15 ms·

New Style of Police Training Aims to Produce Guardians, Not Warriors

278 points by tokenadult 11y ago

fapjacks 11y ago
Holy smokes we need this so badly in the States!
- placeybordeaux 11y ago
  Yeah hopefully they bring this to Washington!
  - vinay427 11y ago
    The article is about the program in Washington.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      "Whoosh"
gherkin0 11y ago
> Gone, too, is a classroom poster that once warned recruits that “officers killed in the line of duty use less force than their peers.” Wow. That was a thing that existed? > Alexis Artwohl, a former police psychologist and consultant to the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association...is skeptical of some guardian-style training. Artwohl has co-written a book on deadly force whose promotional blurb begins: “In a cop’s world it’s kill or be killed.” Jesus. I hope this new-style training actually has an impact.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  An acquaintance of mine who used to be head of training for Oakland PD once commented to me that police officers had essentially the same psychological profile as gang members. I thought he was just engaging in some self-deprecating humor but he was at pains to point out that he was serious and regarded it as a chronic problem in police culture.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Reminds me of a black hat/white hat distinction. Both occupations require basically the same skill set and provide similar thrills, they're just on the different sides of the law.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      That sums up the distinction perfectly.
tokenadult 11y ago
The report "From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals" mentioned in the article is available for downloading from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.[1] The report includes a lot of information about police training. [1] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf
calibraxis 11y ago
This article shows how far ahead some people (in the Mideast) are: "They number roughly 6,000 [police] officers, all of them elected; a women-only force deals with sexual assault and rape. (All recruits receive their weapons only after 'two weeks of feminist instruction,' according to Cengidar Mikail, the director of the Qamishli police.)" (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-hell.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia...) What happens when people dare to think deeper. And they're not only in ISIS' backyard, but the ones beating them.
sremani 11y ago
What I like about US or West is, reflect, retrain and retool. That is absolutely missing in other parts of the world. I know it is early and a bit congratulatory, being an Immigrant and having seen the other world, I am happy to call US my home.
ska 11y ago
Isn't this more like returning to an "old style"?
logn 11y ago
> Artwohl compares police work to defensive driving, which is about “expecting something bad is going to happen. It’s not about dealing with normal traffic flow.” > “We should go out there and expect something bad will happen and watch for it,” she said. “If we are not paying attention, we could die.” If that's how she views defensive driving it might shed some light on her approach to policing. I don't think defensive driving means expecting that at any moment something horrible can happen. It's more about being aware, anticipating events, preventing problems, and having a plan B. And it's very much part of dealing with normal traffic flow, responding to common road conditions in a defensive way that prevents problems or at least offers you a good response should a problem occur.
- gknoy 11y ago
  I think she's entirely correct. I consider "defensive driving" not to be about expecting horrible things, but rather thinking about (and taking action to mitigate) unsafe events. I explicitly distrust other drivers, more than might be considered reasonable, specifically because there have been times that, had I not been so pessimistic, either I would have been injured or my vehicle damaged. - I distrust turn signals. I've seen too many people approach an intersection that I want to turn into that had forgotten to turn their signal off. I believe it when I see your car change course, or start braking. (I also live in an area where many people don't bother to use them in the first place.) - I assume most people are speeding, and am conservative about pulling out in front of oncoming traffic -- which has saved my bacon when my car has stalled. - I assume people on the freeway going faster than me will cut in front if me. Strangely, this _reduces_ my stress while driving, as I am not surprised when it happens. - I approach my car from the front, so that I can see oncoming traffic before stepping into the road. Being prepared for statistical outliers is important, because as a driver (or as a police officer) you have many encounters in the course of your career -- and your cumulative chance of encountering such an outlier increases the longer your career.
  - gozo 11y ago
    Yes, defensive driving is about having higher margins. Which is where her comparison falls short. Because police often escalate the situation to get the upper hand on a perceived threat. Which is more like tactical driving, where you e.g. drive in a convoy at high speed to avoid getting stopped. If there is no real threat you have most likely made the situation worse.
rms_returns 11y ago
Reminds me of the movie "Demolition Man". For those who don't know, this is a Sylvester Slallone futuristic movie where a thug named Simon Phoenix wakes up from a cryo-prison somewhere around 2032. But LA is a pacifist utopia now, and the cops are all "nicey nicey" without any weapons with them, so who is going to stop Simon now? I think, as a society, we are progressing towards that kind of pacifist utopia.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  Modern policing seems to be moving more in the Rambo direction, if we're picking Stallone movies.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    First Blood was ahead of its time, in that the audience was expected to sympathize with the victim of brutal policing.
exelius 11y ago
I see a disconnect between what the public believes the job of the police is and what police officers believe the job of the police is. In my mind, police officers sign up for a dangerous job knowingly - that's why they're revered as heroic by many in society. They are willing to put themselves at risk to protect society from harm, and that's noble. What most police academies teach is the opposite. They teach officers to put their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of "reducing officer casualties" and "overwhelming force". This is not a heroic police officer sacrificing himself for society; it's jackbooted thugs threatening, terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect. Turns out it's really hard to tell a bad guy from a good guy by looking at them, so they play it safe and treat everyone like a bad guy. Not every officer thinks this way, but it's common enough that it leads to a lot of police shootings. IMO a police officer should be more willing to take a bullet than put one into someone. I realize body armor isn't foolproof, but the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that - something a person on the street doesn't get.
- newman314 11y ago
  I can't upvote this enough. However, even the phrase "law enforcement" implies a different mindset rather than "To serve and to protect (the public)". It seems that phrase got perverted into "to serve and protect (thyself)" instead. Which makes me sad. We need more officers to think like this one. [1] [1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-speaks/story?id=35676207 http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-s...
- theworstshill 11y ago
  Who are you kidding? Vast majority are there for pensions, donuts and occasionally (the 1% of cases) the thrill of the chase.
- knieveltech 11y ago
  I agree with your position and would also like to see officer pay increased to reflect the dangerous nature of their work.
  - 11y ago
kelukelugames 11y ago
