IS MORE AND BETTER POLICE TRAINING THE ANSWER?

What good is more and better police training when no one is training blacks to obey police orders?

Ever since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last August, there has been a steady stream of news about the use of excessive force by the police, usually by white cops against black men. Turn on the evening TV news and you’re likely to see a video clip of cops kicking the shit out of someone or shooting at a fleeing man.

The latest incidents include:

A South Carolina white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back

A horse thief being repeatedly beaten and kicked by sheriff’s deputies in the desert od San Bernardino County, California as the horse kooks down at the melee, probably wondering what’s going on.

A73-year-old Tulsa, Oklahoma reserve officer shot a fleeing man in the back. He says he confused his firearm with his Taser and only meant to tase the man.

An Arizona cop drove his police car onto a sidewalk and ran down an armed robber carrying a high powered rifle.

Baltimore, Maryland cops arrested a man who died because his spine had been severed. His spine may have been severed between the time he was taken into custody and when he arrived at a hospital.

Academics and other armchair experts say the solution to the problem of excessive and deadly force is more police training and better training in people skills. What do these experts think the police have been doing since the Vietnam protests and the civil rights movement?

It’s true that when I became a Galveston cop in the late ‘40s there was no training in most police departments. I was told to buy a uniform and gun, given a badge, and ordered to walk a beat or patrol in a cop car. I learned my job from veteran officers, some of them good cops and some of them piss-poor. If someone came to the cop shop to complain about police brutality, they often had the shit beaten out of them as they were thrown out of the door.

By the time I became a California cop in the mid ‘50s, formal training had become quite common and police applicants were required to undergo psychological evaluations. Those evaluations may have weeded out some ass kickers, but I suspect they also eliminated some potentially good cops. And the police academies at that time did not put a lot of emphasis on good police-community relations.

All that changed with the Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement. Since then police agencies have been emphasizing good police-community relations and better people skills in both their pre-service and in-service training programs. And many agencies have adopted the use of community-oriented policing in an effort to eliminate the minority community’s mistrust of the cops.

I have always maintained that policing is much more about dealing with people than it is about solving crimes and disputes, arresting crooks, proper use of firearms and restraining devices, etc. Dealing with people during a highly emotional and/or adversarial situation makes policing the hardest job in our society.

In 1829 the father of modern policing, Sir Robert Peel, put forth the principle that “No quality is more indispensable to a policeman than a perfect command of temper.” While there have been several shooting incidents where officers claimed to have confused their firearm with their stun gun, could that 73-year-old Tulsa reserve officer have lost his temper and deliberately drawn his pistol instead of his Taser? But there can be no doubt that horse in the desert was being entertained by some angry San Bernardino who had completely lost it.

Many incidents of excessive or deadly force by the police would not have happened had a cop not lost his temper, and that includes good cops as well as bad cops. The experts keep calling for more and better training, but how do you train someone not to losing temper in a highly charged situation? Anger management programs may work in domestic disputes, but will they work in police encounters?

There is another problem even the experts seem to overlook. What good is more and better police training when no one is training blacks to obey police orders? No one is training black men not to flee from or become combative during a police stop.

No amount of more and better training is going to keep cops from losing their tempers. No amount of training is going to prevent cops from fearing for their lives. Anger management programs may reduce the loss of temper, but will not prevent it. And all the police training available to cops will not change the behavior of black men.

There are more than 800,000 state and local “sworn” police officers with general arrest powers in the United States. I am not about to throw out that horseshit about 99 percent, 95 percent, or even 90 percent of all those officers being good cops. However, I do believe that 85 percent are good cops trying to do their best in a hard and thankless job.

Sunday, I watched CBS Face the Nation from my hospital bed. Host Bob Schieffer said that after a break he would be back with some personal thoughts about the police. Here is what he said.

Don’t Overlook The Good Cops
By Bob Schieffer

CBS Face the Nation
April 19, 2015

I have always said the great thing about being a reporter is the adventure, getting to talk to the people who make the news, seeing things with your own eyes that other people see only through eyes and lens of others.

And I have always said, the best training to be a reporter are or anything else is to work the police beat, because every story you cover is the worst moment in someone's life.

If you can learn to get the right information under those circumstances, you won't be fazed by the high and mighty and certainly not by on-the-make politicians and spin doctors, which is why I want to add a paragraph or two to the rash of stories lately about cops gone wrong.

This is not about them. This is about all the cops you don't read about. They deal much of the time with the dregs of our society, the schemers, murderers, those who prey on the weak. And most of the time, the police deal with them humanely and as they should.

What we overlook is just how difficult that can be sometimes. It's not easy to remain passive when a child beater looks you in the eye and tells you, you have to understand the kid was keeping him awake. It takes a lot of professional training and strong character not to respond in anger. I know, because I spent my early years listening to some of these awful people. Sometimes, I wanted to hit them myself.

I didn't. But it helped me understand how hard it is to do a cop's job right. As hard as it is, the great majority the cops still do just that.

Bob Schieffer, a native Texan, has been a member of the hated mainstream media since 1969, but I have always found him to be reasonable in his assessment of controversial issues. I think every good cop in this country should take the time to send Bob a thank you note for the fine commentary he made in their behalf. It’s a shame that few, if any, will do so!