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Jocko Willing was asked about the issues with the police (in the US). His response was very insightful. He observed that most problems boiled down to lack of t

• save_ferris 6y ago
  > For an untrained cop an arrest can be very stressful. This then can result in using way too much force. I don't doubt that this is true at all, but it still points to major systemic flaws in how police are managed throughout the country. We wouldn't permit or accept a first-year medical student to perform open heart surgery, nor a first-time flight student to pilot a commercial plane full of people, but throughout the country, we're seeing brutal violence being carried out by people who lack the training, and in many cases, the emotional intelligence to do a job that very clearly requires it. Such failure warrants massive overhauls to the system, regardless of whether it's a training issue or something more sinister. "Lack of training" is, frankly, a really piss-poor excuse when you're seeing videos like George Floyd. How much training do you need to know not to kneel on someone's neck for almost 9 minutes? The culture and management of policing is far too opaque and if the lack of training is the number one issue, the various systems of police training programs need to be brought to light and people need to be fired across the board.
  • jcims 6y ago
    >I don't doubt that this is true at all, but it still points to major systemic flaws in how police are managed throughout the country. I think that's what Jocko's point is, there's a systemic lack of training in police forces across the country, and some portion of the newsworthy interaction with the general public stem from that. >Such failure warrants massive overhauls to the system, regardless of whether it's a training issue or something more sinister. Unless the federal government takes control of law enforcement nationwide, it's not even obvious where how you would start a 'massive overhaul to the system'. You'd probably have to start with declaring martial law then plan to operate that way for the next 5-10 years as law enforcement is reshaped from the ground up. The likelihood that anyone in our current administration or on deck would attempt that is vanishingly small, and the likelihood that they would actually pull it off even less so. It's likely going to take decades to fully repair this, and I think we need to consider incremental improvements vs some kind of big bang change. > "Lack of training" is, frankly, a really piss-poor excuse when you're seeing videos like George Floyd. How much training do you need to know not to kneel on someone's neck for almost 9 minutes? It's not piss-poor, it's just not a complete explanation. There isn't one. More training isn't going to help if you don't have sound policies at their foundation. Policies need to be adjusted for sure, practices need to be expanded to build a relationship with the community, and then training needs to be increased to navigate the broad set of circumstances that police officers may counter. All of this might not have prevented Chauvin from doing what he did, but it seems likely that if the other officers at the scene were better equipped across those dimensions we wouldn't have had the same result.
• deleted 6y ago
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• thowaway23413 6y ago
  Fixing the process (formal training in this instance), rather than focusing on specific mistakes (a specific instance of police violence) is generally the correct approach. However, given how little accountability there is for specific instances, maybe part of "training" is cops actually facing substantial repercussions when they resort to violence? Side note: Does Jocko have a vested interest here? ie. does he sell a police training course? That could explain his bias to pointing to more training while skating over repercussions.