A Missed Opportunity

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Dereck Chauvin. As a police officer, I was disgusted by the video of the incident, the complete disregard for common sense, and the lack of empathy displayed by Minneapolis Police Officers that day. While I wouldn’t say, I like when politicians exploit tragedies for political gain, we can use them to have broader and tough conversations as a society. In the days following Mr. Floyd’s murder, I thought that we might see some productive discussions happen in the realm of policing.

Instead, we had months of unrest throughout the country and terms such as “ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards)” and “Fuck 12.” Unexpectedly, I found myself on the receiving end of an angry mob’s rage, more than 1,200 miles away from Minneapolis, responding to a call about an “elderly man being beaten with a hammer.”

Another Movement Hijacked by Zealots

As the George Floyd demonstrations and protests continued, the narrative began to change from a demand for reform to demands to defund and disband law enforcement agencies. Even the Clinton Foundation funneled significant sums of cash into the movement. The two most radical movements toward this end were in Minneapolis and Seattle. The city council in Seattle, Washington, chose to slash its Police Department’s budget by a whopping 50%, and a supermajority of the Minneapolis City Council vowed to remove its Police Department and replace it with a different concept.

In Seattle, however, after only reducing the police budget by about 13%, the voters of Seattle spoke loudly when they elected a moderate, Bruce Harrell, who vowed to bolster a police department he described as “depleted and demoralized.” In fact, staffing levels for Seattle PD have dwindled from nearly 1,300 officers in 2017 to less than 1,000 officers in 2022. Meanwhile, violent crime reached a 14-year high in Seattle, with a 10% increase in overall crime between 2020 and 2021. Seattle is not alone in this predicament, however, as there is a trend across the country of Departments losing officers at a record pace while struggling to recruit new, qualified individuals.

In fairness, based upon my understanding, the “defund the police” movement was predicated on diverting law enforcement funding toward other social programs that would reduce the strain on law enforcement agencies by creating community-based responses to situations where the presence of law enforcement was not necessary (e.g., non-violent mental health calls and drug use intervention). Unfortunately, I think the movement has failed mainly for two reasons. First, words matter. Most folks will never get past the rhetoric surrounding the word “defund.” This creates an impish and confrontational tone right out of the gate. Second, the movement was railroaded by activists and zealots who would abolish the police altogether, something a vast majority of Americans do not want to see happen.

What does the data really look like?

While my goal is not to downplay the tragedy of the loss of life that can occur during a use-of-force encounter but to counter the narrative being pushed by many media outlets and activist groups that police are on some murder rampage. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 61 million people had law enforcement contact in 2018 (the most recent year for which the data is available). However, only a little more than 1.2 million contacts resulted in “nonfatal threats or use of force.” During the same year, according to the database compiled by the Washington Post, police fatally shot 992 people nationwide. While not insignificant, the number would be considered statistically insignificant, representing only about 0.000017% of all law enforcement contacts. This representation does not tell the whole story of the 992 encounters and does not mean that every one of those shootings was justified or necessary. It is only meant to illustrate that the narrative being driven by the mass media is misguided, at best. Check out this post from the Police Law Newsletter for more.

How did we get here?

It is my personal opinion that Law Enforcement agencies became victims of their success. Violent crime in the United States during the 1990s was out of control, and street gangs were a significant source of that violence. Between 1991 and 2021, the reported crime rate fell dramatically from 729 per 100,000 to 395 per 100,000, nearly a 46% decrease in violent crime during that period. However, a closer look at the numbers shows that the lowest rate came in 2017, just 361 per 100,000. I was not a police officer until 2016, but whatever methodologies and strategies were employed between 1990 and 2016 corked. So, agencies nationwide used the “wash, rinse, repeat” process even as new trends and challenges arose. Training has since become antiquated and limited in scope, while police officers are asked to take on more and more responsibilities.

