What Are Police Training For?

Research on police training shows that realistic simulations may reinforce expectations of violence rather than prevent it. The post What Are Police Training For? first appeared on JSTOR Daily.

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In the 2010s, after black communities and advocates came together to protest the police killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and many others, some reformers and politicians suggested that the solution was more and better police training. From 2015 to 2018, anthropologist Jessica Katzenstein took a closer look at what it might entail by observing training conducted in Maryland police departments.

Katzenstein noted that the departments he worked with tried to dispel the idea that they were training cops to be warriors, instead pledging to serve as engaged "watchdogs" to the community.

If in real life a person with a gun wouldn't necessarily shoot an officer, in a simulator they almost certainly will.

A key aspect of this effort is practicing different scenarios, such as responding to a drug overdose call. This is supposed to help officers overcome implicit fears and prejudices.

However, Katzenstein found that these scenarios are still often dramatizations of worst-case scenarios. In one virtual reality simulation Katzenstein tried, an injured woman lay in a parking lot with a little girl nearby, appearing to be playing on a phone. When the intern approaches the scene, the girl's phone is a gun and she shoots them.

In another VR scenario, the recruit must shoot a man who pulls a gun during a traffic stop. Then, instead of immediately submitting, they should keep their guns on him and search him for another weapon before treating his wounds.

Military police and militarization of the police

The use of military strategies within US borders has long been associated with racial politics.

"If in real life a person with a gun might not necessarily shoot an officer, in a simulator they almost certainly will," Katzenstein writes. "And can you wait and see?"

One training officer explained that a situation only goes bad in "1 percent of calls," but police should always think tactically about the possibility of an attack or ambush.

To prevent a violent situation from escalating, recruits have learned, it's important to maintain a "command presence," which conveys strength and professionalism. In theory, this reduces potential risk. In live training, volunteers who identified themselves as troublemakers behaved aversively, but retreated when faced with an authoritative response. If the recruiter seemed hesitant, they turned violent. Women and smaller individuals were especially encouraged to imitate male characteristics, lower their voices, and quickly approach physical contact.

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Katzenstein argues that the logic of a "commanding presence" presupposes a racial "thug," "ready to pounce on the weak and unyielding, who understands only the language of domination."

In fact, the coaches explicitly told the recruits that they had to present themselves in a poorer, blacker area of their jurisdiction as opposed to a richer, whiter area. One trainer claimed that in a poorer area, if officers fail to maintain control, "they walk all over you".

By the time Katzenstein ended his fieldwork, many people had moved away from calls for training and defunding police departments in protest movements. This was accelerated just two years later when George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin—an experienced Minneapolis police officer who was a field training officer for his department.