
New Style of Police Training Aims to Produce Guardians, Not Warriors - tokenadult
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/12/10/new-style-of-police-training-aims-to-produce-guardians-not-warriors/
======
darkr
My first experience of American policing in action was at a hotel in
Gainsville, most of which was booked out to people attending the same punk
rock festival. There was a whole bunch of people hanging out by the pool in
the summer afternoon, playing music of a ghetto blaster, drinking out of kegs
and just generally hanging out. I think someone may have let off a firework;
but the general scene was on the mellow side of rowdy.

Around 8 or so police suddenly burst out into the patio, guns drawn, shouting
at people, throwing them face down onto the floor and handcuffing them. The
whole thing would have been farcical if there wasn't such an underlying threat
of mortal violence.

Contrast to a scene in Whitechapel, London a couple of years later; a roof
party on top of a tower block. Considerably larger sound system and bigger
crowd. Unsurprisingly, around 3AM one of the residents made a noise complaint.

Couple of bobbies turn up, as usual, unarmed apart from the standard issue
baton; ask to speak to the organisers, give it bit of "well well well, what's
going on 'ere then". Some banter ensues and a polite but assertive request to
turn down the music and disperse is made, which is duely acknowledged and the
party winds down/moves elsewhere.

~~~
jzwinck
I lived in London. Across the street lived a guy dealing drugs from his
window. Like a drive through. This was in a nice area in Zone 1.

Due to the noise created two or three times a week by junkies who sat down
there and got high, I called the police. About once a week around 2 or 3 AM
for a few months. I took pictures documenting all the action and gave them to
the police. When the police arrived in time to find the screaming drug addicts
outside my window, they were just as you describe: incredibly polite, and
ineffective. They would ask some questions then leave.

Please think about it from the perspective of the people whose sleep is
disrupted night after night after night by substance abusers screaming and
drunk people carousing, before we celebrate the kind and gentle bobby.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I think you're creating a false dichotomy. A reasonable police force would
start with the gentle approach and escalate as necessary; staying stuck at
"gentle" is obviously not ideal, but it doesn't follow that defaulting to
violent aggression at all times is the right choice.

~~~
jzwinck
Let me clarify then: I am not in favor of a brutal approach to policing, but I
am in favor of positive action. If it is 3 AM and residents have complained
and there is a very loud scene outside, that is what the British call "anti-
social behaviour." There should be consequences for that--not violence
certainly, but perhaps a fine, and for repeat offenders, a free trip to the
precinct to wait until they are sober.

The person I replied to praised the bobbies for letting them move their party
elsewhere. It's entirely possible they went on to disrupt citizens in another
part of town. The way London policing works, this sort of thing can go on all
night--an "anti-social behaviour crawl." It isn't fair to the people who
actually live there.

~~~
ehnto
I do agree with you, but there is a big difference between disruption of the
peace and an immediate and dangerous situation.

Partying and anti social behaviour should be dealt with over time with care.
Things like dry zones, fines for property owners, police presence and steering
the crowd somewhere less impactful.

While not fair for you to deal with, the punishment needs to match the crime.
Guns and violence aren't appropriate as per America, fines for property owners
could be a solution, and most immediate action such as jail or on the spot
fines needs to come after the situation escalates, not on a neighbour's whim.

A word and a written warning is absolutely enough to begin with, if it carries
on then start to escalate consequences.

In my experience most people will either leave or tone it down when police
show up. Just their presence is usually enough to let you know to keep things
reasonable.

In Australia we have some massive fines for things like disturbing the peace,
which is why police presence works. 300+ depending on state. But they are not
enforced until absolutely nothing else has worked.

------
exelius
I see a disconnect between what the public believes the job of the police is
and what police officers believe the job of the police is.

In my mind, police officers sign up for a dangerous job knowingly - that's why
they're revered as heroic by many in society. They are willing to put
themselves at risk to protect society from harm, and that's noble.

What most police academies teach is the opposite. They teach officers to put
their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of "reducing
officer casualties" and "overwhelming force". This is not a heroic police
officer sacrificing himself for society; it's jackbooted thugs threatening,
terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect. Turns
out it's really hard to tell a bad guy from a good guy by looking at them, so
they play it safe and treat everyone like a bad guy.

Not every officer thinks this way, but it's common enough that it leads to a
lot of police shootings. IMO a police officer should be more willing to take a
bullet than put one into someone. I realize body armor isn't foolproof, but
the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that -
something a person on the street doesn't get.

