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Samantha Simon explains how police training creates a context in which patterns of police violence persist and implores readers to re-envision the future of policing in the United States.

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Samantha Simon explains how police training creates a context in which patterns of police violence persist and implores readers to re-envision the future of policing in the United States.

Speaker notes a correction to her response: she collected data in 2018, which was four years – rather than 2 – after the uprisings in Ferguson, MO

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 1, 2024

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The speaker discusses their research on civilian gun ownership and policing conducted during graduate school. Working with a professor on ethnographic research in Texas, they became interested in the training of police officers and how it compared to civilian gun training. The motivation for this study was influenced by experiences with gun ownership and the context of police violence, particularly following events in Ferguson.

The speaker spent a year researching at various police training academies, observing and participating in the training processes. They found that training emphasized a culture that accepts and even encourages using violence, with cadets being punished for insufficient aggression but not for excessive force. This video video dynamic aimed to ensure officers prioritize their safety over de-escalating situations with civilians.

The speaker argues against the "bad apple" theory of police violence, suggesting that systemic issues within police training and hiring contribute to patterns of violence and racial inequality. The frameworks through which candidates are evaluated create a culture where aggression is normalized, and there is little discourse on the historical context of policing or racial disparities in police actions.

Despite some departments implementing de-escalation training, the focus remained on officer safety, and topics like racial inequality were neglected. The speaker expresses skepticism about the potential for reform within policing, advocating for alternative approaches, like reducing civilian gun ownership and exploring abolitionist perspectives, as potential pathways forward. They hope the book contextualizes the issues of police violence and emphasizes the need to address organizational structures rather than just individual behaviors within police departments.

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I was in graduate school when I started

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the research for this project.

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Um, and I was working with a professor at the time

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who was doing a project about civilian gun

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ownership, in Texas.

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So we were doing ethnographic research,

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which means we were participating, of course,

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in the research,

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or in, in, the social phenomena

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that we were interested in understanding.

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So we were shooting guns, in fields in Texas.

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Lots of kind of interesting experiences there.

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Um, but what I found from that research was that a lot

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of the instructors for those, courses,

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for that training were police officers themselves.

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And in those interviews with them, I started

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to get really curious about, you know,

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how this training was different

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or similar to what officers went through.

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Um, this was 2018, so this was two years

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after, you know, Ferguson uprisings in Ferguson.

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So I also, you know, wanted to know

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what was going on with policing.

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Why were we seeing all of these, you know,

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this persistent trend in policing

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where officers were engaging in violence,

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disproportionately against certain racial communities in

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particular against black communities.

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Um, so all of that really motivated the study, some

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of my experiences with civilian gun ownership, that,

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that exposure to policing and to police officers,

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and also just, you know, the historical moment

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that I was in, in selecting a study, ethnographic work

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or ethnographic methods, generally describes a method

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where the researcher tries to embed themselves as much

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as possible in whatever world they're, they're interested in

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or social phenomena that they're wanting to explain.

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Um, so for this particular book, what I ended up doing

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was going to four different,

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or spending time at four different police training

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academies, in one southern state.

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I don't name the state, in my work

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to maintain anonymity.

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Um, but what that meant, my, my level of embeddedness,

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differed between these academies.

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So at some of them, I was able

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to participate fully in all of the training.

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So that meant I was going on, pretty long runs,

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in formation.

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I was, you know, shooting along with the, the cadets.

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I was doing physical fitness training.

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I was doing tactical training, you know,

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in their defensive tactics gym,

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at other academies I was just allowed to observe.

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So I was watching, the cadets go through all

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of this training and really spending more time

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with the instructors rather than, than the cadets.

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Uh, but that really gave me a,

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a very hands-on very visceral sense of

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what this training is like,

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what it feels like physically

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and how some of these transformations happen at the academy.

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I certainly understand why bad apple arguments are

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appealing, particularly in this case,

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but in, in many different contexts.

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Um, it would be convenient if there were individual,

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you know, violent, racist officers,

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because then the, the solution would be much easier.

