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Crime Science

Police Training Lacks Scientific Input 277

An anonymous reader writes: Police have been under a microscope over the past year for their involvement in some high-profile shootings. We've heard over and over that police need more and better training to keep these incidents from happening, but the truth is that there's no good framework within law enforcement to base their training on actual science. Officers tend to teach from their own experience, and research into techniques for dealing with unpredictable people goes widely unnoticed. "Carl Bell, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has done key work on de-escalation with the mentally ill, said his attempts to introduce techniques to the Chicago police never got anywhere. 'There's no systematic incorporation of research.'" Nobody expects officers to consult an academic journal when they're facing down a hostile suspect, but science needs to be part of conversation we're having.
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Police Training Lacks Scientific Input

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Monday August 17, 2015 @11:09AM (#50332133) Journal

    The cops there are a bit more civilized. They can take down people without killing them. If you want 'science', look closely at the kind of people who want to be cops. Try to find some that don't relish the power so much. The rest are just a bunch a classroom bullies. We should not be rewarding this behavior. And we need to disallow all the secrecy. We have to force open the books to ensure compliance. The cops here are problem because we treat them with excessive deference in an appeal to their authority. We need to remind them and the politicians that they are public servants.

  • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by willoughby ( 1367773 ) on Monday August 17, 2015 @11:15AM (#50332175)

    Police Officers will react exactly as they have been trained.

    Some decades ago, a police agency in the south came up with "better" firearms training. They installed moving targets. The Officer would wait until the target began moving right to left, or vice-versa, and only then were they allowed to fire. Months of this "improved" training.

    An Officer responded to a armed robbery call and, per training, parked not near the door, but some distance away. As the bad guy ran out the door of the business, the Officer fired at the moving target. As the store manager ran out the door chasing the bad guy, the Officer fired at the moving target.

    I'm just saying that the training must be carefully thought through because that's how officers will respond. In fast situations Police don't evaluate and respond, they react.

    • In fast situations Police don't evaluate and respond, they react.

      In fast situations, humans react. It's that, or stand paralyzed with indecision while the other person's actions dictate the outcome. But describing cops - as a whole - as unthinking in the face of dangerous, quickly-evolving situations is absurd. You obviously don't know any.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, he's absolutely right.

        The FBI firearm instruction used to always insist agents picked up their brass on the range. Until several agents got shot during actual fire fights because after unloading they stopped and bent over to pick up their brass before reloading and continuing *exactly as they had done during training*. They have since changed their training to completely ignore their expended brass--just reload and keep shooting.

        A similar thing happened in the military. The US military discovered years

  • Most Police Academies in the US take 6 months or less to complete. How in earth can you expect policemen to learn to act accordingly in all circumstances and know the law as well in that short amount of time. They need to be physically fit, know how to operate their weapons, know the law, have the psychological insight to act accordingly in any situation, know how to file any type of police report, get driving classes, know a bit about the different sciences involved in drugs, crime scenes etc... It's just
    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Most Police Academies in the US take 6 months or less to complete. How in earth can you expect policemen to learn to act accordingly in all circumstances and know the law as well in that short amount of time.

      Generally after the academy comes at least several more months of on the job training, paired with an experienced officer to continue their training. It takes a while before a new cop is going to be out on patrol all alone.

  • europe has better training. being a police officer in europe is a much more highly professional attitude with much more rigorous training

    http://www.quora.com/How-do-UK... [quora.com]

    Tim Dees, Retired cop and criminal justice professor, Reno Police Department, Reno Muni...

    Upvoted by Quora User, I live in the UK. Graeme Shimmin, I am British. Marc Bodnick, 15 years transactions experience

    Tim has 12 endorsements in Police and Law Enforcement.

    Speaking from the perspective of a U.S. cop, there are several areas with significant differences. I should point out that I've never been to the UK, but have read a lot about this issue and discussed it with cops and non-cops in the UK.