~~~
crusso
_the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that_

I think that forums heavy with computer desk jockeys like HN tend to throw
this idea around too casually.

If outsiders kept callously telling us "you signed up for it knowing that you
would work 80 hours a week" or "you signed up for it knowing that your stock
options would probably be worthless", we'd be up in arms and demanding that no
one should be treated that way.

Yet we expect officers to put themselves into situations where they'll be hurt
or injured _unnecessarily_. Take, for example, the Eric Garner case: "They
didn't need 5 officers to tackle that guy who was resisting arrest". Really?
That was a big dude. If he had decided to start punching; officers could have
suffered knocked-out teeth, irreparably damaged eye sockets, and broken bones.
Can you imagine going to work every day where the public expectation is that
the risk of your knocked-out teeth when confronting someone resisting arrest
is perfectly acceptable?

There are very few jobs I would never do, but being a police officer is one of
them. The public is just way too callous in thinking that it's okay for you to
be injured or killed because "you signed up for it".

[grammar fix edit]

~~~
chc
Those police _killed_ Eric Garner. Do you think the police would be so
understanding of someone who killed another person in a bar fight because
there was a chance of having a tooth knocked out? That's not a normal standard
of behavior. Even if you don't think it's reasonable to hold them to higher
standards of behavior, holding them to a lower standard seems really strange
to me.

~~~
crusso
The police subdued Eric Garner in an effort to arrest him because he was
resisting. What they did was reasonable and only the hindsight of his health
problems says otherwise. Eric Garner shares a large portion of the blame in
his own death since he is the one who resisted, was breaking the law, and knew
about his own health situation.

Your bar fight scenario makes no sense because there are lots of ways that a
bar fight could result in one participant's death and the other participant
would be judged to have acted reasonably just defending himself from an injury
as "minor" as a knocked-out tooth.

~~~
JshWright
No, what they did was not reasonable. You're assuming he died because of the
fight... In reality he died because of how he was positioned after the fight
(on his stomach, arms behind his back). We have known for years that this is a
dangerous thing to do (it makes it _much_ harder to breath, at a time when he
was already working harder than normal to breath). The NYPD actually has a
policy against exactly this sort of positioning...

~~~
crusso
I partly agree with you and I definitely concur with your post above on this
whole issue. I'm regretting mentioning Garner in my own post since it's a
rathole of preconceptions.

But I will point out that reasonable is not the same as perfectly following
every policy. It's important to note that there were no indictments handed
down in this case.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this
> case.

OTOH, those who complain about police excesses usually also complain about
prosecutors being uninterested in pursuing abuses by police as crimes, seeking
indictments, etc. So, "no indictments" can be viewed different ways.

~~~
crusso
True, but I've yet to see the decision-based situation in the universe that
couldn't be viewed differently by someone.

Compared to Internet second guessing, the lack of indictments is a pretty
strong data point.

------
gherkin0
> Gone, too, is a classroom poster that once warned recruits that “officers
> killed in the line of duty use less force than their peers.”

Wow. That was a thing that existed?

> Alexis Artwohl, a former police psychologist and consultant to the
> International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association...is
> skeptical of some guardian-style training. Artwohl has co-written a book on
> deadly force whose promotional blurb begins: “In a cop’s world it’s kill or
> be killed.”

Jesus.

I hope this new-style training actually has an impact.