Don't cheer yet. This is how Seattle cops react to training. Go to the 1:22 mark. Cop talks about sticking a gun in someone's face as his method of de-escalation. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-force-police-warily-learn-to-de-escalate.html?ref=topics http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-forc...
- themodelplumber 11y ago
  That same article has a great video of a very nice deescalation by Seattle PD. So clearly not all Seattle cops should be lumped together as overreachers.
brandonmenc 11y ago
"Policing" and "law enforcement" are different. Policing: hey, you're not allowed to jaywalk, so stop. Law Enforcement: here's a $100 fine for your first jaywalking offense. We have too many law enforcers, too few police.
- mgraczyk 11y ago
  By giving police the power to judiciate through selective enforcement of the rules, you are guaranteeing that there will be rampant abuse.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Look at the UK. Police there have far more judicial discretion than is common in the US, but abuse/bribery/etc is incredibly low. Although it should be noted that UK police have no incentive to fine people, the department doesn't profit from it, whereas in the US a lot of departments are primarily financed through fines.
    - clock_tower 11y ago
      I think that that's the root of the problem, or at least a much bigger part of it than either political side is interested in letting on. Not everything is shaped by money, but when there's money involved, it's worthwhile to know what incentives it sets up...
  - vkou 11y ago
    Except we already give them that power - see the all-too-common offenses of driving while black, contempt of cop, and the tried-and-true 'I'm pretty sure I smelled weed in the car'. On top of that, we also give prosecutors the power to judiciate selective enforcement.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    Replace the police with robots? No thanks.
  - 11y ago
zeveb 11y ago
I wholeheartedly approve of this shift in focus. Yes, police do have to deal with violent and dangerous people, but most people are neither violent nor dangerous (nor ought they be criminals). The police force is not the military; one's fellow citizens are not one's foes. > The officers were charged with felony assault but acquitted by a jury in 1992, sparking days of rioting and protests. For completeness, the article really should have mentioned that they were then convicted by a federal court, the Constitution's prohibition on double jeopardy being held not to apply.
mcguire 11y ago
"In 1986, two FBI agents armed with six-shot revolvers died in a shootout near Miami with bank robbers armed with more powerful weapons, including a semiautomatic assault rifle." There's quite a bit more to that story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout The bottom line is that one suspect (the other fired only one shot causing no injuries), after receiving a fatal wound, killed two FBI agents and wounded five more. These are parts 1 and 2 of an FBI training video on the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSCE88UhyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSCE88UhyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAUDnzDhQpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAUDnzDhQpc This incident seems to be so obviously a fluke that it would be hard to find any generally applicable lessons, although as the article points out, lessons have been found from it. (One was the introduction of the 10mm pistol round and pistols chambered for it---that didn't last too long as the recoil was deemed too heavy for accuracy and the pistols seem to have suffered failures---and then the move to the .40 calibre S&W round (based on the 10mm with a reduced powder charge).)
- hga 11y ago
  And now they're moving to 9mm, which 3 of the agents in the Miami shootout were armed with, but certainly not the more effective loadings that the FBI in part uses to justify this move. See https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10716811 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10716811 in this discussion for a few more TL;DR details gleaned from the Wikipedia article.
unabridged 11y ago
The best way to get better cops: Putting multiple cameras on every cop & car, and prosecutors who make it clear they side with the people over the police. Seriously punish any amount of power tripping or harassment of citizens. It may take a few years, but the people who sign up for police academy will be different. Being a police officer will no longer be attractive to those who want to wield power.
- krapp 11y ago
  Prosecutors shouldn't side with "the people" over the police - the police are the people. They should side with the evidence and the rule of law.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  The policy-actionable bits of that (cameras, particularly) may help. But training affects expectations and behavior, both directly and individually and more broadly by shaping institutional culture. So, training reforms of the type discussed in the article are, IMO, part of the solution.
femto 11y ago
Maybe each officer needs to be reminded of their own roots, in the form of the Peelian principles? It should be an easy sell, as the principles have been "their own" for nearly 200 years. Dating from 1829, they are the founding principles of the London Metropolitan Police Force. In summary, policing is a self-regulation function by the community being policed, not imposed by an external force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles#Nine_Principles_of_Policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles#Nine_Princi...
- the-dude 11y ago
  Thanks for posting this, this is great.
darkr 11y ago
My first experience of American policing in action was at a hotel in Gainsville, most of which was booked out to people attending the same punk rock festival. There was a whole bunch of people hanging out by the pool in the summer afternoon, playing music of a ghetto blaster, drinking out of kegs and just generally hanging out. I think someone may have let off a firework; but the general scene was on the mellow side of rowdy. Around 8 or so police suddenly burst out into the patio, guns drawn, shouting at people, throwing them face down onto the floor and handcuffing them. The whole thing would have been farcical if there wasn't such an underlying threat of mortal violence. Contrast to a scene in Whitechapel, London a couple of years later; a roof party on top of a tower block. Considerably larger sound system and bigger crowd. Unsurprisingly, around 3AM one of the residents made a noise complaint. Couple of bobbies turn up, as usual, unarmed apart from the standard issue baton; ask to speak to the organisers, give it bit of "well well well, what's going on 'ere then". Some banter ensues and a polite but assertive request to turn down the music and disperse is made, which is duely acknowledged and the party winds down/moves elsewhere.
- newman314 11y ago
  I feel like there are too many Farva type cops that have seen one too many movies and think that's reality and the proper way to act.
  - baudehlo 11y ago
    I had no idea American police were trained like army recruits. It explains a lot.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      With less discipline and more self aggrandizing macho bullshit.
    - serge2k 11y ago
      I actually heard somewhere (TV probably) that army members are actually trained to try to avoid escalating conflicts like this.
mindslight 11y ago
This is akin to trying to stop crime by changing the high school curriculum. We already have civil and criminal legal systems that even police are supposedly bound by. Why not fucking apply them?
jessaustin 11y ago
So far this year, police have shot and killed more than 900 people, according to a Washington Post database tracking such shootings — more than twice the number recorded in any previous year by federal officials. Surely this indicates the utter failure by any federal agency to track this statistic more than it does exceptionally violent LEOs this year?
- passwordreset 11y ago
  Surely? No. Possibly? Yes. Likely? Both.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Lots of people have searched for this stat. It isn't kept by DoJ, which one presumes is why WaPo is attempting to do so itself.
