AMERICA'S POLICE AT A CROSSROADS
Police departments and their officers across the nation are facing a fundamental question amid public worries over police violence : are they Warriors or Guardians?
(Adobe stock photo, licensed to Mike Lee)
Police violence is statistically rare, but it only takes an occasional outrage in the media to fuel the social and political divide that will determine who will be the next U.S. President. Less rare are complaints of everyday police ‘warrior’ mentality, a mindset which results from officers having been trained to present themselves as a ‘command presence.’ This can result in discord between them and their ultimate benefactors - the public.
This week the Associated Press published the results of its investigation into police violence.
“Over a decade, more than 1,000 people died after police subdued them through means not intended to be lethal, an investigation led by The Associated Press found. In hundreds of cases, officers weren’t taught or didn’t follow best safety practices for physical force and weapons, creating a recipe for death.
These sorts of deadly encounters happened just about everywhere, according to an analysis of a database AP created. Big cities, suburbs and rural America. Red states and blue states. Restaurants, assisted-living centers and, most commonly, in or near the homes of those who died. The deceased came from all walks of life — a poet, a nurse, a saxophone player in a mariachi band, a truck driver, a sales director, a rodeo clown and even a few off-duty law enforcement officers.`’ AP Story Link
According to the AP report, Black Americans, who represent only 12 % of the population make up a third of those victims.
‘Law And Order’ is often an issue in any election year. This time, with the country so intensely divided on major issues, the concept of public safety is also on the frontline.
Police departments are under-funded and, according to my guest on this edition of The Big Conversation, under-trained and largely stuck in a ‘Warrior’ mindset that often leads to unnecessary violence. The Left says the cops are abusive or racist, or both. The Right leans toward defending police force as justifiable. Nether side wants to open up a discussion about how and why policing is so difficult, complex or how the police are still failing in some ways but working on better tactics.
Should there be an ‘October Surprise,’ or other violent police incident between now and November, expect the candidates to exploit it any way they can.
This friction is not new, but it is becoming increasingly important for all of us to do our bit to look behind the sensational news stories and benefit from a deeper look at what actually goes on out there on the streets every day and night along that ‘thin blue line’ between law and order and chaos in our society.
This Substack episode is an opportunity to get ahead of the partisan noise and experience interesting insights into how the police are trained and the pressure they face: some of these you might not have realized.
In this Big Conversation I have reached out to a law professor who keeps track of the complexities of police work, the good and not-so-good, and teaches them to his students. Seth Stoughton is a Professor of Law and Director of the ‘Excellence in Policing & Public Safety’ program at The University of South Carolina.
As you may know by now, The Big Conversation portion of my Substack is about issues. These are long conversations that provide more detail than you will get in most ordinary newspaper, tv or web reporting.
My feeling is that if we want to be well informed, it’s great to have access to experts. It is sort of like discovering an interesting person at a party, coffee shop, or in the next airline seat, who knows about things you either find intriguing or affect your life in one way or another. You come away feeling smarter, entertained or challenged.
Subscribers will know that I have been making The Big Conversation available as video, text and audio. Today I’m trying out a fourth feature, which I call the ‘Bouncing Ball. ‘ It gives you the added option of reading the text of the interview, synced with the audio. The idea is that we sometimes can be distracted by ‘talking heads,’ even those who say smart stuff. By following the text along with the audio only, our imaginations are freed up. The ‘Bouncing Ball’ can be found below the main video. Please let me know what you think in the Comment section.
Here is Prof. Stoughton (pronounced ‘STOW ton) in discussion with me about why police departments are not better funded and better trained in how to diffuse potential violence. Yes, there are times, like active shooter situations or other immediate threats, when they must use force quickly. That comes up in the conversation. We begin with the funding and training question.
AUDIO ONLY OF THE INTERVIEW
NEXT IS THE ‘BOUNCING BALL’ VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW
For laptops, it’s best to see in full screen. For mobile phones, I suggest enlarging the screen and viewing in landscape mode. (iPhones have a toggle button in the controls)
A plain text transcript of the interview can be found at the end of this Post.
What are your own take-aways on Prof. Stoughton’s findings?
Are we, individually and collectively supporting better policing? Are we willing to pay for it? Are we willing to foot the bill, which could be large, for an increase in social services that could free police from the burden of dealing with the consequences of the blight in social housing, mental health crises, homelessness, unemployment and human rights abuses in multiple forms? Or do we hear the word ‘social services’ and think ‘too much government, too much taxation, too much affirmative action or too much immigration’?
I was stunned, even though I should not have been surprised, by Prof. Stoughton’s reminder that our elected politicians have a built in aversion to helping our children and grandchildren live better, safer lives: there is no political reward for them to spend money on projects that will take years to develop. They will be long gone and future lawmakers will take credit. That leaves it to us.
It boils down to the individuals like you and me to realize that there actually is enormous power in the hands of large voting blocks. But how can millions of us fed-up individuals act in unison, instead of throwing up our hands and saying ‘what’s the use, the powers that be will always do what they want.’ Ironically, ants have figured it out. Huge numbers of them pitch in and move mountains (sticks and leaves) without a single piece of legislation, campaign spending or media manipulation. Maybe there is a path to real use of individual power through internet action sites like Change,org and others yet to come.. Maybe that is a dream too far. I hope not.
