Neil Abramowitz

Policing in America 

21 October 2020

 

The American policing system needs major reform, which can be achieved through the improvement of officer training programs. American police have been discriminatory since their formation near the end of slavery. Created as an organization with the goal of subduing African Americans, it remains a racist and unfair system to this day. To enable police to handle any situation with the greater good in mind, programs must focus less on military-style training, and more on community policing and peer intervention. Also, there must be uniform training throughout the country. Although some argue that police abolishment would be a more effective alternative, it would realistically end up causing more violence. Other opponents to improving police training claim incidences of police brutality result from improper morals and toxic culture rather than poor training, but effective police training should eliminate both. 

 

The main issue with today's police training programs is they mostly emphasize military-style training. Officers’ education focuses less on culture, diversity, and conflict resolution and instead they are raised like soldiers. Former policeman Lorenzo Boyd contended that “‘The problem is we treat a police academy kind of like we treat a military boot camp’” (Preston). As a result of their training, police officers are more likely to think of their job as more weapons and violence-oriented, leading to the never-ending acts of excessive force. The amount of time spent on education is miniscule compared to the amount allocated to using weapons and practicing self-defense. A 2006 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that, “Police recruits in basic training spend a median of 60 hours on firearms instruction and 51 hours on self-defense skills”, while “A median of 11 hours is spent on cultural diversity, and eight hours on mediation and conflict resolution” (Preston). The heavy emphasis basic training places on the use of weapons leaves little time for police to learn about and prepare for the complicated situations they may face on duty. Leaving officers unprepared for adverse situations beyond the use of weapons, training programs are breeding grounds for future violence.

 

In order to achieve a healthy balance between the time spent on weapons and situational training, programs must embrace in their curricula community policing and peer intervention. Community policing emphasizes less the use of weapons and violence, while advocating for just problem solving and the elimination of implicit bias. In the few police academies around the country where community policing has been instilled, significant change in the environment of the academies followed. In 2013, the Camden, New Jersey police department began placing “greater emphasis on conflict resolution, de-escalation and developing awareness of implicit bias”, after which “Complaints of excessive force dropped from 65 in 2014 to three last year” (Preston). Logically, the incidences of police brutality drop as their training emphasizes more of a non-violent, community-based agenda. But shying away from a violence-based approach of policing requires policemen to hold one another accountable for their actions. Only a few U.S. departments include peer intervention in their training, but it is vital in reducing occurences of police violence. It “instills the idea that officers have a duty to act as a check on their fellow officers’ misconduct, such as using excessive force, planting evidence or lying in official reports” (Vasilogambros). The lack of this type of training led to the recent deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In Floyd’s case, three officers watched as Derek Chauvin pinned his knee on Floyd’s throat, ignoring the victims’ pleas to breathe. The Minneapolis police department, responsible for Floyd’s death, claims to have rules requiring peer intervention,  “but it lacks the comprehensive training New Orleans has” (Vasilogambros). As a result of the Minneapolis officers’ poor training, George Floyd joined the long list of victims to police brutality. Had they been taught peer intervention skills in basic training, the story may’ve ended much different.

 

Police training would be much more effective if it was the same for every department in the country. Currently, “America’s system for training officers is a complex patchwork of hundreds of different programs that operate with virtually no standardization and little oversight” (Preston). Programs have virtually no restrictions and operate relatively independent from the government, allowing them to train officers however they want. Consequently, many programs continue to utilize a military-based approach and fail to address important issues such as diversity and bias because there is no government order to do so. Uniform training would give all police officers the same ability to assist their communities in non-violent ways. It would also prevent officers from attending unapproved programs, such as the one responsible for Philando Castile’s death. Last year, “the Minneapolis mayor banned a warrior-style training course after the officer charged with shooting Philando Castile was found to have attended it” (Preston). On top of the issue of the military-style training in state-approved programs, there are other, non-approved programs officers can attend to satisfy their training requirements. These programs may focus even more heavily on arms training, but there is no way to tell because of the lack of government oversight on training. 

 

Some argue that training program improvement would be ineffective, and that the complete abolishment of the police would be more effective in decreasing violence. However, the opposite is true. According to the Washington Post, “One of the most robust, most uncomfortable findings in criminology is that putting more officers on the street leads to less violent crime” (Sharkey). Many studies have been done regarding the presence of police and amount of crime, most of which point to the fact that cities are safer with police on patrol. The removal of the police leads to even more crime. For instance, “After the unrest around the deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., police officers stepped back from their duty to protect and serve; arrests for all kinds of low-level offenses dropped, and violence rose” (Sharkey). These findings suggest that instead of removing the police completely, their training needs to change to reflect the interests of people of all colors. Others also claim that incidences of police brutality aren’t due to a lack of proper training, but rather due to non community-serving morals and implicit bias. However, proper training should eliminate bias and praise community-based morals. Police training “programs do not teach the tactic used by the officer who pinned Floyd to the ground” (Preston), but they should reinforce values that enable officers to solve issues justly and peacefully. If the officers who witnessed George Floyd’s death had adopted strong community-based morals during their training, at least one of them would’ve stepped in and prevented yet another death from excessive police force. Unfortunately, police brutality will remain an issue in the United States until the government mandates uniform training programs that achieve a greater balance between military-style combat and community policing.