Remember how prosecutors distributed a copy of Missouri’s deadly force statute that included an unconstitutional provision? The one that was handed out the day Darren Wilson's story would be told over and over, by Wilson and three other witnesses, and via recorded interview?
Well, that statute came up again in testimony before the grand jury, this time from Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson. He was asked about the training officers receive on the use of force to effect an arrest and of deadly force.
Alizadeh: Does your office, or does your department train your officers on when they can use force to affect an arrest and when they can use deadly force?
Jackson: Yes, ma’am.
Alizadeh: Other than what they learn at the police academy, anything that your department instructs them about?
Jackson: Yes ma’am. That’s really continuing education. The post-training they are required where it includes firearms training, deadly force training every year. A lot of it is dictated by both state and federal law and Supreme Court decisions that sometimes change circumstances and deadly force. Fleeing felon rule, for example.
And there it was, the infirmity of the deadly force statute prosecutors previously distributed to grand jurors inadvertently plunked down right in front of the 12 people who most needed to understand it.
What would the prosecutors do? Why, shift the focus to questions about the bureaucratic minutiae of how the training gets done, of course.
Alizadeh: So let me ask, I know and maybe this hasn't been testified about, but officers have to get continuous education to maintain their certification every year; is that right?
Jackson: Yes, ma'am.
Alizadeh: So every year officers have to have so many hours of continuing education, right?
Jackson: Correct.
Alizadeh: And that's put on by various organizations and entities, would that be fair to say?
Jackson: Yes, ma'am.
Alizadeh: And so there might be other entities that would give additional instruction or training on use of force to affect an arrest and the use of deadly force, but my question is, does your department itself train or instruct the officer or is there any kind of formalized training in your department, put on by your department about use of force?
Jackson: Yes, ma'am.
Alizadeh: And is that done as like in the form of giving them some written materials, or is that done as in some kind of class setting?
The questioning goes on about whether there's written literature that officers have to read, protocols on officer-involved shootings, and other similar sorts of things
that don't have a damn thing to do with the need for training to reflect court-imposed changes to statutory law.
Citation: Vol. 21, p. 211-14.
Update: This post originally identified the Ferguson Police Chief as Jon Belmar. Belmar is the chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, not Ferguson.