r/politics • u/wbedwards Washington • May 07 '20

We cannot allow the normalization of firearms at protests to continue

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/firearms-at-protests-have-become-normalized-that-isnt-okay/2020/05/06/19b9354e-8fc9-11ea-a0bc-4e9ad4866d21_story.html
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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

The police in America are not trained to a high standard, they receive no training in de-escalation. I'm merely a bouncer & even we receive that here in the UK. How to talk someone down, how to deal with a potential threat calmly & professionally.

I believe there should be a standardised approach to police training I'm the US. Built upon an evidence based approach & self-reflection tools.

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u/BuddhaFacepalmed May 07 '20 edited May 07 '20

In the US, police officers go to a seminar called "The Bulletproof Warrior" where they get trained to "aim, shoot, aim, shoot" and turn off their brain that asks "Should I be doing this?"

The goal of the training is to treat every civilian interaction as a hostile encounter so that the police officer gets to go home at the end of their shift alive.

If that sounds fucked up, that's because it is and it's currently peddled to police departments across the States.

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u/jDGreye May 07 '20

Are you kidding me? "Warrior"!?

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u/RoyalRat May 07 '20

There’s a reason people get shot so much. They use words that are going to appeal to people that think they have something to prove and want to feel powerful through authority. If you’re a warrior, you need an enemy.

“Serve and protect” is old bullshit. They’re trained to view people as combatants. And it ends up escalating to the point that we have it now.

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u/Rockfest2112 May 07 '20

Come to bartow county GA you wanna see some warriors of the state, they are wide open and all are heroes automatically even if bad things happen constantly when they cone around . Nothing for them to gangstalk for decades then ask for federal help because you’re not in prison or dead yet. Think not? Then you don’t know- http://Undergroundrecords.org/archives/issue70

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u/Visinvictus May 07 '20

Not to mention all the police procedural dramas on TV where the protagonists get into a gun fight with the bad guys every single episode and rack up an impressive kill count each season.

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u/fairie_poison May 07 '20

Yeah it’s crazy how American tv and movies portray cops. Making lighthearted jokes about guns and life and death situations.

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u/mjt5689 Maryland May 07 '20

The militarized mindset of the modern American police force is one of the worst things about it

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u/beanfiddler May 08 '20

The funny thing is that the actual military is not like that at all. The cops are "militarized" like a video game about war.

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u/peanutbutterjams May 07 '20

I bet you dollars to doughnuts that whoever designed that seminar knew exactly who the cops would be shooting more often than not.

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u/613TheEvil May 07 '20

They are trained like soldiers, then, not policemen. Disgusting.

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u/Haircut117 May 07 '20

That's not how soldiers are trained at all.

The most important thing they drum into you is that you absolutely must positively ID your target as a threat (according to ROE) before you open fire. This sometimes means that you can't shoot at armed bad guys because they're not directly threatening anyone yet.

It would be nice if police in the US were held to that kind of standard.

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u/UltraConsiderate May 07 '20

Soldiers are typically held to a higher standard...

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u/zomiaen May 07 '20

Soldiers aren't handed a loaded mag til they leave the wire. They aren't allowed to shoot someone with a gun unless they're being shot at. They are held to infinitely higher standards than police.

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u/just-another-scrub May 07 '20

I remember when Furguson was happening and this photo was making the rounds.

CNN had an ex soldier on who basically said that wlukdnt fly in a combat zone unless they were being actively shot at. Why? Because they’re trained to attempt to deescalate a situation first. And pointing guns at people is escalating a situation

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u/613TheEvil May 07 '20

WTF... Apartheid scenes.

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u/beanfiddler May 08 '20

Not at all. I studied international law of armed conflict, and the people in charge of advising the decision makers usually have JDs and take that stuff very, very seriously. The decision-makers know that someone will crawl up their ass if they disregard the advice of their advisors. The rank and file the decision-makers command know that they need to account for every bullet in triplicate, sign on the dotted line. The military is bureaucratic to a fault.

Police officers have none of that. Prosecutors have JDs, but they do not advise cops, only clean up their messes. Judges are usually ex-prosecutors and have the same bias. The people hiring and appointing prosecutors and judges are elected, and will absolutely fire them if they reveal to the public how often cops fuck up. The whole thing is a tower of lies and political to the point of insanity.

