How the Police See Themselves

Great Debates
41

I don’t know when that was… it’s 45 hours of college credit if you’re over 21, and 60 if you’re under. Or 3 years of active-duty military service with an honorable discharge.

So you either have to have served a stint in the military or a couple of years of college to become a Dallas cop these days.

The big problem with raising the standards is that most (Dallas especially) larger city police departments are strapped for applicants- the suburban police departments pay more and have less dangerous/less stressful environments, so the common career track around here is to go to the DPD Academy and get trained, work a few years for DPD, and then shift out to say… Frisco and spend your time doing speed traps, busting high school parties, and dealing with the occasional domestic violence call, versus Dallas where things can be a lot more dicey at times.

Cops are paid well (DPD starts at 61k per year), but I’m not so sure it’s well enough to entice a bunch of recent college graduates to forego their chosen career paths to become cops. What you’d end up with if you required 4 year degrees would be all the washouts from their chosen careers who would give being a cop a shot rather than be a half-assed accountant or whatever.

42

I’m curious what actions those would be.

43

-Shooting someone who is not an immediate threat (fleeing, etc.)
-Assaulting someone who has already given themselves up
-Torturing someone in custody

need I go on? American police do those things regularly and get away with it. American soldiers do those things? They’re war crimes.

44

There’s no reason for a four year degree for a cop. The kind of training they need is more like what special forces get - constant tactical retraining, practicing hostile scenarios over and over until they no longer have ‘fight or flight’ responses to violence, community policing and engagement training like Green Berets get, etc.

It doesn’t have to be as intense as special forces training, but of the same caliber. The cops that tend to shoot first are the ones who are unsure of themselves and scared. That speaks to poor training.

45

In war time, to keep from being shot, all I have to do is turn around and run?
Forgive the digression.

46

I’ve had a few friends who were officers and one of my closest friends is a former cop. I do think most of them want to be “the good guys” but they invariably end up feeling as if the law does not apply to them.

Example: the former officer’s wife is also friends with my wife. On one occasion our families caravan-ed to an event on the other side of the state. I was following him and on the less trafficked highways he just drove as fast as possible all the time, 100+ MPH.

He was genuinely surprised I wasn’t keeping up with him and actually asked if we were having car trouble when we caught up later. I consider him a moral person but it never occurred to him that he might be doing something wrong, or that I could get a large speeding ticket for matching his speed.

47

In Canada, many police officers supposedly go their whole careers without ever drawing their weapons. I don’t know how true this is in the US. Some of the apparent anxiety may stem from infrequency.

Although police have to perform a lot of very different duties, there must be more scope for specialization and that may benefit from different educational backgrounds. An officer need not be all things, and like anyone is better at some things than others.

Having an independent college might add professionalism to forces, reassure the public, provide education and insurance, and reassure police that small mistakes are understandable (I.e. enforce a realistic standard) might be part of an answer.

48

I’m going to disagree and state that this kind of training is part of the problem. What it does is normalize the siege mentality, where the public becomes a threatening other and the cop must always be on high alert. If you are trained to think of yourself as the Green Beret and the public as the enemy, then you will respond accordingly.

49

Although there are surely situations where quick and automatic actions save lives, there are more frequent situations where it would be easy and unhelpful to overreact. I don’t know enough about military training to know whether this important difference is magnified or mitigated. Probably depends on the person and the practice. But I know it is a very important difference.

50

I don’t think you kmow what Green Berets do. Aside from their weapons and tactical training, Green Berets are tasked with working with local populations to win hearts and minds, gather counterinsurgency intel, participate in the defense of local populations, etc. They are the ambassadors of the special forces.

Effective policing shoild involve close relationships with communities. It involves walking beats, talking to people, understanding what the local problems are, and maintaining a friendly, helpful presence. It also means being trained well enough and current enough that you aren’t going to panic-shoot someone when you get in a threatening situation.

