Police brutality is one of the pressing issues in our society. The issue of holding law enforcement agencies and personnel responsible to the community they took an oath to serve has been a recurrent matter since the establishment of the first local police in the United States. During the initial stages of the movement of police expertise in the early 20th century, training was a feasible way to establish responsible agencies and officers (Klinger 111). Today, every officer must attend a police academy for basic law enforcement training before performing apprenticeship on-the-job and occasionally attending “in-service” training courses and classes for the for their career. However, the majority of the training pays attention to usual topics, for example, the way to appropriately use departmental apparatus and is highly salient on matters of public accountability such as the use of excessive force. Although every police behavior domain is important, application of force stands out because it envelopes the exercise of excessive state power against citizens. Ultimately:
“If officers do not use force, there is no legal or policy question to examine vis-à-vis the appropriateness of force and no concern about community backlash—there has yet to be a riot because the police did not beat, choke, or shoot a citizen. Moreover, if officers use lesser levels of force when they do use some force, their actions are less likely to violate law or policy and are less likely to lead to community disruption” (Klinger 112).
To be able to control the menace of police brutality, training of the police is urgently required. In order for training to be effective it should incorporate human rights-based approaches, concentrate on training officers about the use of force decision-making model and respond to the psychological needs of officers, which augment police brutality and incorporate a specific-individual approach to training police officers.
Human Rights-Based Approach to Transform Police Brutality
Police culture is the cornerstone of brutality. In this case, the core argument is that to alter the perception, incorporating human rights at the center is crucial. After all:
“There should be no conflict between human rights and policing, because policing means protecting human rights” (Pastor 5).
The approach based on human rights should concentrate on changing the culture of the police at two core levels. First, a change that establishes professionalism culture with the desire to make sure that law enforcement officers are ingrained by principles of human rights until they can apply them in their day-to-day jobs. Secondly, a change that generates a responsibility culture with the desire to improve the incorporation of the principles of accountability within the structures of the police to counter any impunity culture (Pastor 31).
Police officers have held on to a culture of brutality and lack of responsibility. Therefore, in advancing a professionalism culture, training plays a critical role whereas accountability mechanisms are basic in improving a responsibility culture. Nevertheless, the two elements (training and accountability) are mutually influential and one cannot be taken into account without the other. Learning without proper mechanisms of liability would leave the learned postulates safeguarded in practice. Similarly, measures of accountability that do not feature appropriate training would create a fearful ambiance to the sanction and not the preferred responsibility culture. Hence, the two elements are parallel (Pastor 31).
Training: Developing a Professionalism Culture
Human rights’ training is the initial step towards promoting the value of every citizen by the police. Moreover, it is an imperative deterrent tool of police brutality with the ability to transfer knowledge, skills, and attitudes on human rights, and design them to be excellent and applicable in the day-to-day police work. However, the government should ensure that it introduces human rights training into the police curricula to influence police behavioral change. Precisely, police academies and agencies should develop an appropriate model of human rights training. Notably, the training model ensures that human rights become a core part of the police training curricula (Pastor 33).
Human Rights as a Core to the Curricula and Partial to the Curricula
Human rights training should be incorporated into the police curricula. Several professionals argue that when human rights are incorporated into the police training, the trainers should make sure that the training does not become a mere “window-dressing”, which is tokenism or official requirement to be incorporated in the police curricula without true relevance. Apparently, the significant desire is to encourage human rights training in the police curriculum. On the contrary, the lack of an appropriate approach, enough depth, or proper conviction and commitment, may result in ineffective and poor human rights training (Pastor 34).
Human rights training in the police curricula should be comprehensive as well impact the desired change on the officers. Therefore, to avoid developing a comprehensive human rights education that does not outline methodologies, materials, and directions of the training effectiveness, the government should incorporate it as a core to the curricula. The integration of human rights as core to the curricula would demand the development of a strategic framework that specifies the purpose of the training, methodologies, and guidelines on how the training should go about. Moreover, it will ensure that human rights training are not taught as stand-alone lessons. Instead, it will be integrated with all other police training aspects (Pastor 37).
