Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Does Training Cause Police Domestic Violence And Infighting

And does this training also teach police to obey orders without question even when their orders come from an incredibly corrupt political establishment that is representing multinational corporations at the expense, and often even lives, of the American public and the police?

First of all as I have pointed out in numerous articles in the past, and will cover a little more below, the most effective way to reduce crime involves recognizing the long term root causes of crime and preventing them, usually by educating people about how child abuse and other contributing factors, lead to escalating violence, providing better education and repairing abandoned inner cities and creating a functioning economic and democratic system that protects everyone, not just those with the most political power.

If this was done then there would be far fewer calls to the police and less confrontation on the few occasions where there are calls to the police, reducing the need, or perceived need for aggressive policing. This shouldn't be controversial, however many people from the political and media establishment base their decisions on ideological grounds. Many communities around the country already do a better job at this, and they're among the least violent and almost certainly far less likely to have problems with their police or citizens.

The media image of police being here to protect us all, isn't nearly as accurate as they would have you believe, as many people in abandoned inner cities or other areas where police are more corrupt than average already know, and the following article about a police chief, which is far from an isolated incident, indicates:

Texas Police Chief Arrested Following Standoff at Home 03/22/2017

A Texas police chief has been arrested following an exchange of gunfire and a standoff at his home northeast of College Station.

Normangee Mayor Gary Dawkins tells KBTX-TV in Bryan that police Chief Charles Herford was taken into custody more than four hours after the standoff began early Wednesday.

The incident prompted a broad response by law enforcement officers, including local police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers. Dawkins says no one was injured.

It's not clear if the gunfire occurred at the home prior to the standoff or during it. The Eagle newspaper reports that the incident began with a dispute between Herford and a family member.

The Normangee school district cancelled classes for the day because the standoff was in proximity to a school. Complete article

Texas police chief arrested following chase, standoff 03/23/2017

.... Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Jimmy Morgan told the station that just before 2:00 a.m., deputies received a 911 call from Herford’s wife, who was crying. During the initial conversation officials lost contact. A dispatcher called back, Herford’s wife answered, and the dispatcher soon heard what sounded like a gunshot.

As sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene, they noticed Herford’s police unit driving through town and attempted to stop him. Trooper Morgan says Herford eluded law enforcement, but officers continued to search for him.

For nearly three hours, law enforcement continued searching for Herford and, according to Trooper Morgan, there were “conversations” via radio between Herford and the sheriff’s office. .... UPDATE: Normangee Police Chief released from jail after posting $8,500 bond. 03/23/2017

There is simply no way the vast majority of the public could get out on bond after an alleged crime like this; and, as many reports of police shooting minorities indicate, there is a strong possibility that if he wasn't a police officer, especially if he was a minor, that he might have been shot and killed during the stand-off.

This was a major story in Texas, I'm sure, and could have been a major national story as well, yet there was little or no coverage of it in the mainstream press, outside of Texas, except for those relying on alternative media outlets to get their news.

Police are much more likely to be involved in domestic violence than the majority of the public as indicated by several studies, which are rarely mentioned at all, by the traditional media, including the following:

One Group Has a Higher Domestic Violence Rate Than Everyone Else; the Police 12/19/2014

The NFL has jump-started a national conversation on domestic violence, but there's one group we're overlooking: The people we trust to keep us safe.

In families of police officers, domestic violence is two-to-four times more likely than in the general population — from stalking and harassment to sexual assault and even homicide. As the National Center for Women and Policing notes, two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.

America's police domestic abuse problem was on full display in Monday's horrific murder of Valerie Morrow, who police say was shot to death by her ex-boyfriend, Stephen Rozniakowski, a Philadelphia-area police officer. Morrow, 40, had just been granted a protection from abuse order against Rozniakowski, who had been charged with 75 counts of stalking.

After Rozniakowski reportedly resigned from his job Monday, police say he kicked open the door to Morrow's home, shot her to death and wounded her teenage daughter before being apprehended at the scene.

There is an epidemic of domestic violence by police officers: In the last two weeks, a Cleveland police officer was arrested for stalking and domestic violence, and officers in New Jersey and New York were charged in domestic violence cases.

