Sheep/Sheepdog/Wolf - Cop Metaphors and the Humanities

Charles Huth, a Captain in the Kansas City PD, has written an outstanding essay taking apart two metaphors commonly employed by police trainers: The "warrior" and the "sheep/sheepdog/wolf" metaphor. Not only is he on point when it comes to the analysis itself and what it says about modern policing, but I was also struck that he's essentially performing an act of language criticism here. He's performing the humanities.

Here's some examples, but seriously, read the whole thing:

In the past several years, it has become popular in police training circles for trainers to use metaphors to characterize law enforcement’s relationship with the public. Among the most popular of these is the "sheep/sheepdog" allegory. Trainers who favor this sort of framing explain that many members of the public are like sheep that operate in constant fear of predators, while law enforcement officers serve as the sheepdogs that protect the hapless sheep from the wolves (criminals) that stalk them. While this type of contrasting might seem harmless, it actually objectifies both the police and the public they are sworn to serve in ways that undermine police effectiveness and helpfulness.

A sheepdog’s job is to ensure the integrity of a herd. When the herd gets out of line, the sheepdog drives them by growling and nipping at their heels. The sheepdog adopts a posture characteristic of a predator—like a wolf, for example. This transformation puts the sheep in a perpetual state of fear of being singled out and attacked, thus providing an extrinsic motivation for them to fall in line. Sheep are afraid of sheepdogs just as they are afraid of wolves. They don't trust them and only comply because they are motivated by fear of consequence. Sheep aren’t equipped to fight their antagonists, so a growling sheepdog may not invite escalated dangers amongst the sheep. Not so with people, however. Among those being growled at are people who are capable of resisting. The sheep/sheepdog allegory completely misses how growling sheepdogs can motivate and escalate resistance.

And then there's Huth's conclusion:

Law enforcement in a democracy is at its best with an ethos where officers see themselves as an integral part and reflection of the best nature of the society they serve, not as a morally superior caste set above that society.

So there are two points I want to make. One is that the analysis itself is expert and thoughtful. When we create these divides - which honestly even the Guardian metaphor (which I prefer to Warrior) perpetuates - there are all kinds of consequences. Language matters and so many of the messages being sold (literally, there's good money in being a police trainer/motivational speaker) to law enforcement heighten both their sense of being under siege and the divide between police/policed. We need to push the other way, and I'm so glad people like Huth (and others - big fan of the Chicagoland Virtus Group) are doing that work.

But second, from a higher ed perspective, why aren't we as humanities professors locating and celebrating writing and thinking like this? Shouldn't humanities centers at major universities be inviting Huth in to talk metaphors with English professors? Shouldn't the MLA, AHA, CAA be tracking not how many of their majors become famous people, but how many become cops, doctors, soldiers? Maybe they do? Is there a room for this kind of pragmatic (and admittedly political) writing in the classroom? It shows both that the skills of the humanities expert matter, but also that such skills emerge far outside our disciplines and classes.

And let me be clear - I'm not saying, gosh, how surprising! I'm saying there are a lot of folks out there who are smart readers and smart critics, and only some of them have formal humanities credentials. But those of us who DO have such credentials should find and promote this kind of work.

A good cop is, among many things, savvy about how to interpret complex situations, savvy about language.

The "Training Isn't Enough" Movement

Discussions around police use of force and disabled civilians usually turn quickly to training. In Chicago, for example, several high profile deaths resulted in mandatory CIT training for all Chicago officers - in policy anyway. It's not clear whether funds have been allocated and to what extent the training is ongoing, but that's another story.

