Police Train to Intervene in Fellow Officer Misconduct
An intervention program that began in New Orleans and garnered little attention has now attracted 138 police departments across the country
Landwebs
Since the killing of George Floyd last May, more police departments have begun training police officers to intervene when their fellow officers use excessive force or engage in other misconduct, reports the Wall Street Journal. Many are using training called Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement, or ABLE, that was designed by policing researchers at Georgetown University Law School. While few departments seemed interested when the program launched in New Orleans in 2016, the number that have signed up since Mr. Floyd’s murder now totals 138, including in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston. The training encourages officers to intervene well before a potential incident if a fellow officer is angry or depressed, all the way up to stopping someone from doing something that could cost them their job.
ABLE offers train-the-trainer sessions to officers who then go back to their own departments. Agencies that want to sign up must train everyone from their chief to their newest recruits. Departments that sign up for ABLE are required to have a strong anti-retaliation policy on the books. Departments must also consider acceptance of an intervention by a colleague as a mitigating factor when disciplining officers. Because adoption of the training is so new, there aren’t studies yet on its effectiveness. A variety of antibias and de-escalation trainings have proven ineffective in the past, often because they often weren’t backed up by any changes in internal policy or because agencies dropped them once political pressure on police died down.
