The lights dimmed as nearly 20 Chicago police officers turned their attention to the dashboard camera video playing in the training room where they had gathered for a new, mandatory course on the proper use of deadly force.
In the footage, an agitated man wielded a knife as he moved down a street with a quick step, ignoring the blinking lights of police vehicles that had surrounded him.
The scene did not play out on South Pulaski Road, and the man was not Laquan McDonald — though the images looked strikingly similar to the infamous video that captured the teen’s 2014 fatal shooting by a Chicago police officer as he walked away, refusing to drop a knife.
Instead, this footage came from a police dashcam in New Mexico, and the man ended up being stopped with a stun gun.
Even though McDonald’s name was never mentioned, the video still raised a haunting suggestion: There might have been a different outcome that night in Chicago.
The November court-ordered release of the troubling footage of Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times upended policing in Chicago, leading to sustained street protests and a U.S. Justice Department investigation into whether there’s a pattern of excessive force by the Police Department against citizens.
After years of paying out tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits over excessive force, the city is now bringing officers in for training that emphasizes “de-escalation” tactics to try to reduce the number of fatal confrontations.
The department has laid out an ambitious schedule to train its entire 12,500 sworn workforce in about a year’s time, holding classes six days a week. A Tribune reporter and photographer were given exclusive access to the two days of training that each officer will undergo. The department launched the effort this month.
It represents a major shift for a Police Department that has lacked a strong mandate and the resources to carry out training that re-creates real-world stress for officers. And while the idea to pull back and take time was welcomed by officers, they also acknowledged how much pressure still exists to resolve calls quickly and move onto the next assignment.
The training comes at a time when not only are the actions and split-second decisions of officers under more scrutiny than ever but as tensions between law enforcement and the public have spiked with the targeted shootings of officers in Texas and Louisiana.
That leaves instructors at the Police Department’s Near West Side training academy with a somewhat delicate balancing act: helping officers recognize times they should use slower, calmer approaches without losing their confidence to use deadly force when needed to protect themselves and others.
“When we can reduce the risk of taking a life even if it’s a bad guy, we should. … We should not use force simply because we can,” Sgt. Larry Snelling, the lead instructor, told the group at the beginning of training last week. “But when you are faced with an immediate threat and your life or someone else’s life is on the line … you should respond with deadly force. You have to.”
‘Learning how to be nice?’
A slight tension filled the air as the 18 officers, most dressed in civilian clothes, gathered for the first day of training around small tables inside a second-floor classroom at the Education & Training Division at 1300 W. Jackson Blvd.
Officer Rob Casale, an instructor with 18 years on the job, spoke first, pointing to a slide with a technical title: “Force Mitigation: Mental Health Awareness.” He asked if anyone knew what the class was about.
Silence followed until one officer, in a more joking than angry manner, asked, “What the f— is it?”
The group cracked up.
Another officer quickly said “De-escalation, De-Escalante” — a joking reference to recently retired First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante, who announced the mandatory classes last winter while he was the department’s interim superintendent.
“Force Mitigation” is Chicago’s term for de-escalation, the buzzword sweeping law enforcement nationwide in the wake of the high-profile in-custody police deaths — many of them unarmed African-Americans. Chicago follows police departments in Seattle, Las Vegas and Los Angeles in rolling out the training.
The jokes eased the tension in the room, but some remained skeptical. One officer later said he remembered thinking to himself at that point if the training was about “learning how to be nice to people?”
Snelling and his team repeated over and over that the training was not about slowing down or easing up in situations that required deadly force to protect officers or the public.
It’s about remembering that rushing in and using physical force is not always the best first option.
When Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the training in December in the fallout over the Laquan McDonald shooting video, he promised a spring 2016 launch. But it took months to design the curriculum, co-written by Snelling and tested with local and national policing experts.
Snelling sought longtime cops from the department’s 22 police districts to act as instructors. About 15 were chosen, and they bring more than just experience from working in some of the city’s toughest, busiest neighborhoods. One is an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder. Another worked as a mental health caseworker before becoming a cop. Still another focuses on suicide in law enforcement. All who teach how to deal with the mentally ill hold degrees or have done advanced work in mental health.
So far, more than 200 officers have gone through the two days of training, but just three supervisors have completed the class. No command staff has taken it yet either, but Snelling said their attendance is important so they understand what is being asked of their rank-and-file officers.
At one point, Snelling took a moment to shake the hand of a sergeant, the only supervisor who attended last week’s training.
“We need more supervisors in the room,” Snelling told him. “… I know one of the frustrations is that police officers are saying, ‘I was trying to do the right thing — my supervisor didn’t back me up, didn’t know.’ … It’s a good thing we have supervisors showing up to this. Now we start moving up the chain (of command), it’ll be a lot better.”
