Commission Approves Police Grooming Policy

By Andrew Gorosko

The Police Commission has approved a new policy covering what constitutes acceptable grooming for police officers, but the specifics of that policy are yet unclear.

The policy sets standards for what amounts to neatness and tidiness for police officers on duty.

Commission members approved the policy at a January 2 commission session.

When asked on January 2 to provide a copy of the public document for public review following the commission’s approval of it, Police Chief Michael Kehoe declined to do so, stating that some revisions would need to be made to the document before it could be disclosed.

The police chief then said that he did not want police officers to read about the new grooming policy in a newspaper story before they had been briefed on its contents by their superiors.

Based on comments made by Police Commission members in a discussion held before the document was approved, certain aspects of the new policy became apparent.

Commission member Bruce Walczak said the grooming policy appears to be the most problematic of seven separate commission policy matters that the panel acted upon that night because the grooming policy addresses matters of taste.

Mr Walczak questioned one aspect of the policy, which bears apparent contradictions in terms of what constitutes acceptable facial hair among police officers.

The police chief explained that those ambiguities in the policy are intentional to allow the amount of facial hair that a police officer can have to be variable, based on the types of equipment that an officer would need to wear in the course of his duties, such as a gas mask.

Chief Kehoe said that the grooming policy is a “guide” for police officers on what is acceptable in terms of maintaining a professional appearance in law enforcement. “It always comes down to ‘reasonableness,’” he said.

Uniformity of appearance is an important visual aspect of law enforcement, he said. Police must establish a presence of authority in their enforcement work, he said.

Establishing a presence of authority is undercut if an officer should present a clownish appearance to the public, he said.

One aspect of the policy addresses the police’s wearing sunglasses while on duty, reportedly stating that such eyewear should be conservative in character.