Schererville Board of Safety unanimously approves two police policy updates

The Schererville Board of Safety voted unanimously May 20 to approve two updates to police policies, including an increase in the purchase-request threshold and a change to complaint-review procedures.

Police Chief Peter Sormoz told the board the two changes were routine housekeeping after a regular policy review and had been reviewed by the board attorney. "The ordinance amounts have been increased from 3,000 to 5,000," he said, and the fiscal-management update adds recently purchased body-worn cameras to the agency property inventory. He also said the department complaint and disciplinary procedure was amended on page 5 to "include the rank of deputy chief as a review and recommendation for preliminary investigations." "I would recommend to the board to accept the policies as presented tonight," Chief Sormoz said.

The chair moved to approve both policies in a single motion; the motion was moved and seconded and passed on a roll-call vote with all present voting yes. Recorded roll-call responses in favor included Eric Grama, George Kouras, David Ennekenberg, David Jarazewski, Robert Volkmann and Christian Bartholomew.

Why it matters: raising the administrative purchase threshold changes which transactions require more formal procurement oversight and permits higher-dollar routine purchases to be handled under existing procedures. Adding body-worn cameras to the agency property list formally recognizes them as department assets to be tracked, and adding the deputy chief to the preliminary-review chain creates an additional supervisory checkpoint in complaint handling.

Board action and next steps: the board adopted the changes immediately. Chief Sormoz and department staff will implement the inventory update for body-worn cameras and incorporate the deputy chief into the disciplinary preliminary-review workflow.