Author, professor and sociologist Michael Sierra-Arévalo talks to us about his detailed look into American policing with his new book The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death and the Soul of Policing. According to Arévalo, the story of policing isn’t the story of a few bad apples, but of an institutional structure and system that is essentially not working. The violence we see from our officers is the logical consequence of an institutional culture that privileges officers’ survival over public safety. Policing and violence simply go hand in hand, and according to Michael, who’s seen much of it up close and personal, we’re not going to be able to train ourselves out of the problem. So what do we do?
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Stop talking about your fucking book
None of this shit sounds legit or real when someone trying to sell a book six hundred times during the podcast
There is a key flaw to police officers trying to dominate a situation. People respond to aggressive dominating behavior with fear and aggression. It does not increase cooperation. What you want to do is to shape the behavior of the person or people involved. You make them want to do what you want them to do. One former officer described how if someone did not want to get into the car, he would have them sit on the sidewalk for awhile and then ask them to get into the car. Sitting on a cold, sometimes wet, sometimes dirty or smelly sidewalk was more unpleasant than getting into a police car and therefore after a short period of time, they would get into the cat without resistance.
Plutocracy comes for us all
I know this podcast isn't about Willis, but I don't know how to contact you. How about you and Karen Friedman Agnifilo doing a podcast. I feel like the treatment of DA Willis is part of a bigger thing to put women back in their place. And that judge!
Please tell me you are as furious as I am over the treatment of Fani Willis.
very insightful discussion, thank you so much! your timing is impeccable as I, like many, could benefit with a break from law & politics. while not a rainbow & butterfly discussion, it definitely provides solutions rather than solely focusing on doom and gloom. thank you! 💙💙💙
Amazing .. not a single mention of firearms as an American cultural or policing issue!
Bizarre!
RE: Police training. I take what Michael Sierra-Arévalo is saying is that nothing in training of police is going to be effectual against the larger cultural, economic and political pressures of what created our fraught communities. We need to address the reasons for why violence and crime arises in neighborhoods. Efforts to deploy mental health professionals, social workers and paramedics have had some great preliminary results. Reinstituting beat cops who actually walk neighborhoods and know the people they are "protecting and serving" is an idea that I really would like to see come back.
My personal Lawyer, upon discussing a police interaction, stated, “The police are not your friend. avoid contact with the police a all costs.”
Who are you in any related field of study that qualifies you to evaluate his claims? If you don’t know anything about calculus how do you decide if one calculus answer is correct vs another?
What most of us can agree upon is that social media is not a substitute for actual research. Had she done any actual research she would know how much his work has been scrutinized and critiqued for its methodology and conclusions.
She is not someone who grew up here and has no research credentials yet here she is discussing topics entirely outside of any frame of reference she has.
I think that for a minority, Hispanic African American, American Indian, Hawaiian, Inuit,etc., the larger majority, has an inherent built in command presence, which does not just relate to the police. The Indians used to mention "the white mans" law. They were not saying that white man had law and Indians did not. They meant that the Indians were forced to respect the laws that white men proclaimed, but, white men did not have to respect the laws of the Indians. That is an automatic command presence.
Any cop that glorifies/idealizes the Punisher has obviously never read the comics. Frank Castle hates cops like that.
I have to ask, since this seems not to be something people pick up on, but why can a police cadet, become an officer, if they are more prepared to kill an innocent person with a sandwich or a mobile phone in their hand, than they are to die honourably in the line of duty? Can anyone explain that?
We recently saw an officer mag dump their own car, with a cuffed suspect in it, because an acorn freaked them out. Why are officers not trained to, for example, not pull a gun unless they CONFIRM the presence of a serious threat, not glimpse something, or get triggered by falling plant material or whatever?
I mean, you say this isn't something you can train out, but surely if you change what the training is FOR, you get different results? Shouldn't cops be more willing to die themselves, than hurt or kill an innocent?
How does it feel to have your rights taken away?
I am a legal licensed gun holder since I was 14 . And I am now being constantly bombarded with the threat of taking away certain guns of mine.
I never committed any crime, why should I have my freedom taken away because of somebody else??
It’s interesting how the abortion and the IVF got under your skin, but you don’t take one second out of your life to understand how firearms legislation hurts people like me.
People die every day from texting and driving, drinking and driving, reactions to medicine
You’re not gonna stop people from dying in this world. So get off of my back. And I’m glad you know what it feels like to have something taken from you. Maybe you will think about the rest of us , Legal, licensed gun owners!!
San Antonio just recently created a Social Mental Health Case Workers Team to intervene and de-escalate the situation when a person is having mental issues so that that person won't be hurt by Police who aren't trained in mental health crisis bc recently two police officers were charged with murder bc they shot and killed a woman that was having mental issues. Sad but it's the reality of ppl having mental issues, so San Antonio took action for these type of crisis. 🕊🥀🕊
Stick this in your favorite search engine:
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops
By ABC News
September 8, 2000, 8:32 AM
Get away from Law Enforcement and bring back peace officers
Politics Girl You Are Right Training Is The Problem Filter The Mental Health Of People.