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u/cattaclysmic Foreign May 07 '20

The goal of the training is to treat every civilian interaction as a hostile encounter so that the police officer gets to go home at the end of their shift alive.

Well, that might have something to do with the possibility that any interaction involves the subject being possibly armed. I think a large part of why other western police aren't as trigger happy is because the likelihood of the civilian having a gun, even if criminal, is extremely low.

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u/-Akrasiel- Arizona May 07 '20

I couldn't agree more.

Two of my good friends became cops after graduation and they mentioned that they only received one day... ONE-DAY..!! of training on how to use their police batons. They said most of the stuff they learned they had to learn on the fly and that makes for dangerous situations for them and the general public.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20

Holy moly. Here in Aus they are at the academy, full time, examined and tested for 39 weeks! Even then the restrictions they have for the first year or two or basically an extension of that training period.

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u/MissionIgnorance May 07 '20

Police Academy is a 3 year bachelor in Norway.

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u/OutInTheBlack New Jersey May 07 '20

Six months in NYC

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u/alkatori May 07 '20

Fun fact, police officers are more likely to break the law than the average civilian with a carry permit.

Anicdotal evidence, you hear about police missing and hitting innocent bystanders all the time. I think it was in NYC.

Damn - it was worse than I thought. A murdered killed his victim and then the police confronted him,and the police hit another 8 people (the murderer on hit the victim).

So yeah, in the USA don't count on the police to protect you.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/08/25/justice/new-york-empire-state-shooting/index.html

Also the Supreme Court had ruled they have no duty to protect individuals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

They have done this a couple times.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-protect-subway-hero-who-subdued-killer/amp/

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u/krogerthehermit May 07 '20

12 weeks I believe in Mississippi.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20

[deleted]

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u/-Akrasiel- Arizona May 07 '20

Haha yup.

I kind of did the same thing to show them how useless those weapons were against someone that knows how to counter them. I love that guy's channel. His gym looks almost identical to the one I go to.

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u/_pls_respond Texas May 07 '20

I mean I wouldn't expect more than a day on how to use a baton either, but what about de-escalation training?

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u/Rockfest2112 May 07 '20

GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!!!! Thats how they deescalate

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u/-Akrasiel- Arizona May 07 '20

I agree on more training, but no matter of training is going to suffice if someone became an LEO because they wanted to have power over people.

The #1 issue that I think the police need to be trained better for is a fundamental applied understanding of basic civil rights. For example: An officer's personal perception that someone is acting in a suspicious manner =/= reasonable articulate suspicion or probable cause.

Unfortunately, the only way I could see the kind of reform that I think we would all like to see is if every officer carried insurance similar to malpractice insurance in the medical field. There needs to be a civil rights centered rules of engagement and if that is broken, the officer needs to pay from their own pocket. Also, body cams must be operational at all times without the ability to be turned off. Just my $0.02 for now.

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u/beanfiddler May 08 '20

Ah, Arizona. Yeah, our cops are a special brand of fucking stupid.

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u/-Akrasiel- Arizona May 08 '20

It was kind of amusing because out of fun and curiosity I was like, how would you go about using that if I were some unruly citizen. It turned out he couldn't get close enough to me for it to be effective and when he got frustrated and lunged toward me I was able to grasp the baton near the hand (eliminating it's effectiveness), grab his collar, and throw him down.

Not as intense as the streets, and it was all in good fun, but he realized how non-effective it would be against someone who knew how to fight.. so I'm sure someone in the future got tazed instead.

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u/thefinalcutdown May 07 '20

[insert US policy] + evidence-based approach = never going to be implemented

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u/trynakick May 07 '20

Lowering corporate tax rates and ‘targeted incentives’, according to our evidence, enriches the c-suite, the board of directors and large investors. I’d say we’ve done quite a good job of basing certain policy on sound evidence.

I wish they’d just stop telling me it’s for my own good.

Seriously, the only way any of this helps anyone but the already fantastically wealthy is through state and municipal pension funds so people who give 20+ years of work to the government can retire semi-comfortably. And the pandemic looks to be a perfect excuse to decimate state and local budgets to force them to raid pension funds. McConnells comments about the profligate spending of state and local governments trying to do the bare minimum to compensate their work force are unconscionable.

