The debate about the role of police has grown ever louder in the United States over the past seven years.

It pits those who see officers occupying a vital role protecting and serving their communities against those who view them as overly aggressive, militaristic and posing a threat, particularly to members of minority communities.

迈克尔·布朗（Michael Brown），弗雷迪·格雷（Freddie Gray），布雷娜·泰勒（Brena Taylor）和乔治·弗洛伊德（George Floyd）在军官手中遭到备受瞩目提供更好的培训来降级情况，然后才能爆炸暴力。

但是来自Samantha Simon，一位助理教授Department of Criminology and Criminal Justiceat the张信哲代言的欧宝网址密苏里大学–ST。Louis，显示了改变警务制度的一些挑战。

“Training for War: Academy Socialization and Warrior Policing，，，，” published in the September issue of the journal “Social Problems，，，，” is based on a year of ethnographic field work Simon did at four large municipal police academies and 40 interviews she conducted with officers and cadets. In the paper, she argues that “police training is an organized effort to condition officers to conceptualize their relationship with the public as a war.”

In the latest installment of its询问专家系列，UMSL Daily与Simon谈了她的研究和观察。

是什么让您有兴趣学习警察和警察培训？

这项研究之所以开始，是因为我参与了与研究生院教授有关民用枪支拥有的另一个项目。我们在基本上正在为平民培训如何在德克萨斯州开枪的学校进行大量现场工作。我开始思考，如果这是平民培训的样子，警察训练的样子是什么样的？看起来有什么不同吗？这也不是很久以后弗格森起义迈克尔·布朗（Michael Brown）被枪杀后发生。我认为这是一个有趣且重要的研究领域，看看如何接受警察使用武力的培训。我也很感兴趣地看到一些改革的努力在部门中如何发挥作用 - 多样性的招聘和降级培训的举措 - 看看他们的样子，以及我是否认为他们正在改变任何事情或将有效或有效潜在地减少警察使用武力和种族主义对武力的使用。

进入警察学院进行研究有多困难？

有很多停留，并继续这样做，大多数民族志学家都会说这是真的。访问是一个正在进行的协商过程。我曾在四个不同的警察学院，但我没有命名学院或州。但是它们都处于同一状态，所有四个都是大型市政部门。我花了一年的时间参加学院培训和观看。这取决于部门，我在每个学院获得多少访问权限。我最初的计划是每天与学员每天通过一所学院，并在我称之为罗林伍德警察局的情况下与中士开会，并问他是否可以做到这一点。他就像，‘不，绝对不是。那是一场城市责任噩梦。这只是不会发生。’他想，“您可以申请就业，”但这将花费一年半的时间。 Then I met with the sergeant at that department in the hiring unit, and he was fine with me tagging along to recruiting events with the recruiting officers and sitting in on interviews. From there, I found that if another officer would vouch for you, then other officers would usually let you in. So, then I got in at the academy at Rollingwood. Once one police department said ‘Yes,’ the other police departments in the state were like, ‘Oh, they’re letting you, then that’s fine.’ But again, sometimes there would be starts and then stops. The longer you’re in a place, the more access they’ll generally give you.

您在警察学院观察到的最大惊喜是什么？

I guess I was a little bit surprised at just how effective the institution was at sustaining itself. I went into the field thinking that diversity mattered a lot in any kind of institutional context, including in a policing context. But it sort of seemed like this institution – like most are – was pretty good at reproducing itself regardless of what the bodies are filling the roles. I think Black women and feminists have been saying this much longer than I have been.

招聘过程的结构是以一种方式，即使妇女进入这些角色，即使黑人进入这些角色，他们也几乎可以确保某种具有某种世界观的人 - 对犯罪和惩罚和无罪的理解和威胁和道德 - 首先允许。有一个非常强大的系统 - 即使有时是非正式的系统 - 几乎可以保证，毕业的人都将非常适合该机构。因此，这个想法是，如果我们只是雇用更多的黑人军官或更多的女官员，那将以某种方式改变机构 - 我现在对此非常悲观。

招聘过程是什么样的？

About 5% of the folks who apply are offered employment, so these are like Ivy League acceptance rates, basically. You do have to test. You have to pass the physical test, there’s a written test, there’s a psychological exam and there’s a background investigation. The whole process can take a year for some folks.