Improving the Safety and Performance of the Police
“There is no other job like a police officer’s that requires someone to deliberately go out and actively search for dangerous situations where their life or someone else’s life may be threatened” (Andersen and Gustafsberg 1).
Police performance should be guided by the laws and regulations on good policing. However, basic research in the premise of the performance of police officers exposes that physiological and psychological stress responses during dangerous occurrences influence the result of the incident as either bad or good. Consequently, dysfunctional responses to stress during a critical incident make individuals and officers vulnerable to death or injuries. Moreover, they affect the performance and health of an officer negatively over time. Therefore, the purpose of the police agencies should be to design and test a method of training that improves stress of officers when they encounter critical incidences (Andersen and Gustafsberg 1).
How Stress Impacts a Critical Incident
Stress significantly influences police officers performance when face with a grave situation. When a police officer faces a threat, the body employs an array of automatic psychological processes as a threat response. Mainly, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is triggered, and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is accountable for stabilizing and calming the body down gets inhibited. At this point, the level of SNS response relies on cognitive understanding of the risks associated with the stimulus is. Moreover, psychological responses when in distress may be heightened or lowered by factors such as perceived control over the incident at hand. Therefore, mental police training should concentrate on teaching officers about physiological and psychological components in response to stress about the application of force decisions (Andersen and Gustafsberg 2).
iPREP Training Intervention
The stress training intervention is modeled to improve police self-regulation skills. The central elements of education should envelop education on the psychology of the response system of stress, encouraging for peak performance, and management of energy. In addition, the knowledge on how to use visualization and psychological focus to promote situational awareness and sensory perception in non-performance and performance settings is vital. Third is guidance and use of biofeedback to accustom oneself in taking part in regulated breathing exercises that promote control of SNS during stress. However, controlled breathing is not an exercise to relax, but rather it balances activities of parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems while under stress, facilitating moderate arousal states and barricading hyperventilation responses while blocking panic reactions that result in dysfunctional sensory responses such as auditory exclusion and tunnel vision (Andersen and Gustafsberg 6).
Stress Management Training
The stress management training is designed to teach police officers about tolerance limits for excessive and actual force as a risk for patrol that needs management via an array of specialized skills. Police agencies should concentrate on training first line officers as compared to supervisors because they are more prone to using excessive force than others. Additionally, Supervisors should be taught early warning behaviors for monitoring their officers and deter them from becoming culprits of excessive use of force (Scrivner 5). Moreover, research shows that:
“A few ‘bad apples’ in the police force are responsible for most excessive application of force complaints. The truth is there are five distinct profiles of different types of officers, only one of which resembles the ‘bad apple’ characterization”.
Retraining Police on the Use of the National Decision Model
The National Decision Model guides so they can handle issues procedurally. First, they gather intelligence information about the incident to help them assess the risk and threat before developing a working strategy after considering their policy and power to enable them to outline their contingencies and options before taking appropriate actions (Wexler 46).
The National Decision model does not have room for responsibility and accountability of the police officer. Hence, police officers do not assess the results of their actions before undertaking them.
“Officers are making poor decisions in critical incidents. In situations where there was a threat, officers are immediately closing the gap and engaging very quickly without any structured thought or process about what they were doing. And the resulting outcomes were messy” (Wexler 40).
The retraining process is a huge step towards imparting change in the decision making process of officers when facing de-escalating incidents. The retraining process should instruct officers to evaluate their responses using the European convention mnemonic
"P.L.A.N. Proportionate demands that the officer questions how an ordinary member of the public would conclude of their action? Would the individual deduce that it was reasonable? If yes, then they can go ahead and act. Secondly, Lawful is where the officer establishes whether there is a legal footing for their presence in the scene at the first place. Thirdly, Accountable demands that there is a place where officers offer a rationale for their actions and even n account for other options they did not act on. Fourth, Necessary demands that the application of excessive by the police was necessary in the initial place or would the officer act in another way? (Wexler 47)
Specific-Individual Approach to Training Police Officers
The specific-individual approach dictates that there are four ideal types of law enforcement officers and they do not all have the same capacity of learning. The four types of law enforcement officers require different treatment to address distinct issues that make them prone to using excessive force. The one who posses the highest challenge in training is the brutal officer. Such people are not ideal for police work in the first place but they still manage to be hired, and those with a sound temperament may eventually get worse. Nevertheless, police agencies can use the threat of punishment to control brutal officers and curtail them from using excessive force because:
“The fact that there are police officers that are disposed towards brutality does not mean they will necessarily act on their violent orientation. One of the things that has been shown to forestall people from acting on their desires is a concern that if they do, they will suffer negative consequences” (Klinger 117).
