Thanks to a patron with a cell phone, the cop who slapped a homeless man in Ft Lauderdale is facing an investigation. Police abuse of force should be addressed systematically, but not only by identifying a couple bad cops.
Kevin Dillon, a 25 year police veteran who now provides combat training, warned in 2011 that police officers are not getting enough training in communication and de-escalation skills.
"Most of the time its the insecurity and lack of confidence that causes the overposturing" that leads to escalation. In another situation where an officer escalated unnecessarily, Dillan observed "A confident officer would have said 'Look man, I apologize but this is what I need to do' - you're establishing dominance but also telling the person what they need to hear. You treat people with respect, it comes back twofold."
"I haven't seen it in academy training...many of these younger officers coming onto this profession are the computer generated generation - they don't have a lot of the communication skills. But if you send an officer into sensitivity training, his brain is gonna be shut down. It should be put into a combative arena where they see the value. Its got to be integrated into our training."
Video of the Ft Lauderdale officer hitting a homeless man
De-escalation tactics and Communication Skills
There's good cops and bad cops, there are guys with a lot of personal strength and confidence who never would do anything like this; and there are just plain bullies wearing a uniform. This particular incident seems pretty clearly just a bad cop, someone with a problem taking it out on a helpless target. But I bet, that given the stresses cops go thru, there are also a lot of men and women officers dealing with situations in ways that escalate when they don't need to, who would do better if they had the skills to handle them differently.
Dillon's video is the best one I found in a short search, but I was disappointed not to find an actual class video or a live situation. Communications skills, de-escalation and communicating with respect is a key cultural technology, and we ought to have a good open source repository somewhere with tools people can use to learn it.
Also having techniques out in a repo would let people comment on their helpfulness - some are not so great, like the 'close your eyes' suggestion apparently given to NY cops. NY cops told to 'close eyes' during volatile situations
Anyone know of other training materials like Dillon's, videos of live situations, or a collection where this sort of thing is kept?