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We could simply detect, these officers,

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from the outset, try to not, try

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to exclude them from entering the institution from

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from the beginning.

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Um, but if we fail to do that, we could, you know,

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create detection systems

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and remove them from the institution at some point.

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Um, so that's of course a very appealing explanation

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for this, you know, very persistent pattern of inequality

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that we see in policing.

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Um, unfortunately, I, I don't think that's the case.

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Um, I don't think that this is simply a bad apple issue.

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Uh, from my year, you know,

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that I spent at these training academies.

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What I really saw was that this was a much more systemic,

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a much more, to use the word again, embedded problem,

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within these, organizations,

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these training academies, really

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to get into the institution, the way

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that the hiring is structured, the way

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that the training plays out,

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and really in order to not wash out

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and to make it to your, to the graduation itself, these,

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applicants and then cadets really needed to align themselves

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with an institutional worldview

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and approach to policing that really emphasized,

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a competence in and also a willingness

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to engage in violence.

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So at the hiring stage, you know, the,

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the hiring process at these police departments

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are, is very extensive.

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So it can take anywhere from three months to

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over a year really to get hired.

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Um, and what I argue in this book is that the,

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essentially the blueprint of what these, academies

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or these departments are looking for in new cadets,

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really creates the perfect storm

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for who's coming into the institution.

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So some of these things seem on the surface, like, you know,

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objectively positive traits that someone might have,

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someone who's disciplined, someone who's honest, someone

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who who's responsible.

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Um, these are all, you know, coded

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as generally positive things.

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What this also means, though, on the flip side, is

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that the folks who are coming in to these departments

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who are being hired, have, you know, a real respect for

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and tendency towards hierarchical structures,

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they are willing to kind of do whatever it takes physically,

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and that can mean, you know, enduring a lot

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of pain for the institution.

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So they're really already from the outset, set up to

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demonstrate their commitment physically, to the,

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the department itself,

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and to be, generally protective of the department.

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Um, and in the hiring process, they,

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they ask each applicant whether

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or not, at, at these departments anyway, whether

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or not they had been in a fight before.

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Um, and if so, to kind of explain the context of that.

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And of course, that was very confusing to me initially,

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as to what the correct answer to

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that kind of a question would be.

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Uh, but it became really clear that the correct answer was

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that they had been in a fight,

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they just didn't necessarily initiate the fight.

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So these departments really wanted to know,

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and they were, there was a lot of anxiety expressed about

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this, both in the hiring units

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and at the academies, that it was very important

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that someone could demonstrate

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that they would stand their ground in a fight,

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and engage in the violence,

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reciprocate in the violence that was brought to them.

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Um, and then at the academy, on the academy side, you know,

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some of the things that I saw, for example, were that,

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you know, the instructors there would get

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absolutely infuriated.

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I mean, truly irate.

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If the cadets did not use enough force in a scenario,

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they would be, you know, disciplined for that.

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They would be punished for that, physically, like

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through running pushups, things like that, that were,

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you know, eventually painful.

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Um, but on the flip side, you know, they really did not

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get punished in that same way if they used too much

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force in a scenario.

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Um, so again, sort of the take home messaging

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to cadets about the use of force, the use

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of violence in the academy was that if you're going

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to make a mistake, it ought to be the one

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where you overreact or use too much force.

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Um, and in doing that, you are prioritizing always,

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always officer safety.

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There were certainly cadets

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or rather applicants at that point in time that were,

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you know, removed from the applicant pool

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because they had a history of sort of

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what was considered egregious violence.

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Um, so for example, there was one applicant I remember,

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who was removed from the applicant pool,

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because, in doing the background investigation

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that is part of this hiring process,

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the background investigator who's, you know,

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a police officer or hiring officer, spoke

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to their ex-girlfriend and the ex-girlfriend recounted times

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where this applicant had threatened to kill her

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and had been, you know, abusive.

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So when that kind of thing comes out,

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in the hiring process and the background investigations,

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certainly it's looked, you know, it's frowned upon

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and is taken seriously.

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Um, in the academy setting, there are certainly a lot

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of mistakes that are made.