A 2013 Bowling Green State University study, through news searches, tallied 324 cases of reported officer domestic violence. It is likely that this number is a gross underestimate, because as the National Center for Women and Policing has detailed, officers frequently cover for each other. ..... Complete article

Why are police so much more likely to be involved in domestic violence?

In most cases it is almost certainly the same reasons for the rest of the population, however the police may be subject to some of the contributing causes of violence more than the rest of the population. As I have explained in numerous past articles including, Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows, the most important contributing cause of violence is almost certainly early child abuse including corporal punishment, which leads to escalating violence including bullying, hazing, and domestic violence, later in life. This was followed up by a series of additional articles that cover some of the other leading causes of violence and summed it up with Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit, which explains that the best educated communities at the grassroots level often do the most effective job holding their politicians accountable and preventing them from catering to corporate interests at the expense of the public.

In the case of police authoritarian upbringing, that might be considered desirable among many police departments, may escalate during police training through a hazing process that is often very similar to military boot camp. I went into this in numerous past articles including Philip Zimbardo, Lucifer Effect, Stanford Prison Experiment and Eli Roth’s Milgram/Obedience experiment much more extensive than most people realize where I reviewed the research that was almost certainly used to help develop boot camp training practices that were designed to teach recruits to obey orders without question and use escalating violence when fighting wars, in the military. These Boot Camp indoctrination methods teach recruits to develop solidarity among themselves, but only when they go along with the program, which means obeying orders and believing the version of the truth taught them by their commanders.

This is a major part of the indoctrination process that is used to train soldiers to obey without question even when we fight one war after another based on lies like the weapons of mass destruction that never existed, the removal of babies from Iraqi incubators that was faked by a relative of the Kuwaiti ruling family and the Gulf of Tonkin incident which was misrepresented if not totally fabricated. Regrettably many police officers use very similar methods to train their police and they often also often give military veterans preferential treatment when hiring. I don't like to demean veterans, who aren't responsible for the indoctrination they're put through by the government that has betrayed them, and the people that often do the most to stand up to this indoctrination are often veterans themselves that go through it and understand better than others how they're being betrayed, however understanding how this could lead to escalating violence requires understanding how this is used for indoctrination purposes.

Like the veterans who recognize the problems with this indoctrination some of the better educated police that are trying to reform the system are also among those that are trying to solve the problem, like David Couper, former police chief of Madison Wisconsin, who has been involved efforts to reform police for years if not decades. He wrote the article below about his own experience with boot camp training in both the military and as a police officer when he saw military methods used in a police academy. He started this article by referring to another article about a "lost boy" immigrating from Africa training to be a local police officer, and saying that he thought this training made sense for military training but not for police training; however I'm not so sure that it is right even for military training since it has been used to teach veterans to obey without question even when wars are based on lies.

Hazing and Bullying in the Police Academy by David Couper former police chief of Madison Wisconsin 12/16/2013

... I stress in my book that police officers need to be college educated, well-trained, controlled in their use of force, honest, and respectful. The following is a story about one of my experiences teaching leadership and improvement methods to a large urban police department in the West:

“As I was setting up my classroom at their training academy, I looked out the window and observed a formation of their new police recruits. I decided to go outside and get a closer look. The recruits were standing in three ranks—it was an inspection, a situation I could easily relate to from my days as a Marine.

“Suddenly, the training instructors started yelling at the new officers. Some were ordered to do push-ups by way of the familiar military command: ‘Drop and give me ten.’ In addition, I heard the instructors calling the young officers ‘assholes.’ I returned to the classroom in time to greet the chief and his command staff. I introduced myself and the curriculum for the next three days, then asked, ‘Are your officers permitted to call citizens names?’ They seem shocked, ‘We have rules against doing that. Why do you ask?’

“’Well,’ I replied, ‘I was watching your new officers outside this window and observed your trainers calling them very derogatory names. You know, it really doesn’t matter if you have rules against such conduct because when their teachers call them names, they will think that it’s okay for them to do the same to citizens. And if you ever try to discipline them, their defense will simply be, ‘That’s what the department taught me.’”

