The Chauvin trial underscores two very different approaches to policing

The Chauvin trial underscores two very different approaches to policing

Opinion by 

Radley Balko

Columnist

April 8, 2021 at 9:27 a.m. GMT+9

A courtroom sketch of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin at his trial April 6. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

At Derek Chauvin’s trial this week, the jury heard from Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, the city’s former training commander and expert witnesses, all of whom testified that Chauvin’s treatment of George Floyd violated widely accepted use of force standards as well as Minneapolis Police Department policy, which calls for commensurate force and requires respect for the “sanctity of life.” But despite those standards, Chauvin also had a history of kneeling on suspects’ necks for long periods of time, and none of those incidents resulted in discipline. It’s an apt illustration of how, for about the past 10 years, two contradictory philosophies have been at war in American policing.

On one side are the de-escalationists, a product of the criminal justice reform movement. They accept police brutality, systemic racism and excessive force as real problems in law enforcement, and call for more accountability, as well as training in areas like de-escalation and conflict resolution. De-escalationists believe police serve their communities by apprehending and detaining people who violate the rights and safety of others, but must also do so in a way that protects the rights of the accused.

The other side — let’s call them “no-hesitationists” — asserts that police officers aren’t aggressive enough and are too hesitant to use deadly force, which puts officers and others at risk. They see law enforcement officers as warriors, and American neighborhoods as battlefields, where officers vanquish the bad to protect the good. These are the self-identified “sheepdogs,” the cops who sport Punisher gear.

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Though the two approaches are inherently at odds, each has managed to exert its influence in U.S. law enforcement, dividing public officials and politicians like a magnet pushing through a pile of iron filings. De-escalationists now hold police chief posts in most major cities throughout the country, as well as prominent, high-ranking positions in executive law enforcement organizations such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Executive Research Forum. Consequently, they exert considerable influence over the policies and procedures of large police agencies.

No-hesitationists are more prominent in sheriff’s offices and police union leadership, and among rank-and-file officers. They’re more populist and have been successful including their policies in union contracts, honing successful legal arguments for cops accused of excessive force and leveraging political power, both to elect police-friendly judges, prosecutors and lawmakers, and to shame and intimidate politicians deemed insufficiently pro-law enforcement.

The de-escalationists successfully worked their preferred practices into official policy. But the no-hesitationists prevented meaningful enforcement of those policies. One example played out in Los Angeles in 2015. After LAPD chief Charlie Beck announced a new “Preservation of Life” award, for officers who held their fire and peacefully resolved confrontations with potentially dangerous suspects, the police union objected, claiming the award valued the lives of suspected criminals over the lives of police officers.

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The trial of Chauvin, an officer unabashedly of the “no hesitation” school, has put this battle for American policing front and center. It’s apparent in a video played at the trial, shot at the scene of Floyd’s death, when Chauvin tells a protesting bystander, “We’ve got to control this guy because he’s a sizable guy. Looks like he’s probably on something.” Floyd, suspected of a minor, nonviolent crime, had told the officers he was claustrophobic and feared getting shot, and cried out for his deceased mother. The footage show a scared, shattered man pleading for mercy. Chauvin saw only a potential threat that needed to be suppressed.

Even before Floyd, Minneapolis has been a battleground for these warring police philosophies. When officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in 2016, news outlets reported Yanez had previously attended a lethal force class called “The Bulletproof Warrior.”

The class was taught by a company called Calibre Press, which claims to train nearly 20,000 officers per year. Until recently, one of Calibre’s most prominent speakers was retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former Army Ranger whose lectures paint a grim, good-vs.-evil world, where terrorists blow up cities, gang members compete to kill cops and maniacs shoot up school buses. His curriculum includes Bible verses that he believes augur when it’s moral to kill. The documentary “Do Not Resist” includes footage of him telling a class of cops that when you kill another human being, you can expect to go home and have the best sex of your life.

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After the reports that Yanez had attended the class, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey barred the city’s police department from sending officers to such classes. The police union responded by offering to pay tuition for any officer who wanted to attend such classes on his or her own time.

There’s another Minneapolis connection to the “no hesitation” philosophy: William Lewinski, who founded the Force Science Institute (FSI) while teaching at Minnesota State University. A 2015 New York Times profile described how he became interested in police shootings after a 1990 incident in which a white Minneapolis officer shot a black teenager in the back, killing him. Among the many controversial policing theories espoused by Lewinski and his organization is “action beats reaction” — that officers should be permitted to shoot suspects before confirming they’re actually armed.

Lewinski’s research has been called “pseudoscience” by an editor of the American Journal of Psychology, and sharply criticized by the Justice Department. But he remains in high demand; Lewinski teaches classes, including to officers who investigate police shootings, and is often hired by police agencies and prosecutors to investigate officer shootings. He has also become a reliable defense witness in high-profile police shootings, including the killings of Oscar Grant in Oakland, Calif., and James Boyd in New Mexico. When a reporter asked the FSI if its experts had ever testified against an officer, the organization couldn’t point to an example.

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While the George Floyd protests spurred a flurry of de-escalationist police reform around the country, changing police culture will be a massive undertaking. The no-hesitationists remain a powerful force, and they aren’t going away. Unless reforms come with real teeth, including diminishing the power of police unions and giving police executives the power to fire officers who stand in the way of change, no-hesitationists will continue to wield their influence, subverting change from behind the scenes.

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