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Um, in the academy setting.

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These cadets are learning, about their authority

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to use force, and they're learning it in a hands-on way

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through scenario-based training.

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Um, and there were certainly situations where cadets,

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overreacted.

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There was, you know, one, scenario

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that the instructors talked about a lot,

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that I think they had removed at that point in time,

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but had historically used in their academy where,

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the cadet was, conducting just a routine traffic stop,

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and the driver in the driver's seat would, you know, kind

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of whip their hand out of the window

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with their driver's license.

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Um, and most cadets would end up shooting this person,

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based on the fact that they had been going through months

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of tactical training that really does, you know,

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train your body to react in a certain way

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where if someone has their hands in their pockets,

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they won't remove them If someone,

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Um, engages in what they talk about as furtive movements.

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So if I'm avoiding your glance, if I'm looking away,

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if I'm walking away, if I'm moving my hands around quickly,

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if I'm swinging my arms around, I mean,

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there's all these physical markers that they learn about,

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that would indicate that their life is,

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is potentially end danger

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and they need to react accordingly.

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Um, so there were certainly situations again where,

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where cadets used too much force,

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but there was a lot of forgiveness there.

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Um, on the side of the instructors, at least from

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what I saw, nothing, is the short answer.

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Yeah, I mean, there, there's no, at, at least at the time

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that I was doing this research, there was really no,

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course or part of the training that discussed the history

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of policing in the United States.

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Um, there was almost no conversation about,

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the existence even of patterns

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of racial inequality in police actions.

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Um, racial discrimination or racial inequity

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and police action was not a topic that was taken seriously,

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at all in the, training that I witnessed.

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Uh, there, there was deescalation,

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there was a deescalation class at the time.

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This was not state mandated at the time.

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This was something that the municipal departments

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that I studied opted to, to include in their training.

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Um, but you know, I write about this in the book.

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The, the, the deescalation training that was included at,

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at these training academies really emphasized,

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again, officer safety.

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So deescalation was really conceptualized as a way

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of approaching a civilian politely, of,

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you know, discussing

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with them in an even tone what's going on.

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Uh, but again and again in these deescalation classes,

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the instructors emphasized

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that at no time should they prioritize deescalation

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over officer safety.

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Um, you know, there were things that,

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the training officers would say.

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So something along the lines of, you know, don't make me go

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to a funeral because an, an officer funeral

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because you were using your words when you shouldn't have.

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Um, things like that. And they were, again,

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as they did throughout the academy, showing videos

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of officers being really brutally beaten

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or killed, on duty as again,

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sort of warnings that, you know, deescalation should be used

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with the utmost caution.

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You know, again, officer safety should be the number one

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priority at all times, for, you know, these new cadets.

256
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So yeah, there really was no acknowledgement of the origins

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of policing nor really of the current state of, of policing.

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Yeah, I think that these organizations are, are really

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quite adaptable.

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Um, and by that I mean that they will continue to do

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what they're doing, while incorporating potential sort

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of window dressings or adaptations.

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I mean, again, these departments had deescalation training,

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and you could, you could perceive that as like a pretty,

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progressive thing that they had opted to do

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that without being mandated by the state.

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Um, but there really is very little oversight on

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what is included in this training.

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Um, there are, you know, state bodies

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that approve curriculums,

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but it, there's not a ton

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of oversight on what's then said in the class

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by any particular instructor.

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Just sort of mention I am unfortunately not

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incredibly optimistic.

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Um, I wish I were, you know,

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in at least the United States context,

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we have been having a lot

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of these conversations about the police, about patterns

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of inequality, about, misconduct, about brutality,

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you know, for about a hundred years really,

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presidents have, you know, put together commissions,

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since the 1930s, the Wickham Commission,

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the Kerner Commission, most recently, you know,

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Obama's task force on 21st century policing.

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And when you look at the, findings from these reports,

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the recommendations that these commissions make over the

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course of a hundred years, they look pretty

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similar, honestly.

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You know, they're talking about the qualifications

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for officers, the training for officers, the systems

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of accountability that we might have for police departments.

