Police Training:
Why Not Try the 9th Commandment?

In the wake of continuing cases of police over-reaction and violence against individuals who pose no danger to the police or the populace at large, there has been a great deal of discussion on police training and police culture. Is police training effective in de-escalation as opposed to escalation in such encounters? Can a different training paradigm serve any real purpose in changing police behavior? Will tweaking police culture serve any purpose. Can police culture be effectively changed anyway? 

Why the 9th Commandment?

There is no doubt, nor any fear of any contradiction, that police reports - either written by police officers on the scene or issued by the police department after the incident - are manipulated and fashioned to divert attention from possible police misconduct. Videos of recent incidents make this conclusion clear beyond a shadow of doubt. So, let's not waste words on this aspect of police encounters.

Let's try something different. Let's try the 9th Commandment. "Thou shall not bear false witness."

The reason police gets off the hook in violence against innocent or low level crime individuals is primarily because the offending police officer gets off the hook by writing his own version of the encounter in a manner that absolves him or her or their partners from any wrongdoing in that encounter. No amount of training has motivated the trainees to shun such aversion to the truth and just report as it truthfully was. No amount of training will encourage police department leadership to not accept situation reports on face-value. This is because neither their conduct nor their behavior is rooted in the their committed to the Ninth Commandment, regardless of their religious grounding. 

Just Tell the Truth

Thanks to surveillance cameras, whether on the bodies of police officers or on street corners or in the hands of a conscientious bystander, truth is there for everyone, except police departments, to see, so it seems. The recent actions of one police department give us some hope that police leadership may be appreciating that they cannot continue to manufacture truth in the era of video surveillance. Even if just the possibility of being caught on camera, as opposed to a commitment to the truth, encourages not bearing "false witness", that's a good start. Wouldn't it be nice if each police officer and each police department just told the truth and shy away from bearing "false witness"? Then let the chips fall where they may.

Having to tell the truth, under a strict departmental policy that prohibits giving false witness, can do more to quell the epidemic of excessive abuse by some police officers than routine police training. 

Iqbal Unus / iunus@me.com