What’s happened in the past two decades is that police have been given all kinds of military hardware due to the downsizing of the U.S. military in the 90’s. In the meantime, training budgets have been cut. So you get cops who can’t handle themselves in dangerous, high adrenaline situations. They escalate their behaviour, which escalates the behaviour of the person they are attempting to arrest, and once things start going south someone panics and starts shooting. If the area becomes dangerous, they weapon up with their fancy military hardware, further alienating the population.

Listen to some of the audio on some of those shootings, The officer’s voices give away their panic a lot of the time. You can hear them breathing hard, screaming hoarsely, and in general exhibiting all the symptoms of someone in ‘fight or flight’ panic mode. Then the other person makes a sudden move, and they open fire.

When people are in that mode, they can’t think laterally and make good choices - which is how people can die in a fire because they are blindly pushing on a door they should pull. You don’t want a gun in the hands of someone in that mode. So you need screening and training and testing to make sure you aren’t putting people like that on the street.

Special forces are effective because they are so highly trained that when things get hairy and lesser soldiers lose the ability to fight effectively, the special forces react purposefully and effectively. The only way you get to that point is lots of hard training. That takes more money, not less. And it takes a higher quality of police, which means you may have to pay them more.

Let me give you an example from martial arts. If a normal, untrained person gets hit by someone, they often can’t process what happened, and their brains start gibbering in panic, allowing their assailant to keep hitting them. Martial arts training involves getting hit a lot. You learn to take a punch or shove or other aggressive behaviour in stride, and to counter effectively instead of going into panic mode and shutting down.

The police equivalent is constant tactical training in real-world scenarios, so when it actually happens on the street your training takes over and you respond reasonably and effectively, instead of panicking and shooting.

51

That makes sense, if the automatic reaction is to stay calm and focused. This is almost always helpful . Less so if it is to shoot back as a reflexive action. No one should be above the law - not the Prime Minister, President, politburo, police or proletariat, perhaps.

52

At least in theory, if a soldier comes under fire, he’s not supposed to instinctively fire back. What they’re trained to do is first take cover (which should be an instinctive response); then look around and figure out who’s shooting at them, with what, and from where; then form a plan to solve the problem; and finally, carry out the plan. In other words, they’re supposed to calmly and rationally assess the situation before they shoot. It’s the only way to win a battle, and it’s also how you avoid shooting people you shouldn’t shoot.

Of course, sometimes they do just shoot. That’s how Pat Tillman died, for instance.

53

Yeah, but more importantly a stock benchmark. Everyone and every organization lowers their standards if they are desperate enough, but make a higher benchmark to even BE a candidate encoded in law and well…we’ll have people with better training and sift out more losers before they get the badge, authority and gun and start using them.

54

Just … no.
I’ve lived under a regime where the cops and the military were interchangeable. It did not work well.

Personally, I think being a military veteran should disqualify you from being a police officer.

55

Sure. And yet, if the real consequences for doing the right thing involve being ostracized and despised, that implies that those who support doing the right thing are a distinct minority. If most officers are “good cops”, you’d hardly be ostracized for doing the right thing.

56

I don’t think “military” and “special forces” are interchangeable in that analysis.

Powers &8^]

57

One’s a subset of the other. I’m not keen on being in a place where the cops get any kind of military training. Special forces training is just a subset of that.

58

I don’t have a problem with police getting some military training - the military sometimes must do police duties. Probably veterans have useful skills. But though there are some similarities, but maybe not all policeman need all those skills, weaponry or ethos.

59

Yeah, but the difference is that Special Forces are trained better than the average grunt.

Powers &8^]

60

One primary purpose of the police is to follow their sworn oath to uphold the law and enforce the constitution. It’s good to have talented applicants. But they probably shouldn’t consider themselves too special to fulfill the basics. I once heard a cop complain that their motto was along the lines of “to protect and serve”, and he thought the serving part sounded too menial. But it isn’t.