The public, the press, and the political elites make all sorts of noise about wanting the very best of the best from the police. This legitimate desire—demand, even—is at least in part delegitimized when it comes from the same people who have vilified and eviscerated the police for the past half-decade.
Responding to an informal—and totally unscientific—poll, law enforcement educators and trainers from around the country pointed to shrinking budgets and increasing anti-police sentiment, but paramount in the list of challenges facing them in the past 12 months was officer recruiting and retention.
Over the past year, the news has largely tended to fall into three main categories: budgets/inflation, de-escalation training, and recruiting/retention—the ongoing focus on these three topics is entirely unsurprising.
With no "red wave" of victories among largely pro-police Republican candidates for public office in this year's midterm elections, hopes that the "defund-the-police" movement had finally met its end have been all but washed away.
Photographer Paul Ratje had told an interviewer that he did not witness the agents harming the migrants, but Mayorkas did not contradict Biden’s false narrative as he stood next to him at the White House podium.
The photo first appeared on an Austin police officer's Twitter account and shows Mayor Steve Adler with his head slumped onto his chest, his eyes closed and hands folded on his lap.
"The sheriff is an elected position, just like the supervisors. Just as the sheriff has no business asking for power to fire the supervisors, the reverse is also true," a statement from Villanueva's campaign said.
De-policing in America has led many cities to record-high homicide rates, along with tragic increases in every manner of crime. But perhaps the tide is turning. Perhaps However, the mounting toll of lost lives, lost property, and lost sense of community safety seems to scream for "refunding" the police.
Despite the challenges FTOs face today, Dan Greene—Executive Director of the National Association of Field Training Officers (NAFTO)—remains optimistic about where the profession is going, and how well FTOs are adjusting to the ever-changing landscape.
As horrendous as the effects of de-policing have been—in many places a society looking a lot like a combination of Mad Max and The Purge—those effects may eventually be outweighed in the long run by an increased emphasis on training the next generation of police leaders.
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