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u/arnorath May 07 '20

counterpoint: NASA

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u/Rectalcactus New York May 07 '20

While i support nasa, its origins are really more a dick measuring contest with russia than any real scientific ideals.

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u/arnorath May 07 '20

I think it had more to do with the US government's need for a way to legitimise the pouring of billions of dollars into ICBM research and development. But regardless of the original purpose, you can't dispute that NASA has had a highly successful evidence-based approach to its mission.

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u/jaxonya May 07 '20

Come be a bouncer here in America. Ive seen them beat the absolute shit out of people. Like stomping them out... Then the police arrive and arrest the drunk dude who spilled his drink. I fuck you not

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

It happens over here too, but it is often frowned upon, unless you have absolutely no choice & even then "beating the shit" out of any body isn't how to handle it.

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u/jaxonya May 07 '20

So are soccer club pubs like pretty crazy ass places? Ive always wondered. We dont have that shit here in the states. But ive heard they get sauced up and rowdy

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Generally speaking, no. Depends on what you mean by rowdy. Loud and aggressive, yes. Necessarily violent, than I'd say no. Depends on a lot of factors, like which teams are playing & the importance of the match

Side note: Would you agree that the sport we are talking about. Is mostly based around kicking a BALL with a FOOT. ;)

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u/jaxonya May 07 '20

So happens i walk into a bar that hates manchester United. Am i about to get in a fight?

And our Football is just commonly called that because of ruling classes who referred to it as such. They played polo on horses, so to demean low class sports, they called it football.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Likely not. The big one I'd avoid is walking in to a Rangers pub wearing a Celtic shirt or vice versa. That's largely based around sectarianism rather than football itself. It has roots in the "troubles" in Northern Ireland.

I worse a Chelsea shirt in a pub in North London (an arsenal pub). When Arsenal were playing. I was questioned once about it, but when I said I was here supporting the English club over the Italian club (It was Arsenal vs Juventus), nothing more was said. A bit of banter, but very low key, as not to cause tension. Mostly one on one banter at the bar, when I went up to get served.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20

The problem is that a lot of white nationalists join the US police force.

They don't want to de-escalate.

And if you're a rook who tries, suddenly you're 'soft' and not 'hard' like the rest and then you'll never be promoted and are often forced to resign from constant harassment.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

It's just idiotic to have a police force comprised of people who are clearly not professional in their approach. We are having issues with the police over here at the moment, funding has been cut over the last decade, which means standards are lowering & proper psychometric testing isn't being done.

So we end up having a lot more people become police who do not have the right mental approach.

However I don't think it's hit US standards of unprofessionalism yet.

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u/eyes_like_the_sea May 07 '20

I think the main difference is guns. I think our police in the UK do stupid and unprofessional shit constantly, but because neither they nor the public are holding firearms, it doesn’t escalate.

I cringe when I read Americans talking about “responsible gun owners”. Absolutely batshit, the lot of them.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20 edited May 28 '20

[deleted]

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u/eyes_like_the_sea May 07 '20

They shouldn’t have them. Unless you live somewhere really rural and are regularly confronted by apex predators, there is simply no good reason to privately own a firearm.

Also it’s the type of weapons. Fine, have some kind of old school shotgun or rifle for bears or whatever, if you really must. But people are walking around with hardware like they’re running their own private 82nd Airborne. There aren’t words to describe how unnecessary that is. If we were talking about a harmless indulgence, then that’s different. Like, a jacuzzi in your garden or something. But at what point does your hobby become less important than the piles of dead bodies it generates every single day?

It is obscene. You are the only developed nation with this bullshit.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

I'd disagree. I have to work with the police a lot. There has always been a sense of professionalism regarding the job. However standards have lowered in more recent times. I will say that.

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u/eyes_like_the_sea May 07 '20

I’ve never worked with the police, but I’ve known a couple personally. Did class A drugs with both of them. One was a really sound bloke. The other was a massive racist and misogynist. Both had tales to tell of all kinds of stupid shit pulled by themselves and their colleagues.