The police have long been society’s “catch-all” for dealing with problems that arise, but it’s unclear who should manage them. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a law enforcement think-tank, says there is an “immediate crisis” in how new officers are trained. One of the keys they point to is a lack of national standardization. In addition, the group says new officers are trained too quickly. I agree with this report’s premise but urge caution with standardization. From my experience, too much national standardization poses the danger of creating an environment where local and small agencies cannot ensure their training programs remain focused on local problems.

The duration of training is also a complex issue, especially with agencies across the country experiencing unprecedented staffing shortages. It is tricky to find the multi-plane balance necessary when training police officers. First, you must constantly stress test trainees, and while some see “military-style” training academies as regressive, that training is imperative. Such stressful environments are crucial to teaching police cadets to make better decisions when stressed to the max because those are the conditions under which officers often have to make decisions. However, we must also balance that with the fact that a significant amount of academic knowledge must be retained, specifically as it pertains to authority within the confines of the U.S. and State Constitutions. A second plane that cannot be ignored is the balance of spending adequate time training officers with the needs of an agency to have those officers on the street. In my calculation, based upon my own experience, it takes 3-5 years for an officer to be genuinely effective on their own, from the day they start the training academy. With that sort of timeline in mind, you will be perpetually in a net negative situation if you’re recruiting and retention efforts are purely in response to today’s mass exodus from the profession, with no way to catch up.

With that being said, I believe that much of the traditional training regimen undertaken by most training academies have become woefully antiquated and outmoded. However, as with most humans (and maybe even more so), Police officers are exceptionally resistant to change, “but this is how we’ve always done it.” This, at least in part, is likely due to law enforcement administrators having no career stability built into their positions as political appointees, who may be terminated at the slightest shift in political headwinds.

Where do we go?

Well, as the title suggests, first and foremost, society must decide what role law enforcement should have. Law Enforcement Officers are perpetually asked to don any responsibilities throughout a given workday. Most of the time, this is simply part of responding to volatile, often violent, and tragic situations. Increasingly, however, it’s due to lazy administrators. For example, there has been a sharp increase in calls for service directly related to individuals experiencing mental health crises. Today, one in five law enforcement calls for service related to mental health emergencies.

The mental health system in the United States has been decimated over the last four decades and, today, is almost non-existent, even though mental health diagnoses have been on the rise for a considerable period already. So indeed, lazy administrations across the United States have tasked law enforcement to handle situations involving people in crisis, which in some circumstances can become violent encounters, but more so because they don’t know who else to send. But let me ask you this: Given the media narrative surrounding law enforcement in America today (whether or not it’s accurate), do you think introducing law enforcement into such a situation may inadvertently escalate that situation? My answer is maybe. I have experienced firsthand the mere presence of officers in uniform, regardless of how well they handle the situation, which has escalated a person in crisis. This is not to say that person would not have acted the same given a different response, but you get my drift.

The final trend that I see commonly today is the argument that police too often embrace the “warrior” mindset when they should have a “guardian” mindset. I think this is pure semantics, but in reality, it is a conversation in which we must objectively engage. Before I dive deeper, let me first present the definition of both terms:

Warrior

^noun

1. (especially in former times) a brave or experienced soldier or fighter.

Oxford Language Dictionary

Guardian

^noun

a defender, protector, or keeper

Oxford Language Dictionary

With both of those definitions in mind, does a modern police officer not need to be able to exercise both capacities? While the “guardian” mentality may be applicable in more scenarios, an Officer must have a warrior switch when appropriate. A prime example of when a warrior response is appropriate but imperative is the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. I will write more on that incident in a later article, but for this topic, an active shooter response must be from a warrior’s mindset. Hunt down the threat and eliminate that threat by whatever means necessary, which may include sacrificing oneself to that end. Additionally, police are attacked at random in record numbers, and only a warrior can indeed survive an unprovoked ambush. Guardians work toward preventing attacks upon others, while warriors are necessary for attacks that have already been initiated.

Such a hybrid model need not only be adopted and accepted by the public at large but too by the officers themselves to move forward with society and the ever-changing needs and wants of the people, not in spite of it.