Video shows moments before North Miami Police shot unarmed man

[Belsnickel]

(07-22-2016, 10:53 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: As to how to fix it, not all of that can come from LEO's.  Training everyone up is important.  Stressing the need to use your verbal skills before moving on to anything physical.  I found very quickly that simply validating a person, even if they were being unreasonable, resulted in an instant deescalation on their part.

We had one of our campus officers who spent roughly 25 years as a city cop here talking to our office the other day and he mentioned this being the most important thing, and every cop I've ever met that was worth their salt said the same. Dialogue is the first, and the most valuable weapon in a LEO's arsenal. Most of the time, the longer an officer talks to someone in a potentially violent situation the less likely that situation will result in violence. Obviously there are outliers in this data set, but it is true for the vast majority of cases, and this is the type of stuff that is ignored.

But like you said, there are people that are good at the job, and there are those that are not. The important thing to remember with officers, and this is not directed at you, just in a general statement, is that an escalated situation results in the same mental reaction that anyone has: fight, flight, or freeze. Through training you can try to get people to overcome that, but not everyone will, and you'll never know if it has truly worked until they get put into a situation where they are really tested. It may result in an unfortunate outcome, but there is really nothing you can do to guarantee it won't happen. Should bad shoots like that result in investigations and potential disciplinary actions or even charges? Absolutely, you screw up there are consequences. But you just can't guarantee a cop will be perfect in that situation no matter what you do.