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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Shoot-don't shoot!

In the capable hands of the Congress.

One of the greatest issues I have with our elected representatives in the Congress is this presumption that they know things. There is only one thing we know they can do, get elected. I'm not partisan in this, there are many incompetent on both sides. And as the newest example of this, I give you Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI)

Proposal to Congress would require police to get de-escalation training, create national use of force standard

Legislation set to be introduced to Congress on Thursday would create a new national standard for when police officers can use deadly force and require police academies to teach officers de-escalation techniques — the latest in a series of measures to be proposed during the current national conversation on police reform.

The bill, called the Preventing Tragedies Between Police and Communities Act of 2016, is authored by Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), who has been among the most outspoken members of Congress in calling for federal action to curb the number of police killings.

“We want our officers using force really that [is] proportional to the situation,” Moore said in an interview on Wednesday. “This is about giving police officers additional training assets with regard to encounters that don’t necessarily have to end up with a use of deadly force.”

The legislation is the latest in a flurry of measures introduced in the 21 months since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which prompted protests and riots and sparked a national examination of police use of force....


...This legislation, like the others aimed at police reform, faces considerable obstacles in the GOP-controlled Congress, especially since this is a presidential election year. Many lawmakers are hesitant to support any measure that could be construed as “anti-police.”

“I do expect some push-back from some law enforcement officials,” Moore said, adding that she hopes that perhaps her legislation could be attached to ongoing criminal justice reform efforts being considered by lawmakers. “The only thing that’s moving in this place are criminal justice issues, and I’m hoping to get this in the queue.”

Moore’s proposal targets police training and would require U.S. police officers to be trained in non-lethal force, to go through crisis intervention training to help them deal with the mentally ill, and to use the lowest level of force possible when responding to a threat. If passed, local police departments would have one year to comply with the new training standards or would face reductions in federal grant money.

“Nobody wants to see a police officer second guess a situation where they themselves will be murdered or maimed,” Moore said. “But I feel there is a huge chasm between officers who claim that they fear for their life and the actual facts of life and how they could have de-escalated these situations.”

Gee Ms Moore, you sound awfully like a women trying to impress people. But I hate to tell you, we are already trained to use least lever of force. It's not like Darren Wilson walked up and shot Mikey Brown in the back for no reason. You can show me a few examples where police make mistakes. I cannot show you as many times they did not, it's not covered on the news when a police officer defuses a situation and takes someone into custody peacefully. Doesn't bleed so it don't lead.

Those standards are drawn from a recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum, an influential Washington-based policing-policy think tank that has been among the leading advocates for policing reform since the unrest in Ferguson and in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Earlier this year, PERF convened a gathering of policing officials at which it proposed adopting new training standards nationwide, and later issued a report with those recommendations.

“Improvements in training, which are the focus of this bill, are a key element of what we are working on,” said Chuck Wexler, PERF’s executive director.

“The challenge is, you have 18,000 police departments … and there is difficulty with implementing change,” Wexler said. “We don’t have best practices, we don’t have best training systems, we don’t have the kind of standards across the board that allow departments to know what works best. This bill … is at the heart of what we’ve been suggesting: that police training has to change...”

...“We cannot reasonably expect law enforcement officers to walk away from potentially dangerous situations and individuals in the hope that those situations resolve themselves without further harm being done,” the groups wrote. “Both of our organizations reject any call to require law enforcement agencies to unilaterally, and haphazardly, establish use-of-force guidelines that exceed the ‘objectively reasonable’ standard set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court nearly 30 years ago.”

You don't say. Something I've had to explain to many an idiot in my years is I cannot run. If you are in a theater or mall and a mass shooting starts, the moron writing this crap will do what is logical, run! But I (and other cops) cannot do that. While everyone is moving away, we have to move towards them. That's the requirement of the job, to take action. Sorry Ms. Moore, sometimes the punks out there are not responsive to "de-escalation techniques."

Moore’s legislation notes ongoing efforts by The Washington Post to track national data on the number of policing shootings each year as well as a similar effort by the Guardian newspaper. The Post’s reporting has revealed that many such shootings are of armed suspects, a large portion include suspects in the midst of a mental or emotional health crisis, and that black men are shot and killed by police at a rate disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population.

The Post “found 990 people in our country who were killed by fatal police shootings last year,” Moore said, referring to the newspaper’s database on fatal police shootings. “This is not rare, and to the extent that it’s not rare, it occurs to me that this is systemic.”

