So says academic dean Mike McGee of Hennepin Technical College, one of the primary institutions in which police officers are trained here in Minnesota, in an opinion piece published in the Star Tribune.
I think if we want to change the way police behave in this country, we have to change the way they are trained. And the piece by Mr. McGee is Exhibit A for how and why police training has gone wrong. Read the whole thing yourself - it's only 12 paragraphs. For those who don't, here is summary:
First, he cites statistics showing that in the five year period extending from 2009 to 2013, Brazilian police shot 11,000 people - which if my math is correct, works out to an average of 2,200 people per year. He contrasts this with allegedly 400 being shot here in the U.S., which he points out, has a population 1.5 times that of Brazil. I guess the point is that the U.S. should be more like Brazil when it comes to police involved violence, rather than the other way around.
Then, he provides an anecdote from a time when his institution hosted some police officers from the Philippines, wherein a "dynamic" exercise was conducted involving police officers confronting a "slumper" in a "poorly lit parking garage" - who it turns out, has a handgun in his lap. After being roused, the man is "groggy" and waves the gun "in the general direction of the trainees," but does not level it as if to shoot. The trainees were perplexed, and so time was called on the exercise.
Mr. McGee then turns to a discussion of the reaction from his Philippine guest:
Suddenly, the Philippine police official burst out laughing. I did not know where he’d found humor in the scenario, so I said: “What’s up? What is funny?”
I thought he’d been confused over some verbal command or that maybe there was some cultural misunderstanding. Well, he was confused, to be sure, but only about why the trainees had not opened fire when they saw the gun. He made it clear that the same situation in his country would have rapidly resulted in the death of the perp. Case closed. If you displayed a gun in the presence of a police office in the Philippines, apparently you didn’t survive the encounter.
I did my best to explain the restraint that professional police officers in the United States exercise. My guest said: “We value our officers’ lives over criminals.’ ”
I guess Mr. McGee's point is again that the U.S. should be more like the Philippines - police should shoot first and often when confronted with any kind of threat.
For those who don't subscribe to such a view of how public servants charged with protecting the lives of their constituents should behave, however, I think the characterizations involved are astonishing for someone involved with training future police officers. Notice the labeling - "perp" and "criminal." This, referring to someone sleeping in a car in a parking garage, who happens to have a gun - which as we are constantly reminded by the 2nd Amendment folks, is not a crime. The only "crime" occurred when the police officers initiated the confrontation, and the person displayed the gun in a threatening fashion.
In the end, that person in the car was really not a danger to anyone except himself if left alone. The decision to confront him, and once a threat was clearly posed, to continue the confrontation and thereby initiate a dangerous situation was really the decision of the police. The man could have been left to come to his senses on his own, and later on, detained and questioned when he tries to leave the parking ramp. I think the decision to confront such persons immediately and escalate the confrontation is more a matter of impatience and a misguided attempt to be efficient than it is mitigating a threat to public safety. Indeed, it seems to me more of a risk to public safety to force a confrontation and chance a gun battle than to just contain the threat and wait. But, police are trained to force "compliance" at all times, and at all costs. I suggest that maybe - just maybe - it might be better for police to be trained to use judgment and discretion so as to minimize danger to the public and themselves rather than insist on immediate compliance and use force in all circumstances.
We see the same attitude in the Furguson shooting - Wilson confronted two people walking in the street, and ends up shooting one of them because of a confrontation he initiated and then escalated beyond all reason.
In short, I believe that until we change attitudes amongst those involved with police training, such as Mr. McGee, and change the course of the training itself, we are only going to continue to see more and more episodes of police violence.
