“I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a person’s outrageous and unprovoked reaction to the simple fact that they were being spoken to by a cop land them in jail for the night.”
The Texas Senate unanimously passed an interesting new bill through the chamber late last month that reportedly aims to build bridges between the police and the communities they serve through education. As long as it passes a vote in the House, Bill 30 will bring the Lone Star State’s Board of Education and its Commission on Law Enforcement together with the goal of educating civilians and police on how to “act accordingly” during encounters with one another. In theory, this bill could be something great if it were to be put into practice in a fair and balanced way – but will it?
So much of the response to the rioting of the past several years has been, “The police need to change”, or “We need to re-train officers on how to deal with society”. Bill 30 is different because it aims to require not only police officers, but also civilians to undergo training on how to behave during encounters.
On the civilian side, training would be conducted in schools and at the DMV. An established block of instruction would be added to the state mandated curriculum for high school aged students and for all new drivers of any age attending the state mandated training required to earn a driver’s license.
The lessons of the proposed course that seem beneficial involve describing the duties and responsibilities of law enforcement, how to appropriately act on a traffic stop, and what behaviors to reasonably expect from the officer. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a person’s outrageous and unprovoked reaction to the simple fact that they were being spoken to by a cop land them in jail for the night.
Teaching people at a young age how to not talk their own way into a jail cell isn’t such a bad idea. There’s valuable information to be taught and if it helps just one person in every class then it’s worthwhile. Yet, while the Bill has some potential – there are some proposals within, based on my experience, that don’t appear to help relations.
If we get deeper into the bill, there are obvious over-reaches like this one. The creators of Bill 30 want to mandate a lesson on “how to make a complaint on a police officer” in high schools. I don’t have a problem with this aspect of the bill because I’m some authoritarian who thinks the public should not have an outlet to whistle blow on cops who deserve it. Affording the public that course of action is Civics 101. Someone has got to police the police in the same way that we have a checks and balances system structured into our government. So rather than take issue with officers being held accountable, here is my bone to pick.
The process one goes through when making a formal complaint on an officer is ridiculously easy as it currently stands. Ask anyone that has done it. If they’re really being honest, they’ll admit that putting in the official complaint was a completely hurdle-less activity and calling it a process doesn’t really capture it at all. You show up and you complain – no instruction manual necessary. Anyone on the literacy level of a kindergartener can do it without having to be taught how.
Therefore, to teach high school aged kids how to make a complaint on police officers in an official classroom setting seems to be more of an attempt to influence them to actually do so than to merely educate them on the process.
It would be like teaching a class on how to use a fork and knife to eat a slice of pizza instead of folding it and eating it by hand. I don’t need to be taught how to do that but I just might pick up the silverware next time I’m at Geno’s since you implanted the thought in my head.
I’ve never once heard someone say, “I’d really like to complain about that cop’s excessive force, but I don’t know how”, but I can picture a representative of the ACLU teaching these high school kids how to sue while handing out his business card as the bell rings.
There’s also this. Should Bill 30 pass the House, police officers will have to undergo the same training as the two above mentioned groups. Let me be clear. Cops already receive all kinds of training on how to handle the public delicately, through “customer service” training, “de-escalation techniques” training, and “Crisis Intervention” training just to name a few.
I’ll attend more of the same but I wouldn’t teach a football coach X’s and O’s and I don’t expect a civilian to be able to teach me about doing my job with the same material they bring to a classroom full of seniors at Lamar High School in Houston.
My final, and perhaps most important criticism, is that the Sandra Bland case in Illinois was cited as a driving factor in this Democrat authored bill. Sandra Bland hanged herself in a jail cell and conspiracy theories pushed out by Black Lives Matter and the mainstream media hung law enforcement officers out to dry as a result.
I worry that when it comes to this bill, if the seed is rotten, so will be the fruit. A good 90% of the comments section on the Texas Tribune’s article covering Bill 30 is accusing officers of being racist, violent, and unjust. One commenter writes,
“The police officers are the issue, not the students. I never heard about a racist cop being beaten up by a group of black teenagers in a neighborhood near Waco.”
No expert opinion needed to refute this one. YouTube is all you need. Hell, this article came a few days ago.
Another asks, “Who is going to teach police brutality is not allowed on children?” If you suggest that police don’t know the difference between right and wrong, no class is going to pull you to the center.
Here’s one of my favorites: “Does this include white cops ‘interacting’ with black boys/men?” I’d say that most — if not all white cops– have far more experience in interacting with black men and boys than even the most self-righteous white virtue signaling liberal. Let me know on Twitter @tblefever if you need any advice on how to break the ice.
I don’t want to be all negative. There’s potential in this bill for sure – but most of that potential for improved relations lies in the education of the public on how to deal with officers. The public asked for bodycams and we obliged. It’s now our responsibility to shut them off before we enter a bathroom stall.
The public asked for transparency. Now most officer involved shootings are detailed in a public press conference before the officer even makes it home to their family.
The public asked for a more “diverse” police force. Agencies across the country responded by campaigning “women and minorities strongly urged to apply” in job announcements.
The list of capitulation goes on and on. This officer asks members of the public who traffic in anti-cop rhetoric to attend their local PD’s Citizen’s Police Academy whether Bill 30 passes or not. Be open-minded and you might learn something. We can all learn something.
No date has been finalized for the final vote on whether House Bill 30 passes and is signed into law. Stay tuned to OpsLens for an update on this story.
