San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SAN DIEGO TRAINS POLICE OFFICERS IN DE-ESCALATION AT REGIONAL ACADEMY
Some advocates for reform disagree with methods used in field
A woman was insisting that police officers go into her home to check on her husband. A mobile app had tracked his cellphone to their house, but he wasn’t answering any of her calls.
She thought her husband might need help, and she feared the worst.
The simulated situation was presented Friday as part of de-escalation training led by the county District Attorney’s Office, with San Diego police officers in a room in front of a monitor.
As the virtual scene unfolded, the officers asked questions of the woman on the large screen. They learned that her husband stored a shotgun in the attic. They called for backup. Ultimately, they decided to walk through the front door.
Appearing on the screen were images of shotgun shell casings inside the home near the door. Asked what they would do next, the team of officers said they would retreat. Apparently, it was the right call.
They watched as an alternate ending to the scenario played on screen: The husband emerged, armed with a shotgun.
Had that happened in real life, the situation likely would have escalated. Someone could have been shot — the man, the officers or both.
De-escalation — a term for tactics police use to try to avoid deadly confrontations — is not a new concept in law enforcement, but it has attracted renewed attention across the nation amid scrutiny of police practices in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis.
Police officials and reformers champion the concept of de-escalation. But what de-escalation means is up for some debate. Police regard the use of less-lethal force, including deploying Tasers, as a form of de-escalation; many reformers don’t.
Usually, officers learn about deescalation as part of training in firearms, defensive tactics and use of force.
Now many law enforcement departments say they are committed to more types of de-escalation training. Friday’s simulated scene was a part of a course that the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office rolled out in January for police officers and sheriff ’s deputies.
The training focuses on ways to slow a situation down so that use of force is less likely.
District Attorney Summer Stephan said she believes it is “the best (training) that exists right now in de-escalation.”
‘It’s not the same’
While police consider tactical communication as one way to de-escalate a situation, they also view use of force and less-lethal weapons, such as Tasers, pepper spray and bean-bag rounds, as options. They tend to view it as a continuum of recourse and outcomes, with deadly force as the worst-case scenario.
“If I walk into a level 10 (situation) and I’m able to turn it down to a level five, that’s de-escalation,” Sheriff’s Department training Sgt. Michael Pepin said recently.
For instance, if deputies were to respond to a report of someone armed with a piece of glass, they wouldn’t be able to go hands-on, Pepin said. One de-escalation alternative: pepper spray, he said.
Some community members disagree.
“The problem is they equate de-escalation with non-lethal,” said Yusef Miller of the Racial Justice Coalition San Diego.
He believes less-lethal options, such as firing pepper balls and unleashing police dogs, actually escalate situations, triggering the flight-or-fight response of the person subjected to the force.
Police officials said force is unavoidable in some situations. When there’s an imminent threat, time is not on their side. In a nod to the scrutiny police face in the age of cellphones and calls for police reform, some officials said it’s much easier to “Monday morning quarterback” than to deal with a threat in the moment.
“It’s very different when it’s a split-second decision and when oftentimes you don’t have the big picture of everything around you,” Chula Vista police Chief Roxana Kennedy said. “You’re focused on whatever the threat is.”
While not all situations lend themselves to de-escalation, most do, said Escondido police Sgt. Mario Sainz, a defensive tactics and deescalation instructor.
Recently, Sainz had to deal with a parolee with a violent past who was threatening to fight officers in a holding cell. When Sainz told the detainee that it looked like he hadn’t eaten in a few days, the man said that was true — he had been doing drugs instead. The sergeant walked over to a vending machine and returned with a granola bar.
“That’s de-escalation,” he said. “It only cost me a buck.”
A default to danger?
De-escalation training — which varies from department to department — begins at the regional academy that trains recruits from agencies across the county. San Diego police Capt. Wes Morris oversees the academy, which covers 928 hours of training in various domains over 25 weeks at Miramar College.
Morris said recruits spend roughly 150 hours — about 16 percent of their time at the academy— on de-escalation as part of training in use of force, arrest and control tactics, tactical communication and so on.
“At the core of everything is de-escalation,” Morris said.
After the academy, training continues within each department. The San Diego Police Department adds two weeks of training, including critical response training, which touches on tactical communication, mental health crises, the use of police dogs and communication with dispatchers.
The latter is key because information relayed from a dispatcher to an officer can aid in de-escalation, Morris said, adding that the more an officer knows, the better he or she is prepared to handle a situation.