But from many activists, particularly those most focused on the intersections of racism and ableism in police use of force, skepticism about training is becoming more prominent (it was always there). For example, Kerima Çevik was recently interviewed by Leroy Moore about policing and disability for Poor Magazine. It was a wide ranging interview and you should read all of it, but here's an excerpt:

Çevik: Racial profiling severely reduces the probability of police accepting my son, a Hispanic presenting male, larger than his peers, walking down the street with an unsteady gait, holding an iPad without challenging him. Which would inevitably lead to them trying to stop him, taking his iPad, and verbally demanding proof his speech device was his and their response to him not being able to respond would be to try and arrest him for stealing it. Situations like the scenario I just described, that I call ‘Mustafa’s Dilemma’ and what happened to Tario Anderson is what haunts me. That is where I am now. I am in this moment of polarization along racial lines seeking solutions to avert this and other nightmare scenarios I’ve witnessed occurring to countless disabled people, for the sake of my son and all his peers.. Training has been done. Trained officers used deadly force in encounters with clearly identified disabled teens and adults. I’ve changed my entire advocacy strategy based on this truth. The best way for a person in Mustafa’s Dilemma to remain alive and safe is to avoid any circumstance in which police engagement is necessary as much as humanly possible.

The painful lesson I’ve learned is that training initiatives fail. The fallout from the slew of deaths that spurred the Black Lives Matter movement is that the majority of those lives lost were disabled Black lives. I learned the police officers that shot both Paul Childs III and Stephon Watts were thoroughly trained and also knew the victims prior to the fatal encounters. This knowledge changed the focus of both my parenting and advocacy.

Later, Moore asks:

Leroy Moore: If it’s not police training then what are your suggestions and it can be for our community (For me I think we only focus on what police need and not what the community need)?

Kerima Çevik: Leroy I agree that we are focusing on what we think police need when we need to reduce police engagement and increase community supports that limit the need for police contact as much as possible. I won’t advise the community but I can tell you what I personally would like to see happen.

I’d like to see efforts made to establish a 911-type number for mental health emergencies/psychiatric disability related crises and more community crisis response teams to answer them. There is a myth that policy makers are exploiting based on a moment in history. This myth that after the Willow brook scandal, we just opened the doors of mental institutions and threw the patients out to wander the streets, and that to this day those same individuals are out there being a danger to themselves and others. The new fear factor story being added to that is we really need to bring back mental institutions. Victim blaming every deceased victim of a catastrophic police encounter with a person with psychiatric disability and sprinkling that disgrace with a healthy dose of posthumously declaring every white male mass shooter as a mental health patient achieves this fear driven train wreck. Uh nope! I think that funding being demanded for the return of the infamous mental institution model of mental health treatment, research, and ‘residential care’ should be given to desegregated, community supported mental health solutions that work in accord with the Olmstead Decision. I think we need to build on peer mentoring and peer respite centers, an idea that has already been proven successful in other parts of the country. I think we need to be seeking preventative solutions that solve the main series of events that ends in catastrophe for so many disabled victims, and that is the present situation where a mental health call is lumped in with a 911 call and therefore has police responding where they shouldn’t be. I think we should be increasing healthy inclusive school environments for neurodivergent students at school by paying school support staff wages that retain them and training them, not calling SROs to handcuff autistic children to squad cars.

Çevik and Moore are essential voices pushing for structural change, rather than simply trying to make the police less likely to misuse force against a disabled victim.

More "Special Rights" for "Special Needs"

Yesterday I wrote about an ID Card for autistic drivers, with links to similar stories.

Now we have "autistic wrist bands."

These are well intentioned efforts to stop police from hurting neurodiverse people. There's a better way, though, and that's to train police not to hurt people who aren't causing active threats.

As always, I quote my friend Jisun:

It is not an individual’s responsibility to wear or show evidence of his or her diagnosis in order to remain safe and retain their basic civil rights.

Read the post. Keep this in mind.

Three Bills In Florida on Police and Disability

There are three new bills working their way through the Florida legislature on policing and disability. One of the interesting things about disability is that even people who refuse to consider most structural reforms to policing and reject the #BlackLivesMatter movement are still willing to push for reforms when it comes to disability.