~~~
anigbrowl
An acquaintance of mine who used to be head of training for Oakland PD once
commented to me that police officers had essentially the same psychological
profile as gang members. I thought he was just engaging in some self-
deprecating humor but he was at pains to point out that he was serious and
regarded it as a chronic problem in police culture.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Reminds me of a black hat/white hat distinction. Both occupations require
basically the same skill set and provide similar thrills, they're just on the
different sides of the law.

~~~
anigbrowl
That sums up the distinction perfectly.

------
stcredzero
My ex-girlfriend's uncle is an honest man, has a stable job, is in a stable
marriage with a wonderful woman, and has two kids. At the time of this story,
his kids were in High school and on the junior varsity and varsity football
teams, and were getting good grades. He and his family are devoutly religious.
In his family, young men are expected to be celibate until they get married.
He lives in a small river town in Louisiana.

The police officers of his town are almost all white, and this is how they
treat him: If they see him and his sons conversing in a parking lot, it is
assumed that they are planning to break the law, and they are always told
summarily to leave. They could talk to him and be civil. They could even ask
him for useful information. However, they only see young black men who might
be perpetrators.

I've also seen the police of this town _herd_ crowds of black people on 4x4
vehicles like cattle on the 4th of July. They were clearly afraid of the
crowd, which mostly consisted of high school students. Kids, really!

There are American police who are afraid of their citizens, and only see them
in terms of their ethnicity and potential danger. Something is very wrong
here!

~~~
gleenn
John Basil Barnhill said, "Where the people fear the government you have
tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

The cops should fear us to some reasonable degree, they just shouldn't be able
to act out of it.

~~~
stcredzero
When the cops can't just plain talk to a law abiding human being who is on
their side -- a father with his kids, no less -- then there is something very
wrong. Do you think that cop would demonstrate a finer granularity of
classification and a different sort of interaction when meeting a white father
with his two football playing high school aged kids?

Police who are a part of the community and who know their fellow citizens are
going to be able to do a much better job.

------
mcguire
" _In 1986, two FBI agents armed with six-shot revolvers died in a shootout
near Miami with bank robbers armed with more powerful weapons, including a
semiautomatic assault rifle._ "

There's quite a bit more to that story.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout)

The bottom line is that _one_ suspect (the other fired only one shot causing
no injuries), after receiving a fatal wound, killed two FBI agents and wounded
five more.

These are parts 1 and 2 of an FBI training video on the incident:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSCE88UhyA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSCE88UhyA)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAUDnzDhQpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAUDnzDhQpc)

This incident seems to be so obviously a fluke that it would be hard to find
any generally applicable lessons, although as the article points out, lessons
have been found from it.

(One was the introduction of the 10mm pistol round and pistols chambered for
it---that didn't last too long as the recoil was deemed too heavy for accuracy
and the pistols seem to have suffered failures---and then the move to the .40
calibre S&W round (based on the 10mm with a reduced powder charge).)

~~~
hga
And now they're moving to 9mm, which 3 of the agents in the Miami shootout
were armed with, but certainly not the more effective loadings that the FBI in
part uses to justify this move. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10716811](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10716811)
in this discussion for a few more TL;DR details gleaned from the Wikipedia
article.

------
kelukelugames
Don't cheer yet. This is how Seattle cops react to training. Go to the 1:22
mark. Cop talks about sticking a gun in someone's face as his method of de-
escalation.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-
forc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/long-taught-to-use-force-police-
warily-learn-to-de-escalate.html?ref=topics)

~~~
themodelplumber
That same article has a great video of a very nice deescalation by Seattle PD.
So clearly not all Seattle cops should be lumped together as overreachers.

------
Animats
This isn't a new style of policing. It's Sir Robert Peel's principles of law
enforcement, from 1822.[1] The UK still tries to follow those.

The militarization of American police is a reaction to the rise in gun
ownership, especially guns with higher firepower. US police have to assume
when they approach someone that they may be armed. UK police don't.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles)

~~~
cja
Exactly. It's difficult to blame US police for acting as though they're
members of an occupying army when all of the people they meet could be armed
with guns. I can understand why a policeman in the US would want to be
equipped like a soldier.

~~~
hga
Thing is, though, when the US has been literally acting as an occupying army
in the sandbox as of late, they have much more restrictive Rules of
Engagement; in the ones relevant to this sort of thing, as I recall they're
not that bad.

Perhaps best explained by Marine General James Mattis, "Be polite, be
professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet", one of his rules to
live by for his men in Iraq.

I personally have no problems with their equipment loadout (it's too much like
mine!), it's the attitudes, it's their actions, in too many localities their
arrest quotas (see the _very highly recommended_
[http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-
Carson/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-
Carson/dp/1613748043)). The equipment has no agency.

------
logn
> Artwohl compares police work to defensive driving, which is about “expecting
> something bad is going to happen. It’s not about dealing with normal traffic
> flow.”

> “We should go out there and expect something bad will happen and watch for
> it,” she said. “If we are not paying attention, we could die.”

If that's how she views defensive driving it might shed some light on her
approach to policing.

I don't think defensive driving means expecting that at any moment something
horrible can happen. It's more about being aware, anticipating events,
preventing problems, and having a plan B. And it's very much part of dealing
with normal traffic flow, responding to common road conditions in a defensive
way that prevents problems or at least offers you a good response should a
problem occur.

