Why is de-escalation training controversial?

It requires officers to abandon a warrior mindset that equates citizens with enemy soldiers and crime-heavy neighborhoods with battlefields. Police training often resembles military boot camp, and police officials commonly refer to officers as “troops.” The paramilitary approach was reinforced by a Defense Department program that sent surplus equipment—including grenade launchers and mine-resistant vehicles—to local law-enforcement agencies. Jeronimo Yanez, the Minneapolis cop who killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in 2016, had previously attended a lethal-force class called “The Bulletproof Warrior.” When the Los Angeles police chief announced a new award in 2015 for officers who resolved dangerous confrontations peacefully, the police union objected, saying the award valued the lives of suspects over officers.

Many still need to be persuaded that de-escalation won’t endanger their lives. The opposite is generally true, because police are safer when there are fewer violent confrontations: After Louisville instituted de-escalation training, officer injuries dropped 36 percent. “I was trained to fight the war on crime,” says former Seattle police chief Kathleen O’Toole. “We were measured by the number of arrests. Over time, I realized policing went well beyond that.” A model case of de-escalation played out in April, when San Francisco police responded to an auto burglary and found a Black suspect, Marcel King, sitting in a van with a machete in hand. Rather than rushing him with guns drawn, a crisis-negotiation team spent three hours talking King into exiting the van without his machete and surrendering. “By de-escalating the situation, we got a peaceful resolution,” Lt. Michael Nevin said. “No-news incidents are the great-news incidents.”