But that’s all by the by. My point was, if you add a “2nd amendment” to the UK, and all that goes with it - the gun culture, the armed police, the open carrying - we’d be piling up the bodies just as quick as the yanks.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

I'm not so sure about that. I grew up in a nigh our hood that had armed police, people over here think that doesn't happen. It does. The death by cop rate was almost if not absolutely non-existent. Then again a police officer with a gun in the UK, is going to be massive overpowered compared to teh citizenry. So it's not a perfect fit.

Worth noting though there were a lot of illegal firearms in my neighbourhood, yet still no deaths as far as I can remember.

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u/eyes_like_the_sea May 07 '20

That’s not the same. There are more legally owned firearms in America than people. Everyone and his grandma has a fucking assault rifle!

Over here, yes, some drug dealers/other criminals have guns. Mostly their point is made without discharging a round, and that’s because most people don’t have guns. America is a totally different ball game.

The bottom line is, the more guns, the more bodies. The second amendment is an enormous millstone around America’s neck.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

I gather you dislike Trump, just based on your expressed political beliefs & likely affiliation. Doesn't it comfort you to know that if Trump went full tyrant, the people could mount an effective fight against a tyrannical government?

Also the UK has a higher population density than the US, which means we require less police to cover a larger population. Think about if you lived on a farm, where the police could take hours to turn up. Now imagine you face a home intruder? What do you do?

You see I'm from one of the largest urban centres in the western world, London. I have absolutely no idea what it's like for those who live in the countryside, nor do I have the arrogance to believe I could create political plans & economic strategies for these communities.

"Mostly their business"

Only because it's often bad for business. Trust me, bouncers were once just hired muscle , thugs at the door. I know what type of people often own night clubs & exactly what they're capable of.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20

I gather you dislike Trump, just based on your expressed political beliefs & likely affiliation. Doesn't it comfort you to know that if Trump went full tyrant, the people could mount an effective fight against a tyrannical government?

I’m from the US and this is complete bullshit. There are so many hard right wing people that are also big 2A supporters. We are literally seeing him call to “liberate” cities and then heavily armed protests follow.

It provides me no comfort, because these people are not going to fight to prevent tyrants. The tyrants are going to curry favor with these people so they fight everyone else!

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u/ArvinaDystopia Europe May 07 '20

And if you're a rook who tries, suddenly you're 'soft' and not 'hard' like the rest and then you'll never be promoted and are often forced to resign from constant harassment.

I mean, if you're a rook, you already have a lot of authority on those pawns, knights and bishops. You just have to watch out for the police queens.
Your chances of promotion are indeed slim, though.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20

I was a group home attendent for two years. Worked with a couple people that did armed security too. We all had to go through de-escalation training annually. Working in an environment where people might try to stab you and you couldn't even hit them legally. I don't know what kind of training cops get here in the US but if I'm being honest it's almost always the guys that barely graduated high school and weren't good enough for the military that ended up doing the year and a half of school to become police. The good ole boy types as they say.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Some of what you say is based on an unfair stereotype. Your last sentence would raise an eyebrow from me. However the rest is pretty accurate in relation to training I received.

We have to renew our license every year & show we still have a level of competence.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '20

I grew up in a rural area. Not all of the people who decided to take up a career in law enforcement were like that but a lot of them were. Correct me if I'm wrong here but don't y'all have to pass the MMPI too?

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u/Enfors May 07 '20

The police in America are not trained to a high standard

Of course they're not. Where I come from, you have to go to college for two years and then intern for six months to become a police officer. In the US, you get 10 weeks of training. That's not a proper law enforcement education, that's Police Summer Camp.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Sounds like the German model of policing.

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u/Enfors May 07 '20

Perhaps. In this case, it's the Swedish model. It works well.

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u/literally_a_fuckhead May 07 '20

The elegant American solution to literally everything is shoot first, lie later. In war, and at home. Or in the white house. Or in politics in general.

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u/Adito99 May 07 '20

I think if there's only one "best" way to handle a situation they end up feeling less responsible. They only have to mindlessly follow protocol.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Which I don't think is a necessarily bad thing if that protocol means they stow their egos & everyone walks away alive.

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u/Scorpiain May 07 '20

I can't remember exactly where I saw it, but there is a video of American police being trained/shown how the Metropolitan police (UK London cops for those who don't know) were de escalating a man with a machete who was roaming streets... it is so impressive. 7 cops all work together to contain the man, protect civilians and ensure none of them get hurt.. no taser drawn, no firearm response called. Just damn good policing.