~~~
gknoy
I think she's entirely correct. I consider "defensive driving" not to be about
expecting horrible things, but rather thinking about (and taking action to
mitigate) unsafe events.

I explicitly distrust other drivers, more than might be considered reasonable,
specifically because there have been times that, had I not been so
pessimistic, either I would have been injured or my vehicle damaged.

\- I distrust turn signals. I've seen too many people approach an intersection
that I want to turn into that had forgotten to turn their signal off. I
believe it when I see your car change course, or start braking. (I also live
in an area where many people don't bother to use them in the first place.) \-
I assume most people are speeding, and am conservative about pulling out in
front of oncoming traffic -- which has saved my bacon when my car has stalled.
\- I assume people on the freeway going faster than me will cut in front if
me. Strangely, this _reduces_ my stress while driving, as I am not surprised
when it happens. \- I approach my car from the front, so that I can see
oncoming traffic before stepping into the road.

Being prepared for statistical outliers is important, because as a driver (or
as a police officer) you have many encounters in the course of your career --
and your cumulative chance of encountering such an outlier increases the
longer your career.

~~~
gozo
Yes, defensive driving is about having higher margins. Which is where her
comparison falls short. Because police often escalate the situation to get the
upper hand on a perceived threat. Which is more like tactical driving, where
you e.g. drive in a convoy at high speed to avoid getting stopped. If there is
no real threat you have most likely made the situation worse.

------
femto
Maybe each officer needs to be reminded of their own roots, in the form of the
Peelian principles? It should be an easy sell, as the principles have been
"their own" for nearly 200 years. Dating from 1829, they are the founding
principles of the London Metropolitan Police Force. In summary, policing is a
self-regulation function by the community being policed, not imposed by an
external force.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles#Nine_Princi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles#Nine_Principles_of_Policing)

~~~
the-dude
Thanks for posting this, this is great.

------
zeveb
I wholeheartedly approve of this shift in focus. Yes, police _do_ have to deal
with violent and dangerous people, but most people are neither violent nor
dangerous (nor ought they be criminals). The police force is not the military;
one's fellow citizens are not one's foes.

> The officers were charged with felony assault but acquitted by a jury in
> 1992, sparking days of rioting and protests.

For completeness, the article really should have mentioned that they were then
convicted by a federal court, the Constitution's prohibition on double
jeopardy being held not to apply.

------
brandonmenc
"Policing" and "law enforcement" are different.

Policing: hey, you're not allowed to jaywalk, so stop.

Law Enforcement: here's a $100 fine for your first jaywalking offense.

We have too many law enforcers, too few police.

~~~
mgraczyk
By giving police the power to judiciate through selective enforcement of the
rules, you are guaranteeing that there will be rampant abuse.

~~~
Someone1234
Look at the UK. Police there have far more judicial discretion than is common
in the US, but abuse/bribery/etc is incredibly low.

Although it should be noted that UK police have no incentive to fine people,
the department doesn't profit from it, whereas in the US a lot of departments
are primarily financed through fines.

~~~
clock_tower
I think that that's the root of the problem, or at least a much bigger part of
it than either political side is interested in letting on. Not everything is
shaped by money, but when there's money involved, it's worthwhile to know what
incentives it sets up...

------
tokenadult
The report "From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture
to Democratic Ideals" mentioned in the article is available for downloading
from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.[1] The report includes a
lot of information about police training.

[1]
[https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf)

------
sremani
What I like about US or West is, reflect, retrain and retool. That is
absolutely missing in other parts of the world. I know it is early and a bit
congratulatory, being an Immigrant and having seen the other world, I am happy
to call US my home.

------
stcredzero
I was watching a video, where the YouTuber, who is a cop, was trying out a
video-wall computerized training tool for police. One thing that disturbed me
was that the simulator was supposed to help police know when to deploy their
firearm. However, _every single scenario_ required the use of lethal force.
The only question was when to use lethal force.

