Both articles suggest the lack of training may be partly responsible for the comparatively large number of homicides committed by US police. They also suggest part of the problem is the large number of independent police forces, making a unified, “best practices” approach impossible.
Finally, I found it interesting that in the case of homicides by police, as in so many issues, Canada looks better than the US–but worse than anywhere else.
Thoughts? Reactions? IMHO, more police training that reflects more advanced and progressive ideas would be a good thing, however difficult to implement.
Some states have unified training and certification requirements for all law enforcement agencies; for instance, California has the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) which all agencies are required to train their candidate officers to. Other states do not have this rigor and may have little or in some cases virtually no explicit training requirements.
However, while lack of training is certainly an issue with regard to understanding the law, conflict de-escalation, identifying and dealing with mental health crises, and officer safety, I think the more fundamental problems are in the basic mandates; specifically, the focus on enforcement ‘stats’ versus proactive engagement with the community, the use of law enforcement in ways that amplify crime (i.e. the “Drug War”), and especially asset forfeiture which creates a perverse incentive toward ‘criminalizing’ things for which there is absolutely no evidence of a crime being committed. Much law enforcement recruiting as also focused on military veterans because they already have experience with weapons handling and working in a hierarchal structure which has resulted in some police departments representing more of a paramilitary agency with a combat focus than an organization focused law enforcement and community protection. To this end, law enforcement organizations (which have always been pretty lax about ‘policing’ the behavior of their own personnel) have become incentivized to overlook problems with mental health and emotional regulation which has resulted in some cohort of ‘peace officers’ who literally patrol around looking for trouble or view their job as ‘busting heads and breaking doors’.
And until recently there has been very little accountability; even when officers are caught doing something that has obviously put innocent people in harms way and even killed people, they are rarely disciplined and almost never prosecuted; witness the completely unnecessary and out-of-policy ‘drug raid’ that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor, a murder for which apparently nobody was responsible or in any way held to account other than one officer who was prosecuted and convicted for “wanton endangerment” in putting Taylor’s neighbors in hazard. When something like this happens and the legitimate furor over it is dismissed as “woke-ism”, with police associations circling their wagons and protecting bad actors to the extent that even if a member is disciplined or fired they are able to obtain a position at another department without penalty.
Nothing will change if there is no incentive or pressure to change, and while training is a component of this a lot of it is the culture and political direction to put a stop to the abusive and exploitative system.
Strangely enough (or maybe not) among all my friends and family scattered across the globe, the ones outside the US who are most pro-gun rights are in Canada and Australia. None of these folks would know what to do with a gun if they had one, but railing against gun regulation seems to be part and parcel of being on the right politically nowadays.
So I’m assuming these are countries where ordinary folks are more likely to have guns and therefore police are more skittish.
I think the comparisons have a serious apples to oranges problem.
Most people wanting to go into police work receive a two-year A.A.S. degree in Criminal Justicebefore they go to the specific community’s police academy. That is obviously not counted in the 21 weeks of training average.
While insufficient or inadequate training is undoubtfully a problem, I don’t think it’s the root cause for most of the problems we see with our LEOs here in the U.S. IMO most of the bad cops (and there are many) already know what they’re doing is wrong or illegal, and they do it anyway.
Bad cops aren’t bad because they’re uneducated or because they don’t know the law. Many bad cops do know the law, but they simply don’t care that their actions are wrong/illegal/unconstitutional.
Nearly all of them. Hawaii is the only state that does not require it. Though, Missouri exempts it for departments with fewer than 4 officers. Surprisingly, many states allow officers to work for 6, 9, 12 and even 24 months before completing the training.
More accurate to say “half” than to say “most”. Though, 51.8% is technically most.
“Slightly more than half (51.8%) of sworn officers in the United States have at least a twoyear degree, 30.2% have at least a four-year degree, and 5.4% have a graduate degree.”
It’s from 2017, but I’m sure it’s still somewhere near the “slightly more than half” mark.