South Bend Mayor James Mueller announced a ban on choke holds in the South Bend Police Department in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Mayor Mueller also announced that the discipline matrix for police would be released to the public and up for comment later this week and the Use of Force policy, soon after.

City staff, both inside and outside of the police department, will also be trained on implicit bias.

The mayor’s announcement took place during a news conference on racial justice on Monday, June 15, one day before the one-year anniversary of the death of Eric Logan, who was shot and killed by a South Bend Police officer. Logan reportedly lunged at the officer with a knife before he was shot. The officer was investigating a car break-in at the time.

“Reforming our public safety systems was the top priority when I entered into office and the importance of doing so is ever more urgent today,” said Mayor James Mueller.

“We have never, in my 32 years, have ever taught it (choke holds), never trained it, never used it,” said Ruszkowski. “However, we never had the words in our policy that you could never use chokeholds, stranglehold, carotid, whatever.”

“Any cop who thinks or relishes in this idea that what we saw is acceptable needs to turn in their badge right now,” Ruszkowski said. “We are more than willing and more than open to having these conversations because we can’t get it right unless people are telling us what we’re getting wrong.”

As for the aforementioned “discipline matrix” Mueller said it will make it easier and more consistent in holding officers accountable for doing something wrong based on the situation.

Mueller stopped short of saying he was planning to remove money from the South Bend police department. However, Chief Ruszkowski said if there is any money that needs to be removed from the department’s budget in order to alleviate the jobs that officers do that aren’t police-related he is all for it.

Similar reforms are happening in Indianapolis where Mayor Joe Hogsett is working with consultants to deep dive into how police in the Capital City can reform it’s use of force policy and other policies where he feels there may be “systemic racism.”

Network Indiana contributed to this story.