‘I was probably dead’
The first day of training was limited to the classroom and focused on how officers should assess and respond to confrontations.
The eight-hour discussion was lively. Officers talked at length how to detect signs of mental health problems, but they were also reminded of the stress that can affect average people every day.
Officer Marianne Horan Dawson, assigned to the Shakespeare District, said she’s essentially been using de-escalation techniques for years.
“The best way (to learn) is to be on that street and learn how to handle people,” said the 18-year veteran, whose quick wit lightened the mood of the training a bit. “First of all, you have to quiet them. You let one speak, and you let the other speak. You won’t fix peoples’ broken lives, but we can try to fix it for that night.”
Officers talked about assessing if someone posed a threat by studying a person’s demeanor, hands, waistline and any objects within reach. They also spoke at length about how listening or expressing empathy can defuse tension.
Instructors warned them to be on the lookout for how an individual’s emotions generally cycle through anxiety, anger and hostility before becoming violent. But they were cautioned to keep their own emotions in check.
As people’s emotions rise, said Officer Marcus Dismukes, an instructor, “their ability to understand verbal commands goes down.”
Dismukes, who worked as a mental health specialist before becoming a cop about 12 years ago, said just hearing out people can help immensely.
“A lot of times we get to a call, we listen, and it ends up being a ’19-Paul’ just because we listened,” Dismukes said, referring to police code for when nothing of significance happened on a call.
On the second day of training, the officers underwent a refresher course on the department’s use-of-force model before going through drills, testing their reactions and judgments.
The drills relied heavily on officers confronted by those with mental health issues. But Snelling said the department is ready to roll out mock scenes that reflect the street violence police are battling every day — calls of a man with a gun, a robbery in progress or a foot chase. The Near West Side training center, though, doesn’t have the physical space at this point to carry out those scenarios, he said.
In one exercise, Horan Dawson faced an agitated guy with lots of weapons at the ready — a crowbar, bat and knife.
He was screaming, swearing and picking up the weapons, waving each and vowing to harm her. Horan Dawson worked as quickly as she could to answer each move he made with her own — un-holstering her handgun, then her Taser as she talked him down.
“Sir, we don’t need to go there today. I can help you. Calm down a little bit,” she said with a style clearly honed over many years dealing with unruly people.
In another mock scenario, another angry man approached an officer, lifted his shirt revealing a gun in his waistband. He quickly pulled out the weapon and opened fire.
“That sucked. I was probably dead,” said Officer Dan Pruszewski, who had tried talking first.
Pruszewski later acknowledged he hesitated because he thought at that point that the training was about not using deadly force.
‘That’s the old way’
Snelling, an expert on use of force, said that drill is meant to remind them that it’s OK to use their gun under the right circumstances.
The training allows them to practice when to use lethal and nonlethal approaches — and understanding the difference. But if they do use a deadly weapon, they should be able to defend the decision.
Snelling urged the officers to strip emotions away and picture themselves in a courtroom faced with a prosecutor who wants to put them in prison for a civil rights violation.
But officers can’t be expected to make these difficult choices fairly without the proper training, Snelling said.
“If the job is going to hold you accountable to rules, regulations and policies, it should give you the training on that,” he said.
In other mock scenarios, knife-wielding people played by trainers confronted officers who were supposed to resolve the call with the least amount of force possible.
Trainers pointed out when officers got too far away from each other — or too close to the suspect. They emphasized the importance of getting into position to deploy a Taser or holstering their service gun when the subject had dropped a weapon and no longer posed a deadly threat.
Officers were teamed with partners and sometimes sent through the same drills twice.
In one exercise, an unarmed trainer was able in a split second to advance on an officer and get close to his weapon. Up until then, the officer had spent several minutes negotiating with the man, trying to calm him.
But it was easy to envision the headline that would result: “Officer fatally shoots unarmed suspect with history of mental illness.”
Pruszewski was one of the skeptics coming in, not because he has a problem with training, but he wasn’t sure what the message would be. The 12-year officer left a convert because of the balance.
“Every situation, you are not going to be able to talk your way out of,” said the officer, who works the busy South Chicago District. “There is nothing wrong with a reminder and refresher. It would be great if they put us through these once a year at least. … It’s amazing how much goes back to your training.”
Over and over during the training, officers noted that defusing tense situations has long been standard police work.
But Sgt. Gene Klamerus, who has 25 years on the job, said the emphasis for officers seems to be changing from a “get it done fast” mentality.
“You go in, you give them a chance to comply, and then you rush in. That’s the old way,” he said. “The old way was a quick way to get the job done and also a good way to get hurt. … Now we’ll talk, negotiate a calmer way to get the situation resolved.”
asweeney@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @annie1221
