The brilliant Tony Norman hits one out of the park again.
"One day, a requirement for graduation from any American police academy will be the successful completion of a series of virtual reality police stops. The virtual reality program, which will be experienced as “real” in every way, will contain all of the most notorious fatal police stops programmed into its database, along with those that never make the news. These will be drawn from a bank of hundreds, thanks to cell phone video enhancements.
The “black lives matters” virtual reality program will be so sophisticated, it will detect the level of fear and implicit bias each virtual encounter generates. Points will be added or subtracted from the final score based on the police cadet’s ability to de-escalate encounters without inflicting an unnecessary and unwarranted fatality.
Some programs like the RK1991 — The Rodney King Special — will be fairly straightforward. If a cadet joins the swarm of officers gleefully beating and kicking a virtual motorist who represents no credible threat, that student will flunk the course with no recourse for a do-over. This is the most elementary of the virtual reality programs because it tests the basic humanity of the officer applicant. There is no longer a “Clockwork Orange” division of law enforcement.
The next level on the virtual reality program is the WS2015 — The Walter Scott Initiative — a test of the applicant’s basic morality. In this scenario, a black motorist is pulled over for a broken third taillight. While the cadet is calling in the plates, the driver bolts. At no time does the fleeing man present a danger to the officer. In the virtual scenario, the cadet pursues the fleeing man on foot, ordering him to stop. If the man doesn’t stop, the cadet has the choice to break off pursuit or shoot the fleeing man in the back. If, after shooting the virtual black man, the cadet walks over to the fallen figure and throws a stun gun within a few feet of him to make it look as if the dead civilian was shot because the cop was defending himself after a struggle, there will be grounds for immediate expulsion from the program. Such a cadet is too fundamentally dishonest to be redeemed. If a veteran taking the test goes a step further and produces a lie-filled affidavit about an event captured on a cell phone video, he or she will be fired immediately.
Some programs will test the inherent level of fear of black boys and men from the smallest — the TR2014 (The Tamir Rice Termination @12) to the largest — the EG2014, otherwise known as The Eric Garner Liquidator. If a cadet or veteran can shoot a 12-year-old boy within seconds of arriving at a public park or choke an unarmed civilian using an illegal hold despite the subject’s plea for air, then there will be grounds for either immediate dismissal or demotion back to the academy for retraining, depending on the level of remorse exhibited.
A few programs are admittedly a little trickier than others, especially once an important element like race is changed. Take the Aurora2012 — a virtual reality program featuring a heavily armed white man who kills 12 people in a movie theater, wounds 58 in that attack and gets off 76 rounds before the crisis is contained. Question: Why is there such a strong compulsion to take the suspect alive in this scenario?
This game is closely related to the ColoradoSprings2015 — this scenario is less grisly than the Aurora2012, but it features the murder of a police officer and the killing of two other people at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Somehow the suspect, a white anti-abortion opponent, is taken alive. What accounts for the professionalism and restraint of the brave officers who bring him in with a minimum of violence? How is this similar — or different — from the Poplawski2009, a scenario in which three Pittsburgh police officers were assassinated by a white supremacist who, despite inspiring an unbelievable level of fury among law enforcement, was taken into custody alive?
After killing nine people in a black church in Charleston, S.C., Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who happens to look like the bigot-next-door, was pulled over a day later and taken to a fast food joint after telling the cops he was hungry. How do we get from the preferred outcomes of the Charleston2015, the Poplawski2009, the ColoradoSprings2015 and the Aurora2012 to what happened in Falcon Heights, Minn., and Baton Rouge, La., this week when the stakes were so much lower for law enforcement personnel?
Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge had a gun in his back pocket and was restrained on the ground when he was shot point blank, an event captured from two angles on cell phones. The cops “misplaced” their body cameras and didn’t know they were being filmed. Meanwhile, Philando Castile, another name fated to become as ubiquitous as Michael Brown, was shot by a cop who sounded so panicked on the recording of the incident that anyone listening to it will suspect he’s having a nervous breakdown.
The officer’s panic is in marked contrast to the calm demeanor of the victim’s girlfriend as she records the incident for dissemination on Facebook hours later. She even calls the officer “Sir” while he freaks out and screams expletives repeatedly through the long recording, his shaking gun still trained on the dying man who did nothing to deserve his fate but drive around with a broken taillight and a bag of weed. Yes, one day there will be a test to detect and root out implicit racial and class bias from police culture. Until then, cell phones and the vagaries of civil justice will have to do.
