Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams says she is "unafraid" of new data that showed that officer-involved shootings in her department more than doubled in 2018 over the previous year. She said she wants her department to learn from findings of a study she commissioned to examine the details of the rise in shootings among her officers.
According to CBS News, a new report by the National Police Foundation says, "there is no one issue" that caused the spike in officer-involved shootings in Phoenix, but notes "assaults on officers were higher than past years" and more of the subjects involved were armed.
Chief Williams says that the agency will be making changes to its training. Among those changes are the addition of implicit bias courses and de-escalation training scenarios at the academy level.
The National Police Foundation report notes Phoenix police have already made significant changes to their training programs. But there is no evidence yet that implicit bias training or de-escalation training will result in fewer officer-involved shootings.
