Police de-escalation saves lives
A troubled person seeking suicide by cop; a hostage situation; someone threatening to harm himself or others. Such situations and more play out during the daily shifts of law enforcement officers.
The Norwich and Stonington police departments are now employing techniques to get better endings when police face outof-control people. Everyone involved — officers, the person acting out and anyone nearby — should have better odds of staying unharmed with de-escalation methods in use by the two departments.
The Day credits the leadership of the departments for getting their officers training that addresses the types of police-civilian confrontations that have led to deaths and protests across the country. In doing so they are following the recommendation of the International Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police Officers to revise traditional use of force policies. The impetus came from the U.S. Department of Justice 21st Century Policing Initiative of 2015.
Just last week, Stonington police used crisis intervention techniques to subdue a Waterford man without any injuries after the man allegedly threatened his girlfriend and told officers to shoot him. Norwich officers have been taking training from three of their own who were sent by Chief Patrick Daley to learn de-escalation techniques and bring them back to fellow officers.
Guiding Norwich police is a revised statement of purpose in the departmental policy on use of force that includes the phrase “sanctity of life.” It implicitly addresses the ongoing national back-andforth of “Black Lives Matter,” “Blue Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter.” “The lives of police officers and the lives of the people we serve are fundamentally important in the Norwich Police Department’s mission to serve the public and our community,” it states.
Lives will surely be saved, and that matters to all of us. Other departments should follow suit.
Just last week, Stonington police used crisis intervention techniques to subdue a Waterford man without any injuries after the man allegedly threatened his girlfriend and told officers to shoot him. Norwich officers have been taking training from three of their own who were sent by Chief Patrick Daley to learn de-escalation techniques and bring them back to fellow officers.