Fear-Based Training
More Information on Fear-based training
“Are you prepared to kill somebody? If you cannot answer that question, you should not be carrying a gun.” In a room full of police officers, this is not a rhetorical question or a matter of philosophy. It is a very real possibility that needs to be considered. And if you cannot reconcile with the answer, you are told to change your career. Meet Dave Grossman, professor of “killology,” or the psychology of killing. And for just $79, you, a budding police officer, can attend one of his courses- if one isn’t provided to you.
Grossman has been hired by local police departments for more than two decades to give cops courses in so-called “Warrior Training.” In his sessions, he teaches cops to perceive every member of their community as a potential enemy, and to always be on guard- as the “first rule” of law enforcement states, “complacency kills.” He tells them not to go out “looking for people to kill,” because the “gangbangers, mass murderers, and terrorists” will come to them. Grossman paints the world as unbelievably dangerous, but this view is in fact what is most dangerous.
While cops do face a very real risk on-duty, the world is not as dangerous as the dystopia painted by Grossman. In actuality, the Department of Justice reported that in police officers’ 63 million annual encounters with the public, officers were only assaulted in .09% of interactions, most of which did not even cause any physical injuries. Officers were killed in .00008% of civilian interactions. Grossman is exaggerating the true risk posed to cops, thereby increasing an officers’ distrust of their community, with tragic consequences.
Grossman’s courses are booked 200 days a year, and his clients include the Los Angeles Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, and hundreds of other jurisdictions.
Even if a budding officer does not receive training from Grossman or another “Warrior” trainer, the same “us-versus-them” ideology is promoted in many police academies. It begins on the first day, when officers are shown gripping images of other officers beaten and killed for the slightest hesitation. They are jarred, and left with a strong conviction not to ever let themselves become the victim shown in a future class’ lesson. The solution? Stay on guard. Treat everyone as an enemy until they have proven you wrong.
But there is a fine line between training an officer to keep themselves safe and training them to do so at the expense of innocents. Former police officer Seth Stoughton told NPR that, on average, police academies give over 120 hours of combat and force training, compared to an average of 8 hours of training in de-escalation and conflict avoidance. Some departments don’t teach conflict avoidance at all, and this disparity means that whatever training is given is likely to be forgotten in lieu of force training.
When cops are taught to fear the community that they are supposed to serve, unconscious biases are revealed. Although sadly unconscious bias is not unique to police officers, their training amplifies the consequences by causing an officer to react more strongly to the perceived threat of a black man than to that of a white man in otherwise identical situations. In fact, the officer who shot and killed Philando Castile in 2016 took 56 hours of fear-based training prior to Castile’s death, in addition to taking one of Grossman’s courses two years prior. And the restraint used by Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd this past May was taught at Hennepin Technical College until 2016, when it was banned. Hennepin Technical College trains half of all Minnesota police officers.
The killing of Philando Castile prompted the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments to put a ban on all fear-based training, but it is not enough. More counties must ban fear-based training, but they must also re-train their officers according to a program emphasizing de-escalatory training.