That's actually a problem. My argument is that the issues with disability and law enforcement reveal broader issues with policing and society at large. Fixing that is tricky and involves widespread reforms, so instead lawmakers like to do two things:

1. Provide disability-specific training for cops. Lawrence Carter-Long (my frequent collaborator) and I have taken to calling this the "Special needs cops" approach. It is not meant to be complementary. It's basically fine but limited in impact.
2. Less frequently, but worse, is to find a way to label disabled people so that cops can recognize them as disabled and give them extra rights. But no one should have to label themselves in order to receive their basic rights under our laws (from the Constitution to the ADA and beyond).

Florida, it turns out, is doing both right now (h/t Leroy Moore for this link), along with a third bill (which I support) defending the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities when being interrogated.

Here are the bills:

• CS/CS/SB 936 [my emphasis] - "Citing this act as the "The Wes Kleinert Fair Interview Act"; requiring the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to issue an identification card exhibiting a special designation for a person who has a developmental disability under certain circumstances; requiring a law enforcement officer, correctional officer, or another public safety official to make a good faith effort, upon the request of a parent, a guardian, or the individual, to ensure that specified professionals are present at all interviews of an individual diagnosed with autism or an autism spectrum disorder, etc."
• CS/CS/HB 1043 - Interviews of Victims, Suspects, or Defendants with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Designates act "Wes Kleinert Fair Interview Act"; requires qualified professional or relative or caretaker of certain individuals to assist law enforcement officer, correctional officer, or other public safety official during interviews in specified circumstances; provides responsibility for payment of related expenses; prohibits failure to have qualified professional, relative, or caretaker present from serving as basis for specified actions; requires agencies to develop & implement appropriate policies & procedures & provide training.
• SB 1352 - Autism Awareness Training for Law Enforcement Officers; Requiring the Department of Law Enforcement to establish an online continued employment training component relating to autism spectrum disorder; providing that completion of the training may count toward continued employment instruction requirements, etc.

Previous coverage of my trouble with labeling provisions:

• Special placards for Deaf drivers touted as great solution in Cincinnati. 
• T-shirts in Colorado - "I have autism. If I am alone please call 911."

Simulating Police Training - What's the pedagogy here?

My friend RC alerted me to this piece on a police training simulator for learning how to reduce misuse of force when encountering autistic people or people with various mental disabilities. It touts the virtues of the virtual playback versus role-playing-based training.

Through the simulator, deputies are immersed in true-to-life scenarios — exactly the kind of situations they often find themselves in: A father calls the police because his bipolar daughter is off her meds and is destroying the kitchen; a man is wandering around a parking lot with a knife talking to himself; an angry young veteran, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is walking down the middle of the street.

The simulator’s operator changes the scenario’s outcome based on how the deputy responds – and the system recognizes and records each type of response, whether it’s with a taser, pepper spray, a gun or verbal interaction. Just like in real like, no situation is ever the same

“The key here is decision-making. We can test and practice-decision making among deputies in a way that wasn’t possible before,” Lt. John Gannon said.
And Gannon can watch it all unfolding, as if he was on the call himself. He can see if a young deputy misses a knife sitting within arm’s reach of a suspect, or unnecessarily escalates a situation involving someone with mental illness. Then the supervisor and deputies can debrief, going frame by frame through the situation to discuss what was done right or wrong.

“How often do you have a chance to go back and see what someone did, see what someone missed?” Gannon said. “Rather than role-playing, rather than having them learn on the job, we can have them learn and make their mistakes here.”

A few thoughts.

1. The pedagogy of police training continues to fascinate me. The police trainers I've talked to are often critical of the method but not empowered to try active learning models. It's mostly talk at officers, dumping information in lecture format. 
2. This simulator, like the more standard role-playing, is obviously active learning.
3. I don't see the evidence in this piece, although it's interesting, that a simulator is better pedagogically than role-playing. In standard role-play scenarios officers work with actors who then go back after and debrief on what the officers did well or poorly in their decision making.
4. Decision making in tense situations is hard.
5. Finally ..

