New Style of Police Training Aims to Produce Guardians, Not Warriors
I see a disconnect between what the public believes the job of the police is and what police officers believe the job of the police is.<p>In my mind, police officers sign up for a dangerous job knowingly - that&#x27;s why they&#x27;re revered as heroic by many in society. They are willing to put themselves at risk to protect society from harm, and that&#x27;s noble.<p>What most police academies teach is the opposite. They teach officers to put their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of &quot;reducing officer casualties&quot; and &quot;overwhelming force&quot;. This is not a heroic police officer sacrificing himself for society; it&#x27;s jackbooted thugs threatening, terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect. Turns out it&#x27;s really hard to tell a bad guy from a good guy by looking at them, so they play it safe and treat everyone like a bad guy.<p>Not every officer thinks this way, but it&#x27;s common enough that it leads to a lot of police shootings. IMO a police officer should be more willing to take a bullet than put one into someone. I realize body armor isn&#x27;t foolproof, but the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that - something a person on the street doesn&#x27;t get.