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion...f-police-training-videos/stories/201607080111
"One day, a requirement for graduation from any American police academy will be the successful completion of a series of virtual reality police stops. The virtual reality program, which will be experienced as “real” in every way, will contain all of the most notorious fatal police stops programmed into its database, along with those that never make the news. These will be drawn from a bank of hundreds, thanks to cell phone video enhancements.
The “black lives matters” virtual reality program will be so sophisticated, it will detect the level of fear and implicit bias each virtual encounter generates. Points will be added or subtracted from the final score based on the police cadet’s ability to de-escalate encounters without inflicting an unnecessary and unwarranted fatality.
Some programs like the RK1991 — The Rodney King Special — will be fairly straightforward. If a cadet joins the swarm of officers gleefully beating and kicking a virtual motorist who represents no credible threat, that student will flunk the course with no recourse for a do-over. This is the most elementary of the virtual reality programs because it tests the basic humanity of the officer applicant. There is no longer a “Clockwork Orange” division of law enforcement.
The next level on the virtual reality program is the WS2015 — The Walter Scott Initiative — a test of the applicant’s basic morality. In this scenario, a black motorist is pulled over for a broken third taillight. While the cadet is calling in the plates, the driver bolts. At no time does the fleeing man present a danger to the officer. In the virtual scenario, the cadet pursues the fleeing man on foot, ordering him to stop. If the man doesn’t stop, the cadet has the choice to break off pursuit or shoot the fleeing man in the back. If, after shooting the virtual black man, the cadet walks over to the fallen figure and throws a stun gun within a few feet of him to make it look as if the dead civilian was shot because the cop was defending himself after a struggle, there will be grounds for immediate expulsion from the program. Such a cadet is too fundamentally dishonest to be redeemed. If a veteran taking the test goes a step further and produces a lie-filled affidavit about an event captured on a cell phone video, he or she will be fired immediately.
Some programs will test the inherent level of fear of black boys and men from the smallest — the TR2014 (The Tamir Rice Termination @12) to the largest — the EG2014, otherwise known as The Eric Garner Liquidator. If a cadet or veteran can shoot a 12-year-old boy within seconds of arriving at a public park or choke an unarmed civilian using an illegal hold despite the subject’s plea for air, then there will be grounds for either immediate dismissal or demotion back to the academy for retraining, depending on the level of remorse exhibited.
A few programs are admittedly a little trickier than others, especially once an important element like race is changed. Take the Aurora2012 — a virtual reality program featuring a heavily armed white man who kills 12 people in a movie theater, wounds 58 in that attack and gets off 76 rounds before the crisis is contained. Question: Why is there such a strong compulsion to take the suspect alive in this scenario?
This game is closely related to the ColoradoSprings2015 — this scenario is less grisly than the Aurora2012, but it features the murder of a police officer and the killing of two other people at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Somehow the suspect, a white anti-abortion opponent, is taken alive. What accounts for the professionalism and restraint of the brave officers who bring him in with a minimum of violence? How is this similar — or different — from the Poplawski2009, a scenario in which three Pittsburgh police officers were assassinated by a white supremacist who, despite inspiring an unbelievable level of fury among law enforcement, was taken into custody alive?
After killing nine people in a black church in Charleston, S.C., Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who happens to look like the bigot-next-door, was pulled over a day later and taken to a fast food joint after telling the cops he was hungry. How do we get from the preferred outcomes of the Charleston2015, the Poplawski2009, the ColoradoSprings2015 and the Aurora2012 to what happened in Falcon Heights, Minn., and Baton Rouge, La., this week when the stakes were so much lower for law enforcement personnel?
Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge had a gun in his back pocket and was restrained on the ground when he was shot point blank, an event captured from two angles on cell phones. The cops “misplaced” their body cameras and didn’t know they were being filmed. Meanwhile, Philando Castile, another name fated to become as ubiquitous as Michael Brown, was shot by a cop who sounded so panicked on the recording of the incident that anyone listening to it will suspect he’s having a nervous breakdown.
The officer’s panic is in marked contrast to the calm demeanor of the victim’s girlfriend as she records the incident for dissemination on Facebook hours later. She even calls the officer “Sir” while he freaks out and screams expletives repeatedly through the long recording, his shaking gun still trained on the dying man who did nothing to deserve his fate but drive around with a broken taillight and a bag of weed. Yes, one day there will be a test to detect and root out implicit racial and class bias from police culture. Until then, cell phones and the vagaries of civil justice will have to do.
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion...f-police-training-videos/stories/201607080111
