Police officers share the goal of a safer Minnesota. Officers work hard in Duluth to build trust and cooperation every single day between police officers and the community.
Police officers are our neighbors and community members who we call for everything from noisy neighbors with fireworks to when we witness dangerous and violent criminal actions — and they show up without fear or favor. Every police officer we know chose this dangerous career because they wanted to help people and serve their communities.
Law enforcement officers see people in their darkest hours, suffering from drug overdoses, as victims of abusive partners, and bloodied in the aftermaths of car accidents. They are the people who are called when a person is in danger, and they often put themselves at risk. Law enforcement officers take great personal risk to be an ally and a supporter to those in need.
Those police officers who break the trust of the community and violate the law deserve to be held accountable. In the last month or so, it has become more challenging to do our jobs to help those in need as well as detain those who seek to harm our communities. We have been spit on, hurt, shouted at, and called obscenities. We’ve been physically blocked from doing our jobs. I know that’s not reflective of the larger Duluth community, but it still happens. It makes it harder for us to do our jobs to protect and serve.
On the topic of police training, we believe the best way to address this is with appropriate training. We believe money is best spent increasing use-of-force training. Crisis and de-escalation training are fantastic, but the most effective way to improve how much and how often police use force is with use-of-force training.
According to a national police trainer, the average officer receives between four to eight hours a year of use-of-force training. Think about a sport you play or musical instrument. Then consider only training four to eight hours a year and being asked to perform under high stress. This is what law enforcement officers are dealing with.
Increased training would have a positive effect on an officer’s ability to de-escalate. The vast majority of officers are very good at de-escalation, and we use those techniques multiple times every day and in most shifts. But sometimes, when the situations are with a high potential of violence and minimal training, the result is stress, anxiety, and adrenaline. Stress and adrenaline cause tunnel vision and auditory exclusion, where the officer cannot take in their complete surroundings and they do not hear everything around them. All of this puts the officer in an escalated state, making it very challenging to de-escalate. This is often why we hear officers repeat the same commands over and over.
More training allows officers to be more confident that they can handle a potentially violent situation. It allows them to experience and deal with stress, and it allows them to be in a more clear-headed state to de-escalate. This is why we think more appropriate training will lead to less force being used and better outcomes. We need to fund training so officers can be trained to the level the public expects.
Crime is escalating in larger cities, and the public — including every single person in Duluth and our area — deserves to be and feel safe. You can count on Duluth Police to help.
This column was written by the following members of the Duluth Police Local 807: President Dan Boese; Vice President Bob Schmidt; Secretary and Treasurer Steve Ring; Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Helgemoe; and board members Meghann Jones, Aaron Haller, and Chris Martin.
"use" - Google News
August 09, 2020 at 08:00PM
https://ift.tt/2PFDoVT
Duluth Police Union's View: What officers need most is more use-of-force training - Duluth News Tribune
"use" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2P05tHQ
https://ift.tt/2YCP29R
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Duluth Police Union's View: What officers need most is more use-of-force training - Duluth News Tribune"
Post a Comment