The streets of this country are awash in cell phone video
capturing the mental illness of a significant number of cops. This is the only way to describe highway
patrolmen who continuously punch elderly homeless women in the mouth; of county
policemen who brandish military grade weapons at peaceful protesters and
threaten to kill them; of state police who chase a mentally ill homeless man and
kill him on a hillside; or of two police officers who oblige the crazed
ramblings of a young man with a knife who cries out “Shoot me! Shoot me!.”
Add to these the chokehold death of Eric Garner and the shooting death
of Mike Brown, and there is no doubt that American policing is in crisis. The call for justice to be done in these cases is important
and righteous. But it is way past time to promote new approaches to policies to PREVENT it.
Since over 90 percent of 12,000 law enforcement agencies in
the US use psychological pre-employment screening tests, one can only conclude
that existing pre-employment testing does not do a good job of screening and/or
predicting who, when, or how racial animus surfaces under stress. The federal government should support a
research program out of the Justice Department that should begin with establishing a repository of cell phone videos and other social media focused on officer-involved killings. Second, the Justice Department should fund scientific research that examines these resources for common markers of officer-involved shootings
of black, brown, and white victims. Questions such
as what precipitates these encounters; roles of bystanders; roles of officer partners and colleagues and whether pairs of officers are more or less involved in escalating tense situations into killings; psychological
profiles of officers involved in such incidents, etc. would be a gold mine for
learning more about the interpersonal dynamics propelling these incidents.
This kind of research base would also enable serious tests
of the validity of psychological testing in predicting racial animus under
stress. It seems reasonable to think that
existing psychological tests—perhaps perfectly fine for ordinary police work-- do
not predict the key psychological attributes that coalesce into
racial animus under stress. Better
information about this variable would support the wholesale revision
of existing psychological batteries. It
would also provide a fuller information base for police screening, training,
and continuing education focused specifically on preventing officer-involved
killings of black and brown victims.
The Police are Public Employees
The idea that we pay the salaries of people who kill us--most often without even a sense of remorse--is way beyond enraging. Mayors, police commissioners, and others whom we elect or appoint to supervisory positions are the ones who must be held accountable FIRST. Killers should not be on the police force, and since they're so hard to get off, we have to prevent them from ever getting on. Mayors and others will understand the crisis we face when we hold them accountable for the kinds of police forces they assemble and run. American policing is in crisis. It's time to demand not only justice, but prevention.
The Police are Public Employees
The idea that we pay the salaries of people who kill us--most often without even a sense of remorse--is way beyond enraging. Mayors, police commissioners, and others whom we elect or appoint to supervisory positions are the ones who must be held accountable FIRST. Killers should not be on the police force, and since they're so hard to get off, we have to prevent them from ever getting on. Mayors and others will understand the crisis we face when we hold them accountable for the kinds of police forces they assemble and run. American policing is in crisis. It's time to demand not only justice, but prevention.