blhack 11y ago
Police need to just behave more like firefighters. Not only that, but I think that a lot more cops need to be out on foot. Not bikes, not segways, none of that. They should be out walking around, talking to people. IMHO, I should know who the cops assigned to my neighborhood are. Here's a thing that happened last week that highlights a problem I have with the cops: At about 1:30 in the morning, my dog starts doing her dog thing and informing me that IMMINENT DOOM is upon us in the form of somebody being outside of the house. I get up and walk to the kitchen to find that, yes, indeed somebody is outside of the door trying to get in, which is a scary feeling. I don't have a peephole on that door, it's the middle of the night, and they aren't knocking, they're trying to get the handle to open. Now, luckily I'm a pretty huge guy, so while this was scary, it didn't really seem life threatening, (they weren't trying to bust through the door, just trying to come inside, so probably just a very disoriented person). Eventually, they left, and I went back to bed. A few minutes later, however, we heard a car alarm go off next door, indicating that the person had just moved on to the neighbor's house, which is really sad, because there is an old lady that lives next door, who might not brush off the idea of somebody trying to come into her house as readily as I could. I go outside and find out that the person trying to come in was a ~20 year old girl who couldn't have weighed more than 110lbs soaking wet. Basically the least threatening person imaginable, but she was trying to get into the neighbor's house. One part of my life involves volunteering for a group of people who deal specifically with this sort of thing at a big dessert party that lots of people in SF have probably heard of. My mode switched from being worried about the lady next door, to being worried about the obviously confused kid trying to get into somebody's house. I loudly convinced her to come and talk to me away from the lady-next-door's house (so as to make sure that the lady inside, who I am sure was scared, could hear that everything was alright), and we started trying to figure out where she was supposed to be, and a plan to get her to that place safely. Sidenote: turns out she just has some really shitty friends who more or less ditched her and went home. While I was talking to her, the cops showed up (presumably my neighbor called them), and I got to see how they would have handled the situation. There was a guy just riding his bike by the neighbor's house, and the cops started YELLING at him "What are you doing?" "Just riding home." "Huh, why are you here? Why are you riding here? Huh? Why here? What are you doing? Is this your house? What are you doing? Do you know you can't be here? This is an alleyway you can't ride here [EVERYBODY rides their bike in the alley, which is practically a bike path], why are you here? This is illegal. What are you doing here?" Just started machine-gunning questions at this poor dude who happened to be riding by at the wrong time. Eventually, they figured out that the girl I was talking to was the person that they were looking for. I explained to them who she was, what she was doing, and where she needed to be. The thing that absolutely FLOORED me was that they refused to give her a ride home. They wanted to stick this obviously disoriented, possibly drugged, girl into a cab (a fucking CAB! Yikes!), and make her into the cabby's problem (hey, get into this random car and hopefully this drugged up girl will make it home safe!) Luckily they did NOT do this, because the girl said she didn't have any cash. The ended up calling some sort of non-police-police van who gave her a ride to [hopefully] her house. (It was their Crisis Intervention Team, I think. Like people who show up and talk to people who have just had a traumatic experience, I guess they weren't busy, and had time to give this girl a ride). -- Watching the whole thing was just sad to me. Not only was the FIRST response that the cops had to start yelling at some dude, but when presented with a REAL opportunity to improve somebody's safety (this girl), they either didn't want to, or were not allowed to. Keeping some disoriented girl safe in the middle of the night seems like the cliche of what cops are supposed to be doing, and here when presented with the opportunity, they wouldn't do it. Pathetic.
jessaustin 11y ago
I'm no expert, but reading TFA I can't help but think that though this new training is an improvement, it's not going to make much difference. It would take a saintly person not to menace and abuse the public when placed in the position in which we place cops. As long as we rely on the goodness of people, on the availability of "heroes", we'll be disappointed. We'll still have a system that rewards corrupt and brutal behavior while imprisoning people who smoke pot. This thread is a perfect illustration why. We have numerous comments claiming that police should just put up with serious risks to their lives, which is ridiculous. The risks that e.g. deepwater oil workers face are inherent to current oil drilling technology. Though such workers are paid enough to accept those risks, safety technology is always improving. In contrast, every risk involved in police work is due to arbitrary decisions society has made, which could be changed at any time if we cared enough to do so. It's no wonder that police have responded with a bunker mentality. Society has invented numerous victimless crimes, many of which attempt to counteract basic psychological and physical drives. Society has outlawed "risky" behaviors rather than punishing actual harms caused by those. Society has given municipalities, agencies, and contractors commercial interest in draconian enforcement. Society has decided to employ multitudes more police than we actually need, so that they are forced to menace the public in order to make work for themselves. My suggestion for a maxim of policing would be to follow physicians: "first, do no harm". Actually living that rule would be a vast change to current LEO practice.
hyperion2010 11y ago
Far better for the authority of a policeman to come from citizens' belief in the importance of law and respect for their governmental institutions than from fear of deadly force. Even if the rule of law is ultimately guaranteed by force it is a really bad idea to continually confront generally law abiding citizens with that fact, they are going to follow the law anyway most of the time and pointing guns at them is just going to escalate the situation because the one pointing a gun is seen as an imminent threat and 'other.' Dangerous for everyone involved and stupid if you care about building belief in the importance of rule of law.
allworknoplay 11y ago
I'm a fan of this video that tears down lousy police training during a tough encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VeHOkt_o8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VeHOkt_o8 I believe they have others, too. Our cops are simply not trained for de-escalation and disarming like they should be.
stcredzero 11y ago
I was watching a video, where the YouTuber, who is a cop, was trying out a video-wall computerized training tool for police. One thing that disturbed me was that the simulator was supposed to help police know when to deploy their firearm. However, every single scenario required the use of lethal force. The only question was when to use lethal force.
- hga 11y ago
  Eh, one of those was a bonus in the mandatory Missouri concealed carry training class I took (taught by current duty local police officers in the local college's police training academy), and that you will have to use lethal force at some point is vastly outweighed by all the times you might but cannot legally and morally use it. In none of the scenarios was it clear at the beginning that you'd need to fire your weapon at some point, and, hmmm, all that I recall were in defense of a 3rd party on the scene. Although I'm sure there are ones where you personally are in simulated danger.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    What was disturbing to me, was that all of the scenarios dealt with the police having to defend themselves using lethal force.
