Thursday, December 10, 2015
Police: Trained to Kill
At the end of Patrick's presentation, I really got to thinking about the training of the police and the question Ms. B posed to Bailey. The way I interpreted the information Patrick presented today, led me to believe that the Ferguson Police Department was trained to kill. Patrick kept bringing up the fact that the FTO was training Officer Wilson to achieve compliance in any way possibly from a potential suspect. When Patrick kept reiterating that point, it really pushed my buttons because how could a police department preach something like this? Yes I understand that the officers life might be in danger in some cases but I believe there are other ways to achieve compliance then beating or killing someone. I think in training, instead of teaching the officers to shoot for the central nervous system, shoot for somewhere where the bullet will hurt the suspect and do enough damage to immobilize him rather than aiming for a place that could result in paralysis or death. There needs to be a change in the way police are trained because so far from this case and the Rodney King case, it appears as though the police are trained to kill. If there are already two known police departments where they are trained to use force until someone complies, then imagine how many more police departments could be practicing the same thing? There needs to be a real change in the way police officers are trained because that's where it all starts.
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Exactly what I was thinking! How are you supposed to protect the public if the only way you know how to protect yourself and others is to just shoot and kill? That makes me so hesitant to ever call the police because I'm afraid that a simple fight that needed to be broken up, will end up with someone dead. I feel that the Ferguson Police officers should NOT have the option to carry certain weapons or not! As I said in my blog, what's the point of creating a protocol for force, when the officers don't even bother to bring the necessary weapons to follow that protocol?
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ReplyDeleteIn my opinion you can train an officer all you want, but in the end it is whether or not he feels threatened that triggers the shot. It is really really hard to absolutely make sure there is no violence because if an officer is trained to have too much restraint he could die.
So the real issue here is the decision making capabilities of the officer, which can not be trained no matter how many "what if" games are played.
It really is unfortunate, but officers have to have the ability to exercise their own judgement otherwise they will be ineffective.
But I agree with Lauren, all officers NEED to have access to the proper tools like tasers so that lethal force isn't the only effective option.
I see where you're going and I somewhat agree. I agree that it is unfortunate that police have the right to excersize their own judgemet but what I'm more interested in is how we can make the police have better judgement, i guess. I think the police should be trained in such a way where they have to go thoug dozens of different of scenarios where they take the right steps before immediately going to a deadly force. I also think it is important that police departments stop preaching the whole "do whatever is necessary in order to receive compliance".
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