~~~
hga
Eh, one of those was a bonus in the mandatory Missouri concealed carry
training class I took (taught by current duty local police officers in the
local college's police training academy), and that you will have to use lethal
force at some point is vastly outweighed by all the times you might but cannot
legally and morally use it.

In none of the scenarios was it clear at the beginning that you'd need to fire
your weapon at some point, and, hmmm, all that I recall were in defense of a
3rd party on the scene. Although I'm sure there are ones where you personally
are in simulated danger.

~~~
stcredzero
What was disturbing to me, was that _all_ of the scenarios dealt with the
police having to defend themselves using lethal force.

~~~
hga
There's such a thing as not wasting training or simulator time. That cops
trained with such simulations don't then go all Terminator when they're out on
the streets says something.

And as noted there are simulation suites which focus entirely on protection of
3rd parties, you're oddly enough never at risk, which was itself unsettling.

------
eagsalazar2
I have a friend who went through the Seattle academy training then left the
SPD after a year. He said this attitude runs very deep. Citizens are seen as
the enemy and it is a bunch of insecure, macho dudes who get off on
intimidating people.

I think some of the reason people disagree on this subject is that police
across the country vary a lot. In SF where I live now police are, to most
people anyway, pretty good. Growing up in Seattle and living there until I was
about 35, I was harassed and intimidated many many times.

------
jessaustin
I'm no expert, but reading TFA I can't help but think that though this new
training is an improvement, it's not going to make much difference. It would
take a saintly person _not_ to menace and abuse the public when placed in the
position in which we place cops. As long as we rely on the goodness of people,
on the availability of "heroes", we'll be disappointed. We'll still have a
system that rewards corrupt and brutal behavior while imprisoning people who
smoke pot.

This thread is a perfect illustration why. We have numerous comments claiming
that police should just put up with serious risks to their lives, which is
ridiculous. The risks that e.g. deepwater oil workers face are inherent to
current oil drilling technology. Though such workers are paid enough to accept
those risks, safety technology is always improving. In contrast, _every_ risk
involved in police work is due to arbitrary decisions society has made, which
could be changed at any time if we cared enough to do so. It's no wonder that
police have responded with a bunker mentality.

 _Society_ has invented numerous victimless crimes, many of which attempt to
counteract basic psychological and physical drives. _Society_ has outlawed
"risky" behaviors rather than punishing actual harms caused by those.
_Society_ has given municipalities, agencies, and contractors commercial
interest in draconian enforcement. _Society_ has decided to employ multitudes
more police than we actually need, so that they are forced to menace the
public in order to make work for themselves.

My suggestion for a maxim of policing would be to follow physicians: "first,
do no harm". Actually living that rule would be a vast change to current LEO
practice.

------
unabridged
The best way to get better cops: Putting multiple cameras on every cop & car,
and prosecutors who make it clear they side with the people over the police.
Seriously punish any amount of power tripping or harassment of citizens.

It may take a few years, but the people who sign up for police academy will be
different. Being a police officer will no longer be attractive to those who
want to wield power.

~~~
krapp
Prosecutors shouldn't side with "the people" over the police - the police
_are_ the people. They should side with the evidence and the rule of law.

------
ska
Isn't this more like returning to an "old style"?

------
jessaustin
_So far this year, police have shot and killed more than 900 people, according
to a Washington Post database tracking such shootings — more than twice the
number recorded in any previous year by federal officials._

Surely this indicates the utter failure by any federal agency to track this
statistic more than it does exceptionally violent LEOs this year?