学院是否正在采取措施增加多样性？

Their initiatives kind of differ depending on if they were talking about race or gender. Typically, they would say that their goal was to mirror the demographics of their city in terms of race. They never stated that as a goal for gender, which I found interesting. I don’t know if the difference was too large between what would have to happen for them to have 51% women because there are certainly fewer women applying than men. Typically, these departments had between like, 9-11% of their police force were women or sometimes less. I think one of them was like 7%, and their goal was to get to 12%. Nobody could tell me where these numbers came from. I didn’t particularly get the sense that there was any kind of privileging of women or racial minority applicants in the hiring process. That was just my sense of what was going on.

Generally, for racial diversity, they would try to go to HBCUs to recruit. They would try to go to Hispanic-serving institutions for recruiting events or go to hiring fairs that were happening at Black churches or Latinx churches, things like that. Also, they tried to recruit really heavily from the military. I saw that across departments. In particular, that seemed to be one pathway for them to get Black officers because the military is disproportionately minority. That was one method they were using.

学员在退化方面接受了多少培训？

当时尚未进行州要求的降级培训。现在在许多州有，但在那时没有。这些都是大型市政部门，因此他们确实接受了降级培训。他们选择了它，这是一个八个小时的训练。通常非常模糊和脱节。我实际上同意官员们说降级为一个概念的降级很模糊。我仍然不太确定在可操作的项目或特定指令方面意味着什么。总的来说，在我在两个不同部门看到的培训中，将降级的方式作为一个概念提出的方式是，当您接近他们时，您应该对人们有礼貌，并对他们发生的事情进行交流。但永远保持警惕。如果您需要并且永远不要优先考虑降级而不是警官安全，请确保为暴力做好准备。 Even in the de-escalation classes, they were still showing videos of officers being killed, and they were really still emphasizing danger and risk and threat as the primary concerns for officers.

官员们如何看待培训？

降级曾经是而且仍然是每个人都在谈论和要求的事情。我遇到的军官说：“我们一直在降级。”他们的理解是，使用武力绝对不是问题，他们会引用联邦调查局的统计数据，内容涉及实际上有多少互动最终使用的武力，这肯定是一小部分或百分比。每天都有很多警察联系。他们认为降级是一个流行语或重命名他们一直在使用的策略，而且再也应该是优先考虑高于军官安全的事物。

通常，为了发挥力量或升级力量，他们需要表达自己的生命处于危险之中。如果有人的手放在他们的口袋里，那么实际上可能就足够了。They’re taught that in the academy – that if someone’s hands in their pocket and if they ask somebody to take their hands out of their pocket, and they don’t, now they have a lot of discretion on how much force they can then use. Because they could decide that they felt that you had a gun in your pocket. These sort of lessons are everywhere at the academy. There are posters on the walls that say, “Watch the hands. The hand you can’t see is the one that could kill you.” There was a hyper fixation on body movements. They’re supposed to intuit what level of risk is coming from these body movements.

How receptive do you think the academies were to calls for reform?

警察改革开始发挥作用的唯一原因是由于自我保护。如果有足够的人生气。但这也是为什么它通常最终成为美容或美学改革的原因。Some academies will change the outfits they’re wearing to look less militaristic, but nothing actually has changed about the substance of the academy, or they’ll add an eight-hour block of de-escalation to just hammer home the points that they’ve talked about for the rest of the 600 hours of state-mandated training, plus an additional 500 hours of municipal training.

Where does that leave the broader debate?

每个人都想感到安全，我认为这可能是基本的事情。所有这些人也有类似的动机。警察感到安全的人想要警察。因为这使他们感到安全，对吗？几个世纪以来，有系统地成为警察暴力的人，彼此相反，对吗？他们想摆脱警察，因为他们想感到安全。但是，所有这一切的根本是人们希望在社区中感到安全和支持，并弄清楚如何为每个人做这件事。

短URL：https://blogs.umsl.edu/news/?p=91207