One of the critical parts of using threats is training. Training should be two-fold if it will result to the desired outcome. One, agencies can stipulate that there will be stern punishment for those who intentionally use force- the training acts as a marker that the agency will not tolerate brutality. Two, agencies can use training sessions to discuss incidences where discipline was imposed on officers who used excessive force as a reminder of the punishment officers will suffer for engaging in brutal acts (Klinger 118).
There Is More Than the Police to Blame for Police Brutality
The entire world is aware that America has a problem with violence, racism, and policing which is comprised of a patchwork of agencies of law enforcement. Therefore, brutal and racists cops are not to blame for the police brutality menace. It is desirable to place the blame it on them. However, “if bad cops are the problem, the rest of us can go to bed with a clear consciences and no need to look in the mirror. But the “bad cop” explanation is too simple” (Brooks 3). A more intense evaluation on the issue shows that America is plagued by racism, policing and violence problems. However, more often than not, the three elements intersect, and the problem of force arises (3). Therefore, police training alone cannot remedy the issue at hand. A proper remedy should control the other two elements. Moreover, Scrivner says that training on its own is not enough- monitoring is essential to detect precursors of police brutality before an incident (5).
Conclusion
Police brutality is a pressing concern, and various remedies have been presented to control it. However, none of them has been promising compared to police training, which should incorporate the human-rights approach, specific-individual methodology, as well as retraining on the decision-making model. However, training requires monitoring, and there is more than the police to blame for brutality.
Annotated Bibliography
Klinger, David A. "Police Training as an Instrument of Accountability." Saint Louis University School of Law, 2011-2012, pp.111-122.
According to this article, police training is one of the fundamental instruments in enabling officers to perform their duties in an effective, fair, and lawful manner. The author discusses four different reasons the law enforcement personnel tend to use more force that is necessary during their interactions with the public. The article states that for training to successfully combat police use of force, it needs to be directed at each of these probable sources of abuse. Consequently, the article provides a model on how police training should be directed to different sources. In addition, it discusses the probability of success that all the discussed approaches have in managing police violence. Accordingly, the author’s arguments are relevant because they offer a guideline about different ways to train four distinct ideal police types. Particularly, the article explains why it is important that different police officers are trained separately.
Scrivner, Ellen M. "Controlling Police Use of Excessive Force: The Role of the Police Psychologist." National Institute of Justice Research in Brief October, 1994, pp. 1-6.
The article provides a summary of a survey that was financed by the National Institute of Justice as a partial way of the Department of Justice to determine additional ways of controlling the application of force by the police. The beating of Rodney King, which caused the Los Angeles riots, was the incident that triggered the initiative by the Department of Justice. The input of psychologists who work in the police departments assisted in developing profiles of police officers who abuse force. Further, the author outlined the role of psychologists that were linked to the mental health of officers, particularly their application of excessive force. Moreover, the study presents recommendations on the most appropriate way to predict, cure, and deter excessive force. In this regard, this article is relevant because it explains how police officers should deal with psychological issues that influence their application of police brutality.
Wexler, Chuck. Critical Issues in Policing Series: Re-Engineering Training on Police Use of Force. Police Executive Research Forum, 2015.