    - hga 11y ago
      There's such a thing as not wasting training or simulator time. That cops trained with such simulations don't then go all Terminator when they're out on the streets says something. And as noted there are simulation suites which focus entirely on protection of 3rd parties, you're oddly enough never at risk, which was itself unsettling.
stcredzero 11y ago
My ex-girlfriend's uncle is an honest man, has a stable job, is in a stable marriage with a wonderful woman, and has two kids. At the time of this story, his kids were in High school and on the junior varsity and varsity football teams, and were getting good grades. He and his family are devoutly religious. In his family, young men are expected to be celibate until they get married. He lives in a small river town in Louisiana. The police officers of his town are almost all white, and this is how they treat him: If they see him and his sons conversing in a parking lot, it is assumed that they are planning to break the law, and they are always told summarily to leave. They could talk to him and be civil. They could even ask him for useful information. However, they only see young black men who might be perpetrators. I've also seen the police of this town herd crowds of black people on 4x4 vehicles like cattle on the 4th of July. They were clearly afraid of the crowd, which mostly consisted of high school students. Kids, really! There are American police who are afraid of their citizens, and only see them in terms of their ethnicity and potential danger. Something is very wrong here!
- gleenn 11y ago
  John Basil Barnhill said, "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty." The cops should fear us to some reasonable degree, they just shouldn't be able to act out of it.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    When the cops can't just plain talk to a law abiding human being who is on their side -- a father with his kids, no less -- then there is something very wrong. Do you think that cop would demonstrate a finer granularity of classification and a different sort of interaction when meeting a white father with his two football playing high school aged kids? Police who are a part of the community and who know their fellow citizens are going to be able to do a much better job.
kevinpet 11y ago
I remember when the Abu Ghraib and similar revelations came out, I was relatively unsurprised. Military training is to prepare people to fight a war, against a defined enemy, where the general gist of the available tactics all come down to "kill the other guy first". And if you put someone with that kind of training in a situation that calls for police, you're going to get bad results. I had naively assumed at the time that police were still trained to a different outlook and set of priorities.
Animats 11y ago
This isn't a new style of policing. It's Sir Robert Peel's principles of law enforcement, from 1822.[1] The UK still tries to follow those. The militarization of American police is a reaction to the rise in gun ownership, especially guns with higher firepower. US police have to assume when they approach someone that they may be armed. UK police don't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Personally, I live in one of the "murder capital's" of the U.S.. Them going for dangerous people highly armed would make plenty of sense. Still, despite high crime, police are quite safe with them rarely dying and that's not due to militarism: hood areas could pour 100+ rounds into any cop that showed up. Most people, even crooks, just wouldn't try to kill a cop. Run or resist a bit? Yes. Gun down? Only the dumbest, most evil, or most mentally ill. Very few and cautious, non-asshole cops can handle them with training. Cops still regularly use plenty of macho attitude and force against many here. This ranges from kids smoking weed to drunks to white collar criminals. I knew one teenager that got SWAT'ed because his mom was a small time meth dealer. She has some addiction and non-violent crime then her kids are on the ground with machine guns shoved in their heads and their belongings torn apart? Please... No wonder they "learned" that police were heartless pricks to avoid when they themselves became dealers or whatever to get ahead. The OP may be going too far with it but I've seen a number of police departments adopt the stance of "we care about you, working with you, and will drop you with a quickness if we have to." They're doing fine last I heard where militant areas like mine surely ain't. Hood rats pride themselves in fighting or being jailed by such police. So, it not only doesn't work: becomes a vicious circle between police and thugs. Glad to see more taking a less simplistic view than "more violence = more compliance."
- cja 11y ago
  Exactly. It's difficult to blame US police for acting as though they're members of an occupying army when all of the people they meet could be armed with guns. I can understand why a policeman in the US would want to be equipped like a soldier.
jqm 11y ago
This is great, but I wonder if without a pay raise if they will be able to fill the ranks. Cynical me thinks maybe a large number of current cops would do the job for even less, so long as they were allowed to carry a gun and a stick and order people around and maybe even get to shoot them. So with that approach we get a less expensive police force that is fairly effective (for the privileged class) as it ruthlessly beats and suppresses the unprivileged class. Win-win for the privileged class. Keeping the thugs down at bargain prices. So now policing gets more expensive? Many cities are strapped for cash at the moment. (Heaven forbid we consider cutting unneeded bureaucrats to pay for better police officers). So higher taxes it is? I'm certainly ok with paying for quality. That is... if I actually get it.
- hga 11y ago
  It's hard to explain their observed eagerness to shoot harmless dogs in any other way than the power trip thesis.
sahreeg 11y ago
Although I am no authority to properly comment on the American police system; having never lived there. I think we should not boil it down to a black-white issue of police training. I definitely agree that training police should not be in the same fashion as military, I think this needs to be coupled with anti-gun laws, and proper education to ever see a true decline in police brutality. After all, being confronted with an armed suspect, will lead to escalation, remove that game changer, and a properly trained police should be able to subdue them.
- hga 11y ago
  I can't think of any gun control that would help this situation, plus it's not happening in the forseable future. But thinking about your comment just now, less gun control would help in the 8 states that don't have "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes, which include the high population states of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Knowing that outright murder and the like might be opposed by a legally carrying concealed citizen has got to have a chilling effect on the worst of the police. Knowing that 5% of the citizens 19 or older in my county have concealed carry licenses should also have some good effects of various sorts, and temper some of the sorts of things we've been told about in this HN topic. Won't help when they're dealing with "known criminals" or the young (the threshold age is generally 21), unless of course a parent is there or the like. To the extend citizen concealed carry decreases crime (a hotly debated topic that's very hard to prove when things like demographics are also steadily decreasing it), that would also help.
eagsalazar2 11y ago
I have a friend who went through the Seattle academy training then left the SPD after a year. He said this attitude runs very deep. Citizens are seen as the enemy and it is a bunch of insecure, macho dudes who get off on intimidating people. I think some of the reason people disagree on this subject is that police across the country vary a lot. In SF where I live now police are, to most people anyway, pretty good. Growing up in Seattle and living there until I was about 35, I was harassed and intimidated many many times.

