As we recently marked the one-year anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd, the inescapable fact is that the killing would have never happened had then-officer Derek Chauvin de-escalated the situation rather than escalating it. Escalation seems to be a systemic problem in American policing. According to a June 2020 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, American police lead all wealthy countries with just under 34 police killings per 10 million people a year. The next closest country -- Canada -- checks in with only about 10 killings per 10 million.
From George Floyd and Ma’Khia Bryant nationally to Anthony Vega Cruz and Mubarak Soulemane in this state, so many of these killings have spurred debate about whether police did everything they could to de-escalate the situation before resorting to deadly force.
Retired Lt. Ray Hassett runs De-Escalation / Connection Training, a company that trains officers to cool the temperature in dealings with the public. I spoke with him for All Things Considered last month. You can hear that interview above. It’s a spirited discussion about modern-day policing that deals with questions like “why do so many officers seem to purposefully shoot to kill instead of to wound?” and “wouldn’t police be more effective if they actually lived in the communities they policed?”
