A new book on police reform called ‘Rethinking the Police' offers real solutions pertaining to changing the culture of law enforcement, Jabari Simama writes for Governing in an opinion column. The author, Daniel Reinhardt, spent 24 years as a police officer near Cleveland before earning a Ph.D. and becoming an administrator at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Reinhardt’s analyses blend research and personal experience as a police officer with his theological training in Christianity, Simama wrote. Reinhardt spent four months in a police academy being schooled in defensive tactics, learning laws and standards of conduct, and training in firearms.
The heart of academy training is the “indoctrination” into a particular culture, Reinhardt writes. “You’re not just learning the curriculum, you’re absorbing the officers’ attitudes, vocabulary and mannerisms.” These cultural factors lead many officers into violent encounters with residents, too often ending in preventable fatalities. Reinhardt believes that the "warrior mentality" is embedded in the culture of police training, and it is perpetuated from academy to academy and generation after generation.
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