Having been a federal law enforcement officer, a SWAT member and a training specialist for 8 years these conversations are difficult for me.
There are cops making bad decisions. There are cops who think that a gun and a badge makes them the jury and a badass with impunity. There are just flat out bad cops.
There are also, whether or not fear and experience facing prejudice dictate their actions, far too many people who choose not to be compliant and patient when confronted by police in any capacity. This inevitably always escalates a situation. While we are trained, and put emphasis, on deescalation tactics, we are also a career field that worries about making it home to our own families each and every shift, and who do encounter and have to navigate situations with genuinely violent subjects on a routine basis.
It’s difficult, even for an excellent, highly intelligent, highly skilled officer to navigate these use of force situations which have zero margins for error. Unfortunately, excellent, highly intelligent, officers who are highly skilled in verbal controls and deescalation tactics and who have the poise to remain calm when situations do escalate make up a small percentage of the active duty law enforcement profession. This is not something that can be remedied easily; the percentage of the general populace that possesses the aptitude to do all of those things at a high level, consistently, is low and the number of police needed is high. While police jobs pay well, they don’t pay exceptionally well and come with a lot of risk, bad hours and many negatives that outweigh the pay and benefits, meaning that many people who possess the altitudes necessary to be an exceptional cop won’t ever consider going into that line of work. That means we have little choice but to employ a lot of individuals who don’t have the aptitude to be exceptional in these situations and then rely on training them to the best extent possible to handle them. Unfortunately, the time and monetary investment necessary to bridge the natural skill gap with to the required practical ability is impractical for most departments to achieve. If every police department had the luxury of putting their candidates through special operations level stress indoctrination and only candidates that succeeded were able to become officers, we would have a far more expensive and far smaller police force.
I don’t have any answers. The entirety of the current situation is difficult, devastating and heart wrenching. On the one hand, the majority of individuals who become cops genuinely wish to do good, to serve and protect, to have a positive impact in their communities etc. On the other hand, we clearly have a reality where the training, skills, decision making, etc. is not up to snuff and the consequences are dire. It’s why I left the career field, but it’s also something I’d love to be able to have a positive voice toward correcting. I just don’t even know where to begin.