Morris said he has noticed a change over time in the way officers respond to calls. Officers now tend to ask dispatchers for more information and formulate a plan of action, even before an encounter.
Michael Jenkins, a University of Scranton associate professor of criminal justice, said de-escalation training is beneficial because it teaches officers to slow down or take a step back in a field in which there is pressure to take immediate control of a situation.
He noted that other professions train their workers in de-escalation techniques without the context of force.
But the difference between the job of police officers and, say, paramedics is that policing can be more dangerous. And Jenkins said officers tend to “default to danger” — a mindset that views the job, and the individuals they encounter — as inherently dangerous.
“That’s going to change ways (officers) respond to a situation,” he said.
A report released last year by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office shed light on the dynamics of shootings by local police officers and sheriff’s deputies. The analysis, which reviewed shootings between 1993 and 2017, found that in 92 percent of cases, the person shot by police was armed; 38 percent of them had a gun.
Among other findings, the study found that most shootings — 64 percent — occurred within five minutes.
The data was taken into account when the District Attorney’s Office developed the new training in conjunction with law enforcement agencies and the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team. The eight-hour class teaches officers and deputies to consider de-escalation tactics before and during encounters, with a focus on interactions with civilians who are experiencing a mental health crisis or drug-induced delirium.
The course teaches officers to consider their tone of voice and emotional intelligence during an encounter, as well as backup resources, such as K-9 or PERT units. They’re also taught to keep a safe distance from a person or withdraw if necessary and possible. Officers are put to the test through three roleplaying scenarios.
“It’s a hybrid class that combines humanity, psychology, medicine, with policing,” Stephan said, adding that the intent is not to focus on use of force.
“I really think this is going to be life-saving (for both officers and the public)”, she said.
About 1,300 officers countywide have gone through the training. The goal is to train all 5,000 or so officers in the county in the next three years.
“Officers will have to apply de-escalation wherever it is practical and safe; as opposed to de-escalation being an option, it will become a requirement,” Stephan said.
In response to calls for reforms in recent months, many law enforcement departments have embraced standalone de-escalation policies, which officials say clearly lay out what is expected of them.
Some community members say that’s not enough.
“The conversation can’t end with a policy on the books,” said Geneviéve Jones-wright, executive director of Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance. “Are we enforcing the policies? Are we doing this with a wink and a nod?”
‘The finish line’
Jones-wright and other community members said mechanisms for accountability and oversight of law enforcement are necessary, as well as deeper changes within police culture that go beyond a strong focus on deescalation.
“If you don’t have the culture-shift conversation, we’re never going to get to the end of the finish line,” said Francine Maxwell, president of the NAACP San Diego branch. She and others pointed to data that suggests racial bias exists in local policing.
Campaign Zero, an advocacy group working to end police violence, released a 54-page study last year that found the county’s two largest law enforcement agencies — the San Diego Police
Department and the San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department — stopped, searched and used force against Black people at higher rates than white people.
That analysis came out about three years after San Diego State University researchers released the results of a study that look at local traffic stops, finding that San Diego police were more likely to search Black and Latino drivers than White drivers.
Law enforcement leaders around the county have largely disagreed with those conclusions. Some have argued that there could be multiple reasons that traffic stop and use-of-force data show disparities among different racial groups. And they say the disparity is not, in and of itself, evidence of racial bias.
When it comes to police reform, Roxana Kennedy — who heads the San Diego County Police Chiefs’ and Sheriff ’s Association in addition to the Chula Vista Police Department — said she is open to make changes.
“I don’t care if we’ve always done it that way,” she said she tells her staff. “That’s not even anything I want to hear about. I want to know that we’re doing it the right way.
“I’m not afraid of reform at all,” she continued, “but I want to make sure it’s the right type of reform.”
The chief said it is up to top brass in departments to promote a culture that fosters de-escalation. “Leadership has a lot to do with everything right now,” she said.
Pepin, of the Sheriff ’s Department, shared a similar opinion. He said it falls on departments to discipline or terminate deputies who use excessive force.
“That’s not what we teach, that’s not what we do, that’s not who we are,” he said.
In May, a sheriff ’s deputy, Aaron Russell, resigned five days after he fatally shot a man who tried to escape from custody of California State Park rangers outside San Diego Central Jail. Russell was charged with murder in July in a case that marked the first time a law enforcement officer was charged in the state under a new law that raised the standard for when law enforcement can use deadly force — from when “reasonable” to “necessary” to prevent imminent and serious injury or death.
Russell has pleaded not guilty.