NAACP calls for de-escalation training for police

Some of the few dozen resolutions adopted Tuesday by the national NAACP are ceremonial, such as one to honor the memory of the late Muhammad Ali.

Other resolutions address challenging contemporary issues.

None is more difficult and timely than a resolution approved Tuesday by the majority of the 1,400 national voting NAACP delegates on the use of deadly force by police. It was submitted by the Cincinnati branch.

Titled “Legislative Accountability to Eliminate Wrongful Use of Deadly Force by Law Enforcement,” the Cincinnati resolution is now part of the NAACP’s national platform and a point of emphasis for all of the organization’s 2,200 local units.

Its three points call for the national organization and its local branches to advocate for:

• Legislation for mandatory police de-escalation training for all law enforcement agencies equal or greater to the number of hours spent on firearms training.
• Legislation requiring mandatory practices for law enforcement, especially in states with open-carry weapons laws, that require officers to provide clear instructions to legal weapons-holders.
• Elimination of ambiguous language in the law that allows law enforcement to use deadly force on “reasonable presumption of fear” and replace it with more definitive language that raises its use to “incidents of absolute threats.”

“We’ve always had to fight for equality and justice, and the use of deadly force by law enforcement is no different,” said Nicole Taylor, third vice president of the Cincinnati NAACP branch and chair of its criminal justice and public safety committee.

She drafted the resolution that the branch submitted to the national NAACP committee that decides which ones get to the convention floor.

Studies show that black men between the ages of 15 and 34, though comprising just 2 percent of the U.S. population, are five times more likely to die at the hands of police than white men in the same ago group. In 2015, African-Americans were killed by police at a rate twice that of other races and ethnicities.

The police killings this month of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, brought renewed focus to the issue. Parts of both of those incidents, along with others in recent years, were recorded on cellphones.

On Tuesday, NAACP delegates also approved emergency resolutions calling for its units to advocate that their members and other people employ phones or other recording devices to capture alleged police brutality or other civil rights violations. The NAACP also is calling for its branches to provide training on how to use contemporary recording and to defend citizens’ rights to use them when police are involved.

Much of NAACP delegate floor discussion Tuesday involved de-escalation training.

The Police Executive Research Forum, an independent research organization based in Washington, D.C., conducted a survey of 281 police agencies that was reported in the media in 2015. The survey showed that the average young officer received 58 hours of firearms training, 49 hours of defensive tactical training and eight hours of de-escalation training.

Training in chaos, using words effectively

At the Cincinnati Police Academy in Lower Price Hill, de-escalation training – or conflict resolution training – is woven into the overall training of its recruit classes.

“On Day 1 of training, the first thing I tell them that their strongest and best weapon they’re going to have as a police officer is their mouth,” said Spc. John Rose, a 28-year police veteran who has taught in the academy for the past nine years. “The better they are at their words when they’re interacting with people, the better chance they have of coming home at night.

“It’s what they say and how they say it. Day 1, here, everyone is ma’am and sir. They need to be humble. It’s part of our structure.”

Trainers keep detailed logs on recruits and look to remove those who show a penchant to use deadly force.

De-escalation training begins with classroom work on active listening, Rose said.

Sgt. Dan Hils, president of the Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police, is a 22-year crisis negotiation specialist who teaches active listening, which is designed to improve mutual understanding.

“I don’t know what ‘mandatory equal number of hours’ means, but the goal should be an increase in de-escalation training and active listening,” he said. “It’s akin to what counselors do and is transferable to day-to-day situations officers encounter on the streets.”

The bulk of de-escalation training at the academy is done in active scenarios. With officers and training staff role-playing, candidates must manage potential suicides, domestic violence scenes and other life-and-death situations. Recruits are taught words and phrases to use and those to avoid.

“On a traffic stop, we don’t say, ‘Do you know why I stopped you?’ People don’t like that,” Rose said. “We say, ‘I stopped you because you ran a red light two blocks back.’ ”

Even when they are at the target range for four weeks, half of the time there is invested in more scenario training.

“We teach them to look around and to be observant,” Rose said. “It’s moving a knife on a kitchen counter when you get to a domestic violence run or positioning the person in another room.”

Other scenarios force police recruits to speak with angry drivers, people dealing with mental health challenges, military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and rape victims. Training is racially neutral.

“You have to blend it into everything you do,” Rose said. “You have to train in chaos.”