The piece concludes with this insight:

Lessons Learned:

Some of the same techniques can also help deputies when they are responding to someone with PTSD, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

“You don’t always have to shoot, taze, pepper spray — sometimes talking works,” Deputy Shawn Walters said.

That's true. The key is to take that insight out of disability-related training and apply it to every encounter, because people don't broadcast their disabilities to the world. It's why I'm skeptical of diagnosis-based training in general. It says: Apply these specific resources to specific cases.

I like police training models which use insights from the disability world to help officers fundamentally change the way they think. 

De-escalation for Law Enforcement in Park Ridge

Nice article in the local paper on de-escalation training for Park Ridge law enforcement.

Last year, a U.S. Justice Department grant secured by the Park Ridge Police Department allowed for officers to take crisis intervention training, a program that aims to prepare officers to deal with citizens struggling with a broad spectrum of mental health disorders, said Deputy Police Chief Duane Mellema.
The training, Mellema said, is largely aimed at de-escalating tense or potentially dangerous situations through communication techniques. Some of the things officers are taught include showing empathy, speaking slowly and calmly, and taking time with the individual.
"If a person thinks you are bothered or in a hurry, you'll have a hard time communicating with them," Mellema said.
Out of 39 incidents last year that involved police response to a situation involving mental illness, all but one was handled without the use of force, Mellema said. The single incident in which force was used involved an intoxicated man who was subdued with a taser because he was walking in traffic on Dempster Street and attempting to get into cars that were stopped in traffic, Mellema said.

Two caveats:

1. Median home value in Park Ridge is $378,000. It's a gorgeous, wealthy, place. Great schools. If we ever decided to move to the north suburbs (which we might, for commute reasons) and our income increases significantly, we'd try to move there.

That means this is NOT a place where race, poverty, and disability intersect in policing. It's easier to work on single-factor places. It still matters as one of my arguments is that the intersection of disability and policing can lead to terrible outcomes anywhere. It's also important to call this out as atypical.

2. "If a person thinks you are bothered or in a hurry, you'll have a hard time communicating with them," - That's true in every encounter. These findings need to be universalized, not compartmentalized to just mental-health cases.

Portland Police

The Portland OR police department has been sanctioned by the DoJ for its handling of cases involving people with psychiatric disabilities. There's been too many deaths, too many tasings, too much violence, too much ignorance.

Now, Portland has announced a new policy.

The Portland Police Bureau has drafted a much-expanded policy that stresses the need for officers to recognize behaviors "characteristic'' of mental illness and safely de-escalate encounters.
The new "Mental Health Crisis Response''directive requires officers to use special skills to avoid unnecessary violence and potential civil liability.

As Scott Kaufman writes over at Rawstory:

According to the new policy, police “are not expected to diagnose mental or emotional conditions, but are expected to recognize behaviors that are indicative of persons affected by mental illness or in crisis, with a special emphasis on those that suggest potential violence and/or danger.”
If officers judge that the person is suffering from a mental illness or is in an acute state of crisis, instead of confronting them, they are strongly encouraged to disengage and reevaluate the situation with the assistance of a supervisor or a member of the Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team (ECIT).
“Non-engagement or disengagement are tactics that can be used if the member determines that contact or continued contact with the person will result in an undue safety risk to the person, the public and/or members,” the new policy states.
“A police report will be written documenting the following: details of the call; reasons for non-engagement or disengagement; actions taken to deescalate the situation; actions taken to promote safety; follow up plans and referrals made, and whether the address is flagged” in a database containing the names of people who have previously had mental episodes.

 Scott calls this: "just back off."

I've written about this a lot over the last two years. So many incidents would not have gone wrong if the officer took steps backwards instead of steps forward. Once they are close to a person in mental health crisis, especially if they have a knife or even just their hands, officers feel threatened, and once they feel threatened they can use force. The only solution is to back away.

The problem is this - backing away runs directly counter to the cult of compliance, so training is critical. It's got to kick in early in an incident (and there are many law enforcement trainers working on just this).

I'll be watching the comment period and how this plays out closely.