~~~
passwordreset
Surely? No. Possibly? Yes. Likely? Both.

~~~
jessaustin
Lots of people have searched for this stat. It isn't kept by DoJ, which one
presumes is why WaPo is attempting to do so itself.

------
hyperion2010
Far better for the authority of a policeman to come from citizens' belief in
the importance of law and respect for their governmental institutions than
from fear of deadly force. Even if the rule of law is ultimately guaranteed by
force it is a really bad idea to continually confront generally law abiding
citizens with that fact, they are going to follow the law anyway most of the
time and pointing guns at them is just going to escalate the situation because
the one pointing a gun is seen as an imminent threat and 'other.' Dangerous
for everyone involved and stupid if you care about building belief in the
importance of rule of law.

------
sahreeg
Although I am no authority to properly comment on the American police system;
having never lived there. I think we should not boil it down to a black-white
issue of police training. I definitely agree that training police should not
be in the same fashion as military, I think this needs to be coupled with
anti-gun laws, and proper education to ever see a true decline in police
brutality. After all, being confronted with an armed suspect, will lead to
escalation, remove that game changer, and a properly trained police should be
able to subdue them.

~~~
hga
I can't think of any gun control that would help this situation, plus it's not
happening in the forseable future.

But thinking about your comment just now, _less_ gun control would help in the
8 states that don't have "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes,
which include the high population states of California, New York, New Jersey,
Massachusetts, and Maryland.

Knowing that outright murder and the like might be opposed by a legally
carrying concealed citizen has got to have a chilling effect on the worst of
the police. Knowing that 5% of the citizens 19 or older in my county have
concealed carry licenses should also have some good effects of various sorts,
and temper some of the sorts of things we've been told about in this HN topic.

Won't help when they're dealing with "known criminals" or the young (the
threshold age is generally 21), unless of course a parent is there or the
like.

To the extend citizen concealed carry decreases crime (a _hotly_ debated topic
that's very hard to prove when things like demographics are also steadily
decreasing it), that would also help.

------
kevinpet
I remember when the Abu Ghraib and similar revelations came out, I was
relatively unsurprised. Military training is to prepare people to fight a war,
against a defined enemy, where the general gist of the available tactics all
come down to "kill the other guy first". And if you put someone with that kind
of training in a situation that calls for police, you're going to get bad
results.

I had naively assumed at the time that police were still trained to a
different outlook and set of priorities.

------
jqm
This is great, but I wonder if without a pay raise if they will be able to
fill the ranks.

Cynical me thinks maybe a large number of current cops would do the job for
even less, so long as they were allowed to carry a gun and a stick and order
people around and maybe even get to shoot them.

So with that approach we get a less expensive police force that is fairly
effective (for the privileged class) as it ruthlessly beats and suppresses the
unprivileged class. Win-win for the privileged class. Keeping the thugs down
at bargain prices.