The outcome of what many believe is the most important U.S. election ever will depend upon how the American public votes on those social issues which police have to manage, largely by themselves, every day.
Here are some links to some of my recent posts reflecting various issues:
No Oscar for Nuclear Test Exiles
A Perfect Storm of Sports Rules vs Justice
BELOW IS THE PLAIN TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THE PROF. STOUGHTON INTERVIEW
Seth Stoughton 0:00
At its core, I think it's the lack of political will. I don't think it's a lack of understanding about a number of the causes. We have 100 years worth of Blue Ribbon commissions that have given us very consistent input about how to deal with aspects of policing, including police violence. We have decades and decades of empirical, quantitative and qualitative research. What we don't have our political leaders who are willing to spend their political capital, and the money and time and resources that it would take to address the issue. I think it's really lack of political will.
Mike Lee 0:54
Every time that I hear somebody talk about political capital, and I think you're right, but by the very nature of democracy, these leaders are responding to people in a democracy who put them there. So we're ultimately talking about public opinion. I mean, I know a lot of policymakers and a lot of people who want to see better policies or what they feel are better policies, want politicians to be, quote unquote, brave and go against their constituents. But isn't that a lasting way to go? Or do you need to change the fundamental priorities of the public in order to have a more of a bedrock for these politicians to act upon?
Seth Stoughton 1:42
I think there is some need to change some of the fundamental aspects of society and the political process. But I don't think that's, I don't think that's the sum total of the issue. So we can, we can certainly identify problems in policing, that just exist within policing. But we also have to recognize that policing is part of our society. So sometimes the big problems that we have in society are just being reflected in policing. And they may often be reflected in a way that magnifies them because of the nature of police interactions. So when we're talking about improving policing, I don't think we can cleanly separate that from improving the society in which police operate. But I do think that there are some specific aspects to our political process that make it difficult, even when elected officials have public approval or public opinion on their side, where you have constituents who are saying we want police reform efforts, there are still aspects of our political process that make that difficult. And here's a very simple one, it takes time and money, but it's not actually going to improve things for some period of time, five years, 10 years, 20 years. In other words, the police leader, that excuse me, the elected officials who were in office now are the ones who have to commit what might be very significant amounts of funding and resources to an uncertain effort that won't get any payoff, let's say for 10 years at that point, they might not be in office anymore, they're not going to be in position to benefit from it anymore. Which even if it's something their constituents want, the political system is much more likely to reward short term ways of capturing public approval. And this is not a short term effort. This is a long term effort. It requires long term thinking. And unfortunately, our political processes not great about long term thinking.
Mike Lee 3:57
We can talk about those policy changes or in a few moments, but before we get too far down that road, can we talk about the problems? What what needs to be fixed?
Seth Stoughton 4:09
Yeah, absolutely. We can look at it at a really high level or a very granular level. At a high level. We as a society expect too much from policing. We have used police agencies and police officers as a way of dealing with this very tangled mess of social issues, that police just don't have the training or the resources to actually address. We tend to think of policing and crime, but it's so much more than that. And there's a lot of empirical research that shows that officers most officers spend most of their time doing something completely unrelated doing a number of things that are completely unrelated to crime. But even when you add aspects of crime into what police deal with, it's often interwoven with poverty and mental health and alcohol or substance abuse, or domestic problems and anger management issues and lack of economic opportunity and housing policy. And all of these things that we just haven't dealt with, with a more robust social service infrastructure. Fundamentally, I think the problem with policing, and this is going to be a perennial problem with policing, it exists right at this point of tension between what society expects, or what societal demands are, and what police can actually do on those sides of the scale are just wildly unbalanced. And unfortunately, it's very difficult for police agencies and police leaders to even acknowledge that,
Mike Lee 6:03
for example, that point of which what the public wants and what the police. Can do an example?
Seth Stoughton 6:10
Sure, so take something that seems very intuitive, like crime control, there's a surge of violent crime right now in a number of cities across the United States. That is, that is true, that is statistically undeniable, that is happening. It's still historically not at record levels, but it's still surging. We turn to the police and say, do something about that. The problem is that policing and crime have a very complicated and multifaceted relationship. Policing does have some effect on crime. But it can be sporadic, it can be inconsistent. What works in one community, a police effect on crime may not work the same in a different community. Often, crime goes up or down for reasons that have nothing to do with policing. So when we fire a police chief, because crime rates have gone up, or when we hire a police chief who lays out a specific plan about how to address violent crime in a community, we're putting a lot of eggs in a basket that doesn't have a bottom on it, or at least has a lot of holes in the bottom. Maybe policing can carry some of those eggs. But we're allowing ourselves to remain convinced that it can carry all of the eggs and it just can't. What complicates this is that it's very difficult for a police chief or a prospective police chief, to say that if you were interviewing a police chief, and you said, Look, we have a problem with violent crime in this community, and you have two candidates, and one of those candidates says, Actually, I don't think I can do a whole lot about that. Maybe I can help tangentially. But here's where you need to spend more time and money and resources to try and fix that. And the other police chief says sure, hire me, we'll take care of it, you're not going to hire the first one, you're going to hire the second one. And that's a pattern that we see over and over again. And that's just very narrow. That's with crime, the thing that we most intimately associated with policing and the police mission, when we broaden that out to public safety, it kind of gets even worse, we expect police to deal with the downtown homeless population, or individuals who need assistance because of what can be debilitating mental health situations. But police are a hammer, they have effectively one piece of authority, and that's to arrest people and bring them into the criminal justice system. And that's not an effective way of dealing with the problems.
