How seemingly minor interactions with police spiral out of control:
Staring down the mayor of Phoenix and its police chief, 12-year-old Savannah Taylor made a confession to the city leaders after a viral cellphone video emerged of police officers screaming profanities and pointing guns at a black man, his pregnant fiancee and their two young children.
On March 1, a white police officer in Boulder, Colorado, was caught on cellphone video pulling a gun on a black man picking up trash in his own yard. On July 26, 2017, a white nurse at a Salt Lake City hospital was arrested and forcibly pulled from her emergency room for refusing an officer's request to draw blood from an unconscious patient without a warrant.
"Most departments are satisfied with a GED or a high school diploma," she said."We have people who are trained in a very short, basic way that does not give them a fraction of the tools that they would need to have to police in a professional way. To me, it's irresponsible in a democratic society not to give police officers four years at a university."
The Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, a policy organization comprised of law enforcement executives from the nation's largest cities and counties, conducted a survey of U.S. police academies in 2015 and found that recruits were given about eight hours of training on each of the topics of de-escalation, crisis intervention, use-of-force policy and the use of electronic control weapons, specifically stun guns.
"The best available evidence reflects high rates of use of force nationally, and increased likelihood of police use of force against people of color, people with disabilities, LGBT people, people with mental health concerns, people with low incomes, and those at the intersections of these groups," the report says.
While the number of police escalations is unclear, there is data on race, policing and some aspects of the use of force. The Washington Post database on police shootings, which the newspaper has kept close track of since 2015, shows that of the 992 people shot and killed by police in the United States in 2018, 772 were armed with guns, knives or using vehicles as weapons, while 47 were unarmed and 33 were wielding toy guns. The newspaper's data shows that 452 of the people killed were white, 229 were black and 164 were Hispanic.
Dillon and other experts on policing said the lapses in the training of police are being manifested in numerous encounters like the one in Phoenix, prompting investigations, dismissals, criminal charges against officers and protests by people who have reached a boiling point. In 2011, the Department of Justice found that Seattle police officers used force"in an unconstitutional manner" 20% of the time, and that 57% of the times officers used batons it was"unnecessary or excessive."
"Less-lethal instruments are used infrequently -- with baton use dramatically declining from the time period before and during DOJ's investigation," the federal monitor's report reads. One of the methods that departments have adopted over the years to attempt to control the number of police shootings and escalations is a use-of-force continuum, which prescribes appropriate levels of force for different situations.
The Police Executive Research Forum said that's necessary to"challenge conventional thinking on police use of force." A number of officers have been lauded for showing restraint in the field in recent years, despite threatening situations. For instance, NYPD transit officer Syed Ali did not pull his gun despite being confronted by a group of men in the subway in 2018.
The unrest appeared to take authorities aback and resulted in them scrambling to calm the community by explaining that the fugitive had allegedly shot a man multiple times in Hernando, Mississippi, earlier this month and stolen the victim's car. Memphis police also said that when cornered, Brandon Webber rammed the stolen car into the marshals' vehicles, then took off running with a gun in his hand.
"It's not like they're acting violently against peace, they're responding to the violence that they experience on an ongoing basis," Loynes told ABC News. On Aug. 1, a veteran African American Detroit police officer was caught on cellphone video beating an apparently emotionally disturbed naked woman at a hospital after she struggled with him, spat on him, and allegedly tried to bite him, officials said.
Here are some other incidents ABC News has reported on in the past year that were supported by video and prompted probes and protests: Thomas said she was just sitting in her car in the parking lot of her apartment complex when Hines approached her and began grilling her about who owned the car and warning her not to drive the vehicle because it was not insured. Hines wrote in his report, which was released by officials, that Thomas became"agitated" and told him,"There shouldn't be a white officer harassing her," and asked for the name of his supervisor.
Ray Brown, 33, was shot with a stun gun multiple times and arrested on suspicion of a slew of charges, including resisting arrest, neglect of a minor and assault and battery of a police officer in the incident in the Detroit suburb of Westland, police said. But the baby boy's mother, Nicole Skidmore, 28, told ABC News at the time that police deployed the stun gun on Brown at least three times and handcuffed him once they had him on the ground.
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