"So this is new?" Scott Hatfield asked. "If you take your gun out there's a report that gets filed?"

Chief Jeff Bliemeister said yes, going forward there would be an asterisk on the department's trend line on its use-of-force reports. In 2019, for instance, there were around 180, he said. 

"There will be more," he said, if the change goes into effect in September. 

Bliemeister said officers unholster their weapons during felony traffic stops and when going in to serve search warrants or search buildings. 

And they need to be tracked, member Shirley Mora James, a civil rights and defense attorney, agreed.

"That's what we want," she said. 

Fellow member Patrick Finnegan said it's a pain, but it's the right thing to do.

Bliemeister said he thinks it's a good change and called it an advanced level of quality assurance, so things aren't focused on a "game of gotcha, but on accountability at lower levels, preventing things from escalating."

He said he expects it will show the remarkable restraint shown every day by members of the Lincoln Police Department on the street.

The police chief proposed the changes as part of a planned review  taken up early in response to outrage here and across the country over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in late May, which sparked protests and talk of police reforms.

But Tuesday's meeting didn't get the kind of attention seen at a City Council meeting earlier this month. Spike Eickholt, an attorney for the ACLU of Nebraska, provided the only public comment. He said the proposed changes are an "encouraging starting point but taken alone are woefully myopic."

Eickholt questioned the authority for officers to show a gun on all felony arrests, given that not all felonies these days are violent, and categorizing Taser use as less-than-lethal force when at least 500 people nationally have died after being tased since 2001, including Zachary Bear Heels in Omaha three years ago.

Board members asked about proposed changes that would expand a longtime ban on strangleholds and chokeholds to two other neck restraints, which don't restrict a detainee's breathing if done right but can be lethal if not. 

Lincoln police stopped teaching officers the lateral vascular neck restraint 10 years ago and started teaching a shoulder-pin technique instead. Both would be banned under the proposed change.

Finnegan said he thought it was valid to ban any hold that restricts breathing, except in cases where lethal force is authorized, and in putting regulations on shoulder pins. 

"Respiratory restraints are the real problem area," he said. 

The board approved a working group to put together recommendations to return to the chief. 

Bliemeister said he'll evaluate them internally and bring a proposal forward for final review. The plan is to implement the changes in training set to start in September and finalized by the end of that month.

"Making the change on paper is easy," he said.

But the policy is written to provide practical applications to all of the department's staff to give them guidance in the most dynamic of incidents, the kind of encounters that happen rarely but involve high liability, Bliemeister said.

Member Micheal Thompson said transparency is key. While Lincoln doesn't have the issues that other cities have nationally, he said, that's not to say something like that couldn't happen. 

"It absolutely could," Bliemeister said. "And what I think is very important is that the Lincoln Police Department does have a demonstrated history of holding people accountable."