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Um, and this isn't to say that policing hasn't changed at

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all over the last 100 years.

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It certainly has. Um, but these problems are quite enduring.

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And for that reason, I'm not,

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incredibly optimistic about reform as a way forward.

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Uh, in the book, I talk about, you know,

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civilian gun ownership, ba basically gun control

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as being a potential way forward.

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I'm similarly pessimistic about in the US context that,

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you know, being, a viable way forward.

303
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However, the police are not wrong here.

304
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Um, in the US when they are fearful of people with guns.

305
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Um, there are a lot of people here with guns.

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We have, you know, kind of an astronomical rate

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of civilian gun ownership here.

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Um, so I do think that there is potential,

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if the public was less armed,

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that potentially the police would feel less afraid,

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and less reactive.

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The other pathway forward is engaging in

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abolitionist perspectives.

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Um, so I, you know, I

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provided an, a brief overview of some

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of these perspectives in the book.

317
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Um, I'm not, you know, I don't think

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that these perspectives are naive or idealistic.

319
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Um, I think that they really do provide a real way

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of thinking about a future

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where we are not reliant on state law, like the,

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like law enforcement

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or the state, in being the,

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problem solver for how we, how we address harm.

325
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I hope they don't come away too pessimistic.

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Although, you know, given the answer I just gave, I don't,

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I wouldn't blame them if, if they did.

328
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What I hope is that this book contextualizes some

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of the patterns

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that we see covered in, you know, news reports.

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Um, and

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I, I hope that it sort of disuses readers of some

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of these really dominant narratives about police violence.

334
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Um, of course I didn't, this book doesn't cover

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what happens on patrol, right?

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This is about what happens before patrol.

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But I do think it really emphasizes

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that this is an organizational level problem.

339
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Um, this isn't an individual officer issue.

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Uh, and that if we want to address police violence, curb it,

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if we want to have an impact on the racial inequality

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that happens in, policing in police action, then we have

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to take very seriously this organizational lens

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to the problem.

Quick Answers

Exploring Police Training and Gun Ownership

00:00:00 - I was in graduate school when I started the research for this project. and I was working with a professor at the time who was doing a project about civilian gun ownership, in Texas. So we were doing ethnographic research, which means we were participating, of course, in the research, or in, in, the social phenomena that we were interested in understanding. So we were shooting guns, in fields in Texas. Lots of kind of interesting experiences there.
00:00:33 - of the instructors for those, courses, for that training were police officers themselves. And in those interviews with them, I started to get really curious about, you know, how this training was different or similar to what officers went through. this was 2018, so this was two years after, you know, Ferguson uprisings in Ferguson.
00:01:07 - what was going on with policing. Why were we seeing all of these, you know, this persistent trend in policing where officers were engaging in violence, disproportionately against certain racial communities in particular against black communities. so all of that really motivated the study, some of my experiences with civilian gun ownership, that, that exposure to policing and to police officers, and also just, you know, the historical moment that I was in, in selecting a study, ethnographic work
00:01:41 - where the researcher tries to embed themselves as much as possible in whatever world they're, they're interested in or social phenomena that they're wanting to explain. so for this particular book, what I ended up doing was going to four different, or spending time at four different police training academies, in one southern state. I don't name the state, in my work to maintain anonymity. but what that meant, my, my level of embeddedness, differed between these academies.
00:02:12 - to participate fully in all of the training. So that meant I was going on, pretty long runs, in formation. I was, you know, shooting along with the, the cadets. I was doing physical fitness training. I was doing tactical training, you know, in their defensive tactics gym, at other academies I was just allowed to observe. So I was watching, the cadets go through all of this training and really spending more time with the instructors rather than, than the cadets. but that really gave me a, a very hands-on very visceral sense of
00:02:45 - what it feels like physically and how some of these transformations happen at the academy. I certainly understand why bad apple arguments are appealing, particularly in this case, but in, in many different contexts. it would be convenient if there were individual, you know, violent, racist officers, because then the, the solution would be much easier. We could simply detect, these officers, from the outset, try to not, try