“I recently learned that the department never did change. Their academy remains stress-based, military, and intimidating. I don’t know if their training officers ever stopped calling recruit officers names. But one thing I do know, is that if they don’t stop, I predict they will continue to have problems with officers disrespecting citizens. How could they expect any different kind of an outcome?…

“Half of our nation’s police academies train in an atmosphere police trainers themselves identify as stress-based; that is, intimidating, even bullying. This makes half of American police academies more like military boot camps or correctional facilities than places in which college-educated young men and women are prepared to be professional police practitioners…

“Today, many police departments still continue to run their training academies like boot camps. These departments have training officers who look and act like Marine Corps drill instructors. They even wear the familiar Smoky Bear hats of a Marine drill instructor. As I became more acquainted with police work, I couldn’t understand why police were using the same training model I had been subjected to as a Marine. There was no similarity whatsoever between being a Marine infantryman and a police officer—the two job functions were as different as night and day.

I found this documentary about police training in Atlanta to be very unsettling. I challenge the basic assumptions about the efficacy of this model. First of all, is it necessary to bully and abuse police recruits in order to teach them the skills necessary to be an effective police officer today? Do people learn better under encouragement than stress? I think we all know the answer.

Secondly, if the stress-based, boot camp style is a necessary part of police work, why aren’t the highly-valued physical fitness requirements required of all police officers during their careers, not just at the beginning? (In fact, the only skill that continues to be evaluated by most police departments is periodic firearms, and not physical fitness, qualification standards.)

The best argument against this method of teaching occurs in the documentary itself. It was when Mach was having trouble on the shooting range and we see two styles of teaching used on him: one by an aggressive and demeaning male instructor and the other by a nurturing female instructor. Which one was effective in helping Mach qualify that day? Of course, the instructor who acted in a helping and humane manner.

This kind of debasing treatment in one way or another continues as the primary training protocol in at least half of our nation’s police training academies. It must stop. Complete article

It appears as if this type of training might also impact domestic behavior as well especially if it begins with an authoritarian upbringing before police academy training then escalates the same training at the academy, which is almost guaranteed to be a contributing factor to high rates of domestic violence among the police.

This type of training is, like the training in the Stanford Prison Experiment and Obedience to Authority experiments I described in previous articles, designed to use intimidation to control the situation and is an escalation of authoritarian child rearing tactics that lead to excessive violence and blind obedience. In another previous article, A Brief History of Cops Convicted of Murder, I cited many more police violence cases and similar arguments about how this training leads to blind obedience, which was the opposite of what Stanley Milgram said the Obedience to Authority experiments were intended to do. David Couper recently reposted an article from Jelani Cobb, Militarizing the Minds of Police Officers which describes aggressive training by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman who began training veterans in the military, and is apparently using the same authoritarian training now to teach police officers, and it is haveing the same problems contributing to excessive violence in both cases and he's in total denial about the causes of this as I have pointed out previously when I wrote about him in Teach a soldier to kill and he just might, where I wrote about similar problems with veterans coming home from war and having problems with violence, or in some cases they haven't even seen combat but have been through aggressive intimidation in the military, including boot camp which created PTSD anyway. His denial in that article included some incredibly obvious misrepresenting of statistics showing that he was clearly not even willing to acknowledge obvious facts, which many people defending the military or police violence often do, causing the problem to get even worse.

This aggressive training is also leading to violent behavior against peaceful protesters on many occasions. If the Obedience to Authority experiments really were intended to avoid blind obedience to authority this is a clear example where police should be thinking about this carefully before they obey orders from politicians that have little or no justification, especially when these politicians don't address the grievances of their own citizens and rely on police to suppress the protests even when the policies they're protesting are incredibly corrupt.

I've gone into the details of how the government is bending over backwards to cater to campaign contributors in many other articles, and so ahve many other people from alternative media outlets, so I'll keep it brief here.

There is no doubt that if a poor person killed a rich person by poisoning him he would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law; however when rich people pollute the environment in poor neighborhoods and slowly kill large amounts of people for profit, instead of prosecuting the rich people they arrest protesters.

