Plan – change training of ‘warrior police’

Status quo police are trained in a militarized fashion, and that’s problematic

Interestingly, members of the law enforcement community are far from unified on the topic of police militarization. Some fully embrace militarism in policing: “We trainers have spent the past decade trying to ingrain in our students the concept that the American police officer works a battlefield every day he patrols his sector.”23 The most common rationale put forth to support the notion that the police in fact should be militarized is to protect life: “A warrior cop’s mission is to protect every life possible and to only use force when it’s necessary to accomplish that mission.”24 Others suggest that policing has in fact not become militarized at all: “Advocates from every corner of the political compass have produced a mountain of disinformation about the ‘militarization’ of American law enforcement.”25 Still others express concern that American policing has become too militarized; Salt Lake City police chief Chris Burbank recently stated, “We’re not the military. Nor should we look like an invading force coming in.”26 Diane Goldstein, a retired lieutenant, agrees. Speaking of the drug war zeal of the 1980s, she stated that “[The] everincreasing federalization of what traditionally had been a state and local law enforcement effort received massive funding as politicians, presidents and the Drug Czar increased the rhetoric of war.” Even the U.S. Department of Justice has questioned the wisdom of militarizing local police departments: “According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report on State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies (BJS Report), the majority of police recruits receive their training in academies with a stress-based military orientation. This begs the question; is this military model—designed to prepare young recruits for combat—the appropriate mechanism for teaching our police trainees how to garner community trust and partner with citizens to solve crime and public order problems?”27

SWAT training in the status quo aims to inculcate a ‘warrior mentality’ in police

ACLU 2014 (American Civil Liberties Union, “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing”, June 2014, p.2, https://www.aclu.org/report/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-police, p.22-23 note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

Military Training//// The militarization of policing culture is also apparent in the training that tactical teams receive—SWAT team members are trained to think like soldiers. The ACLU asked hundreds of law enforcement agencies to submit copies of SWAT training materials. One response from the Farmington, Missouri, Special Response Team consisted of a piece written by Senior PoliceOne Contributor Chuck Remsberg for Killology Research Group. The piece summarizes a presentation given at a conference of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors and warns that “preparations for attacks on American schools that will bring rivers of blood and staggering body counts are well underway in Islamic terrorist camps.” It further states that “police agencies aren’t used to this…We deal with acts of a criminal nature. This is an act of war, but because of our laws we can’t depend on the military to help us…[T]he U.S. in [sic] the one nation in the world where the military is not the first line of defense against domestic terrorist attack. By law, you the police officer are our Delta Force.” It provides “‘4 Ds’ for Thwarting Terrorists’ Plans to Massacre Our School Children” and concludes with an admonition to “Build the right mind-set in your troops.”54//// Even if there were merit to the argument that training SWAT teams to think like soldiers in the context of a school shooting would provide them with the skills that they need to respond effectively, it appears that training in how to develop a “warrior” mentality is pervasive and extends well beyond hostage situations and school shootings, seeping into officers’ everyday interactions with their communities. For example, the Cary, North Carolina, SWAT team provides a training session explicitly titled “Warrior Mindset/Chemical Munitions” for all Emergency Response Team personnel. A PowerPoint training presentation sent by the National Tactical Officers Association urges trainees to “Steel Your Battlemind” and defines “battlemind” as “a warrior’s inner strength to face fear and adversity during combat with courage. It is the will to persevere and win. It is resilience.” Neither of these training documents suggests that SWAT teams should constrain their soldier-like tactics to terrorism situations. Additionally, in the documents reviewed for this report, the majority of SWAT raids took place in the context of serving search warrants at people’s homes—not in response to school shootings or bombings.//// Training programs like these impact how some SWAT officers view the people in their communities. For example, in one of the cases examined for this report, a SWAT team drove a BearCat APC into a neighborhood for the sole purpose of executing a warrant to search for drugs. Once the SWAT officers arrived at the home, they drove the APC to the residence, broke down the front and back doors, destroyed a glass table, deployed a distraction device, and pried a lock off a shed, all to find the house empty. One of the officers noted in his report that the house was “empty of suspects and civilians.” The distinction between “suspects” and “civilians” is telling. If police see suspects less as civilians and more as enemies, what effect does that have on police-suspect interactions?