So now policing gets more expensive? Many cities are strapped for cash at the
moment. (Heaven forbid we consider cutting unneeded bureaucrats to pay for
better police officers). So higher taxes it is? I'm certainly ok with paying
for quality. That is... if I actually get it.

~~~
hga
It's hard to explain their observed eagerness to shoot harmless dogs in any
other way than the power trip thesis.

------
calibraxis
This article shows how far ahead some people (in the Mideast) are:

 _" They number roughly 6,000 [police] officers, all of them elected; a women-
only force deals with sexual assault and rape. (All recruits receive their
weapons only after 'two weeks of feminist instruction,' according to Cengidar
Mikail, the director of the Qamishli police.)"_
([http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-
utopia...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-
hell.html?_r=1))

What happens when people dare to think deeper. And they're not only in ISIS'
backyard, but the ones beating them.

------
blhack
Police need to just behave more like firefighters.

Not only that, but I think that a lot more cops need to be out on _foot_. Not
bikes, not segways, none of that. They should be out walking around, talking
to people. IMHO, I should know who the cops assigned to my neighborhood are.

Here's a thing that happened last week that highlights a problem I have with
the cops:

At about 1:30 in the morning, my dog starts doing her dog thing and informing
me that IMMINENT DOOM is upon us in the form of somebody being outside of the
house. I get up and walk to the kitchen to find that, yes, indeed somebody is
outside of the door trying to get in, which is a _scary_ feeling. I don't have
a peephole on that door, it's the middle of the night, and they aren't
knocking, they're trying to get the handle to open.

Now, luckily I'm a pretty huge guy, so while this was scary, it didn't really
seem life threatening, (they weren't trying to bust through the door, just
trying to come inside, so probably just a very disoriented person).
Eventually, they left, and I went back to bed.

A few minutes later, however, we heard a car alarm go off next door,
indicating that the person had just moved on to the neighbor's house, which is
really sad, because there is an old lady that lives next door, who might not
brush off the idea of somebody trying to come into her house as readily as I
could.

I go outside and find out that the person trying to come in was a ~20 year old
girl who couldn't have weighed more than 110lbs soaking wet. Basically the
least threatening person imaginable, but she _was_ trying to get into the
neighbor's house.

One part of my life involves volunteering for a group of people who deal
specifically with this sort of thing at a big dessert party that lots of
people in SF have probably heard of. My mode switched from being worried about
the lady next door, to being worried about the obviously confused kid trying
to get into somebody's house.

I loudly convinced her to come and talk to me away from the lady-next-door's
house (so as to make sure that the lady inside, who I am sure was scared,
could hear that everything was alright), and we started trying to figure out
where she was supposed to be, and a plan to get her to that place safely.
Sidenote: turns out she just has some really shitty friends who more or less
ditched her and went home.

While I was talking to her, the cops showed up (presumably my neighbor called
them), and I got to see how they would have handled the situation.

There was a guy just riding his bike by the neighbor's house, and the cops
started YELLING at him

"What are you doing?"

"Just riding home."

"Huh, why are you here? Why are you riding here? Huh? Why here? What are you
doing? Is this your house? What are you doing? Do you know you can't be here?
This is an alleyway you can't ride here [EVERYBODY rides their bike in the
alley, which is practically a bike path], why are you here? This is illegal.
What are you doing here?"

Just started machine-gunning questions at this poor dude who happened to be
riding by at the wrong time.

Eventually, they figured out that the girl I was talking to was the person
that they were looking for. I explained to them who she was, what she was
doing, and where she needed to be.

The thing that absolutely FLOORED me was that they refused to give her a ride
home. They wanted to stick this obviously disoriented, possibly drugged, girl
into a cab (a fucking CAB! Yikes!), and make her into the cabby's problem
(hey, get into this random car and hopefully this drugged up girl will make it
home safe!)

Luckily they did NOT do this, because the girl said she didn't have any cash.
The ended up calling some sort of non-police-police van who gave her a ride to
[hopefully] her house. (It was their Crisis Intervention Team, I think. Like
people who show up and talk to people who have just had a traumatic
experience, I guess they weren't busy, and had time to give this girl a ride).

\--

Watching the whole thing was just sad to me. Not only was the FIRST response
that the cops had to start yelling at some dude, but when presented with a
REAL opportunity to improve somebody's safety (this girl), they either didn't
want to, or were not allowed to.

Keeping some disoriented girl safe in the middle of the night seems like the
cliche of what cops are supposed to be doing, and here when presented with the
opportunity, they wouldn't do it.

Pathetic.

------
allworknoplay
I'm a fan of this video that tears down lousy police training during a tough
encounter:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VeHOkt_o8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VeHOkt_o8)

I believe they have others, too. Our cops are simply not trained for de-
escalation and disarming like they should be.

------
fapjacks
Holy smokes we need this so badly in the States!

~~~
placeybordeaux
Yeah hopefully they bring this to Washington!

~~~
vinay427
The article is about the program in Washington.

~~~
jessaustin
"Whoosh"

------
mindslight
This is akin to trying to stop crime by changing the high school curriculum.
We already have civil and criminal legal systems that even police are
supposedly bound by. Why not fucking apply them?

------
rms_returns
Reminds me of the movie "Demolition Man". For those who don't know, this is a
Sylvester Slallone futuristic movie where a thug named Simon Phoenix wakes up
from a cryo-prison somewhere around 2032. But LA is a pacifist utopia now, and
the cops are all "nicey nicey" without any weapons with them, so who is going
to stop Simon now?

I think, as a society, we are progressing towards that kind of pacifist
utopia.

~~~
ceejayoz
Modern policing seems to be moving more in the Rambo direction, if we're
picking Stallone movies.

~~~
jessaustin
_First Blood_ was ahead of its time, in that the audience was expected to
sympathize with the _victim_ of brutal policing.

