency Is also looking for ways to save money in getting new cars, he said. He said it is taking the engines from ISP cars that have been totaled In rearend collisions and putting them In good car bodies for a total cost of $875. In another effort to upgrade its professionalism, Proctor said the ISP is teaching its men bow to cope with stress. "Police work has one of the highest propensities towards suicide of any profession," he said. When you go to the scene of an accident where a woman and three children are dead, where you see "a four-year-old boy with his hands out, dead, and a mother with her hand over the chest of her little child and both are dead-that's stress," Proctor said. He then talked about his "stressful" experience as a fonner member of a Los Angeles SWAT team, which often involved shootouts with militant groups such as the Black Panthers. Proctor left the SWAT team after he was hurt in a shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst.