‘Kill them if you have to’: A fascinating peek inside a police training seminar

It’s the viral video that cost a Texas cop his job earlier this summer: a white cop busting up a pool party, throwing a black teenage girl in a bikini to the floor, then pulling his gun on two teenage boys.

But a former suburban cop who is training Illinois officers in the use of deadly force has defended the actions of former McKinney, Texas, Police Corporal Eric Casebolt, according to a fascinating article by Bloomberg reporter Peter Robison.

Robison spent two days in Urbana, attending a “Street Survival” seminar for mid-career cops from across Illinois. Run by former Lombard officer Jim Glennon’s training organization Calibre Press — and similar, Robison writes, to police training courses nationwide — the seminar taught officers to adopt a “warrior” mentality to stay safe.

The article does a good job describing the danger that officers face on their job and the resentment that many feel about their portrayal in the media as the shooting of civilians by police has come under the spotlight in recent months. During the seminar, officers learn by watching graphic videos of police being murdered during traffic stops, the article states:

Critics of the “warrior” approach, including Seth Stoughton, a former patrol officer in Tallahassee turned assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, told Robison officers are taught to overestimate the risks they face:

The disconnect between how the public and some police officers can view exactly the same scene is vividly shown in Glennon’s reaction to the Texas viral video. Though the officer in that case, Casebolt, resigned after his chief called his actions “indefensible,” Glennon told his class in Lombard that it was a ”textbook tactical matter,” Robison reported:

The whole article is well worth a read.