What I Learned at the Police Academy

Sonya Massey was holding a pot of water in her own kitchen when an Illinois sheriff’s deputy, Sean Grayson, threatened to “shoot” her in the “f***ing face.” Body camera footage from that night shows how quickly an interaction with a police officer can turn deadly: Within minutes, Massey’s call turned into a murder scene. Throughout the interaction, Massey followed Grayson’s orders. Despite her compliance, Grayson pulled out his gun, pointed it at her, and shot her three times. At age 36, Sonya Massey became another black American woman needlessly killed by police. (Grayson has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges.)

Every time the name of a new victim of police violence enters the public lexicon—Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and now Sonya Massey—questions arise about the officer’s response. How could this officer mistake a cellphone for a gun? Why did this officer shoot someone who was running away? Did this officer really have to shoot so many times? One answer to all of these questions is that officers are qualified to see the world as threatening and to react accordingly.

Their training takes place primarily at a police academy, where cadets spend months learning how to be a police officer. I took this training at four large municipal police departments to better understand the types of skills cadets learn, how they are evaluated, and why some cadets graduate while others fail. (As part of my agreement with the departments and my university’s institutional review board, I cannot identify the specific departments.) It was 2018, just four years after the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, that followed the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, and two years before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. Like so many others around the world, I wanted to know why the names and stories of African Americans killed by police kept pouring in, and I thought finding out who was allowed to be a police officer and how they were trained to do their jobs might help answer that question.

(Sue Rahr: The Myth That Fuels America’s Violent Police Culture)

I myself observed and participated in the training at the academy, which meant that, alongside the cadets, I rose early, attended hours of intensive classes, ran miles in formation, learned basic drill commands, did push-ups, lifted weights, fired rifles, and learned how to punch, kick, use pressure points, apply handcuffs, and take someone to the ground. (All the academies knew I was there as a researcher, and I identified myself as such when meeting with cadets and officers.) I had a front-row seat to the training at the academy, and what I saw was alarming. As I later wrote in my book, Before the badgeViolence was everywhere I looked. As a result, I found that many of those who had come into the institution, through training, and who were sent out on patrol were competent and willing to use violence.

Of course, my study of police training practices was not exhaustive. It is certainly possible – and I hope so – that some academies do things differently. And many of the officers and trainees I met aspired to join police departments because they wanted to help the most vulnerable and serve others. But in my experience, the emphasis on violence was very strong in the training, over and over again.

To be admitted to the academy, candidates had to demonstrate their willingness to use violence by telling hiring managers about physical altercations they had had in the past. I observed parts of the hiring process in all four departments and watched the full application and interview in two departments. In both departments, the interview included a question explicitly asking whether the candidate had ever been involved in a physical confrontation and, if so, to describe what happened. The preferred response to this question was Yes, I was involved in a fight, but I didn’t start it.. When candidates responded that they had no experience fighting, hiring managers expressed intense anxiety and doubts about their suitability for the job. In one interview, for example, after a 43-year-old white candidate said he had never been in a fight, the sergeant told her colleagues that she thought he would “withdraw and withdraw” if a fight came up, adding, “He’s going to have to get angry.”

Once at the academy, cadets were bombarded with warnings about the dangers they would face on the job. Instructors insisted that the police were at war, making police work more dangerous than ever. Although empirical evidence shows that police work has become safer over time, academy instructors repeated these warnings, often in graphic form, showing graphic and shocking videos of officers being brutally beaten or killed. On several occasions, instructors designed morbid exercises that required cadets to imagine their own violent deaths. On their very first day at one academy, a commander encouraged cadets to study the Wall of Honor in the main hallway of the academy building, which hung portraits of every officer in the department who had died in the line of duty, along with a description of how they had died. Reading their stories, he explained, “will keep you alive.” At another academy, after a tactical exercise, instructors asked any cadet who had lost his weapon in the fight to write his own obituary. “For everyone who had their weapon taken away,” the instructor explained, “you have to write your own obituary … write about everyone you leave behind.” A war was underway, the cadets learned, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Instructors stressed that surviving this war depended on cadets adopting a warrior mentality, which required hypervigilance, heightened suspicion of others, and a willingness to do whatever it took to get home at the end of each shift. Equally important was knowing how to identify one’s enemy: the “bad guys,” described as ruthless, malicious, immoral, and unpredictable. Although ostensibly race-neutral, the concept of “bad guys” was infused with language that invoked race. Instructors told cadets that while they were never to racially profile, they were absolutely required to profile “criminality,” discerned by clothing, cars, mannerisms, gait, and neighborhood. “We don’t racially profile,” one instructor explained during the multiculturalism course, but they TO DO Racial profiling is based on “body language, appearance, and mannerisms.” “If you can’t profile someone who wants to hurt you or kill you,” he explained, “that’s a problem.” Racial profiling, he continued, is a form of discrimination, and the police “don’t do that.” Officers in their department don’t profile based on “skin color, gender, or language,” he said, “but if (someone looks) like a burglar, then that’s good profiling.” These discursive gymnastics allowed instructors to officially condemn racial profiling while simultaneously encouraging it under a different name.

(Excerpt from the July/August 2021 issue: The authoritarian instincts of police unions)

Once they knew who to fear, cadets trained to respond to those threats, spending hundreds of hours practicing techniques designed to control, incapacitate, injure, and kill others. These skills were not necessarily innate, and learning to use appropriate force took practice. Cadets sometimes used too much force, and sometimes not enough. These two mistakes, however, were handled very differently in the academy setting, where instructors calmly acknowledged when cadets used too much force but became enraged when they used too little. During one tactical exercise at one academy, for example, when several cadets used deadly force in a scenario against their unarmed partner, instructors were not visibly upset and did not punish the class. In contrast, during another tactical exercise, in which three cadets lost their weapons, holstered them, and engaged in a physical struggle with their opponent again, one instructor threw his mask in the air and yelled, “What the hell!” After the exercise, another instructor pressed the cadets repeatedly, asking why they didn’t shoot, reminding them that in this scenario, “it’s you or him or her, and we want it to be you.” If they were going to make a mistake, the cadets learned it had to be the one they got out alive.

Even in courses focused on violence mitigation techniques, such as de-escalation, instructors consistently stressed the importance of staying vigilant, preparing for violence, and prioritizing officer safety above all else. During the de-escalation course at two different academies, instructors shared the 1998 video of the murder of Laurens County Sheriff’s Deputy Kyle Dinkheller. The three-and-a-half-minute video shows a traffic stop gone wrong, culminating in Dinkheller’s guttural, panicked screams and labored breathing as he dies next to his patrol car. Before playing the video, one instructor explained, “Even though we’re talking about de-escalation today, I’m not diluting officer safety. Don’t let your guard down.” After the video ended, another instructor warned, “I hate going to funerals.” Don’t make me go to your funeral because you used your words when you shouldn’t.” While using words is helpful when possible, these lessons highlighted that if used incorrectly, they could be your last.

By the time cadets graduate, they have spent hundreds of hours being taught that they are at war, that the “bad guys” must be profiled, and that learning skills in violence is the only way to survive. The cadet corps is physically conditioned to assume that everyone is armed, to act quickly and decisively, and to shoot as soon as they perceive a deadly threat. Given this training, it is not hard to understand why some police officers end up shooting unarmed civilians who run away, turn around abruptly, or reach into their pockets for a phone or wallet; it is what they have been trained to do.