278 points by tokenadult 11y ago

fapjacks 11y ago

Holy smokes we need this so badly in the States!

placeybordeaux 11y ago
Yeah hopefully they bring this to Washington!
- vinay427 11y ago
  The article is about the program in Washington.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    "Whoosh"

gherkin0 11y ago

> Gone, too, is a classroom poster that once warned recruits that “officers killed in the line of duty use less force than their peers.” Wow. That was a thing that existed? > Alexis Artwohl, a former police psychologist and consultant to the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association...is skeptical of some guardian-style training. Artwohl has co-written a book on deadly force whose promotional blurb begins: “In a cop’s world it’s kill or be killed.” Jesus. I hope this new-style training actually has an impact.

anigbrowl 11y ago
An acquaintance of mine who used to be head of training for Oakland PD once commented to me that police officers had essentially the same psychological profile as gang members. I thought he was just engaging in some self-deprecating humor but he was at pains to point out that he was serious and regarded it as a chronic problem in police culture.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Reminds me of a black hat/white hat distinction. Both occupations require basically the same skill set and provide similar thrills, they're just on the different sides of the law.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    That sums up the distinction perfectly.

tokenadult 11y ago

The report "From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals" mentioned in the article is available for downloading from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.[1] The report includes a lot of information about police training. [1] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf

calibraxis 11y ago

This article shows how far ahead some people (in the Mideast) are: "They number roughly 6,000 [police] officers, all of them elected; a women-only force deals with sexual assault and rape. (All recruits receive their weapons only after 'two weeks of feminist instruction,' according to Cengidar Mikail, the director of the Qamishli police.)" (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-hell.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia...) What happens when people dare to think deeper. And they're not only in ISIS' backyard, but the ones beating them.

sremani 11y ago

What I like about US or West is, reflect, retrain and retool. That is absolutely missing in other parts of the world. I know it is early and a bit congratulatory, being an Immigrant and having seen the other world, I am happy to call US my home.

ska 11y ago

Isn't this more like returning to an "old style"?

logn 11y ago

> Artwohl compares police work to defensive driving, which is about “expecting something bad is going to happen. It’s not about dealing with normal traffic flow.” > “We should go out there and expect something bad will happen and watch for it,” she said. “If we are not paying attention, we could die.” If that's how she views defensive driving it might shed some light on her approach to policing. I don't think defensive driving means expecting that at any moment something horrible can happen. It's more about being aware, anticipating events, preventing problems, and having a plan B. And it's very much part of dealing with normal traffic flow, responding to common road conditions in a defensive way that prevents problems or at least offers you a good response should a problem occur.

gknoy 11y ago
I think she's entirely correct. I consider "defensive driving" not to be about expecting horrible things, but rather thinking about (and taking action to mitigate) unsafe events. I explicitly distrust other drivers, more than might be considered reasonable, specifically because there have been times that, had I not been so pessimistic, either I would have been injured or my vehicle damaged. - I distrust turn signals. I've seen too many people approach an intersection that I want to turn into that had forgotten to turn their signal off. I believe it when I see your car change course, or start braking. (I also live in an area where many people don't bother to use them in the first place.) - I assume most people are speeding, and am conservative about pulling out in front of oncoming traffic -- which has saved my bacon when my car has stalled. - I assume people on the freeway going faster than me will cut in front if me. Strangely, this _reduces_ my stress while driving, as I am not surprised when it happens. - I approach my car from the front, so that I can see oncoming traffic before stepping into the road. Being prepared for statistical outliers is important, because as a driver (or as a police officer) you have many encounters in the course of your career -- and your cumulative chance of encountering such an outlier increases the longer your career.
- gozo 11y ago
  Yes, defensive driving is about having higher margins. Which is where her comparison falls short. Because police often escalate the situation to get the upper hand on a perceived threat. Which is more like tactical driving, where you e.g. drive in a convoy at high speed to avoid getting stopped. If there is no real threat you have most likely made the situation worse.

rms_returns 11y ago

Reminds me of the movie "Demolition Man". For those who don't know, this is a Sylvester Slallone futuristic movie where a thug named Simon Phoenix wakes up from a cryo-prison somewhere around 2032. But LA is a pacifist utopia now, and the cops are all "nicey nicey" without any weapons with them, so who is going to stop Simon now? I think, as a society, we are progressing towards that kind of pacifist utopia.

ceejayoz 11y ago
Modern policing seems to be moving more in the Rambo direction, if we're picking Stallone movies.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  First Blood was ahead of its time, in that the audience was expected to sympathize with the victim of brutal policing.

exelius 11y ago

I see a disconnect between what the public believes the job of the police is and what police officers believe the job of the police is. In my mind, police officers sign up for a dangerous job knowingly - that's why they're revered as heroic by many in society. They are willing to put themselves at risk to protect society from harm, and that's noble. What most police academies teach is the opposite. They teach officers to put their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of "reducing officer casualties" and "overwhelming force". This is not a heroic police officer sacrificing himself for society; it's jackbooted thugs threatening, terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect. Turns out it's really hard to tell a bad guy from a good guy by looking at them, so they play it safe and treat everyone like a bad guy. Not every officer thinks this way, but it's common enough that it leads to a lot of police shootings. IMO a police officer should be more willing to take a bullet than put one into someone. I realize body armor isn't foolproof, but the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that - something a person on the street doesn't get.

newman314 11y ago
I can't upvote this enough. However, even the phrase "law enforcement" implies a different mindset rather than "To serve and to protect (the public)". It seems that phrase got perverted into "to serve and protect (thyself)" instead. Which makes me sad. We need more officers to think like this one. [1] [1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-speaks/story?id=35676207 http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-s...
theworstshill 11y ago
Who are you kidding? Vast majority are there for pensions, donuts and occasionally (the 1% of cases) the thrill of the chase.
knieveltech 11y ago
I agree with your position and would also like to see officer pay increased to reflect the dangerous nature of their work.
- 11y ago

kelukelugames 11y ago

Don't cheer yet. This is how Seattle cops react to training. Go to the 1:22 mark. Cop talks about sticking a gun in someone's face as his method of de-escalation. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-force-police-warily-learn-to-de-escalate.html?ref=topics http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-forc...

