![]() ![]() Police training starts in the academy, where the concept of officer safety is so heavily emphasized that it takes on almost religious significance. “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.” ![]() I’ve had long conversations with officers and former officers, including firearms trainers and use-of-force instructors, at law-enforcement agencies across the country, and they’ve all led to one conclusion: American police officers are among the best-trained in the world, but what they’re trained to do is part of the problem. I’m not just relying on my own experience, though. Having served as an officer at a large municipal police department, and now as a scholar who researches policing, I am intimately familiar with police training. It is because officers perform the way they are trained to perform. But in most cases, it isn’t because individual police officers are consciously racist or think black lives don’t matter. Too many phone calls telling families that their loved ones, particularly young black men, won’t be coming home. ![]() There have been too many lives lost to police killings. ![]()
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