Mike Lee 8:51
Yet police are thrown into these circumstances. And then we need to talk about what they do when they get there. They may not maybe they shouldn't be faced with those problems. But they are. And that's where things start to go wrong.
Seth Stoughton 9:09
Absolutely. So both at the systemic level, why are we using police to deal with these issues, but also at the the retail or the acute level? Are officers are dealing with these situations? are they dealing with them appropriately? And unfortunately, the answer to that question is sometimes no.
Mike Lee 9:32
Sometimes, very rarely, often. I mean, we you often hear almost in every one I interview about this, the majority of police officers behave themselves and are well intentioned yet. the media focus is almost exclusively on these incidents in which they don't.
Seth Stoughton 9:57
Yeah, so I think it's probably true that most officers are well intentioned, but we don't actually have enough data to say how well officers are handling most of these situations. One of the massive limitations in understanding the current state of policing is a lack of data. We, I can I can tell you, I can do a quick Google search. And I actually have my students do this in class, and look up how many cars and light trucks the United States exported to any given country in the world in the last couple of years? Or how many metric tons of shellfish we imported from any given country. But when you try and look up, how many times did officers shoot at people? Or how many times did officers shoot and kill people, the best data that we have comes from media aggregation research, like by killed by police.net, or by Washington Post, we don't have good official government statistics on on any of that high level stuff,
Mike Lee 11:10
Which raises the point that I know you've made in other places that you're talking about a number of different agencies that a don't coordinate their data and be at the local and state level. It's often the case that officers are not required to report whether they had to use any kind of force, much less shooting. And also in terms of these police body cameras, which we can talk about in a few moments. They're often required to use them, but it isn't enforced. So is that kind of data about?
Seth Stoughton 11:43
It is yes, we probably have more data about fatal police shootings than anything else. But we're talking about 1000 a year. If you really want to understand what policing looks like in a neighborhood, I would argue that you don't just need to know about shootings, those are important, but they're also kind of inherently anomalous. In some ways. You need to know how many times officers are grabbing someone in taking the ground, you need to know how many times officers are pushing or striking or beating someone how many times officers are using a baton or pepper spray or a taser. We don't have anything other than department specific data at those departments that actually track and release it. And many of them do not.
Mike Lee 12:32
in Memphis some time ago. Had those officers not been wearing active body cameras? Would they have been required to report that they had to use force against that man?
Seth Stoughton 12:48
As a matter of policy, they probably would have been required to report it. But whether they did so and whether they did so accurately is an entirely different question. Most agencies require officers to use force, although where they draw that line actually varies from agency to agency. Not
Mike Lee 13:10
sure. I think it's clear that they are not required to use force,, they're allowed to use force under certain circumstances. I mean, I just don't want I don't want people to mistake what you think your intent is. Officers are not uniformly required to use force.
Seth Stoughton 13:27
Yes, I'm sorry, I met. And I may have misspoken I meant when officers use force, they are typically required to report that use of force that is there's a particular form or document that they have to fill out. But what the agency requires officers to report that is the threshold at which agencies require officers to complete a use of force report can vary tremendously from agency to agency, good practices right now is, would be an agency telling officers look, if you use any force greater than the amount needed to put a fully compliant individual into handcuffs, if you have to grab them, pull them, kick them and take them down anything, you report that, but a number of agencies have a higher threshold, they may not have to report physically bringing someone to the ground, which can be very kinetic, very injurious. They may not have to report empty hand strikes, even closed hand punches to the face, they may only have to report the use of weapons like a baton or powered Taser or pepper spray or something like that. If that's the case, then those officers are effectively acting with no oversight in those agencies. And that's not something that I think we should be comfortabl with.
Mike Lee 14:48
And as you pointed out, we don't know for sure because we don't the data is not required, not collected or under collected in terms of how often that may or may not happen and perhaps at least training and in a moment, but training versus behavior on the ground, I think that might be a good point to talk about the culture of working with colleagues and the peer pressure to behave in a certain way. And we're all human, we're all subjected to peer pressure, is that not a powerful influence on how officers behave, regardless of what kind of training they receive before they hit the street.
Seth Stoughton 15:34
That's a tremendously powerful. It is the most important influence the most critical influence how you think your peers expect you to behave is how you are going to behave. policy matters, training matter, the chiefs expectations all matter. But what drives human behavior is the way that you think the people around you expect you to behave your peers, your colleagues, your squad mates, your friends, that has tremendous impact on human behavior on officer behavior.
Mike Lee 16:06
And no, even local, much less federal government is going to be able to influence that.
Seth Stoughton 16:15
It takes a degree of intentionality and effort that you don't see very often, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that culture is just something that you can push down from the top, the chief says, This is our culture now. And everyone nods, happily. And that's the new culture. And that's a lovely fantasy. But that's never been the way it worked. Culture is created, those pure expectations are created by a bunch of different influences. Some of that is the top down pressure. But some of it also just bubbles up from the way that people behave, and learn to behave and learn from each other, to behave in real world scenarios where you don't have a sergeant looking at you or a training supervisor or training officer or a police chief, ready to hold up the policy manual and say, Here's where you fell short or not. We also have a problem of, of over regulation in policing. If you look at a police policy manual, even for a relatively small agency, they are often hundreds and hundreds of pages long. They're so long, that it's often just not realistic to expect an officer to know and to abide by all of the policies all of the time, and will
Mike Lee 17:41
'Read and sign,' I think it's called isn't it?