If a poor person got a great deal by switching price tags and got caught they would be charged with "theft by deception" and prosecuted to the full extent of the law; however if a rich insurance executive took money they collected from premiums and spent it on deceptive advertising and lobbying against Single Payer ensuring that the public never learns about the fundamentals of insurance, this isn't called "theft by deception" because the lawmakers are on the side of those with political connections; nor is it called "theft by deception" when they hire union busting consultants in secret protected by "trade secrecy" laws, even when union busting tactics result in a hostile workforce.

If working class people do the research to expose this and protest against it instead of charging the executives with fraud or "theft by deception," they arrest the protesters.

When the government and the media refuses to inform the public about the basics of insurance or pooled risk and that private insurance competes by spending premium money on deceptive advertising increasing bureaucratic expense making for profit insurance inefficient compared to Single Payer in other countries; and a small percentage of the public learns from more reliable sources that the media portrays as fringe about this and protest, often handicapped people instead of addressing the concerns they arrest protesters.

When corporation ship jobs overseas to sweatshops that are so dangerous they burn down killing hundreds so they can increase profits by crushing wages and endangering lives the police do not protect the public from epidemic levels of fraud they throw them in jail if they speak out about it!

I could go into one example after another; how extreme does it have to be before the police admit that they're not hired to protect the majority of the public equally at all, as an enormous amount of propaganda implies; they're hired to obey orders from the oligarchy without question!

I have no doubt that there are a lot of good police officers that never intended to aid and abet in epidemic levels of fraud on a massive scale; however it is extremely rare for them to speak out and admit that this is what they're doing! Ray Lewis is one of the rare people that have actually done this, and to some degree a lot of other police officers like David Couper are trying to bring about reform as well; however they're only a small fraction of the police; and even though I'm sure there are many more that dislike the current pattern of behavior they're going along with the program anyway, even if it is destructive in the long term, and for those with the least amount of political power even in the short term. Most of these people are either going along the program or protesting in a peaceful manner; however a few of the most unstable occasionally strike out violently when they realize that peaceful protest doesn't work the way it should in a real democracy!

I can't speak for all the protesters standing up to corporate corruption, butt here is good reason to believe that a lot of them aren't relying on the traditional media for their news and have found far better research to explain how to reduce violent crime including by or against police officers as I explained in several articles including, Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit, which means that if the political establishment listened to them and the researchers that provide the best academic work, instead of the propaganda provided by their campaign contributors, they could do far more to reduce violence and tensions between the police and the rest of us.

It isn't even in the police's own best interests to continue ignoring the epidemic levels of fraud that they're unintentionally helping with by blindly obeying orders to suppress protests even when the political establishment refuses to address concerns and the media only covers corrupt candidates supported by the oligarchies. The so-called "war on cops" that the media and police have been hyping up isn't nearly as bad as they claim; however it may no longer be totally fabricated as I implied a few years ago when I first pointed out that they've been distorting the statistics. 2013 was the safest year for police fatalities in the line of duty since the establishment of the Union over two hundred years ago, on a per capita basis; and in order to find a year were there were fewer police dying in a year they would have to go back at least to the nineteenth century when we had much less than half the population and when the records might not be quit as complete so even then there might have been more police dying in the line of duty.

In order for the police and media to create the image of a dramatically increasing assault on police they had to point to the increases since 2013 without reminding the public of the history before it; if they compared it to any year prior to 2009 or so the years since 2013 would still be far less risky for police than reported by the media. Also some of the most common statistics often cited are from the Officer Down Memorial Page which in 2015 included eight Air force veterans killed in Afghanistan and there were also at least a couple police officers listed in other years that were listed as dying as a result of complications from shootings that happened fifteen to twenty years ago and many more that die of 9/11 related illnesses; so statistics cited without a closer look from this page can easily be inflated or taken out of context, as the media often has. However since 2013 police deaths have gone back up there have been at least fifteen police officers killed in six high profile ambushes where police were targeted at random; and glancing through the police memorial page indicates that there may have been at least four more similar incidents that weren't quite as high profile. However a far bigger risk to police officers is clearly domestic violence, which is much more common. This is probably more common than drug shootouts or robberies that often get far more attention.

