04 Police Violence

For our paper we've decided to talk about excessive use of force by police officers. It's understandable that police officers are going to be worried about what happens to themselves first and foremost, it's the human condition. But, it seems that their methods of self-preservation are going too far. I believe that this stems from poor training, or rather improper focus on training. For instance, while looking for sources for our paper, I found a website that breaks down the training of police officers by hours spent on each topic. It showed that all academies spend 60 hours on firearm training. However, only 83% of academies spend time on Conflict management, and the ones that do only spend a total of 8 hours talking about it! It's no wonder that officers seem quicker to pull out their guns than try to talk a suspect down without the threat of violence. The point that I'm attempting to make is that if we opt for smarter training of police officers, then there might be less police-related deaths in the future.