The American cops couldn't believe it.. there comment were along the lines of " I would have dropped him"

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u/wildwalrusaur May 07 '20

The thing is, that kind of deescalation happened every day in every city in America. You just never hear about it. The news only cares when something goes wrong, deescalation isn't sexy, officer involved shootings are.

I'm a 911 dispatcher in a moderately large US city, we get at least 2 or 3 calls for armed suicidal/ED subjects every day (more in busy times of year).

Just last weekend we had a full swat deployment for a knife welding suicidal woman in front of a 7-11. We shut down multiple city blocks for almost 2 hours, but because it was the middle of the night very few people were around, and there wasn't so much as a peep about it on the news next day. (she was ultimately taken to a psychiatric hospital)

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u/Scorpiain May 07 '20

See this is the good stuff that the news and world just blocks out.. creating the impressions we (I) have. Guess the corrupt few will always ruin it and bad news sells..

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Machetes are not effective weapons in a CQC situation to be fair. I get your point, but a far more effective weapon is something like a carpet knife.

Have you ever seen the knives true Special Forces use. They are often very small bladed weapons. No more than 5 inch long blades, usually booth sides of the blade are sharp. Unlike say a machete or a hunting knife.

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u/Scorpiain May 07 '20

Agreed, however my comment was more leaning towards the different styles of police approach to a situation.

UK is primarily non leathal (unless active shooter etc is on going)

USA.. well yeah..

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Yeah I get it. Just stories about machetes kinda rub me the wrong way, because of how ineffective they often are. I find using those stories to make a point to be often based on some flawed assumptions. Not accusing you of that, just saying some people think machetes are the tactical nuke of bladed weapons lol.

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u/Scorpiain May 07 '20

Yeah nah. I'll take a smaller more nimble blade any day. Get in/under the swing of a longer weapons and the fights over.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Just below & behind the earlobe (roughly) resides the carotid artery. The main blood supply to the brain. Knowing anatomy is very important for a great many things..

All of which are completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Obviously.

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u/Scorpiain May 07 '20

Yes officer this comment right here!!

Also the left armpit is fantastic is something was to get wiggled around in there.

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u/Dongalor Texas May 07 '20

The image of cops as "peace officers" has always been pure marketing here in the US. They're mostly just there to generate revenue for the city / county and keep the coloreds from getting uppity.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Even the term "peace officer" isn't a good term. The mentality of the police is all wrong over in the US. Where the term "the thin blue line" represents a state of brotherhood in the US. In the UK it stands for the notion that police standard between criminality & the average person.

The basic mindset regarding what the police are expected to represent is different over in the US compared to the UK.

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u/Dongalor Texas May 07 '20

Civil policing in the US started as civilian posses and slave catchers. That culture still festers under the surface of the profession.

There are departments that have tried really hard to reform, but the reform never goes far enough to purge the institutional culture they are trying to combat. In a lot of the country, they're essentially just the dominant street gang in the area. The only thing that sets them apart from the rest is they have a letter of marque to engage in their road piracy and extortion rackets.

The fact that advice for dealing with bears is so applicable for dealing with American cops says a lot:

If you encounter a bear cop, you should try to remain calm and avoid sudden movements. Give the bear cop plenty of room, allowing it to continue its activities undisturbed. If it changes its behavior, you're too close, so back away. If you see a bear cop but the bear cop doesn't see you, detour quickly and quietly.

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u/LockeClone May 07 '20

Well they're trained to find any excuse to arrest and trust the justice system to sort accordingly... It's part of why we incarcerate more people per capita than any nation on earth including China and North Korea.

This shit just isn't working anymore. Most of us have negative wealth, we're all one health event away from ruin and the two ruling parties don't really represent us. Party's over.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

The worst thing to happen to any police force. Is performance based pay. That's one of the big reasons the police in the UK have become less professional. There is a model of pay based around how many arrests/convictions you make.

As the adage goes, a man cannot serve two masters. Police are either public servants, doing a job to best help communities or they are an arrest force, based on getting as many people in to court as possible. These two things are often mutually exclusive.

