16 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: JUNE 2017 OPINION/EDITORIAL American Police Beat Chairman & Publisher: Cynthia Brown Chief Executive Officer: Sarah Vallee Editor-in-Chief: Mark Nichols Advertising Sales: Dave Quimby Digital Manager: Jeremy Lange Office Assistant: Brendan O’Brien Designer: Karin Henderson If you’re a drug dealer, pedophile, bank robber or any other serious criminal and you’re having a hard time with the local fuzz, maybe you should think about relocating to Texas. Governor Greg Abbott recently just gave professional bad guys an amazing gift with SB-4. That’s the new state law that not only lets politicians lock up police chiefs, sheriffs and officers who refuse to violate the Constitution and do the feds’ job for free, it also fundamen- tally transforms the nuts and bolts of everyday crime fighting in the Lone Star State. As the immortal Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” It’s not like we don’t know what happens to public safety when policing “strategies” are shaped by politicians and not police profes- sionals like Houston Chief Art Acevedo. Pols did the same thing in Arizona under former-sheriff Joe Arpaio (minus the locking up and fining cops bit.) That turned out to be wildly advantageous to any perpetrator that didn’t fit the description of an undocumented immigrant. Now maybe AG Sessions has managed to clear out all the bad actors at DOJ, but you never know. At any rate, here’s what DOJ determined happened in Maricopa County when Joe Arpaio and state lawmakers went all-in on the busboy roundups: • MCSO has focused its most intensive law enforcement efforts on low-level immigration of- fenses over more serious crime from approximately 2006 to the present. MCSO’s prioritization of immigration enforcement has resulted in a failure to meet its other law enforcement responsibilities, and provides further evidence of the Defendants’ intent to discriminate against Latinos. • Statistical reports show an increase in violent crime in Maricopa County, and of homicides in particular, during the period of enhanced immigra- tion enforcement. • MCSO has failed to adequately respond to reports of sexual violence, including allegations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of girls, thus exposing women and girls, who constitute the major- ity of victims of crimes of sexual violence in Maricopa County, to a disproportionate risk of physical and psychological harm. • Faced with such an increase in crime and the risk of harm presented by unaddressed sexual as- saults, a law enforcement agency ordinarily would be expected to prioritize more serious offenses, such as crimes of sexual violence, over less serious offenses, such as low-level immigration offenses. But these days it’s all about the “feels” as op- posed to the real. As long as the right people feel like their wants and needs are being met, who gives a crap if crime fighting has to take a back seat to politics. Some lady from a white-coat think tank in Manhattan recently opined that “policing is political.” And boy is she ever correct. The more important question, the relevant question, is if that’s good or bad from a public safety perspective if you’re not thinking party and politics above all else. Let’s lock up some cops! APB media corner What’s hot, what’s not and what to avoid entirely if you can Guardians of the Galaxy II is out and it’s outstanding. Some people say there hasn’t been a stronger sequel since The Empire Strikes Back. We give GOG2 four stars. Don’t forget the extra scenes during credits! Better Call Saul season 3 is out and it’s still great. Bob Odenkirk continues to do great work, but if you haven’t seen the show, it’s the character actor Jonathan Banks playing ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut that’s the show-stealer. Also featured on Season 3 is the always excellent Giancarlo Esposito. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but a really solid series. We give BCS Season 3 three stars. Chicago Justice is unwatchably bad (just our opinion). Makes Law and Order look like On the Waterfront. We give CJ half a star – for trying. If you read American Police Beat, you’ll hear a lot of police officers and police association officials saying that de-escalation training is nothing new and has been part and parcel of police training for decades. But others say it’s not that de-escalation hasn’t taken place in the past that’s such a huge and obvious problem. The problem is that there’s so little of it when police officers across the nation are clamoring for the tools they need to defuse tense situa- tions, talk down suicidal individuals and learn how to slow things down before they spiral out of control. According to recent research, Georgia is one of the states where there’s little or no de- escalation training. In fact, 385 of the 582 departments surveyed had fewer than one hour of such training per officer over the past five years. Georgia’s got lots of company. There are 34 states that do not require de-escalation training for all officers, according to recent reports. Forward thinking agencies and leaders have gotten results fast in terms of metrics when they implement at least some minimal, bare bones de-escalation training. For instance, the Dallas Police Department saw an 18 percent drop in use of force the year after it instituted de-escalation training. Las Vegas, which has also provided cops with bet- ter training, has reported a reduction in use of force and officer-involved shootings, which fell by more than half between 2012 and 2016. Many cops are fond of making the point that not every situation can be defused and that more nuanced training that goes beyond the running and gunning stuff does not work in every situation. But that’s a little bit like saying EMTs don’t need to learn CPR because they have a defibril- lator. It’s not that de-escalation training will solve all your problems. But it will damn sure help in the circumstances where it’s called for. “The problem is, with 18,000 police depart- ments in the U.S., you don’t have any kind of uniform standards,” said Chuck Wexler, execu- tive director of the Police Executive Research Forum.“We never blame individual police officers for actions that they take, because when we look at the training that they receive, they’re simply doing what their training told them.” And when all you have is a hammer, every- thing tends to look like a nail. More tools, more solutions