Joseph Darius Jaafari
Did you get “the talk” from your parents when you were growing up? Or have you given “the talk” to your own kids?
I’m referring to the conversation in which parents instruct their kids about how to properly interact with police if they are ever pulled over or come into contact with law enforcement officials.
As a kid, I never received the talk from my mother and step-father, two white people who grew up in middle class suburbs in Louisiana and California, respectively. But once I learned how to drive, my biological father – an Iranian immigrant who came to America in the late ‘70s – gave me an entire driving lesson centered on how to act when a police officer pulled me over.
I’m glad he did. Growing up in Arizona in the era of SB1070 and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s racist and xenophobic treatment of immigrants, I was indeed pulled over a handful of times. Some of the incidents were definitely my fault, but other times were questionable. Once, after handing over my license, registration and insurance, the officer then asked for my “papers,” to which I sarcastically gave the officer the homework pages that were lying on the passenger seat.
Every one of those times I followed my father’s instructions: I kept my hands in plain sight and let officers guide me and tell me what to do; I never talked back, nor did I ever reach for things without first narrating what I was going to do.
Why was I trained to be so cautious, particularly when being pulled over? Partially, because it’s rarely clear how police officers are trained to respond to high-stress situations. At what point are they allowed to respond with a baton, a taser or even a gun?
In most states, there are general rules in place that say officers can use deadly force if they feel threatened or if someone is evading arrest or escaping to commit a felony.
But beyond that, the specifics on how police officers are trained is often cloaked in secrecy. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day set off weeks of protests, with police reform advocates calling for more transparency from law enforcement agencies. One of the simplest steps any agency could take in response to those calls is to make public their use-of-force policies.
In Pennsylvania, though, most police departments don’t do that. That’s what Ed Mahon and I found in our reporting for this story. We looked at 35 of the state’s largest municipalities to see if their police departments make use-of-force policies public..
A handful of cities have already done so; in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the policies have been online for years. Other cities (York, Bethlehem, Erie) recently released their policies, in part because of the optics around keeping the policy secret amid the national outcry over the deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.
Of the departments we reached out to, more than two-thirds haven’t publicly posted their use-of- force policies on their websites. (As an aside, Tredyffrin Township’s police force publicly posts their workout routine, in case you want to get in those extra gains during the pandemic.)
Why does this matter? For many, it’s just about transparency and the old truism of if there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing to hide.
DeRay Mckesson, an activist focused on civil rights and policing issues, told us that it’s unreasonable for the public to be left in the dark about police training. At the other end of the political spectrum, a libertarian-minded policy researcher (and former cop) at the R Street Institute in Washington D.C. told us that it’s simply good protocol to be transparent in how officers are trained. And some local police chiefs also believe in that.
So, why do so many departments fail to release their policies? Some say it’s because the public will use that information to harm officers. Two officials we spoke with defended not posting their use of force policies, stating that people who might want to push police officers to the edge of using lethal force, inciting a legal fight and media outrage.
And the Office of Open Records ruled in 2016 in an appeal decision that police departments can redact information in use of force policies that might give away tactical information.
You can read more on our story here.
PA Post is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom covering politics and policy in Pennsylvania. For more, go to PaPost.org.