"Could we be better? We’re always searching for ways to become better," Ratliff said. "We’re always looking for ways to improve what we do.”
Ratliff said he was "upset" by the video of Floyd's death, in which a former Minneapolis police officer used his knee to pin Floyd by the neck until Floyd died.
"We’ve been training our officers for years on how to mitigate positional asphyxia,” Ratliff said. "The death of this individual should never have occurred and wouldn’t have occurred in this department."
As part of the national unrest in response to Floyd's death, some cities have considered reducing the budgets of or completely defunding police departments. Others have proposed increasing training or changing what tactics officers are allowed to use to restrain suspects, such as choke holds.
Raymond Steward is a black man who pastors Restoring Hope International Fellowship Church and is the CEO and founder of Hope Active, a nonprofit that, in part, helps with the local juvenile justice system and Clear Creek ISD's at-risk population. While talking about the peaceful protests Steward attended in the Bay Area the weekend of June 6-7, he mentioned "8 Can't Wait," a national campaign to implement eight initiatives at all police departments, including banning shooting at moving vehicles, requiring warning before shooting and more.
Still, Steward said he has the utmost respect for the League City Police Department and believes they are doing policing right.
“I’ve always been really, really impressed with League City Police Department," he said.
Ratliff said everyone around the country has different viewpoints because there are varying levels of accountability between police departments and the communities they serve across the country.
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"This situation breaks everybody’s heart. It caused a lot of folks to check their faith in the police, and I understand," Ratliff said. "[But] everybody’s not the same. Every department should be judged on and handled by their own accord and not by the actions of other departments.”
In League City, the response has not been extreme because the police department already has adequate training and policies and procedures in place, Ratliff said.
“A lot of these things people are questioning openly we already cover in our policies," he said.
One thing not previously covered in the department's policies is use of choke holds. To Ratliff's knowledge, League City officers have not been trained to use choke holds, but as a result of Floyd's death, the department put language in its policies to indicate officers are not allowed to use choke holds to restrain suspects except in the rare circumstances deadly use of force is authorized to neutralize a threat, Ratliff said.
Additionally, the department has more training in its budget than any other law enforcement agency in Galveston County, Ratliff said. Officers go through a 40-hour class every two years for training on de-escalation and use of force, and this training is on top of all the other training officers go through annually, such as state-required race and bias training, Ratliff said.
"We are extremely dedicated to training our officers," he said.
Ratliff said he has received several "polite" inquiries from residents as to the department's policies and training since Floyd's death. Ratliff said those are appropriate things to inquire about considering Floyd's death.
"There’s a lot of reasons to be upset over what happened in Minneapolis, but there’s probably ... no one more upset than the police agencies across the United States who have dedicated their lives to serving the citizens that they do and have an officer through negligence do something like that because that impacts all of that in a negative fashion, and we will be dealing with that for years to come," Ratliff said.
Ratliff said the department has 126 officers but could not name offhand how many are black. However, the department makes an effort to recruit minorities through local colleges with minority populations, surrounding police academies and other statewide efforts, Ratliff said.
"Our goal is [for the police department] to have the representation of the citizens that we serve," he said.
No police department is perfect, but the League City Police Department has procedures in place to hold officers to high standards. The department holds officers accountable, has several review procedures in place, regularly reviews police footage from cruisers and fills out state-required racial profiling data, among other things, Ratliff said.
The department is also considering getting body cameras for its officers, which likely would increase trust of League City police officers from those outside the community, Ratliff said.
"We have a lot of things in place to put those checks and balances," he said.
If residents ever have an issue with a League City officer, Ratliff encouraged them to file a formal complaint. The department works hard to maintain public trust, and when an officer violates that, no one wants them gone more than the department's other employees, Ratliff said.
"I can't stress it more," he said.
