July 14, 2016
Cop Who Shot Philando Castile Had
Special Training that Taught Him the Public is the Enemy
William N. Grigg
Jeronimo Yanez, the St. Anthony, Minnesota Police Officer who fatally
shot Philando Castile, underwent “Bulletproof Warrior” officer survival
indoctrination that imparts what one police trainer calls a “paranoid”
and“militaristic” mindset.
In May of 2014,
reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Yanez underwent a 20-hour
seminar on “Street Survival” taught by Illinois-based Calibre Press,
which teaches
courses on the subject to police officers nationwide. The company’s
“Street Survival Seminar” overview displays a monomaniacal focus on
that most important of all policy considerations, “officer safety.” It
treats every police encounter as a combat situation in which only one
life truly matters – that of the government’s armed emissary, not that of
the citizen who is supposedly being protected and served by him.
Although
Calibre
co-owner Jim Glennon has written that viewing “police as the enemy is
not a healthy or helpful position for a society to take,” the courses
presented by his company relentlessly teach officers that the public is
their enemy. As one instructor summarized the course for the
benefit of his students, “We’ve got to survive this job!”
“The goal and purpose of the Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar is
twofold: Keep officers alive and give them the tools to enjoy a
successful career in law enforcement,”
explains the company’s promotional literature. “In order to
accomplish this mission we need to tackle the realities and complexities
of policing today for officers on the street … while placing the
responsibility for winning right where it belongs – with the individual
officer.”
A brief video excerpt from a “Street Survival” course shows a presenter
lecturing officers about the need to visualize shooting someone as part
of the “Psychological Game” necessary to “win” encounters with what
trainees are told is an implacably hostile public.
“That’s winning, ladies and gentlemen,” he declares.
http://youtu.be/6z-Dz78z5M8
“Traffic stops kill police officers, injure police officers –
that’s a fact,” insists another lecturer. “But – and I’ll say this – it’s
our bread and butter for enforcement.”
Local police had certainly feasted on Philando Castile,
who had been stopped 52 times over the course of 14 years, and paid
thousands of dollars in citations. Although he had no criminal record
beyond traffic misdemeanors, Castile was known to the St. Anthony Police
Department, which patrolled the town where the fatal traffic stop
occurred.
Officer Yanez reportedly believed that Castile broadly resembled a
suspect in a recent armed robbery. This may explain why he made what
appears to be a “pretext stop.” It neither explains nor justifies why he
opened fire on a citizen who was compliant, and
who possessed a valid carry permit. The officer’s attorney insists
that the mere presence of a gun was sufficient to trigger the officer’s
lethal reaction – which makes sense, given that Yanez had been marinated
in Calibre’s “officer safety” alarmism.
“The force used has to be `reasonable and necessary,’” “Street Survival”
attendees are told. “And who judges if it is `reasonable and necessary’?
It is to the officer’s standards.”
“Does the public understand, and are they trained in the dynamics of use
of force as you and I are? No!” continues the harangue. This is why
police must act as evangelists to the ignorant public, catechizing them
about the sacred imperative of officer safety, and the duty of citizens
to submit with docility in every encounter with the state’s agents of
coercion.
“Teach them,” the lecturer exhorted. “Establish, articulate, and
indoctrinate.”
Calibre’s“Bulletproof” lectures are jointly taught by Glennon and David
Grossman, a retired Army Lt. Colonel and former Army Ranger who
originated the
now-common conceit that
police and military personnel are “sheepdogs” blessed with
the “gift of
aggression” and who have a divine duty to deal out violence against
“wolves.”
In this depiction, the public are “sheep” – to be protected and, of
course, sheared as their overseers see fit.
Interestingly in addition to the familiar instruction regarding officer
safety and the “sheepdog mentality,” those who attend “Bulletproof”
training events are also taught about “Threats to Democracy” – an
examination of “the current relationship between law enforcement and the
community they are sworn to protect while also identifying the most
current threats to both.”
The “Street Survival” seminar Yanez attended was not the only training of
this sort he received. He took a similar 20-hour “Officer Survival”
course from a different company two years earlier. Just a few weeks
before the fatal encounter with Castile, Yanez participated in a two-hour
training course entitled “de-escalation.” This was his “only instruction
in his four years with the department that appears to focus on that
approach,”
summarizes the Star-Tribune, which obtained his training
records.
William Czech, who attended a two-day Bulletproof Warrior class at a
Bloomington, Minnesota Ramada Inn, described himself as “horrified” by
the course. Czech is a private citizen, not a police officer, and he
attended the class following encounters between police and a relative who
suffers from mental illness. The second day of the class was devoted to
videos of shootouts between police and citizens, with narration by
Calibre co-owner Glennon.
“Every time a video came up where the officer hesitated, he would stop
and he would say, `This is a point where there should have been a
reaction, he should have engaged,” Czech recalls.
While he admits that his course teaches officers that “hesitation will
get you killed,” Glennon insists that Czech’s perception was “totally
inaccurate.”
“That’s why we don’t let the press in” to the training seminars, Glennon
added.
Michael Becar, executive director of the International Association of
Directors of Law Enforcement, agrees with Czech’s supposedly untutored
assessment of Calibre’s “officer survival” training.
“Everything they were doing made the police officers very paranoid,” he
points out. “At some point, they wouldn’t even stop a car without three
backups.”
Peter Kraska, chairman of the School of Justice Studies at Eastern
Kentucky University, has described Calibre’s training seminars as
“irresponsible” and “dangerous.” The actions of the program’s most
notable graduate, Officer Jeronimo Yanez, demonstrate the lethal
consequences of weaponizing the “officer safety” mindset.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-castile-bulletproof-warrior-training/#UkM7bvDxH4314YSr.99
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