Re-Engineering Training On Police Use of Force (2015)
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Over the past year, the policing profession has been shaken by controversies over the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, and many oth- ers. I don’t know anyone who would dispute that the reputation of American policing has suffered from these incidents. At times, it has seemed like every time you turn on the TV, you see another story about the police that hits you like a punch to the stomach.
PERF’s Board of Directors was quick to realize that the rioting last summer in Ferguson was not a story that would fade away quickly, and we decided to hold a national conference in Chicago about the implications of Ferguson for policing. That meet- ing, held on September 16–17, just five weeks after the Ferguson incident, was written up in “Defining Moments for Police Chiefs,” our last Critical Issues in Policing report.1
One of the key issues we discussed that day in Chicago was the need to rethink the training that police officers receive on de-escalation strategies and tactics. As we look back at the most controver- sial police shooting incidents, we sometimes find that while the shooting may be legally justified, there were missed opportunities to ratchet down the encounter, to slow things down, to call in addi- tional resources, in the minutes before the shooting occurred.
