The Urgent Need for a National Police Academy
The latest of many cases of egregious excessive force by the police has just occurred in Minnesota, with the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Daunte Wright, in his car by a white policewoman on April 12, 2021, who stopped him for a minor traffic violation. This follows an incident last week of a white Virginia policeman dousing pepper-spray on an unarmed, polite black man in his car, pulled over at a gas station and treated with verbal aggression for an undisclosed minor traffic violation. These incidents, and many others, follow the notorious, outrageous coldblooded murder by asphyxiation of a prone, handcuffed, defenseless black man, George Floyd, on May 26, 2020 by a clearly vicious, mentally disturbed, non-empathetic, and badly trained white Minneapolis policeman, kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes as documented by a cell phone video taken by a bystander.
It should be amply clear to everyone by now that we desperately need a prestigious national police academy with extremely high professional and moral standards, having the mandate of training and certifying as highly qualified all members of state and local police forces, including police directors. A federally created National Police Academy, to which the states and cities would have to send all their police officers and directors for training and certification, would be constitutional in accordance with the Commerce Clause, Article 1, Section 8. In fact, interstate commerce is hindered by bad policing, while uniformly excellent policing is required across the nation in order to maximize interstate travel, commerce and economic growth, as well as to protect civil rights and minimize violations by the police.
Under this program, every single police officer and police director would have to undergo training by the national police academy and be certified as being highly qualified professionally, of high moral standards, and free of problematic psychological characteristics, such as being short-tempered, abusive, racist, narrow-minded, violent, and unempathetic. Without such certification, no individual could be employed by a police force. Every police officer and director would have to be re-certified annually, after a performance review and psychological evaluation.
While strict national police academy training and certification would result in very few cases of police misconduct, particularly excessive use of force, unjustified arrests, abusive behavior, and general incompetence, it should nevertheless be mandatory for all police officers and directors to wear video cameras always turned on while on the job, with the video stored in case evidence is needed in the future.
A prestigious, ultra-competent national police academy would end our disgraceful history of egregious police misconduct. It would restore trust in the police which has been severely degraded over the past decades. It would remove one very destabilizing factor in American society, and help create a more positive, humane environment, leading to a more serene society while removing fascist tendencies.
But something else should be abundantly clear: the need for every high school to have four year courses in 1) psychology accompanied by “group therapy” and “good parenting” workshops; 2) ethics and empathy; 3) the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the world history of human rights violations; 4) logic and critical thinking. What a difference maker that would be.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves and keeping our heads in the sand. There are all too many Americans with psychological problems and with a low degree of honesty and morality in all walks of life, in all professions. Is that the society we want? Are we satisfied with having so many dishonest, violent, abusive, and mentally disturbed citizens, including politicians? Are we finally going to do something about it? Until we do, we will remain a shameful nation in steep social and political decline.
© Edward Sonnino 2021
April 15, 2021