There is plenty of research to indicate that by addressing the social problems that precede many of these domestic violence calls they can be reduced dramatically. The biggest one as I have reported in previous articles is child abuse and corporal punishment that leads to escalating violence later in life. This isn't the subject that most protesters raise the most, however it probably should be, and the economic problems that many protesters do try to address is one of the leading causes as well and it contributes indirectly to child abuse, since parents with financial difficulties, often at least partially because of corporate corruption that is creating economic inequality is sending their jobs overseas. Like the murder rates being higher in states that still allow corporal punishment in schools police are more likely to be killed in states that still allow corporal punishment in schools. These states only cover about 40% of the country or a little less yet about 45%-49% of the police killed in the line of duty since 2013 have been killed in states that still allow corporal punishment. Texas, which is the biggest state that still allows corporal punishment has more officers killed in four out of the past five years than California, which doesn't allow corporal punishment, and is more populous, even on the one year that they had a higher total Texas still had a slightly higher rate per capita.

If the political establishment was willing to address many of the most legitimate grievances by protesters and listen to the best researchers then the reversal of the threat to police since 2013 could be cut back, and violence to the general public can also continue the decline that has also been reversed, although not by as much since then.

The fifteen high profile ambushes since 2013 all happened at a time when attention to police violence was increasing however the people that have been subject to police violence have known about it all along and the highest violence against police were also when there was the most violence by police historically, in the twenties during prohibition and the second most violent period of time was in the late sixties and early seventies when police corruption was also at a high point. Even after the recent reversal since 2013 there isn't nearly as great a threat to police officers as there was during whether of those two periods.

In the high profile killings of police that were clearly retaliation for police brutality that has been reported, it would be easier to recognize the root causes and that contributed to the shootings even if it is clear that tehy weren't justified and that these shootings weren't directed at the police that were known to have been involved in abusing behavior. Alexander Bonds apparently said, “I got broken ribs for a reason, son. We gonna shake,” on a Facebook video saying "that he would not back down if he encountered police officers on the streets." (Police Officer Is ‘Murdered for Her Uniform’ in the Bronx 07/05/2017) Jerad Miller also indicated that he was abused by police during his encounters with them. It may be easy to dismiss their accounts as biased since there is little or no corroborating evidence to the incidents they complained about; however since the movements to film police there have been an enormous amount of evidence to indicate that eh police are far more brutal than they have been portrayed as and there is a major pattern of behavior to indicate that there may be a lot more to their complaints than most people want to believe.

The shootings by Micah Xavier Johnson and Gavin Long might be considered even clearer if people were aware of the impact of their training in the military, which is similar to the authoritarian training given to police to teach them to blindly obey. They were trained to fight and obey orders when they were sent to Afghanistan or Iraq then when they returned they both must have known that the war in Iraq, at least, was based on lies about weapons of mass destruction that the government knew or should have known were non-existent and recognized that the same government that sent them to war based on lies was doing little or nothing about the problem with police shootings against minorities. It shouldn't be too surprising that when they were trained to fight the enemy and recognized that their own government was betraying them and many others, that they perceived them as the enemy. This doesn't mean it was justified, of course; however they weren't trained to think rationally in boot camp; they were trained to obey, and resolve their problems with force, just like many police.

The government is relying on people from the lower working classes to fight their wars for them; and when they come home they often find that despite all the propaganda from the media and the government glorifying veterans who are allegedly "fighting for freedom," which many of these veterans believe and intend to do, although the wars are based on lies, then they're abandoned by their government. Many of these veterans come from areas where there are few if any other job opportunities, since the oligarchies have shipped them overseas, and a large number of these veterans come from the South, where some of the worst pollution and economic inequality exists. I can't say for certain that this was the primary concern for Micah Xavier Johnson and Gavin Long, but even if it isn't this is an outrageous way to treat both the veterans and the rest of the population especially those that don't go over the edge and strike out violently committing suicide by cop.

Another common tactic that seems to sound like great propaganda but incredibly bad social science to prevent future shootings is the common practice of calling extremists that go on shooting sprees killing police knowing that it is a virtual guarantee that they'll be killed before they're done, "cowards" over and over again and coming out with heartfelt stories about how great the police were, which in many cases I don't doubt. But this does little or nothing to find out how to prevent future shootings and it is simply not true.