themodelplumber 11y ago
That same article has a great video of a very nice deescalation by Seattle PD. So clearly not all Seattle cops should be lumped together as overreachers.

brandonmenc 11y ago

"Policing" and "law enforcement" are different. Policing: hey, you're not allowed to jaywalk, so stop. Law Enforcement: here's a $100 fine for your first jaywalking offense. We have too many law enforcers, too few police.

mgraczyk 11y ago
By giving police the power to judiciate through selective enforcement of the rules, you are guaranteeing that there will be rampant abuse.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Look at the UK. Police there have far more judicial discretion than is common in the US, but abuse/bribery/etc is incredibly low. Although it should be noted that UK police have no incentive to fine people, the department doesn't profit from it, whereas in the US a lot of departments are primarily financed through fines.
  - clock_tower 11y ago
    I think that that's the root of the problem, or at least a much bigger part of it than either political side is interested in letting on. Not everything is shaped by money, but when there's money involved, it's worthwhile to know what incentives it sets up...
- vkou 11y ago
  Except we already give them that power - see the all-too-common offenses of driving while black, contempt of cop, and the tried-and-true 'I'm pretty sure I smelled weed in the car'. On top of that, we also give prosecutors the power to judiciate selective enforcement.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  Replace the police with robots? No thanks.
- 11y ago

zeveb 11y ago

I wholeheartedly approve of this shift in focus. Yes, police do have to deal with violent and dangerous people, but most people are neither violent nor dangerous (nor ought they be criminals). The police force is not the military; one's fellow citizens are not one's foes. > The officers were charged with felony assault but acquitted by a jury in 1992, sparking days of rioting and protests. For completeness, the article really should have mentioned that they were then convicted by a federal court, the Constitution's prohibition on double jeopardy being held not to apply.

mcguire 11y ago

"In 1986, two FBI agents armed with six-shot revolvers died in a shootout near Miami with bank robbers armed with more powerful weapons, including a semiautomatic assault rifle." There's quite a bit more to that story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout The bottom line is that one suspect (the other fired only one shot causing no injuries), after receiving a fatal wound, killed two FBI agents and wounded five more. These are parts 1 and 2 of an FBI training video on the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSCE88UhyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSCE88UhyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAUDnzDhQpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAUDnzDhQpc This incident seems to be so obviously a fluke that it would be hard to find any generally applicable lessons, although as the article points out, lessons have been found from it. (One was the introduction of the 10mm pistol round and pistols chambered for it---that didn't last too long as the recoil was deemed too heavy for accuracy and the pistols seem to have suffered failures---and then the move to the .40 calibre S&W round (based on the 10mm with a reduced powder charge).)

hga 11y ago
And now they're moving to 9mm, which 3 of the agents in the Miami shootout were armed with, but certainly not the more effective loadings that the FBI in part uses to justify this move. See https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10716811 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10716811 in this discussion for a few more TL;DR details gleaned from the Wikipedia article.

unabridged 11y ago

The best way to get better cops: Putting multiple cameras on every cop & car, and prosecutors who make it clear they side with the people over the police. Seriously punish any amount of power tripping or harassment of citizens. It may take a few years, but the people who sign up for police academy will be different. Being a police officer will no longer be attractive to those who want to wield power.

krapp 11y ago
Prosecutors shouldn't side with "the people" over the police - the police are the people. They should side with the evidence and the rule of law.
dragonwriter 11y ago
The policy-actionable bits of that (cameras, particularly) may help. But training affects expectations and behavior, both directly and individually and more broadly by shaping institutional culture. So, training reforms of the type discussed in the article are, IMO, part of the solution.

femto 11y ago

Maybe each officer needs to be reminded of their own roots, in the form of the Peelian principles? It should be an easy sell, as the principles have been "their own" for nearly 200 years. Dating from 1829, they are the founding principles of the London Metropolitan Police Force. In summary, policing is a self-regulation function by the community being policed, not imposed by an external force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles#Nine_Principles_of_Policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles#Nine_Princi...

the-dude 11y ago
Thanks for posting this, this is great.

darkr 11y ago

My first experience of American policing in action was at a hotel in Gainsville, most of which was booked out to people attending the same punk rock festival. There was a whole bunch of people hanging out by the pool in the summer afternoon, playing music of a ghetto blaster, drinking out of kegs and just generally hanging out. I think someone may have let off a firework; but the general scene was on the mellow side of rowdy. Around 8 or so police suddenly burst out into the patio, guns drawn, shouting at people, throwing them face down onto the floor and handcuffing them. The whole thing would have been farcical if there wasn't such an underlying threat of mortal violence. Contrast to a scene in Whitechapel, London a couple of years later; a roof party on top of a tower block. Considerably larger sound system and bigger crowd. Unsurprisingly, around 3AM one of the residents made a noise complaint. Couple of bobbies turn up, as usual, unarmed apart from the standard issue baton; ask to speak to the organisers, give it bit of "well well well, what's going on 'ere then". Some banter ensues and a polite but assertive request to turn down the music and disperse is made, which is duely acknowledged and the party winds down/moves elsewhere.

newman314 11y ago
I feel like there are too many Farva type cops that have seen one too many movies and think that's reality and the proper way to act.
- baudehlo 11y ago
  I had no idea American police were trained like army recruits. It explains a lot.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    With less discipline and more self aggrandizing macho bullshit.
  - serge2k 11y ago
    I actually heard somewhere (TV probably) that army members are actually trained to try to avoid escalating conflicts like this.

mindslight 11y ago

This is akin to trying to stop crime by changing the high school curriculum. We already have civil and criminal legal systems that even police are supposedly bound by. Why not fucking apply them?

jessaustin 11y ago

So far this year, police have shot and killed more than 900 people, according to a Washington Post database tracking such shootings — more than twice the number recorded in any previous year by federal officials. Surely this indicates the utter failure by any federal agency to track this statistic more than it does exceptionally violent LEOs this year?

passwordreset 11y ago
Surely? No. Possibly? Yes. Likely? Both.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Lots of people have searched for this stat. It isn't kept by DoJ, which one presumes is why WaPo is attempting to do so itself.