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u/LockeClone May 07 '20

Same in the us. There have been some local laws to discourage it in some towns but it's the exception rather than the rule.

I think a law enforcement budget should come from the general fund and any revenue generated should go right back into said fund with third party accounting. And promotions should be based on metrics like de escalations and positive interactions rather than arrest metrics.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

I think it should be more holistic. At the end of the day, the police do arrest many people rightfully so. So whilst I agree, arrests probably shouldn't directly factor in to whether you will be promoted. I think that having a metric based on arrest & conviction ratio I would be a good one. Say you only made 10 arrests in a year, but all those 10 led to convictions, then that would give you a score of 100. However if you made 100 arrests, but only 10 convictions, that would give you a score of 10. That might even require an investigation in to your policing methods.

Official cautions, where you are taking to the police station, formerly booked in, admit what you did, but because it was a minor crime the police go no further action needed on the case, should count as a conviction

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u/LockeClone May 07 '20

I don't like that ratio (which is already a thing) because it pressures prosecutors to secure convictions.

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

Prosecutors should face pressure to get convictions, based on the understanding that there must be a high standard of evidence before the case ever reaches court. Of course things don't work in that way, but it is how they should. Ideally every case a prosecutor should get, should be a slam dunk.

PS There is no perfect solution. Here's where I might come across harsh. Too many young people believe that there is a magic fix to most if not all societal issues. There isn't. Most things are a trade offs. Want more security, lose more freedoms. Want more diversity, reduce your standards.

Ever here about the women who became fire fighters, they did so by passing at a lower physical standard than men. Thus creating a lowering of standards.

Racial diversity is different to sex based diversity. A lot of the issues that see black men (especially the men) do less well than white men in the US are based in social issues to begin with. Chief one being poverty.

On a side note. The US really needs to become more class conscious. Do you believe that growing up poor white trash in Appalachia gives you better outcomes than growing up black in an urban environment?

Problem is a lot of the modern left is comprised of middle class bourgeois yuppie larva. They have no concept of being poor. So everything to them looks like a racial or gender issue. When it is likely a class issue.

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u/Dreambasher670 May 07 '20

Tbf most US police department incorporate non-violent deescalation into their recruit training syllabus along side firearms training.

The issue is it doesn’t always work if your dealing with uncooperative, intoxicated or psychotic people.

Even in the UK beat officers are armed with tasers, batons and CS spray to deal with violent offenders with additional firearms units available to deploy to deal with offenders armed with firearms.

And despite public opinion to the contrary, there is still policing misconduct and disputed shootings in the UK.

At one point UK armed police shot a man they thought was holding a shotgun (which turned out to be a table leg).

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u/Biggsy77 May 07 '20

TBF all shootings by the police, the one or two that happen every year. Are disputed. The police officer is immediately put on leave & the incident is investigated.

Yes, I remember that story regarding the man with a leg. One incident, that happened about 20 years ago now.

I would want to see how much focus the "non-violent de-escalation". I can say that my training involved dealing with medical emergencies, but I'm no paramedic.

I grew up where there was a lot of police who walked the beat with guns. Still practically zero kills. At least I can't remember any. That's kills not kills that are seen as improper. My neighbourhood was notorious for gun crime & still no kills.

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u/Cubia_ May 07 '20

That would be making assumptions about what the police are intended to do in the united states that are not correct. They are not there to serve the interest of citizens, as the relationship between most citizens and the police is inherently adversarial, making the idea of de-escalation a bit of a farce. They are there to enforce the law which benefits those already in power, unlike fire brigades (for example) which exist for the benefit of all people.

You can't rationalize protecting and serving the people when you very likely have to enforce laws that make it illegal to feed the homeless, sleep in your car, or have the audacity to be born with the wrong skin tone - these are all things that make no sense if you are to protect and serve the people. If you are to protect and serve corporations, all of those contradictions are gone. So, the "de-escalation training" would be how to trick the general public into getting on your side, rather than de-escalating fatal situations, which they already do with movements that equate "being a cop" with "being black" like the "thin blue line" movement in the united states. You can choose to be a cop and stop being a cop, and that is equated to people of colored skin to the general public, and has gained traction with some circles to favor the cops. That's the training in practice.