That'sexactly right. That's it, okay, we pushed out another policy update, just read and sign or now in this era, it's click on the email to acknowledge, you know, click on this link to acknowledge that you've got this policy update, but often with no discussion about what that policy update is or why the agency is adopting it. And the result is officers know that they have these policies. But they also know that the policies may not match the way that things are done on the street. That separation between the policies on paper, and the policies in practice, actually kind of reduces respect for the policy manual on paper, right? It's sure there are a bunch of policies on paper, but this is the way we do things. Don't worry about the paper. Well, if the message that you get is don't worry about those written policies, then how much influence are they going to have.
Can we talk about police training for a moment? probably agree is pretty it is a mismatch. There are federal suggestions or federal guidelines, but almost exclusively, most police training is done at a local, state, local or state level. There are no uniform standards are there?
Seth Stoughton 18:58
Only within each state, but even that there's a lot of flexibility. No, we there are no national standards for training that the some 800 Odd academies have to actually abide by.
Mike Lee 19:10
Is there any way or any reason to and or any way to change that?
Seth Stoughton 19:16
Sure, it could be done. And I think there's ample reason to do so. I want to be a little bit careful about this because I do think that we should encourage states to act like the laboratories of democracy that they are. But we can imagine a federal or national minimum standard that still encourages states to go above and beyond again, we can imagine a federal floor and states are free to build up from that floor so long as they meet the minimum. Right now police training nationwide varies tremendously from state states like California that have very long police academies, comparatively speaking. They have state mandated field training programs with very specific instructor and student expectations to states like Louisiana or Mississippi that have relatively few hours of training, and no field training requirements. A lot of large agencies might still do some version of field training. But that's because they create their rules and standards in house not because there's a state entity telling them this is the right way to do it.
Mike Lee 20:43
Isn't it also the case that a lot of state and local governments farm these training out to independent companies who have a variety of different qualification, Let's put it that way.
Seth Stoughton 20:58
Yes. So there are when we're talking about basic trainer, what's often called pre service training, this is the officers Academy level training. You see a couple of State Academies, South Carolina, Washington, there are a couple of other states that there's only one State Academy and as a Central Academy in that state. What you typically see are regional academies. And in most states, those regional academies could be run by individual police departments. The Los Angeles Police Department has its own academy, for example, or they could be run by educational institutions. I went to a police academy, the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy, that was run by the Tallahassee Community College system, it was part of the community college program. California has I think, 19 of the state's academies within their community college system. But there are also there's also the potential to bring in even if we're talking about a community college academy or a police agency Academy, there is often an involvement of private training vendors.
Mike Lee 22:18
A lot of these private vendors have different standards of training, is that a fair statement?
Seth Stoughton 22:26
They have very different standards of training, and they have a very obvious profit motive in selling their training and convincing agencies that their training is the best or particularly appropriate, when it may not be.
Mike Lee 22:43
Some, for example, overtly encourage, what is often called warrior versus Guardian training. Can we talk about that?
Seth Stoughton 22:57
Sure, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There. For a long time, this concept of the police worrier was being being thrown at officers in really all kinds of ways in training seminars in police media, and articles and in advertisements directed to officers. And the, the metaphor was basically that officers are soldiers fighting on the frontlines, and they need to think like soldiers and they need to be equipped like soldiers, and they need to act like soldiers. This came across in in a number of different training scenarios, where it was wildly inappropriate. And I want to be a little bit careful a little bit careful about this. Because I don't think that it's always the wrong response. In something like an active shooter situation. You want officers to have the equipment and tactics that we might otherwise called militarized equipment or tactics. But active shooter situations are regrettably common, but also fairly rare along the spectrum of things that officers do. And it can be really damaging and destructive for officers to take that same type of militarized thinking or tactics or equipment, and put it into play in situations where it's really not justified. Making your every day arrest, for example, arresting an individual for DUI, you don't need a hardcore military response to something like that. And
Mike Lee 24:44
there is the risk and adhering, even informally to a warrior mentality is that you're going to be treating everyone as an enemy or potential enemy that could harm you. And that's good military training, but not necessarily good. Urban police training with the exception as you point out, so you have to be aware of both possibilities.
Seth Stoughton 25:09
That's right, I think that the best way for me to think about it is, is really put it on a on a spectrum, right. And in any given situation, you may be on one side of the spectrum, very protected, very relaxed, talking to, for example, a burglary victim and help consoling a burglary victim who's really shaken by the fact that their house was broken into, that might be very guardian, like active shooter might be the far end of the other spectrum where we need very warrior like actions. The problem is not that that spectrum exists, or that officers are somewhere on it in any given situation. The problem is the default, where our officers on that spectrum in the default situation, that is when they're just stopping that car or arresting that person, and they don't have any reason to believe that it is leaning hard to one direction or the other. Where did they end up and with training, or cultural forces that push officers to be on the worrier end of that training, I think it creates a lot of problems, they end up treating everyone as the potential threat and that can really undermine the type of public confidence and legitimacy that policing relies on.
