BlogVibe

Thaddeus Johnson:

The one thing that we taught officers were to take control of the scene.

And taking control of the scene, we're teaching officers to be aggressive. We're teaching officers to assert their physical and legal authority on the scene, as opposed to dealing with our citizens like human beings, in which they are, as if they are co-producers for solutions of crime, or people who are actually going through some type of struggle.

We have to also try our officers to de-escalate, not just verbally, but also for space between officers and the people that they encounter, particularly when you can tell and look at the cues that things are escalating.

And one reason that you see officers tend to be overly assertive when it comes to these aspects is the emphasis of arrest, traffic stops, and custodial stops in the evaluation process. I mean, it's difficult to be promoted, it's difficult to get a more prestigious assignment, or get a better shift in a better neighborhood if you don't have high numbers in these areas.

But many of these things don't have public safety value. And what they do, they tend to unnecessarily put police and citizens in adversarial situations that could have otherwise been prevented. When we also reward officers for these traditional antiquated crime-fighting metrics only, we also prevent the pipeline for more diverse leaders, whether it's younger leaders, whether it's women leaders, or whether it's nonwhite leaders, who research has shown has been attracted to this type policing, as opposed to the warrior-style policing that we have seen far too long.

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