As a follow up to my last post. Most of you know that I spent the last 10 years of my AG career representing the Michigan State Police. Usually involving claims of excessive force. About 90% of those claims were bullshit. The 10% that were not, however, were damaging to the reputation of the 90% of Troopers that interacted firmly but respectably with the rest of us in performing the most stressful job there is.. And, when there was a bad apple, I never had anyone try to save him. In fact, I even had fellow troopers on more than one occasion tell me That guy has to go. The comments made by contributors in my prior post regarding the kill the cops chant are addressed in this article. As I see it, the Ferguson issue, The Cleveland issue, the NYC issue, and the more recent Lansing Township issue do involve training and screening, As former general counsel to the Michigan Commission On Law Enforcement Standards, I can say that psychological testing was resisted by most departments. I can also say that although Michigan requires graduation from a Police Academy, there are still Departments in the state that do not require a college degree for an officer. I am not familiar with standards in other states but firmly believe that Michigans standards are among the highest in the Nation. In debating the issue of the use of deadly force, I think it is important to avoid the generalization syndrome that seems to have infected every side of this, and seemingly every other issue of the day. The kill the cops chant came from one specific group of fringe individuals, not the thousands of protesters marching, and the use of deadly force, correctly or incorrectly, has to be attributed to the individual officer using it, not the entire population of Police in the nation.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:08:25 +0000
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