These shooters are taking on overwhelming odds; it is the police that are often going up against peaceful protesters that should be considered cowardly, when they drag out handicapped people protesting corrupt health care laws, or turn on water cannons against unarmed environmental protesters at the DAPL camps.

If you Google some of these names it isn't hard to find plenty of people from both sides of the argument either calling them cowards or heroes, which should concern everyone. The people calling them cowards are often in total denial of anything that might be considered a mitigating circumstance; but the people that consider them heroes are often fully aware of them and know damn well that the police aren't protecting everyone equally. Many of these shooters started out with angry rants on social media but the police can't possibly keep track of all the angry rants. What the political establishment could do is at least try to figure out what their legitimate grievances are, or if they're not concerned about the ones they've decided are too extreme, then they could address the grievances of the peaceful protesters, then the people on the verge of striking out will at least see that non-violent protest do work and can get their concerns addressed, and might be less likely to go on a rampage.

In a real democracy that is what the political establishment would do instead of catering to those bribing politicians with "campaign contributions."

Of the seven highest profile shooters targeting cops as revenge in an ambush, Alexander Bonds, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, Micah Xavier Johnson, Gavin Long, Scott M. Greene, Jerad and Amanda Miller, all four of the minorities were killed by police, only one of the white people were killed by police, another committed suicide and the only that was arrested alive was involved in a long history of racist incidents and conflicts with the police. This feeds into the claim that police are much more likely to target black people. Dylann Roof, who killed nine blacks was also referred to as a "coward," by many on the left; and this also supports claims that the police are less likely to kill white supremacists; however, unfortunately they also miss the point.

Like many other violent felons Dylann Roof was badly abused as a child and most, if not all, of the others shooting police were also abused as children. The same abusive and authoritarian upbringing that teaches violence to them is often also taught to abusive police officers.

Prevent the early child abuse, and later conflicts will also be prevented, not complicated!

If there was more reporting on this and how successful many social programs to teach about how this abuse leads to escalating violence are and that they're much less expensive and more effective than mass incarceration, then the public would be more inclined to elect officials that are willing to fund good programs that reduce violence than authoritarian police practices that don't work!

This past weekend there was another high profile police shooting where someone that called 911 was killed by the responding officer, 'American Nightmare': How A U.S. Police Shooting Is Roiling Australia 07/18/2017 and another one that is getting far less attention, 2 bodies found in Seal Beach apartment are that of a Los Alamitos police captain and Westminster’s city clerk 07/17/2017, looks like it might be another murder-suicide, although they haven't come to that conclusion yet it is strongly implied by this article. these are just a sample of the stories of police misconduct, most of which are only reported at a low profile while the propaganda about them protecting us is routinely repeated over and over again without addressing the root causes of violence.

They have psychologists that almost certainly know that authoritarian police training is far more concerned with teaching obedience than with protecting the public yet they rarely report it all, and if it is reported it is only when few people are paying attention.

Edit 07/29/2017: Yesterday Donald Trump just made another of his outrageous comments saying, "please don’t be too nice," to "thugs," possibly inciting violence, and an audience of police applauded him without questioning him on the spot. Like some of the most extreme police, Donald Trump is in total denial about the large number of problems with excessive force that are only being reported in there entirety by alternative media outlets. traditional media outlets generally report them only as isolated incidents without letting the public how common they are. This is part of the authoritarian rhetoric that is inciting violence, and fortunately even though there was no one speaking out against it on the spot there were apparently many police departments speaking out against it shortly afterwards, including David Couper as the following article shows. If there isn't more problems with police as a result of this rhetoric it will be because of the people, including many police speaking out against Trump. Unfortunately this will turn some police against each other, however it will show which ones are more likely to cause problems with violence, and are in total denial.

You’re Wrong, Mr. President, It’s Not Okay! by David Couper 07/28/2017

Police Chiefs Defend ‘Respect’ After Trump Appears To Endorse Brutality 07/29/2017

In MS-13 speech, Trump applauded for imploring police “not to be too nice” while arresting “thugs” 07/28/2017