    I believe the most critical difference is the amount of training required of UK police. New hires attend a "police college" course of several months before going into the field to work for another few months under close supervision (sorry, I don't have the precise durations here, but it's considerably more training than most U.S. police receive). They then return to the police college for several more weeks until they are assigned to their duty stations. From here, on-the-job training is similar to that in the U.S., where the new constable works with a senior partner for several months before he is given a solo assignment. He is still closely supervised and his performance reviewed frequently for his first year to two years of service.

    also, like europe, and i'll try not to completely derail the conversation, but no one should get a gun in the usa without rigorous training first, including testing and ongoing inspections. exactly like we do with getting a drivers license and a car. same level of responsibility, same standards, right?

    without so many easy guns in he hands of idiots, cops are less jumpy

    "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws..." actually, when guns are harder to get, the kind of casual hothead that causes all the mayhem with guns simply doesn't get a gun and reaches for a knife instead. *casual* hotheads are not trying hard in life, they will not try hard to get a gun, ti takes too much effort in a serious society. and a knife is far less lethal, so homicide rates drop

    https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

    so the "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws..." is a propaganda lie

    besides, we're not even talking about "outlawing" guns. we're talking about rigorous training which every responsible gun owner already agrees with and complies with. so what is the problem exactly? why is this country held hostage by a paranoid schizophrenic fringe on the issue of guns? most gun *owners* agree with what i am saying

    yes, the criminal masterminds will still get illegal guns. and use them wisely and surgically: criminal *masterminds*. so again, no ridiculous mayhem. we're talking about the casual hothead that is thwe problem here. he should not get a gun easily, like he currently does in the usa

    a responsible gun owner knows the seriousness of a gun and really has no problem insisting everyone get good training

    anyway, with less easy guns getting easily in the hands of hot heads cops have less reason to be so jumpy with their own guns. the change won't be immediate, it will take awhile to drain the swamp of easy guns

    as if that is somehow an argument not to drain the swamp, because the right thing is hard to do and will take time is never an argument against doing the right thing

  • Given that social science studies are notoriously [nature.com] bad [nature.com], why do we think things would be any better if we used "science" in police training?

    We'd probably be better off if we made some structural changes, like limiting qualified immunity and requiring all interactions with the public and accused to be videotaped.

    • Because we are a journalist for Wired. Wired is only relevant in the area of technology, mostly when it comes to strictly news, and the opinion of a journalist with an ideological bias picking stories and sources to confirm it in a non-tech domain is only relevant nowhere.

  • The fact that there is still no official, nationwide, legally-required (upon pain of zero Fed cash for anything) system to record and disseminate statistics of all LEO-involved violence up to and including deaths (or more accurately: murder by cop of minorities) by every method is not just a casual mistake.

    This is also why social (mobile) media is so despised by the LEO crowd: it exposes their abuses to world, where in the 'good old days', well who *wouldn't* believe Officer Bob's statements that he 'had n
    • murder by cop of minorities

      That's racist. Why is it wrong for a copy to kill a minority but okay for them to kill a white male? Why do we have rioting and looting when a minority hoodlum is killed, but when a white hoodlum is killed, it is not even news? This society is racist.

  • Do I smell bacon?

  • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 ) <tomh@nih.gov> on Monday August 17, 2015 @03:07PM (#50334339) Homepage

    I wonder how many cops take steroids, and whether 'roid rage is a factor in shootings. Or any other drugs for that matter. Drug testing for police is woefully lacking. http://www.quora.com/How-often... [quora.com]

  • by Moskit ( 32486 ) on Tuesday August 18, 2015 @04:41AM (#50337535)

    This book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson has a huge chapter devoted to "mistakes" done on purpose by Police.

    Policemen are typically trained that once they have a "probable cause" they push, deceive and trick people into confession, regardless if other facts may completely change the cause into improbable. They act just like in the movies where "greater good" is more important than trampling the truth, except in movies it's usually shown as fully justified, while in real life there is too many mistakes.

    "He must be guilty because he was sentenced" and other cognitive issues are aplenty.

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