: Will Moravits
: The Blue Divide Policing and Race in America
: Houndstooth Press
: 9781544524993
: 1
: CHF 7.30
:
: Allgemeines, Lexika
: English
: 190
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
The deaths at the hands of police of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans have spurred national outrage-but now what? To make progress on the complex issues surrounding race and policing, Americans must begin a conversation rooted in mutual respect and in facts. Laying the groundwork for productive engagement, Dr. Will Moravits details how police officers are trained in the use of force and the choices they confront. The Blue Divide analyzes the past decade's highest-profile cases of police use of force against people of color and looks more broadly at the criminal justice system, use of force, and the tragic disconnection between police officers and the communities of color they are sworn to protect. A former police officer, Moravits brings a uniquely informed, mutually sympathetic point of view that can be heard by everyone who has an opinion about American policing-good, bad, or unsure about what to do to ensure safety and justice for all.

Chapter 1


Use-of-Force Training and Scenarios


There is no question that Derek Chauvin’s decision to put his knee on the neck of George Floyd at all, much less for over nine minutes, has been roundly criticized by pundits, attorneys, and many law enforcement entities, such as Andy Scoogman (executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police), John Shane (professor and use-of-force expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice), and John Peters Jr. (president of the Institute for the Prevention and Management of In-Custody Deaths). Use-of-force experts and members of the Minneapolis Police Department reiterated this criticism during Derek Chauvin’s trial,10 despite the fact that the Minneapolis Police Training Manual did allow for two types of “knee on the neck techniques” as a “non-lethal” use of force.11 A pretrial motion to dismiss the murder and manslaughter charges based on this training manual was denied.

It is also without dispute that Derek Chauvin had seventeen complaints of excessive force filed in his nineteen years of policing.12 What wasn’t clear at the time of Floyd’s death is what his motivations were. It is assumed that it was racially motivated despite no indication that it was, but the narrative of racist police was pushed. Although there is great condemnation for Chauvin’s tactics and the training manual that allows them, some information about the moments leading up to Floyd’s arrest were not revealed until several days later. We will discuss the body-cam footage of Derek Chauvin, his trial and conviction, and the aftermath later in this book. But first, it is necessary for the reader to get a crash course in police use-of-force law and training. Only then can we truly understand the facts and circumstances of these high-profile deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police officers.

Current training on police use of force is in line with criteria established in both federal and Supreme Court rulings. The purpose of the use of force is to gain control and to stop a subject’s action. In order for a use-of-force program to be truly effective, it must be defensible in court. There are four, general use-of-force justifications. Is there a need for force? Was the force applied proportional to the resistance exerted? Is the subject’s injury proportional to the subject’s resistance or threat to the officer or a third party? And finally, was the force applied in good faith in a way that a reasonable, trained police officer would react given the facts the officer had at the time of the encounter? Taken together, one could call this a “totality of circumstances,” meaning that evaluation of an officer’s use of force is dependent on the combined factors involved with a force incident. There are nuances to consider in the use of force which we will discuss later, but a description of the basic use-of-force continuum is necessary before we get into specific types of situations.

The majority of Use of Force tactics discussed in this chapter are from the 2003 book,PPCT Defensive Tactics Student Manual, by Bruce Siddle, Ron Bilyk, Joan Pechtel and Darrell Ross. There are two different philosophies surrounding police use of force, total control theory and One Plus One Th