Solvency

Federal government should mandate implicit bias training and in-service training AND mandate diversity hiring and retention policies of all state police as a condition for receiving any federal grants

JAWANDO & PARSONS center for American progress 2014 (Michele, vice president of legal progress, and Chelsea, director of crime and firearms policy at the center, “4 Ideas That Could Begin to Reform the Criminal Justice System and Improve Police-Community Relations” Center For American Progress”, Dec 18, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2014/12/18/103578/4-ideas-that-could-begin-to-reform-the-criminal-justice-system-and-improve-police-community-relations/)[AR SPRING16]

3. Implement implicit bias training for all federal law-enforcement officers and state and local police involved in federal task forces//// “Black Lives Matter” is one of the most evocative statements being chanted from protesters participating in demonstrations in the wake of the recent killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice. The statement itself has become a point of contention, but the statement speaks to perhaps the most important and most difficult issue that has arisen out of the recent protests: the subtle and stark differences that make up white and black experiences in America. While these divisions are often felt writ large by communities of color, the disparities seem to be particularly acute between white and black individuals, and the data seem to support these perceptions. The discrepancies in outcomes with similar circumstances between races can be interpreted through the lens of implicit bias. Researchers who seek to measure implicit biases often point to psychological and neurological factors inherent in unconscious racial associations. This has shown, as one researcher recently noted, “that hidden biases operating largely under the scope of human consciousness influence the way that we see and treat others, even when we are determined to be fair and objective.” Findings show that implicit bias can be contradictory to an individual’s stated beliefs. The presence of implicit bias has been used to explain disparities among races in both access to and quality of health care, treatment in the criminal justice system, and housing.//// For instance, despite reporting very little explicit bias, approximately two-thirds of the nation’s health clinicians were found to harbor a statistically significant implicit bias against blacks and Latinos. Additionally, unconscious views about race help explain the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African Americans for drug offenses. Research shows that although whites engage in drug offenses at rates higher than blacks do, blacks are almost four times more likely to be arrested for these offenses compared to whites. The data also reveal that black men were sent to prison on drug charges at 11.8 times the rate of white men, and black women are sent to prison on drug charges at 4.8 times the rate of white women.//// Likewise, the realm of housing shows a striking racially based implicit bias when African Americans look to rent or buy housing. When renting, blacks were told about the availability of 11.4 percent fewer units as compared to whites and shown 4.2 percent fewer units. When it came to home buying, blacks were also told about 17 percent fewer homes than whites and shown 17.7 percent fewer homes.//// According to David R. Williams, a Harvard sociologist, the “frightening point” is that because implicit bias is “an automatic and unconscious process, people who engage in this unthinking discrimination are not aware of the fact that they do it.” A 2012 study found that officers were quicker to shoot an armed black person and slower to refrain from shooting an unarmed black person than they were with members of any other racial group. Similar results were found in a study of the Denver, Colorado, police department. When asked to press a button labeled “shoot” or “don’t shoot,” Denver police officers were “uniformly faster to shoot an armed black target, relative to an armed white target, and uniformly faster to press the ‘Don’t shoot’ button for an unarmed white target, relative to an unarmed black target.”//// If these are indeed unconscious reactions, what can actually be done about implicit bias, especially in policing? There are promising policies available that may mitigate the effects of bias. A key element is training. Training recommendations do not reduce bias; rather, they raise consciousness about them. Research has suggested that by making one aware of unconscious biases, these malleable biases may be reduced. The federal government should require training on implicit bias in police academies and ongoing state and local departmental training as a condition of federal grants. Law-enforcement recruits should be challenged to identify key police decisions and scenarios that are at greatest risk of manifesting bias—such as traffic stops, consent searches, reasonable suspicion to frisk, and other procedures—and then reflect on the potential impact of implicit bias on their perceptions and behaviors in those scenarios. Furthermore, seasoned officers should be similarly challenged at in-service and other training venues. In addition, police departments should be encouraged to take steps to increase diversity among law-enforcement professionals. The federal government should condition receipt of certain grant funding by state and local law-enforcement agencies—perhaps funding for surplus military equipment—on the implementation of hiring and retention policies designed to increase diversity in police departments. Ideally, the composition of personnel should reflect the diversity of the community that is serves. Finally, law-enforcement agencies need to eschew colorblindness and acknowledge real group and individual differences, such as through ongoing diversity and multiculturalism training. Research suggests that a colorblind ideology generates greater amounts of implicit bias than a multicultural perspective does.