The report summarizes recommendations of police leaders on the best way to change police policies, culture, and training in relation to the use of force. In addition, the police chiefs discussed the methods to strengthen police-community relationships. Consequently, one of the main issues discussed in the report is on how to rethink the police training on de-escalation tactics and strategies. One of the most controversial police shootings experiences examined showed that we at times realize that even though shooting can be justified legally, there were foregone chances to prong the incident down, decrease the pace of things and ask for reinforcement in the minutes prior to the occurrence of the shooting. Notably, it became certain that the de-escalation problem was an example of areas in police officers training that needed to be improved. Therefore, Wexler’s idea is relevant because above everything, it depicts the output of relevant police departmental heads who review decision-making models of police departments in other countries to help in retraining officers on the best model to use.
Andersen, Judith P., and Harri Gustafsberg. "A Training Method to Improve Police Use of Force Decision Making: A Randomized Controlled Trial." Sage Journals, 2016, pp. 1-13.
The article discusses the issues on safety of the police and the application of force when serious situations are a continued concern for both the public and law enforcement officers. Past research in the police performance area exposes that physiological and psychological stress responses during incidents that are critical can shape an outcome either negatively or positively. Moreover, the paper tests a method of police training that can be used to improve decision-making processes regarding the use of force. Advanced application of force directly equates to probable life-saving decisions for the public and police to work with. As such, Andersen is relevant because he shows how theory can be applied in practice, that is, how a hypotheical framework of police training on psychological issues can be applied in police training.
Pastor, Sara. "Time for Change in Police Culture: Putting Human Rights at the Center of Policing." Postgraduate HRC 2015 Working Paper No. 9, 2016, pp. 1-93.
The report states that police possess the protection power but they violate the human rights of the people they ought to serve. The role of Global policing principles is to influence propitious links between human rights and policing and to reduce probable pessimistic clashes between both concepts (discriminatory treatment, abuse of power, arbitrariness). According to the report, this can only be possible if there is a significant change in police culture. In regard to the argument that the approach of human rights to policing is necessary, the author holds that to make an impact on the patterns of police behavior, there is a need for implementation of international standards via police accountability and training measures. Notably, Pastor uses a parallel analysis of how human rights and policing are implemented in Northern Ireland and Spain to provide a guide to identify the good practices and limitations in police accountability and training. Moreover, it depicts how changing the police culture encounters an array of challenges at various levels and offer an account of the role played by the society in the process. In light of this, this report is relevant to the study because it shows the need for incorporating human rights approaches to policing. Besides, it explains why the topic ought to be a core curricula and not a part of curricula.
Brooks, Rosa. "America's Police Problem isn't just about Police." Foreign Policy, 2016 http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/05/americas-police-problem-isnt-just-about-police-guns-violence/. Accessed Feb. 7, 2018.
The article argues that the issue of police brutality in America is not just a bad brutal cop problem. Brooks highlihts that America has a racism, violent, and policing problems. Therefore, the issue of police brutality should not be completely blamed on the officers. Precisely, the author is relevant on the issue under study because she paints a broader picture to stop focusing the issue of police use of force on the law enforcment officers alone. Moreover, it is apparent that training alone cannot remedy the issue of police brutality.
Works Cited
Andersen, Judith P., and Harri Gustafsberg. "A Training Method to Improve Police Use of Force Decision Making: A Randomized Controlled Trial." Sage Journals, 2016, pp. 1-13.
Brooks, Rosa. "America's Police Problem isn't just about Police." Foreign Policy, 2016 http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/05/americas-police-problem-isnt-just-about-police-guns-violence/. Accessed Feb. 7, 2018.
Klinger, David A. "Police Training as an Instrument of Accountability." Saint Louis University School of Law, 2011-2012, pp.111-122.
Pastor, Sara. "Time for Change in Police Culture: Putting Human Rights at the Center of Policing." Postgraduate HRC 2015 Working Paper No. 9, 2016, pp. 1-93.
Scrivner, Ellen M. "Controlling Police Use of Excessive Force: The Role of the Police Psychologist." National Institute of Justice Research in Brief October, 1994, pp. 1-6.
Wexler, Chuck. Critical Issues in Policing Series: Re-Engineering Training on Police Use of Force. Police Executive Research Forum, 2015.