“Were these killings some sort of isolated incident, something that happened once in a lifetime, it would be different,” Moore said. “We see it happen over and over. Not just Ferguson, but Eric Garner, or even in my hometown with the death of Dontre Hamilton. It just really struck me as being too close to home.”

Ms Moore, perhaps you should remember the wisdom credited to our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
The Post says 990 people were killed by police shooting. Let's take that for an accurate number for the moment. Per the B Hussein Obama Just-Us Department, in 2011 (latest records I could find) the public had 34.1 million calls for assistance from police. Now this only counts times the cops were called, not raids, warrant election, on view investigations, just the time the cops were called. Assume a similar number for 2015. The means you have an approximately one in 34,500 chance of being killed by gun fire in a police action. One in over thirty-four thousand. And we know it's lower, but look at the number. Is that showing something frequent and systemic?
Hamilton was a 31-year-old homeless man who was shot 14 times and killed in April 2014 in a park in downtown Milwaukee by Officer Christopher Manney. According to a report released by Milwaukee’s district attorney, Hamilton was sleeping near a Starbucks kiosk when Manney woke him up and attempted to pat him down.

Manney said Hamilton grabbed his baton and turned it on him, prompting him to open fire. Local and federal investigators declined to bring charges in the shooting, which prompted protests locally. The department fired Manney, saying that he did not follow department policies during the interaction.

“This man literally was lying on the ground sleeping, you talk about being as innocent as you could possibly be,” Moore said, adding that she met with Hamilton’s mother for dinner on Sunday. “His fate is shared by too many people in this country.”

Madam, see the wisdom above. Now you don't put up a few details in the case, where Mr Hamilton took the officer's baton and beat him in the next with him. He wasn't " as innocent as you could possibly be." But again, enjoy you're 15 minute of fame. Thankfully this will go nowhere though the legislative process, however the DOJ may yet send out illegal executive actions.

To take a look at the proposal, here it is:
SEC. 2. TRAINING ON DE-ESCALATION FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT.

(a) Training Requirement.—For each fiscal year after the expiration of the period specified in subsection (d) in which a State or unit of local government receives a grant under part E of title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 3750 et seq.), the State or unit of local government shall require that all individuals enrolled in an academy of a law enforcement agency of the State or unit of local government and all law enforcement officers of the State or unit of local government fulfill a training session on de-escalation techniques each fiscal year, including—

(1) the use of alternative non-lethal methods of applying force and techniques that prevent the officer from escalating any situation where force is likely to be used;

(2) verbal and physical tactics to minimize the need for the use of force, with an emphasis on communication, negotiation, de-escalation techniques, providing the time needed to resolve the incident safely for everyone;

(3) the use of the lowest level of force that is a possible and safe response to an identified threat, then re-evaluating the threat as it progresses;

(4) techniques that provide all officers with awareness and recognition of mental health and substance abuse issues with an emphasis on communication strategies, training officers simultaneously in teams on de-escalation and use of force to improve group dynamics and diminish excessive use of force during critical incidents;

(5) principles of using distance, cover, and time when approaching and managing critical incidents, and elimination of the use of concepts like the “21-foot rule” and “drawing a line in the sand” in favor of using distance and cover to create a “reaction gap”;


(6) crisis intervention strategies to appropriately identify and respond to individuals suffering from mental health or substance abuse issues, with an emphasis on de-escalation tactics and promoting effective communication; and

(7) other evidence-based approaches, found to be appropriate by the Attorney General, that enhance de-escalation skills and tactics, such as the Critical Decision-Making Model and scenario based trainings.

In the case of individuals attending an academy, such training session shall be for such an appropriate amount of time as to ensure academy participants receive effective training under this subsection and in the case of all other law enforcement officers, the training session shall be for an appropriate amount of time as to ensure officers receive effective training under this subsection. The State or unit of local government shall certify to the Attorney General of the United States that such training sessions have been completed.
(b) Scenario-Based Training.—Training described in subsection (a) shall be conducted with an emphasis on training that employs theories of de-escalation techniques and applies them to practical on-the-job scenarios that regularly face law enforcement officers.

(c) Cross-Training.—To the extent practicable, principles of training as described in subsection (a) shall be applied to other training conducted at the academy.

There is a reason we have the "21 Foot Rule," because it needed. It takes time for a cop to react to a suspect with a bladed weapon, much less a firearm.

Perhaps this idiot in the Congress should remember the wisdom of Detective Dirty Harry:

To my fellow cops, be safe out there. Remember, this moron in the Congress had no concern for you.

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