Doctors’ de-escalation skills a lesson for police

As a physician I and many of my nearly a million colleague physicians practicing in the United States, have not been strangers to treating people who may initially seem to pose a threat to us — the same type of people police have learned to target. However, our outcomes, in emergency rooms and on wards, have not been the intentional death of patients at our hands. We have learned, or already known, that our mission is to help them. We, and the nurses and medical workers who assist us transmit that verbally and by our actions in spite of confrontations that may start out as threatening or abusive. The “warrior philosophy” that permeates many police departments — starting with recruiting, continuing through training and ongoing with peer pressure is, I believe, in large part responsible for the frequent escalation of interactions that have led all too often to the use of lethal force. Abandoning the “warrior philosophy” will be a start in teaching successfully the de-escalation tactics which have been shown to be effective even in extremely threatening circumstances.

— Marcia Moore, Chico