Systemic Issues in Police Training and Hiring

00:03:17 - from the beginning. but if we fail to do that, we could, you know, create detection systems and remove them from the institution at some point. so that's of course a very appealing explanation for this, you know, very persistent pattern of inequality that we see in policing. unfortunately, I, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that this is simply a bad apple issue. from my year, you know, that I spent at these training academies. What I really saw was that this was a much more systemic,
00:03:50 - within these, organizations, these training academies, really to get into the institution, the way that the hiring is structured, the way that the training plays out, and really in order to not wash out and to make it to your, to the graduation itself, these, applicants and then cadets really needed to align themselves with an institutional worldview and approach to policing that really emphasized, a competence in and also a willingness
00:04:20 - So at the hiring stage, you know, the, the hiring process at these police departments are, is very extensive. So it can take anywhere from three months to over a year really to get hired. and what I argue in this book is that the, essentially the blueprint of what these, academies or these departments are looking for in new cadets, really creates the perfect storm for who's coming into the institution.
00:04:52 - objectively positive traits that someone might have, someone who's disciplined, someone who's honest, someone who who's responsible. these are all, you know, coded as generally positive things. What this also means, though, on the flip side, is that the folks who are coming in to these departments who are being hired, have, you know, a real respect for and tendency towards hierarchical structures, they are willing to kind of do whatever it takes physically, and that can mean, you know, enduring a lot
00:05:22 - So they're really already from the outset, set up to demonstrate their commitment physically, to the, the department itself, and to be, generally protective of the department. and in the hiring process, they, they ask each applicant whether or not, at, at these departments anyway, whether or not they had been in a fight before. and if so, to kind of explain the context of that. And of course, that was very confusing to me initially, as to what the correct answer to
00:05:53 - but it became really clear that the correct answer was that they had been in a fight, they just didn't necessarily initiate the fight. So these departments really wanted to know, and they were, there was a lot of anxiety expressed about this, both in the hiring units and at the academies, that it was very important that someone could demonstrate that they would stand their ground in a fight, and engage in the violence, reciprocate in the violence that was brought to them. and then at the academy, on the academy side, you know,

Police Training: Force Use and Consequences

00:06:26 - you know, the instructors there would get absolutely infuriated. I mean, truly irate. If the cadets did not use enough force in a scenario, they would be, you know, disciplined for that. They would be punished for that, physically, like through running pushups, things like that, that were, you know, eventually painful. but on the flip side, you know, they really did not get punished in that same way if they used too much force in a scenario.
00:06:57 - to cadets about the use of force, the use of violence in the academy was that if you're going to make a mistake, it ought to be the one where you overreact or use too much force. and in doing that, you are prioritizing always, always officer safety. There were certainly cadets or rather applicants at that point in time that were, you know, removed from the applicant pool because they had a history of sort of what was considered egregious violence.
00:07:27 - who was removed from the applicant pool, because, in doing the background investigation that is part of this hiring process, the background investigator who's, you know, a police officer or hiring officer, spoke to their ex-girlfriend and the ex-girlfriend recounted times where this applicant had threatened to kill her and had been, you know, abusive. So when that kind of thing comes out, in the hiring process and the background investigations, certainly it's looked, you know, it's frowned upon
00:07:57 - in the academy setting, there are certainly a lot of mistakes that are made. in the academy setting. These cadets are learning, about their authority to use force, and they're learning it in a hands-on way through scenario-based training. and there were certainly situations where cadets, overreacted. There was, you know, one, scenario that the instructors talked about a lot, that I think they had removed at that point in time, but had historically used in their academy where,
00:08:31 - and the driver in the driver's seat would, you know, kind of whip their hand out of the window with their driver's license. and most cadets would end up shooting this person, based on the fact that they had been going through months of tactical training that really does, you know, train your body to react in a certain way where if someone has their hands in their pockets, they won't remove them If someone, engages in what they talk about as furtive movements.
00:09:00 - if I'm walking away, if I'm moving my hands around quickly, if I'm swinging my arms around, I mean, there's all these physical markers that they learn about, that would indicate that their life is, is potentially end danger and they need to react accordingly. so there were certainly situations again where, where cadets used too much force, but there was a lot of forgiveness there. on the side of the instructors, at least from what I saw, nothing, is the short answer. Yeah, I mean, there, there's no, at, at least at the time

