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1/7 Last night in LA, sheriff's deputies arrested @NPR reporter @Josie_Huang. They were angry and on edge. Two deputies had been shot in an ambush. Protesters said they hoped they'd die. But we can bracket off the need for Josie's arrest, and see what the tactics used show us. https://twitter.com/josie_huang/status/1305331513592967168
The deputy uses an arm bar takedown. It's the standard in places, taught to be muscle memory. But it puts a person's face into the pavement *by design.* You can see it here in this video by "Spartan Cops." It's taught as the default move for noncompliance.
3/7 To do the arm bar here, the deputy has to take her off the car she's up against. If the deputy wasn't on autopilot, this would have been the place to handcuff her. We've all seen cops arrest a person standing up, against the trunk of a car. But training and habits prevail.
4/7 And there are so many deputies present. But in America, patrol officers are rarely taught to act as teams, only as individuals that back each other up once one commits to something. Teamwork would have meant officers restraining her limbs against the car as they cuffed her.
5/7 As long as officers act as individuals, not teams, and academies train them in a move that sends people to the pavement face first as the default, we will have cops on film hurting news reporters whether the arrests are lawful or not. We owe the public and police much more.
6/7 Consider we have a police culture where academies punch unsuspecting recruits hard enough in the head to give them brain injuries, and call it a lesson learned in paying attention. Police should look inward when thinking about how to move forward. https://vtdigger.org/2019/01/07/recruits-suffer-concussions-hitchhiker-scenario-police-academy-drill/
7/7 I once wrote police should train to see guns as life insurance, not problem solving tools or persuasive devices. The most angry, hate-filled responses were from fellow police officers.
With our own feathers, not by others' hands, are we now smitten. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/opinion/police-shootings-guns.html
With our own feathers, not by others' hands, are we now smitten. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/opinion/police-shootings-guns.html
