Salt Lake City police invested in training and haven't had an officer-involved shooting in two years

In the United States, we’ve come to accept a narrative that part of being a police officer means that an unfortunate reality of the job is that someone (a civilian) may lose their life in a justifiable shooting. This line of thinking is simplistic and prevents us from looking at much-needed reform within the institution of policing and it doesn’t have to be true. Less than six months into the year, police officers have already shot and killed 367 people—a number slightly higher than the last two years. But there is evidence that when police embrace training tactics that involve communication and empathy, they don’t have to take lives.

In Utah’s capital, police have actively embraced a tactic called de-escalation.

The officers being trained in de-escalation are encouraged to communicate and empathize with suspects, take stock of the factors contributing to a confrontation, and consider ways to disengage before the situation spirals out of control, leading to the use of force.

With this policy in place, there hasn’t been a fatal encounter between officer and civilian in Salt Lake City since September 2015. 

A few things are important to note here: the population of Salt Lake City is less than 200,000 so they do not experience the same levels of crime that major cities experience. What would be interesting to explore is whether or not some of the historical racial tension that makes up some of the policies and practices of police departments in other places with more diversity and different history exists in Salt Lake City considering that it’s nearly 80 percent white. Of course, police violence is not exclusively a white cop on people of color problem (though it’s largely framed that way and there are many good reasons to explicitly discuss the interracial and historical nature of it). It is important to frame this as a larger societal and systemic issue—one all of us should care about, though not all of us are at the same risk of death at the hands of police. At any rate, the lesson here is critical. The cops in Salt Lake City have found ways to improve their policing and to learn new techniques and have managed to stop killing people.

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