Mike Lee 26:27
And so we come to the point of wondering, what can we as a society, as a democratic voting society do about this problem of training, making the training, either perhaps more uniform, or more sophisticated? And yet, at the same time, once you're out on this road, on the street policing, it is a situation completely different than on paper on law or anything else? How can you be confident that that can improve?
Seth Stoughton 27:09
Personally, I'm confident about its improvement, because we have a long term history of seeing it improve. There are a lot of problems with contemporary policing. And I am one of the folks who is clamoring in a number of ways for improvements and reforms. But policing is by almost any measure significantly better now than it was in the mid 80s. And significantly better now than it was in the 1950s or 60s. And significantly better now than it was at the turn of the last century, or in the 1860s shortly after it really became popularized in American cities. We're seeing professionalization, we're seeing a movement towards professionalization. It's just a slow boat to turn, which is incredibly frustrating because I and I think most folks want it to be better right now. But the pace of change is generational, not not annual, which is which is difficult. And that's kind of a bitter pill to swallow sometimes, especially when you see in a 1930s report about problems with law enforcement in prohibition, exactly the same kind of comments that apply in 2022, or 23. Or that may apply in the next few years. Concerns about lawless policing, about officers aligning about a toxic culture. The problems are long standing, but they're also better than they were and that leads me to be guardedly optimistic that they're going to continue to improve.
Mike Lee 28:57
And because of the internet, these incidents, even though as you suggest they may be fewer and far between than they were years and decades ago, they're amplified more than they were in the old days.
Seth Stoughton 29:12
I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think the prevalence of cameras, and I don't just mean body worn cameras, I also mean cell phone cameras, has been one of the most disruptive technologies forcing policing and really society to reckon with things that it has been able to turn a blind eye to. If you think back to the early 90s, and the Rodney King incident that was captured on video, and it was a huge issue, while it was played on the news during the trials, for example, then eventually it kind of went away when it stopped being played on the news and the talking heads stopped talking about it. But with cameras now and with social media And now, we have the capacity for people to have those conversations on their own to maintain a focus on policing in a way that isn't as reliant on, let's say, external conversations, right? Traditional media, for example. I think in some ways, that's really good, because it's meant that since probably 2014, and the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, policing has been in a public spotlight in a way that is forcing it to grow and change. Those growing pains are uncomfortable, but I think they're often necessary. I think it would be a mistake to suggest that people not get outraged when you see something outrageous, the appropriate human response is outrage. And I think that when we're talking about a democratic institution, or at least an institution, in a democracy, like policing, we have to remember and I've said this before, it's not police agencies or police officers that get to decide whether they're doing a good job, ultimately, that's a question the public has to answer. So when I, when I make I'm, I apologize, I'm setting up a comment here, I promise. When I say what I'm about to say, I don't mean, we should just all be okay with outrageous incidents. And that, you know, just keep it in perspective. And it's only one thing and it's fine, right? It's not just one thing, and it's not fine, and we shouldn't treat it like it's fine. But we should also be very skeptical of simple solutions. And quick explanations like this was a rogue cop, that shouldn't be good enough anymore. We need to direct our outrage in productive ways. And for me, I generally think that means systems design, how are we designing a system in which officers operate, that makes it less likely that they will engage in misconduct? How do we build a system of policing that encourages officers formally and informally, to do policing the way that we in society? want it done?
Mike Lee 32:31
unpack that a little bit? What should those systems include?
Seth Stoughton 32:36
Sure. So start with something simple, like democratic accountability. Police chiefs are appointed by a mayor or town manager or city council, whoever, however that happens to be structured. Let's look at those relationships. Is the police chief being brought in after a competitive search, as is often the case in larger cities? Or is he the town manager, second cousin, who maybe had some passing acquaintanceship with law enforcement before this job, right? Maybe they maybe got promoted from Sergeant somewhere to now Chief of Police? How are we picking our leaders? And how are we holding our leaders accountable? That's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is what we expect officers to do. And we talked about this a little bit earlier. But really, I'm talking about what other resources are we using? Or could we use to deal with some of the problems that officers are currently called upon to deal with take any of the number of tragic incidents in which officers shot and killed an individual with some form of mental illness or experiencing a mental health crisis? One question that we should be asking ourselves is not just Why did officer shoot but why are officers there in the first place? Is there another entity, for example, that could respond in that crisis? And how did we even get to a point of crisis? Was there a lack of mental health care in that community for this individual? Could it could he not afford mental health care? Those are the bigger picture problems that when we fail at those earlier steps, we are really setting the stage for a police interaction that can turn really bad. But so when they're not or,
Mike Lee 34:34
and do not build a better system in which officers who do arrive on the scene where somebody is in a mental health crisis, and they mistake that for criminal intent and imminent danger even at the person and maybe holding something. And so the officer has to immediately weigh up his own safety. And if that officer happens to be in a warrior mentality, things get out of control. He's in a guardian mentality, he may be able to defuse that, but possibly at greater risk to himself. Can you build a system that deals with that?
