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Comment by mildbow | Hacker News Reader

But here's the thing: imminent threat is exactly what they are allowed to react against now.

I think the issue isn't actual threat, it's perceived threat. And, cops perceive a lot of things as threatening enough to endanger your life upon.

But we know this. How to fix it? I don't think better training is the answer. I don't think cops will allow cams to work. I think incentives need to change.

Here's a fix: give a 40% (or whatever) pay bump to any officer that chooses to work without his gun.

We'll probably start seeing exactly where guns are required vs where they are an emotional crutch.

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Better training is exactly the answer.

Most officers get less than six months of training.

In other countries (with much lower rates of officer involved homicides), officers receive years of training.

It is exactly perceived threat.

But they're so untrained that they perceive many things as threats that are not threats (a man with autism rocking back and forth on the ground while holding a toy firetruck, for example).

I think better training might help, but the problem isn't pre-job training, it's the training they get once they've been on the job.

Surely, most average people's first instinct isn't approach any interaction with hand on weapons? I doubt that's due to lack of training. I think that's due to an entirely wrong sort of implicit and explicit training.

Walking around with a gun + license to kill + fostering sense of us vs them for years will probably teach you that escalation and confrontation is the way to get people to back down. So that's what you do.

By incentivizing them to take a second look at their assumptions, maybe we can make progress?

Better training is exactly the answer.

I'd say just the opposite. Normal people don't react to others this way. The violent hair trigger that cops are set on is a result of their training - they're taught to do this.

The solution is not to train them more. The solution is to change the relationship between police and the public, and train them to respect that.

Better training != more training.

Police are presently trained to shoot first, to pull out their guns first, and perhaps not formally trained for this but they're taught by at least their peers and mentors to be hostile and aggressive first.

Better training changes this. Better training fosters their membership and relationship with the community. Better training gets them to pull out their guns only when they intend to use them, not when they first pull someone over. Better training will get NYC cops to stop shooting passerbies while trying to kill suicidal people (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/nyregion/unarmed-man-is-ch...).

The present training is overly focused on violent intervention. And for the majority of police-civilian interaction no violence is intended by the civilians or needed by the police. But their mindset is entirely predicated on "be violent before they are".

Interesting thought on the pay incentive, but what will happen is eventually a cop will get shot in the line of duty without a gun and the media will have a frenzy and that incentive will get canned.

But let's say you get the pay incentive after you go through a class on deescalation. Make it a 4hr online class :)

Now, the debate can center on training again. But, this time with a focus on deescalation vs how to aim for center of body mass.

Anyway, it's probably a bad idea: I haven't thought about it much. But, I do think we need to start thinking about carrots instead of just sticks.

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