This is horrible. I thought i’d just add this, because i think it’s important (bolded by me):
Police training is also problematic. Currently, training focuses too much on firearm skills and omits vital exposure to non-lethal weapons and conflict management. The median time of basic recruit training is 18 weeks, not counting field training. Nationally, police departments spend an average of 60 hours on firearms training and 44 hours on self-defense. Less deadly weapons, like Tasers, can be alternatives to guns. But agencies only provide an average of 8 hours of training for Tasers, which is only 25 percent of the necessary training required according to manufacturers.
The ability to defend oneself is an important skill for police officers to have. But the emphasis on firearm skills and self-defense should not compromise the training on mediation skills and conflict management.
Police departments only offer an average of eight hours in mediation skills. Moreover, only 39 percent of agencies mandate that all officers go through conflict management training.
The importance of conflict management cannot be underestimated. Police officers need to have the necessary training and knowledge to manage their emotional and physiological reactions, particularly in high stress situations. - X
Police departments only offer an average of eight hours in mediation skills.
Eight hours! In 18 weeks of training, which frankly, isn’t a lot. That’s a little over four months. In Germany, for example, there are two ways to train for police work, one as a detective, which is a university degree and takes three years, and one as “street officer”, which is practical training that lasts on average two and a half years.
In those years, and this is important, the nut cases are mostly weeded out. That’s not to say there isn’t police brutality or racism issues with the German police as a whole but it’s nowhere near the levels of American police.
Because in just four months of training, people slip through the cracks, go unnoticed, enter the police force with severe issues and are handed something like ultimate authority, a firearm and an endless supply of bullets to boot. It’s giving a “licence to kill” and a very well-oiled machine of covering up and lying away the repercussions to what must in many cases be lunatics. State sanctioned. That’s insane. That needs to change!
And until it does, people will keep getting murdered by police.
