I think the biggest problem is their training. I was on a base police detail as a temporary duty for about a year and I often see things like this and the police act exactly as the training I had taught. The "force escalation" went ask -> tell -> make, and they try to instill a paranoia that everyone has a concealed gun by default and should be treated so. I think I have the old training manual laying around somewhere still.
Training about recognizing and handling disabled persons should be mandatory, I received none. Also, clearly what is considered "deadly force" should be re-evaluated. Injecting someone with sedatives without knowing their medical history definitely seems like it should be on that list.
One of most disturbing things I remember from the training was an instructor telling us "It doesen't matter what really happened, what matters is how you articulate what happened."
> Training about recognizing and handling disabled persons should be mandatory
Sure, but in this case, the man's ability level doesn't even seem relevant.
Officers see a nonviolent man taking a shower. No weapons seen by officers. No weapons reported in the 911 call. Man is naked, also suggesting nothing concealed. Man is acting unusually but does not appear to be harming himself and is not uttering any threats to officers.
Yet a team of armed and armoured law enforcement officers think they are at risk? They respond with electric shock, physical force, and injecting drugs!
The ability level of the man is irrelevant. These are thugs and I think their problem may be deeper than gaps in their training.
That's sort of my point. I was responding to the "training" comment.
So if those officers genuinely believe that their armed and armoured team needs to electrocute, subdue, and inject a naked man in the shower who posed no apparent threat in order to "help" him then they are potentially beyond training.
Yikes. If that's the case then trainers and everyone up the chain needs to answer to the community (i.e. who they ultimately serve and protect) on this one, then.
Thank goodness for 1) body cams on police, and 2) shared footage so we can have this conversation.
They most certainly do not serve and protect the community.. That is unless by community you mean "law enforcement community". They do indeed serve and protect their own gang quite effectively.
That is plausible. Especially if we assume that "helping him" meant ending the situation as quickly as possible. They probably hoped to drop him off at the next hospital to deal with.
Mental issues take time. Often you just wait for the person to recover. When you rule out that option, only force is left.
That's not what they did. They brought him to the morgue.
You know, where I grew up, it's very simple: if your actions directly result in the death of another human, you go to jail by default. "I only wanted to help" is a weak excuse, and "I only wanted to help by injecting a drug" gets you a longer sentence. As it should be.
I agree. I'm not saying that the police who did this were right or that they shouldn't be punished. I'm saying that with better training the kid might not have died. The idea that police could be trained to kill fewer people doesn't mean that they're currently not at fault when they do kill people.
Note that the police didn't inject the drugs. The paramedics did that. The police just held him down for that part.
It makes me sad to see that is the current culture of US police force. It would interesting to know why and how the European and American cultures have grown apart so considerably on this matter. I think in 19th and 20th century we were both pretty blood-thirsty although I'm not sure were the American police force then already considerably more accustomed to use lethal force. Now it seems that it's such an integral part of the American police officer's identity that the stereotype already feeds itself by people expecting them to behave that way and them in turn behaving as they expect them.
Of course in the US the people have more guns so police for sure has more reason to fear for getting shot but the use of lethal force still seems excessive.
A lot of this comes from the "SWAT-mentality" that began infecting police forces in the 70s and 80s. The police went from a community organization to a paramilitary one.
The most import thing that is not taught is deescalation.
It is vital for Police to take control of a situation but instead they general yell and shout increasing the tension between parties turning a controllable situation into chaos.
Many people to not respond well to threats and shouting.
A while ago my car got hit by car that had run a red light. It was a huge impact without any warning and I was pretty shaken (probably a concussion). When a cop asked me for my license I couldn't really compute this request and gave him random stuff from my wallet. He started shouting "Sir, show me your license" which I understood even less and kept giving him credit cards and library cards . Thank God another cop came by and pointed calmly to the thing in my wallet they wanted to see.
I can't even imagine how confused I would be if I had people yelling at me while I am in the shower.
My training required shouting in all of the drills. The reasoning that was given was that it was required to make sure any and all bystanders and recording devices heard you clearly so there would be evidence that you followed procedure and that they did not follow commands.
Perhaps this is now outdated with the introduction of body cams but I would bet it is still taught that way.
"The "force escalation" went ask -> tell -> make, and they try to instill a paranoia that everyone has a concealed gun by default and should be treated so."
That's in line with what I saw when I was military police during my German service and had to interact with American MPs. Their strategy was often (not always) to go in directly and if anybody resisted they immediately applied force. Us Germans on the other hand did almost everything we could do to avoid force. It was definitely a noticeable difference in attitude. The Americans also spent a huge amount of time on the shooting range whereas we got there maybe twice a year.
I read the gp comment as basically: desperately needing improvement through the entire non-lethal ‘stack’. This would include new training materials, R&D for better equipment, and so on.
The person in the first story was "non-lethally" tazed over and over, 15 times before being dragged out of the shower and injected with multiple sedatives. Any "non-lethal deterrents" applied that aggressively are still gonna kill people.
And if they don't, they should be regarded as "cruel and unusual punishment", colloquially known as torture.
Seriously, policemen who repeatedly fire a tazer at their victim, rendering him unable to control any of his muscles (including the sphincter), while screaming "STOP RESISTING!!", should be locked away indefinitely.
My point was that if the police are going to act so aggressively, it won't matter how cuddly their tools are. Pillows aren't generally considered lethal, but if you suffocate someone with one....
You don't need more non-lethal deterrents, you need to educate your police officers about how to deal with a human without shouting and threatening.
And nope, no industry needs to be disrupted, no industry needs ignorant individuals without domain knowledge to reinvent the wheel or replace human interaction with a machine interaction, 5 star ranking system and all your personal data sold away.
I feel like the default should be "this person is mentally unstable and might have a weapon" instead of "this person is a potential enemy combatant". Then again, the whole justice system could use an update in that direction.
While I do agree, I’m curious how you think that might alleviate some of these issues (specifically)? Wouldn’t a mentally unstable person with a weapon still be considered a high risk threat? Potentially even more so than a combatant, as police aren’t necessarily equipped to understand mental conditions.
My thinking is that it implies officers will be training to respond to people that can't or won't listen to reason, or have limited ability to feel pain or comprehend instructions. But this is all armchair speculation. How do they deal with this kind of thing in other countries?
You are making excuses for feral animals who used a cattle prod to torture a naked, unarmed man before proceeding to poison him. And your instructor is part of the problem and should be wearing orange, not a police uniform.
Training about recognizing and handling disabled persons should be mandatory, I received none. Also, clearly what is considered "deadly force" should be re-evaluated. Injecting someone with sedatives without knowing their medical history definitely seems like it should be on that list.
One of most disturbing things I remember from the training was an instructor telling us "It doesen't matter what really happened, what matters is how you articulate what happened."