blhack 11y ago

Police need to just behave more like firefighters. Not only that, but I think that a lot more cops need to be out on foot. Not bikes, not segways, none of that. They should be out walking around, talking to people. IMHO, I should know who the cops assigned to my neighborhood are. Here's a thing that happened last week that highlights a problem I have with the cops: At about 1:30 in the morning, my dog starts doing her dog thing and informing me that IMMINENT DOOM is upon us in the form of somebody being outside of the house. I get up and walk to the kitchen to find that, yes, indeed somebody is outside of the door trying to get in, which is a scary feeling. I don't have a peephole on that door, it's the middle of the night, and they aren't knocking, they're trying to get the handle to open. Now, luckily I'm a pretty huge guy, so while this was scary, it didn't really seem life threatening, (they weren't trying to bust through the door, just trying to come inside, so probably just a very disoriented person). Eventually, they left, and I went back to bed. A few minutes later, however, we heard a car alarm go off next door, indicating that the person had just moved on to the neighbor's house, which is really sad, because there is an old lady that lives next door, who might not brush off the idea of somebody trying to come into her house as readily as I could. I go outside and find out that the person trying to come in was a ~20 year old girl who couldn't have weighed more than 110lbs soaking wet. Basically the least threatening person imaginable, but she was trying to get into the neighbor's house. One part of my life involves volunteering for a group of people who deal specifically with this sort of thing at a big dessert party that lots of people in SF have probably heard of. My mode switched from being worried about the lady next door, to being worried about the obviously confused kid trying to get into somebody's house. I loudly convinced her to come and talk to me away from the lady-next-door's house (so as to make sure that the lady inside, who I am sure was scared, could hear that everything was alright), and we started trying to figure out where she was supposed to be, and a plan to get her to that place safely. Sidenote: turns out she just has some really shitty friends who more or less ditched her and went home. While I was talking to her, the cops showed up (presumably my neighbor called them), and I got to see how they would have handled the situation. There was a guy just riding his bike by the neighbor's house, and the cops started YELLING at him "What are you doing?" "Just riding home." "Huh, why are you here? Why are you riding here? Huh? Why here? What are you doing? Is this your house? What are you doing? Do you know you can't be here? This is an alleyway you can't ride here [EVERYBODY rides their bike in the alley, which is practically a bike path], why are you here? This is illegal. What are you doing here?" Just started machine-gunning questions at this poor dude who happened to be riding by at the wrong time. Eventually, they figured out that the girl I was talking to was the person that they were looking for. I explained to them who she was, what she was doing, and where she needed to be. The thing that absolutely FLOORED me was that they refused to give her a ride home. They wanted to stick this obviously disoriented, possibly drugged, girl into a cab (a fucking CAB! Yikes!), and make her into the cabby's problem (hey, get into this random car and hopefully this drugged up girl will make it home safe!) Luckily they did NOT do this, because the girl said she didn't have any cash. The ended up calling some sort of non-police-police van who gave her a ride to [hopefully] her house. (It was their Crisis Intervention Team, I think. Like people who show up and talk to people who have just had a traumatic experience, I guess they weren't busy, and had time to give this girl a ride). -- Watching the whole thing was just sad to me. Not only was the FIRST response that the cops had to start yelling at some dude, but when presented with a REAL opportunity to improve somebody's safety (this girl), they either didn't want to, or were not allowed to. Keeping some disoriented girl safe in the middle of the night seems like the cliche of what cops are supposed to be doing, and here when presented with the opportunity, they wouldn't do it. Pathetic.

jessaustin 11y ago

I'm no expert, but reading TFA I can't help but think that though this new training is an improvement, it's not going to make much difference. It would take a saintly person not to menace and abuse the public when placed in the position in which we place cops. As long as we rely on the goodness of people, on the availability of "heroes", we'll be disappointed. We'll still have a system that rewards corrupt and brutal behavior while imprisoning people who smoke pot. This thread is a perfect illustration why. We have numerous comments claiming that police should just put up with serious risks to their lives, which is ridiculous. The risks that e.g. deepwater oil workers face are inherent to current oil drilling technology. Though such workers are paid enough to accept those risks, safety technology is always improving. In contrast, every risk involved in police work is due to arbitrary decisions society has made, which could be changed at any time if we cared enough to do so. It's no wonder that police have responded with a bunker mentality. Society has invented numerous victimless crimes, many of which attempt to counteract basic psychological and physical drives. Society has outlawed "risky" behaviors rather than punishing actual harms caused by those. Society has given municipalities, agencies, and contractors commercial interest in draconian enforcement. Society has decided to employ multitudes more police than we actually need, so that they are forced to menace the public in order to make work for themselves. My suggestion for a maxim of policing would be to follow physicians: "first, do no harm". Actually living that rule would be a vast change to current LEO practice.

hyperion2010 11y ago

Far better for the authority of a policeman to come from citizens' belief in the importance of law and respect for their governmental institutions than from fear of deadly force. Even if the rule of law is ultimately guaranteed by force it is a really bad idea to continually confront generally law abiding citizens with that fact, they are going to follow the law anyway most of the time and pointing guns at them is just going to escalate the situation because the one pointing a gun is seen as an imminent threat and 'other.' Dangerous for everyone involved and stupid if you care about building belief in the importance of rule of law.

allworknoplay 11y ago

I'm a fan of this video that tears down lousy police training during a tough encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VeHOkt_o8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VeHOkt_o8 I believe they have others, too. Our cops are simply not trained for de-escalation and disarming like they should be.

stcredzero 11y ago

I was watching a video, where the YouTuber, who is a cop, was trying out a video-wall computerized training tool for police. One thing that disturbed me was that the simulator was supposed to help police know when to deploy their firearm. However, every single scenario required the use of lethal force. The only question was when to use lethal force.

hga 11y ago
Eh, one of those was a bonus in the mandatory Missouri concealed carry training class I took (taught by current duty local police officers in the local college's police training academy), and that you will have to use lethal force at some point is vastly outweighed by all the times you might but cannot legally and morally use it. In none of the scenarios was it clear at the beginning that you'd need to fire your weapon at some point, and, hmmm, all that I recall were in defense of a 3rd party on the scene. Although I'm sure there are ones where you personally are in simulated danger.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  What was disturbing to me, was that all of the scenarios dealt with the police having to defend themselves using lethal force.
  - hga 11y ago
    There's such a thing as not wasting training or simulator time. That cops trained with such simulations don't then go all Terminator when they're out on the streets says something. And as noted there are simulation suites which focus entirely on protection of 3rd parties, you're oddly enough never at risk, which was itself unsettling.