Seth Stoughton 35:10
Absolutely, absolutely. We can, we need to not stop there. Right. This is in the spirit of having multiple layers of reform here. I don't think it's enough to just say, let's give officers significantly more training in, for example, interacting with individuals in mental health crisis, or let's give them more tactical training, or let's give them more protective equipment. All of those may be part of a solution. All of those may be part of building that system that will improve those acute interactions. But we also need to think about at the at the wholesale level, or the at the broader system level. What else can we be doing there? There's a book written in the 1970s by a criminologist named Herman Goldstein. And he talks about the problem of police reform is that we have repeatedly tried to make reforms to the superstructure without actually fixing the foundation itself. I think we need some corrections to the superstructure, but we shouldn't be pursuing those at the expense of reforms to the foundation, and we're talking about the foundation. Part of what we mean is what role do police play in society? Where do we call police? Where do we need police? What is the basic foundational culture of policing itself? Until we address those questions? We can we can have agencies adopt new policies or put on some new trainings, but we're going to continue to see the same problems, maybe fewer of them, hopefully fewer of them.
Mike Lee 36:51
In real times. And in real time and real circumstance, sticking with that example of somebody's out of control. Maybe he or she is a menace, maybe they're just having a mental health problem. What do you mean by a system that can help fix that?
Seth Stoughton 37:10
Oh, sure. Okay, so let's be very specific. Let's start with how we select officers. How are we attracting officers, especially right now, when we have a huge hiring crunch in policing? Are we reducing our standards? Are we screening officers the way that we want to, to ensure that we have the best candidates from what can be a limited pool? I'll tell you right now, the answer is no. Right now, most of the screening mechanisms that we use, including the psychological screenings are about weeding out the worst candidates, but they're not about identifying the best candidates. That's something that needs to be changed. Go into training, are we emphasizing in training, the importance of using sound tactics as a way to keep officers safe? And as a result of that? A way of keeping community members?
Mike Lee 38:13
So what are some tactics? Give me an example?
Seth Stoughton 38:17
Yeah, sure.So it depends a little bit on the situation. But let's take an easy if hypothetic. Well, not entirely hypothetical example. If you have someone who is acting out and has a knife, how close are you going to stand to that person? Officers need to be trained? I'm going to take a small step back, because I think this is actually important when we're talking about training, or policy for that matter. But particularly when we're talking about training, we're talking about teaching officers to do something other than what they might instinctively do. If officers did it instinctively correctly, we wouldn't need training, we wouldn't need policy, we could just go go go with your instincts, right? Go with your gut. We need training because sometimes the officers response might be, I need to stay close to Him, I need to be 10 feet away with my gun pointed at him or I need to go grab him or I need to have nothing between me and this person. So when we're talking about someone who may be experiencing mental health crisis, who has a knife, we actually want to tell officers, no, no, you need to be farther away. Put yourself behind your car, for example. So there's an obstacle between you and that person. And instead of yelling repeated verbal commands, drop the knife, drop the knife, drop the knife, you need to lower your voice and expect a much slower pace of that encounter. So the guy has the knife to his own throat. Let him have the knife to his own throat for a while unless there's some immediate need to rush in there. Don't rush in there. Let him paced around with a knife in his throat while you try I can talk him into complying. That's a that's a very specific example. But we can take that and apply it to a number of situations high risk car stops, for example, there are police developed tactics, certain best practices and generally accepted practices for dealing with high risk stops. Domestic disputes, right how many officers you're going to send where they're whether they're going to go into a house, where they're going to stand, there are tactics that we can use to, there are tactics that officers can learn to help make the situation safer, which reduces their potential need to use force.
Mike Lee 40:44
Let's go back to the car stops. Sure. What is good practice for car stops, that more police could learn from? Implement?
Seth Stoughton 40:54
Yeah, okay. So um, I'm gonna give you this one and a couple of different layers, right? The first layers, here's a great opportunity to talk about both the superstructure, but also the foundation. Why are we doing traffic enforcement and policing? The sort of obvious answers are public safety, maybe some answers that are obvious, but that we don't really like like revenue generation, there are certainly small towns, especially that use their police ticketing authority to generate revenue. We might be using traffic stops to conduct pre textual investigations. I want to stop that quarter to see if they have any drugs in the car, even though I don't have any reason to believe that. So why are we doing traffic enforcement? Once we develop some answers to that, that and I mean, societally, right. Once we develop some answers to that, then we can say, okay, is that actually something that we want police doing? In most of our comparator European neighbors, for example, police don't do a lot of traffic enforcement. They do Traffic Safety Enforcement through other means, sometimes automated needs, right? Think red light cameras and speed limit cameras and things like that. So that's the that might be the sort of social foundation. Should the police be involved in traffic enforcement? And if so, what should that look like? Let's assume that they are. And now we're talking about the specific tactics of a police encounter. What type of traffic stop? Is it? Is it a speeding? Is it a stop for speeding in a neighborhood where speeding has been a problem where there's been wrecks? That is, is there actually a public safety? purpose to the stop? Or is it purely pretextual? Because the officer wants the chance to investigate someone in that car. That I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to get too big with this. But one of the points of tension that can exist between police agencies and communities is the mutual sense of distrust when community members say we get stopped all the time, because the police must think that everyone here has drugs in the car, we are being over policed. That may be a problem that, you know, so I don't