In the wake of Michael Brown's death at the hands of a Ferguson police officer and the other police killings in the area since then, clearly anyone can see why the St. Louis area PDs need to do some retraining. All licensed law enforcement officers in Missouri must get about 16 hours per year (48 hours every 3 years) of continuing education.
Although most would totally understand why the powers that be (PTBs) in St. Louis would like to improve their optics, somehow I think sessions on deescalation techniques would be a better choice. Perhaps a couple sessions on interracial interactions would be in order. How about something along the lines of recognizing when your profiling is racist or sexist or in some way biased? How about something about persuasion techniques? or a course that teaches how to recognize a conflict that doesn't need lethal force?
No, there's nothing like that.
Police officers have 3 pages of course selection for October of this year where they
can get instruction in things like how to create web pages (a helpful skill, true), nutrition (also a good idea), how to use Microsoft Word 2007 (a little old since Word 2013 is out irritating the uninitiated), police report writing and guns, guns, guns. There is a class on animal welfare which might help some hapless family keep their dog from being shot, but the one class that caught my eye is:
That clarifies the St. Louis PD's priorities.
I downloaded the flyer and you can see it below.
My first impressions when reading this flyer is how insensitive it is. How tone deaf it is. The author doesn't pay Michael Brown enough respect to name him. Calling the week after the shooting "events that followed were tragic" was off key, too. The "tragic event" was Michael Brown's death, which a lot of people see as murder. The penalty for jaywalking is
not death.
The insensitivity:
WIN WITH THE MEDIA!
practical training, not theoretical
no PowerPoint!
highly entertaining:
You will learn a lot, you'll have fun doing it!
Meet the 900-Pound Gorilla
Feeding the Animals
Managing Media Assault and Battery
This flyer is created by the people in charge of STL PD's continuing education department. They have not learned a damn thing.