stcredzero 11y ago

My ex-girlfriend's uncle is an honest man, has a stable job, is in a stable marriage with a wonderful woman, and has two kids. At the time of this story, his kids were in High school and on the junior varsity and varsity football teams, and were getting good grades. He and his family are devoutly religious. In his family, young men are expected to be celibate until they get married. He lives in a small river town in Louisiana. The police officers of his town are almost all white, and this is how they treat him: If they see him and his sons conversing in a parking lot, it is assumed that they are planning to break the law, and they are always told summarily to leave. They could talk to him and be civil. They could even ask him for useful information. However, they only see young black men who might be perpetrators. I've also seen the police of this town herd crowds of black people on 4x4 vehicles like cattle on the 4th of July. They were clearly afraid of the crowd, which mostly consisted of high school students. Kids, really! There are American police who are afraid of their citizens, and only see them in terms of their ethnicity and potential danger. Something is very wrong here!

gleenn 11y ago
John Basil Barnhill said, "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty." The cops should fear us to some reasonable degree, they just shouldn't be able to act out of it.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  When the cops can't just plain talk to a law abiding human being who is on their side -- a father with his kids, no less -- then there is something very wrong. Do you think that cop would demonstrate a finer granularity of classification and a different sort of interaction when meeting a white father with his two football playing high school aged kids? Police who are a part of the community and who know their fellow citizens are going to be able to do a much better job.

kevinpet 11y ago

I remember when the Abu Ghraib and similar revelations came out, I was relatively unsurprised. Military training is to prepare people to fight a war, against a defined enemy, where the general gist of the available tactics all come down to "kill the other guy first". And if you put someone with that kind of training in a situation that calls for police, you're going to get bad results. I had naively assumed at the time that police were still trained to a different outlook and set of priorities.

Animats 11y ago

This isn't a new style of policing. It's Sir Robert Peel's principles of law enforcement, from 1822.[1] The UK still tries to follow those. The militarization of American police is a reaction to the rise in gun ownership, especially guns with higher firepower. US police have to assume when they approach someone that they may be armed. UK police don't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Personally, I live in one of the "murder capital's" of the U.S.. Them going for dangerous people highly armed would make plenty of sense. Still, despite high crime, police are quite safe with them rarely dying and that's not due to militarism: hood areas could pour 100+ rounds into any cop that showed up. Most people, even crooks, just wouldn't try to kill a cop. Run or resist a bit? Yes. Gun down? Only the dumbest, most evil, or most mentally ill. Very few and cautious, non-asshole cops can handle them with training. Cops still regularly use plenty of macho attitude and force against many here. This ranges from kids smoking weed to drunks to white collar criminals. I knew one teenager that got SWAT'ed because his mom was a small time meth dealer. She has some addiction and non-violent crime then her kids are on the ground with machine guns shoved in their heads and their belongings torn apart? Please... No wonder they "learned" that police were heartless pricks to avoid when they themselves became dealers or whatever to get ahead. The OP may be going too far with it but I've seen a number of police departments adopt the stance of "we care about you, working with you, and will drop you with a quickness if we have to." They're doing fine last I heard where militant areas like mine surely ain't. Hood rats pride themselves in fighting or being jailed by such police. So, it not only doesn't work: becomes a vicious circle between police and thugs. Glad to see more taking a less simplistic view than "more violence = more compliance."
cja 11y ago
Exactly. It's difficult to blame US police for acting as though they're members of an occupying army when all of the people they meet could be armed with guns. I can understand why a policeman in the US would want to be equipped like a soldier.

jqm 11y ago

This is great, but I wonder if without a pay raise if they will be able to fill the ranks. Cynical me thinks maybe a large number of current cops would do the job for even less, so long as they were allowed to carry a gun and a stick and order people around and maybe even get to shoot them. So with that approach we get a less expensive police force that is fairly effective (for the privileged class) as it ruthlessly beats and suppresses the unprivileged class. Win-win for the privileged class. Keeping the thugs down at bargain prices. So now policing gets more expensive? Many cities are strapped for cash at the moment. (Heaven forbid we consider cutting unneeded bureaucrats to pay for better police officers). So higher taxes it is? I'm certainly ok with paying for quality. That is... if I actually get it.

hga 11y ago
It's hard to explain their observed eagerness to shoot harmless dogs in any other way than the power trip thesis.

sahreeg 11y ago

Although I am no authority to properly comment on the American police system; having never lived there. I think we should not boil it down to a black-white issue of police training. I definitely agree that training police should not be in the same fashion as military, I think this needs to be coupled with anti-gun laws, and proper education to ever see a true decline in police brutality. After all, being confronted with an armed suspect, will lead to escalation, remove that game changer, and a properly trained police should be able to subdue them.

hga 11y ago
I can't think of any gun control that would help this situation, plus it's not happening in the forseable future. But thinking about your comment just now, less gun control would help in the 8 states that don't have "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes, which include the high population states of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Knowing that outright murder and the like might be opposed by a legally carrying concealed citizen has got to have a chilling effect on the worst of the police. Knowing that 5% of the citizens 19 or older in my county have concealed carry licenses should also have some good effects of various sorts, and temper some of the sorts of things we've been told about in this HN topic. Won't help when they're dealing with "known criminals" or the young (the threshold age is generally 21), unless of course a parent is there or the like. To the extend citizen concealed carry decreases crime (a hotly debated topic that's very hard to prove when things like demographics are also steadily decreasing it), that would also help.

eagsalazar2 11y ago

I have a friend who went through the Seattle academy training then left the SPD after a year. He said this attitude runs very deep. Citizens are seen as the enemy and it is a bunch of insecure, macho dudes who get off on intimidating people. I think some of the reason people disagree on this subject is that police across the country vary a lot. In SF where I live now police are, to most people anyway, pretty good. Growing up in Seattle and living there until I was about 35, I was harassed and intimidated many many times.