want to keep banging on that drum. Let me answer your specific question. Okay. So officers make a traffic stop, let's assume it's not pretextual. Let's just get rid of all of those issues. It's just an ordinary traffic stop. How does the officer call in the traffic stop? Ideally, tactically, you want the officer to get on the radio, provide a description of the car that he's going to stop, including the license plate number, provide a location where that stop is going to occur, you want the officer to try and control to at least some extent where that individual stops so that it provides some benefit to the officer, for example, maybe not stopping on the shoulder of the road where the officer is going to be in traffic, but pulling into a nearby parking lot or something like that. The officer may want to position their car in two or three different ways. Maybe they offset their car a little bit to help protect them from passing traffic, or maybe they're in a perfect line. Again, depending on the situation. There is an appropriate way to approach for something like a speeding in normal traffic stop a speeding stop or something like that. You might train officers to, for example, first identify themselves. I'm Officer Stoughton with the police department. You might train officers that they're supposed to then provide the reason for the stop. I pulled you over because you were exceeding the speed limit a little bit and then to ask the questions that they I need to ask, Can I get your license and registration here, and maybe even to explain the outcome, like, if it's a warning ticket, the officer already knows that they're gonna give a warning ticket to say that just as a way of smoothing over the rest of the encounter, I'm gonna go run your information. If there are no problems with it, I'm not going to give you a ticket today, it'll just be a warning, I'm gonna go check out the information. And I'll get back to you. In other words, setting up the social dynamic in that situation in a way that is designed to ease the potential points of conflict. As opposed to, for example, the traffic stop where the officer maybe puts their car in an unsafe position, and then has to take some additional actions to address the lack of safety, or walks up to the car and very aggressively demands. Where are you going so fast, you could kill somebody speeding like that, the type of approach that is far more likely to get pushback from the person in the car that the officer may perceive as resistance or non compliance, and then you get this escalating ladder of responses from both parties. Maybe the best example of this is the somewhat tragic case involving Sandra Bland a few years ago, where the officer made a made a traffic stop, approach the vehicle in the course of the traffic stop, said to the motorist, you seem irritated. And the motorist explained that she was irritated because she switched lanes without signaling to get out of the officers way and let him drive past. And he ended up pulling her over. And the officer had this fantastic opportunity to build a human connection. And say, I understand why you pull over that way. Don't worry, I'm not giving you a ticket. It's just a warning today to explain the reason for his action I pulled you over because we have a lot of problems on this stretch of road and it's a college campus nearby. So we have a lot of pedestrians, I just want to make sure that everyone stays safe. In other words, use these tenants of what's often called procedural justice as a way of leaving a more positive impression of that stop. That's a very specific example again, but the difference between a positive interaction during a traffic stop and a negative interaction during a traffic stop can affect not just public trust, it can also affect whether the officer gets involved in do we use a force that ends up on national media, which is exactly what happened in the Sandra Bland case.
Mike Lee 47:43
What happened,
Seth Stoughton 47:45
The officer ended up telling her to put her cigarette out. Miss bland asked why she had to put her cigarette out in her own car. And at that point, the officer decided that he wasn't going to give her the warning that he had written out he was now going to arrest her. So we called her out of the car, she refused to get out of the car. They ended up in a use of force situation he arrested Miss bland, and ultimately she committed suicide in jail.
Mike Lee 48:14
There's a third element to this to not knowing whether they're the driver or driver and passengers in the car, have weapons. How do you factor that in and still take a semi pastoral approach in the early stages?
Seth Stoughton 48:38
Yeah, I think so one, it's a it's a great point. And when we're comparing policing in the United States to policing, especially overseas in Europe, one of the big cultural differences is the prevalence of private firearms ownership here as opposed to there. In the United States, officers have to be aware that people can be armed, often lawfully armed. There's a difference between anticipating the possibility that someone is armed and treating them like they are necessarily a threat. You can think of this a little bit as a difference between passive and active. Sometimes we like passive safety measures your airbags, for example, they don't really affect you very much. They're just sitting there until you need them and then they go off. Officers have ballistic vests that they were exactly the same idea, right. The ballistic vest is something that officers wear that aren't really a point of contention in how they interact with people. So when we talk about interacting in a traffic stop We can use the type of passive safety mechanisms like good tactics in exactly the same way. If you aren't sure whether someone is armed, you treat them like they might be, but that's different than treating them like they might be a threat. So maybe you have them step out of the car to you. Or maybe you ask them, Do you have any weapons in the car, anything that I need to be aware of, or if you have legal justification, you might frisk them. But a great deal of policing in the in the public perception of policing is not just what officers do, it's how they do it. Officers can have a conversation with someone that they believe to be armed, that's very aggressive and abrasive, or they can have a similar interaction that isn't usually I wouldn't say we want the second of those, not the first.
Mike Lee 50:52
That's a critical potential flashpoint without knowing what the situation is. If you ask your first question, can you? Do you have any weapons? No reply? Could you please step out of the car and your further back? Let's say you're behind your car, would you please step out of the car? No reply. Then you have to make a decision. Do you get closer which prevents more danger? potential danger to you? Do you call for backup? What Do You Do? Do? I mean in the extreme passive sense, you could backup your car way out of the way and wait, nobody gets hurt. And you call for backup? And wait them out? That doesn't seem to happen very often. Is there a good reason for that?
