I have signed a petition in the state of Washington called De-Escalate Washington--Building Bridges Between Community and Police. With a sufficient number of signatures having been gathered, the petition was presented at the state capitol in Olympia last week.
Police shootings are often sticky wickets. In each individual case that results in controversy, there are many sensible things that can be said by people defending the actions of law enforcement, just as there are sensible things said by those who feel LE might have acted hastily.
There have been a couple of citizen deaths in my community in the past couple of years at the hands of law enforcement. One officer was even fired as a result, which doesn't happen all that often. Within myself, I seriously questioned both deaths, yet I don't personally know what it would feel like to be the officer, facing critical unknowns.
I'm not sure how great this proposed De-Escalate law would or wouldn't be in practice...maybe it should read differently or who knows what. But I am behind it because de-escalate is such a good word. Let's start there. Policing is an art as well as a science. I would imagine that sometimes instinct can keep a professional and other innocents just as alive as following a checklist can.
More de-escalation training can't hurt, assuming it is good quality instruction. My personal opinion is that there are too dang many guns in the U.S., and of course too many of high power, so given the prevailing climate, LE needs all the weapons it can get--some of those being psychological, sociological, and cultural.
Besides good marksmanship, which is important to an officer, I would like to see them practice (and practice some more) the art of sizing up a situation to see if withholding fire power for a second or two might yield up useful information that could save a civilian life and spare the officer possible future anguish over what went down on a certain day or night.
http://www.deescalatewa.org/