Changing police training is key – police are trained to be ‘warriors’ vis-à-vis civilians

ACLU 2014 (American Civil Liberties Union, “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing”, June 2014, p.3, https://www.aclu.org/report/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-police, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

De-escalating militarized policing will also require analysis of how the presence of these weapons and tactics has impacted policing culture. Our analysis shows that the militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies, as well as in the equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang grenades, and APCs. This shift in culture has been buoyed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s weakening of the Fourth Amendment (which protects the right to privacy in one’s home) through a series of decisions that have given the police increased authority to force their way into people’s homes, often in drug cases.

Status quo police training is inadequate – at best it focuses on ‘de-escalation’ techniques, which is piecemeal. Must train the policy to have a mindset to perceive citizens as people for real change

ARBINGER, summarizing a Ted talk by CHIP HUTH, Captain Kansas City Police Department 2015 (“The Only Way to Tranform Law Enforcement”,https://arbinger.com/blog/the-only-way-to-transform-law-enforcement/, not://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

With rioting in Baltimore, foment in Ferguson, and the communities of Columbia, Salt Lake, Pasco, and Staten Island reeling from tragedy, there is a palpable urgency to find some solution to the “law enforcement problem.” The problem, as Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts stated, is a lack of trust in law enforcement.

“We are part of the problem. The community needs to hear that,” he said. “The community needs to hear from us that we haven’t been part of the solution, and now we have to evolve. Now we have to change.”

Several measures have been put forward that promise to enable such change, including adjustments in policy and improvements in technology, as well a re-emphasis on scenario-based crisis intervention training. These trainings teach officers behavioral techniques including de-escalation tactics and communication skills. But while each of these measures certainly can help, none of them address the underlying problem. Until we get clear on the real problem, any recommended solution will inevitably fall short.//// In a recent TEDx talk, delivered March 20, 2015, Chip Huth, a Captain in the Kansas City Police openly admitted that “for most of my career I’ve been part of this problem.” As Sergeant of Kansas City’s 1910 SWAT Squad, he was the willing recipient of behavioral training in de-escalation techniques, communication skills, and proper use of force, while simultaneously leading the unit which consistently received the most community complaints—often for excessive use of force. For Chip and his Squad, behaviors finally changed, and dramatically so, only when they addressed what drives every behavior, particularly in crisis. There is no doubt that the behaviors of officers drives the results a squad, or an agency, or all of policing gets. Driving behavior however, is mindset//// For Chip and his Squad, changing their mindset began as they questioned how they really saw they people they policed. “We began to ask a critical question,” Chip said. “‘Do we really see the people we are policing as people?’ As we started to ask ourselves this question, our team members started to consider what it might be like to be policed by us. As we started to see those we were policing more and more as people that mattered the way we mattered, it began to affect what we did as we responded to unique situations in ways we could not have conceived of when operating within our prior mindset.” A mindset so pervasive in policing, he notes, that he had never before questioned they way he saw the people he policed//// After sharing several remarkable examples of this mindset demonstrated through his team members and the response of the community, Chip concludes that “no behavioral training, new policy, or technology prescription can change the way we see others. Nor can these sterile measures equip us as officers with the ability to adapt in the moment to provide the approach each unique situation requires. This change in the way we see cannot only transform a single situation, but can transform an entire community. And I know that what has happened with us can happen anywhere. “//// Above the cacophony of angry voices, here is the voice of experience who has policed from both mindsets and has led a true transformation. With all that is at stake, we cannot afford to ignore this solution to the real problem any longer. Please watch and share this vital message.

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