Training Gaps in Police History and Inequality

00:09:34 - course or part of the training that discussed the history of policing in the United States. there was almost no conversation about, the existence even of patterns of racial inequality in police actions. racial discrimination or racial inequity and police action was not a topic that was taken seriously, at all in the, training that I witnessed.
00:10:03 - there was a deescalation class at the time. This was not state mandated at the time. This was something that the municipal departments that I studied opted to, to include in their training. but you know, I write about this in the book. The, the, the deescalation training that was included at, at these training academies really emphasized, again, officer safety. So deescalation was really conceptualized as a way of approaching a civilian politely, of, you know, discussing
00:10:35 - but again and again in these deescalation classes, the instructors emphasized that at no time should they prioritize deescalation over officer safety. you know, there were things that, the training officers would say. So something along the lines of, you know, don't make me go to a funeral because an, an officer funeral because you were using your words when you shouldn't have. things like that. And they were, again, as they did throughout the academy, showing videos of officers being really brutally beaten
00:11:10 - sort of warnings that, you know, deescalation should be used with the utmost caution. You know, again, officer safety should be the number one priority at all times, for, you know, these new cadets. So yeah, there really was no acknowledgement of the origins of policing nor really of the current state of, of policing. Yeah, I think that these organizations are, are really quite adaptable.
00:11:38 - what they're doing, while incorporating potential sort of window dressings or adaptations. I mean, again, these departments had deescalation training, and you could, you could perceive that as like a pretty, progressive thing that they had opted to do that without being mandated by the state. but there really is very little oversight on what is included in this training. there are, you know, state bodies that approve curriculums,
00:12:08 - of oversight on what's then said in the class by any particular instructor. Just sort of mention I am unfortunately not incredibly optimistic. I wish I were, you know, in at least the United States context, we have been having a lot of these conversations about the police, about patterns of inequality, about, misconduct, about brutality, you know, for about a hundred years really, presidents have, you know, put together commissions,

Reforming Policing: Systemic Challenges and Perspectives

00:12:40 - the Kerner Commission, most recently, you know, Obama's task force on 21st century policing. And when you look at the, findings from these reports, the recommendations that these commissions make over the course of a hundred years, they look pretty similar, honestly. You know, they're talking about the qualifications for officers, the training for officers, the systems of accountability that we might have for police departments. and this isn't to say that policing hasn't changed at all over the last 100 years.
00:13:14 - And for that reason, I'm not, incredibly optimistic about reform as a way forward. in the book, I talk about, you know, civilian gun ownership, ba basically gun control as being a potential way forward. I'm similarly pessimistic about in the US context that, you know, being, a viable way forward. However, the police are not wrong here. in the US when they are fearful of people with guns.
00:13:44 - We have, you know, kind of an astronomical rate of civilian gun ownership here. so I do think that there is potential, if the public was less armed, that potentially the police would feel less afraid, and less reactive. The other pathway forward is engaging in abolitionist perspectives. so I, you know, I provided an, a brief overview of some of these perspectives in the book. I'm not, you know, I don't think
00:14:15 - I think that they really do provide a real way of thinking about a future where we are not reliant on state law, like the, like law enforcement or the state, in being the, problem solver for how we, how we address harm. I hope they don't come away too pessimistic. Although, you know, given the answer I just gave, I don't, I wouldn't blame them if, if they did. What I hope is that this book contextualizes some
00:14:45 - that we see covered in, you know, news reports. and I, I hope that it sort of disuses readers of some of these really dominant narratives about police violence. of course I didn't, this book doesn't cover what happens on patrol, right? This is about what happens before patrol. But I do think it really emphasizes that this is an organizational level problem. this isn't an individual officer issue.
00:15:30 - if we want to have an impact on the racial inequality that happens in, policing in police action, then we have to take very seriously this organizational lens to the problem.

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