People have to understand that modern day cops are NOT there to protect and serve. Hell, the courts have literally ruled that cops ARE NOT required to risk themselves to in order to protect others.
Most cops today are there to serve the rich and powerful and keep the people under their heel.
No knock raids
Power posing (like when they shoved that elderly guy for no reason and cracked his head open)
Civil forfeiture (finding any excuse to take from the poor, and often sell it on the streets)
Serving the rich (keeping "undesirables" away from affluent areas, regardless of whether those people have a right to be there)
Getting their kicks by abusing their power, especially against minorities who are unarmed
Being protected despise being bullies, thugs, rapists, racists, murderers, pedophiles, etc…
Suppressing dissent (cops DESPISE peaceful protests for rights and freedoms, but will happily march alongside Nazi groups)
Re-train people? As a fundamental liar you think you are the person to tell us what we should believe? Please answer this directly 'Politics Girl'. Let's see what you do.
Need a higher recruitment standard, psychological testing
I agree that law enforcement is essentially flawed. It's also difficult to attract applicants.
In many communities, becoming a Police Officer is tantamount to putting a target on your back. If the process was longer or more selective, the number of qualified graduates would drop to dangerously low levels.
Desperation to fill positions = more bad apples.
Great show and great guest as always.
The way for the people to police the police is what we are already doing. Whipping out our cell phones and recording the cops and putting it online so they get fired. A young drunk girl in Fort Collins got piledriven by a cop. He is fired now because so many people caught it on camera.
The institution of policing was NOT brought about to 'keep us safe'. Its beginnings was to return property, escaped slaves, back to their owners and to stamp down any rebellion by the enslaved people. Policing is still predominantly about protecting property and stamping down any protest or rebellion against injustice.
Part of required training is training the public they require police
Great conversation. Now let’s doing something about it.
The main word here is control. They are not supposed to be controllers. They are not the military. They need a lot more knowledge and training on the constitution. I remember growing up watching policemen walking down the streets, saying hi, and knowing everyone in the neighborhood. That all changed in the later part of the 80's. Since then it has seemed like officers have a hatred and are against the people they are supposed to be helping.
cf. "peace officers (tprf)" a YT video
I absolutely loved this video. Very insightful! I wish the title weren't so "fox news" like though
It doesn't help to know there are more assault weapons than people in the US.
Law enforcement are predators currently
First off I don’t disagree with a word spoken here, I completely understand what has been said! I am retired from the sheriffs department. Most sheriffs department are not Union, ours is not! Training does need to change, times have changed but law enforcement is still doing things the old way. People also need to pay attention to elected sheriffs. They should not keep the same sheriff for more than 10!years! Mine is the longest serving sheriff in Georgia history, he is 91 and should have retired years ago years ago! 💰. Slava Ukraine 🇺🇦 #MeidasMighty Ⓜ️Ⓜ️ #voteblue dump maga 🤡s
Thank you Leigh and Michael for a very sensible and rational conversation and with good questions and discussions. Michael brings a very pragmatic perspective on the difficulties facing the police role and the dangers they face in doing their work. Institutional culture has a big part of the system. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 41:55
Command Presence is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you go into a situation with violence in mind, you will get violent, and violate the public.
Suddenly, white people have a problem with cops. And something must change! How Caucasian.
Most important subject to bring light into the understanding of Law Enforcement.
I'm Canadian and I think there are a lot of huge differences between the police in Canada and the police in the states. In Canada police are trained for anywhere from 26-44 weeks and they have to update their training often, they also subject to strict background checks, in the states training can be as little as 12 weeks and the average is around 16-19 weeks and it seems like the need for police is so high they often take people who have no business being police officers. The training is also very different in Canada and focuses a lot more on mental healthcare and public safety. Then of course there is the gun culture differences, in Canada guns are controlled strictly and in the US it varies state by state but obviously gun control and safety are a unbelievably huge problem in the US which affects the way police do their jobs substantially. Then there is the racial profiling and systemic racism in the US as well as the prison industrial complex. In Canada of course we have racial profiling happening but nowhere near the extent it happens in the US and we don't have a system that makes money off of prisoners leading to corruption and just complete distrust of the entire system in general especially by people of colour and rightly so. Our system isn't perfect but the American system is broken and needs a major overhaul starting with federal gun control laws, better vetting and better training and ideally ending with all prisons being for rehabilitation not for profit. I honestly don't see any of that happening on a federal level unfortunately. Don't get me wrong I am by no means saying that all American police officers or bad and all Canadian police officers are good but there is a big difference in how police in both countries are perceived and that is for a reason.