Police Training Standards

Will
One issue which has come up in the Police Shooting in Minnesota is that the officer involved privately took several additional training courses with or without the permission of his department from an outfit that is known for teaching police to be paranoid of situations and to react rather than to think. I believe that Police Departments need to have complete control over training. Members of the police departments should not be permitted to take training on their own unless the department they work for and the Massachusetts department of Public Safety has evaluated and approved the course as being of benefit to the goals and standards, we the public, want to instill in our police. This approval process should ensure that the course only covers topics that have been reviewed. It is common sense that government agrees to only permit training of benefit to the job the police need to undertake and in a manner that supports the goals and standards we have decided police need to uphold. Freelance training should be forbidden and grounds for discipline or termination. Police departments need to control, and be responsible for the training their officers receive and held to account and the officer they employ should also be accountable for actions that break training. Poor training, lack of uniform training standards, and the resulting lack of accountability should not be permitted to exist in Massachusetts. On balance I believe we have been lucky because we require police recruits to be somewhat older and have some college education before becoming an officer. So our officers on balance have a more mature outlook. Being proactive to ensure that training does not become an issue needs to be reviewed and having a policy and legal framework in place will ensure that police departments control training and training do does not become an issue or an excuse for police personnel seems like a great idea.