Stephan: Many people disgusted by the rampant police brutality are lobbying to cut the budget of the police and sheriff departments. I strongly disagree. In my opinion the current probems all stem from the kind of people hired, and the way they are trained. What I think needs to happen is that there has to be a very different approach to who departments hire, and those hired need to undergo a very different kind of training. Norway would be the model I would look at.
Instructor Javier Sola teaches frisking and handcuffing methods to police recruits at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission facility in Burien, Wash., on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. Washington State requires all new recruits to go through the state-run Basic Law Enforcement Academy, except for those becoming state patrol officers. Credit: Jovelle Tamayo/ TIME
Until Earl McGhee was hired in 2018, Dodge County, Wisconsin, had never had a Black sheriff’s deputy, so when the county sent him to a police academy at a local technical college, McGhee wasn’t all that surprised to be the only Black cadet in the class.
But a few weeks into the course, McGhee was stunned when the instructor used the N-word during a lecture. “Out of nowhere he looks me in the eyes and points his index finger directly at me” while uttering the slur, McGhee wrote in a statement to the school, the Madison Area Technical College, shortly after the Jan. 25, 2019, incident. “The entire class was looking at me.”
The instructor apologized the next day, but only after McGhee spoke up in […]
