Makes me feel a bit better about my pending journey to Dallas. That’s good info.
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Yeah, sounds good, and coming from Balko that’s quite the endorsement. 
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Gun control; hire social workers; fund trauma prevention research, training and trauma-informed practice; ease policing of non-violent crimes; and stop legal coddling of non-local bondholders’ and investors, real estate speculators and non-resident property owners at the expense of working people.
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maybe more related to the rather huge cultural differences between Germany and the US in regard to the military, but when it comes to media coverage of the US police the label “officer bla, an army veteran” is used as some kind of quality seal.
the overlap of military and police functions is rather low, using soldiers as LEOs is not necessarily working, imo even a bad idea when reading about the amount of training new policemen get.
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Ugh. This just churns my gut. For those truly short on time right now to read the whole article , here’s the distilled version:
The WaPo article (written by Radley Balko) describes the Dallas PD as ‘a national model for community policing.’ Much credit goes to Chief David Brown (serving since 2010), who implemented the following:
• increase in frequency of use-of-lethal-force training from every two years to every two months
• in collaboration with NAMI, improved officer training for dealing with mental health crises
• public accessibility to data on all ‘officer-involved shootings’ (also available on the PD’s homepage)
• announcement, via the PD’s official Twitter account, of any firing of a PD officer and reasons for their discharge (according to the article, has fired over seventy this way)
• publicly lauded an officer who had turned in one of the PD’s bad apples
• collection and annual release of data on all use-of-force incidents
• implementation of body cam policy in conformance with ACLU model
• reassignment of traffic patrols to ‘beats he felt were more conducive to public safety’ (article)
Finally, the article concludes (emphasis added):
It’s always dicey to credit a particular policy, public official or even set of policies for statistical trends that are likely driven by a broad range of variables. What we can say is that during Brown’s tenure, the trends that matter are mostly moving in the right direction. After his first few years on the job, crime in Dallas dropped more than under the leadership of any of the city’s previous 27 police chiefs. In 2014, murders in the city hit a 50-year low. At the same time, both use of force and citizen complaints about excessive force dropped dramatically.
And then Micha Johnson decided he’d rather just see some cops die.
Fucking. Hell.
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The media is also a HUGE problem here, and if I had my druthers none of the 24-hour sensastionalizing newsertainment sites should get to call themselves ‘news’ unless they hold themselves to a far higher standard.
While it’s awful when a public servant dies, they’re putting their lives on the line and there’s a certain risk that’s inherent in that. An innocent civilian has not made that commitment and has not signed on for that risk.
An innocent civilian dying should be even worse than a policeman dying…they should be the more shocking and traumatic death.
Instead, most of our media sources are quick to put up pictures and names of the police while ignoring any civilians that died. FOX in particular is very guilty of this, and it is part of the problem.
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I agree, obviously:
<post can’t be empty>
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Yes, yes, and more yes. And I would add one other item: A concerted effort to diversify: more women, more minorities, more accurate representation in our police force that truly reflects the populace.
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Agreed! Excellent point!
If the police don’t identify with the people they’re policing, see them as ‘their peeps’ and want the best for everyone in the community (even if it involves tough love or having to send one to a rehabilitation focused penitentiary) then they shouldn’t have any authority over those people
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I’ve offered to work with my local PD R&D team to give them tools for police work that are non lethal.
I think we keep putting animals in uniforms, giving them tools of war, and then holding them accountable when someone gets killed.
Swap human beings for K9 cops, and the problem becomes clearer, IMO. I don’t know. It’s worth a try.
Unless someone has a better idea?
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Agreeing with you, I think the reason many people see former military as good candidates to become police – they’re skilled with weapons and squad operations – are NOT the things we want in regular police. On the contrary, much better to have people skilled at resolving things without use of weapons. I’d say ex-military would be very suitable for SWAT but not necessarily for regular police.
I’ve seen it said (weasel words meaning “I can’t remember who or where”) that people coming out of the army are very good with disciplined weapons-handling and following rules of engagement. That’s good, minimize accidental shootings. Again, only useful for encounters with weapons involved. (And the current rules of engagement – “I feared for my safety” – should be revised to something like “there was no possible way, not even running away and coming back later, to avoid using a weapon”.)
From Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s On Killing (other people here have mentioned it too), we know that part of basic army training is overcoming people’s natural instinct to take care of each other and teaching them to kill instead*. That’s not a strong recommendation for policing based on deescalation and connection. I don’t want to overgeneralize because I expect a lot of ex-military do fine as police, but it still seems like it contributes to the problems of weaponized policing rather than fixing them.
(*And we do ask a lot of them. For many, they keep paying the price long after leaving the military.)
ETA: This looks to be Grossman’s book as a PDF (virus-scan appropriately): http://kropfpolisci.com/cognitive.grossman.pdf
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Thank you. You’ve encapsulated very well what I’ve been trying to express as:
Military means people who’ve been trained to be the world’s best, and most disciplined killers. They do other things too.
Police should mean people who’ve been trained to be the world’s best conflict resolvers and de-escalators.
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Thanks man, I feel hugged. 
We all need one of those these days.
In the voice of Harry Shearer: “…every day!”
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Sorry, had to ninja edit my hug, to be more like how it’d really play out. I would never hug anyone mostly naked without asking though.
ETA: to get even more off-topic, I really would like a good hug. Not even my family hugs me. I have to initiate every single hug, or even physical contatct ever. And being my body shape makes it seem like a criminal offense to even ask.
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Try speaking with a police officer. Work it out.
But… ya know that would cause you to have to change your minds.
They’re just people in a uniform. Police diversity exists.
These faux differences are… ridiculous? Flawed from the start?
Get out more and stop believing the press.
I don’t generally believe the press. I do, however, believe my eyes. I do believe that numbers don’t lie. 1,134 people died at the hands of police in the USA in 2015. I believe that’s a problem.
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In 2008, state and local law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.1 million persons on a full-time basis, including about 765,000 sworn personnel (defined as those with general arrest powers). Agencies also employed approximately 100,000 part-time employees, including 44,000 sworn officers.
So.
1134 shootings. That’s a teeny percentage of police doing it.
And there’s real reasons why internal affairs and the system of policing the police don’t work.
3/4 of complaints about officers come from other officers. Not even the police can police the police.
1,134 people died at the hands of police. That’s not a “teeny percentage” of police doing it. That’s 100%. And they were not all shootings, either. Several were from tazers, or other (supposedly) less-than-lethal methods.
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