Seth Stoughton 51:43
There are, I would say the potential for good reasons, but often bad reasons for that. Most of the time, with most of policing, and tact. Speaking tactically, right, when in most contexts, when we're talking about police tactics, time favors the officer, there's no imminent need to get something done within five minutes, or 10 minutes or an hour, if it takes an hour and a half to get someone out of a car without shooting them. That's probably time that's pretty well spent. Sometimes, sometimes Human Factors kick in, right? The the end of shift is coming, the officers are tired, they just want to go home they want to have this situation over and done with, they get impatient and frustrated. We do need to anticipate that officers are human and they're going to act with human emotions. That's not an excuse or a justification. It's one of the reasons that we actually need to do a better job of training officers to deal with stress in stressful situations. One of the areas of training that is almost entirely lacking in policing, is how officers should physiologically recognize and deal with the effects of stress that they may be experiencing. It's a bit that's a skill. That's a skill set. But it's not one that we typically teach them.
Mike Lee 53:08
It's a human emotional reality. And often if an officer through peer pressure or informal or formal training, will probably peer pressure feels himself a warrior. He's more likely to make the Miss judgment and it is Miss judgment, in my judgment, to go into a tube to put yourself in danger. And other I mean, you may end up heroically killing somebody who's wanted, but chances are, everybody's going to be in danger if you rush in into that red zone. have almost a half century living in England. I know from experience police there don't do that. And not many of them get into trouble. And not many of them are killed in traffic stops. Why is that? Not happening in America? What is it? That doesn't allow that to happen? Pull, pull it just put it in reverse. Say, Okay, let's put everything on pause. I'll call for backup. And we'll see what happens.
Seth Stoughton 54:15
Yeah, some of this comes down to decades of police culture and the way that training has reinforced a particular approach to police culture. One of the more problematic aspects of police culture has been this. This very amorphous concept of what I would call control. That's not the phrase that's used in policing policing tends to use the phrase command presence. command presence is a term that originated in the military and it essentially from my understanding of the military context, it means to present oneself As a leader expressing the attributes of the leader in policng, that's not the way the term was used during your military command
Mike Lee 55:08
presence is a primal concept. It's what is this animal display concept? That's obvious. I mean, any psychologist can tell us that. Any police community officer, ironically, if you ask them, What do I do? If somebody starts hassling me on the street, or they have a knife or gun, that community officer is going to tell you walk away? Yeah. So it's like an irony there.
Seth Stoughton 55:36
Yeah, what we've told what we've told officers, or at least the message that's been communicated to officers, especially when we've reinforced this command presence, you are the authority at the scene, you're the only authority. You can't Brooke any challenges to your authority, the minute you start to go soft, the minute that someone perceives a potential point of weakness, you are in danger. And this is the message that offic ers got, right. I'm not I'm not I'm not exaggerating, it's almost in these words. But
Mike Lee 56:10
let's be clear, this is important point you were making. Let's be clear, we don't know to what extent because as you point out, we don't have the data. We don't know how many officers have this warrior mentality in their head. But obviously, a considerable amount do.
Seth Stoughton 56:29
That's correct. What I'm talking about now is sort of the the historical norms for police training, not universal, I'm sure there were exceptions. But from, I would say, at least the 1970s. And definitely in the 1980s. Up until relatively recently, the emphasis on police interactions, the training that officers got for dealing with individuals, particularly individuals who may not be entirely thrilled about interacting with officers, is this command presence approach, you're in charge, you need to be in charge, and part of being in charge means never backing down. But that's a horrible idea, right? The idea that you can't take a step back when doing so would help make the situation a little safer means that officers can only aggress they can only take this step forward. Because to do otherwise, is to fail to represent police culture, I guess, right? It's to it's to fail as an officer, I backed down in some way. No, you didn't back down, what you did was you stabilized the scene, until you had additional resources there and you gave yourself the time to come to, ideally, a better outcome, rather than pushing forward in the name of, I don't know, pride or ego. I think it's incredibly disruptive. It's only been in the past five years or so that we've started to see police leaders, really around the country start to say, well, that warrior metaphor is the wrong thing for us, right? That's not the way that we need to think about ourselves. It's not the way that we need to portray ourselves.
Mike Lee 58:15
It often boils down as we both discuss into what happens on the scene in the squad cars. Are you optimistic, this culture can change at that level,
Seth Stoughton 58:27
I am optimistic that it can change. In the mid and long term. I am not optimistic that we're going to say deep changes to police culture are in the next five years. I'm optimistic that we can start changing police culture in the next five years. And that we will see real changes to police culture in 15 years or 20 years, I think officers in 15 or 20 years are going to look back on the way that we do it now with horror, in very much the same way that a number of officers now would look back at the way that policing was done in the 90s with a sort of abject fascination like that can't possibly have been true. That's the way you treated people. I think that's what we need to continue to push for. But it's slow. And it's slow because we have 18,000 different police agencies. Each one has their own police chief or sheriff or Commissioner. And they're often deeply entrenched in the way that things are done. There's a saying that's true of a number of aspects of, of human experience, but is especially true, I think, in policing, and its officers hate to things more than anything else, the way things are now and change. And that's what we have to confront.
Mike Lee 59:53
Seth, thank you very much for your very important insights.
Seth Stoughton 59:58
My pleasure. It's a real I'm honored to share him
(End of Interview)
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