What I Learned at the Police Academy

Sonya Massey was just holding a pot of water in her own kitchen when an Illinois sheriff’s deputy, Sean Grayson, threatened to “fucking shoot” her in the “fucking face.” The body-camera footage from that night shows how quickly an interaction with a police officer can become deadly: In a matter of minutes, Massey’s call for service turned into a murder scene. Throughout the interaction, Massey followed Grayson’s commands. Despite her compliance, Grayson drew his pistol, aimed it at her, and shot her three times. At 36 years old, Sonya Massey became another Black American needlessly killed by the police. (Grayson has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder.)

Each time the name of a new victim of police violence enters the public lexicon—Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and now Sonya Massey—there are questions about the officer’s response. How could that officer have mistaken a cellphone for a weapon? Why did that officer shoot someone who was running away? Did that officer really have to shoot so many times? One answer to all these questions is that officers are trained to see the world as threatening and to respond accordingly.

Their training happens primarily at a police academy, where cadets spend months learning how to be a police officer. I studied this training at four large municipal police departments to gain a better understanding of what kinds of skills cadets learn, how they are evaluated, and why some cadets make it to graduation while others wash out. (As part of my agreement with the departments and my university’s institutional review board, I cannot identify the specific departments.) This was in 2018, just four years after the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, following the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown and two years before the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. I, like so many others around the world, wanted to know why the names and stories of Black Americans killed by police just kept coming, and I thought that finding out who was allowed to be an officer and how they were trained to do their job could help answer that question.

[ Sue Rahr: The myth propelling America’s violent police culture ]

I observed and participated in the academy training myself, which meant that, alongside the cadets, I woke up early, sat through hours of dense lectures, ran miles in formation, learned basic drill commands, did push-ups, lifted weights, shot guns, and learned how to punch, kick, use pressure points, apply handcuffs, and take someone to the ground. (All of the academies knew that I was there as a researcher, and I introduced myself as such when meeting cadets and officers.) I had a front-row seat to academy training, and what I saw was cause for concern. As I later wrote in my book, Before the Badge , violence was everywhere I looked. The result, I found, was that many of those who made it into the institution, through the training, and out onto patrol were competent in, and eager to use, violence.

My study of police training practices was, of course, not exhaustive. It is certainly possible—and, indeed, I hope this is the case—that some academies are doing things differently. And many of the officers and trainees I met aspired to join police departments because they wanted to help the vulnerable and serve others. But in my experience from studying these academies, the weight of the training tilted strongly toward violence, again and again.

To even gain admission to the academy, applicants needed to demonstrate a willingness to engage in violence by recounting prior physical altercations to the hiring officers. I observed parts of the hiring process at all four departments, and watched the full application and interview portion at two. At these two departments, the interview included a question explicitly asking whether the applicant had ever been in a physical confrontation and, if so, to describe what happened. The preferred answer to this question was Yes, I’ve been in a fight, but I did not initiate it . When candidates responded that they had no experience fighting, the hiring officers expressed intense anxiety and wariness about their suitability for the job. In one interview, for example, after a 43-year-old white applicant said he had never been in a fight, the sergeant told her colleagues that she thought he would “crawl into himself and disengage” if a fight presented itself, adding, “He’s gonna have to get angry.”

Once they got into the academy, cadets were bombarded with warnings about the dangers they would face on the job. There was a war on cops, instructors insisted, making policing more dangerous now than ever before. Although empirical evidence shows that policing has actually gotten safer over time, the academy instructors repeated these warnings, often vividly, showing disturbing, graphic videos of officers being brutally beaten or killed. On several occasions, instructors designed morbid exercises requiring that cadets envision their own violent death. On the very first day at one academy, a commander encouraged the cadets to study the wall of honor located in the main hallway of the academy building, where portraits hung of every officer at the department who had died in the line of duty, along with a description of how they died. Reading their stories, he explained, will “keep you alive.” At another academy, following a tactical exercise, the instructors directed any cadet who had lost their gun during the fight to write their own obituary. “For all those who got your gun taken,” the instructor explained, “you have to write your own obituary … write about everyone you’re leaving behind.” A war was being waged, the cadets learned, and the stakes could not be higher.

Surviving this war, instructors stressed, depended on cadets’ ability to adopt a warrior’s mentality, which demanded hypervigilance, heightened suspicion of others, and a willingness to do whatever it took to make it home at the end of each shift. Equally important was the ability to identify their enemy: “bad guys,” who were described as ruthless, malicious, immoral, and unpredictable. Although ostensibly race-neutral, the “bad guys” concept was steeped in language that invoked race. Instructors told cadets that although they should never racially profile, they should absolutely profile “criminality,” discerned through clothing, cars, mannerisms, gait, and neighborhood. “We do not racially profile,” one instructor explained during the multiculturalism class, but they do profile based on “body language, appearance, and mannerisms.” “If you can’t profile someone who wants to hurt or kill you,” he explained, “that’s a problem.” Racial profiling, he continued, is a form of discrimination, and police “don’t do that.” Police officers at their department do not profile based on “skin color, gender, or language,” he clarified, “but if [someone looks] like a burglar, then that’s good profiling.” These discursive gymnastics enabled instructors to officially condemn racial profiling while simultaneously encouraging it under a different name.

[ From the July/August 2021 issue: The authoritarian instincts of police unions ]

Once they learned whom to fear, cadets trained themselves to react to these threats, spending hundreds of hours practicing techniques designed to control, incapacitate, hurt, and kill other people. These skills did not necessarily come naturally, and learning how to use the appropriate amount of force required practice. Cadets sometimes used too much force, and sometimes too little. These two mistakes, however, were treated very differently in the academy setting, where instructors calmly acknowledged when cadets used too much force but became irate when cadets used too little. During a tactics drill at one academy, for example, when multiple cadets used lethal force in a scenario against their unarmed partner, the instructors were not visibly upset and did not punish the class. In contrast, during a different tactics exercise, in which three cadets lost their gun, re-holstered it, and reengaged in a physical struggle with their opponent, one instructor threw his face guard in the air and screamed, “What the fuck!” Following the exercise, another instructor repeatedly pressed the cadets, asking them why they hadn’t shot, reminding them that in this scenario, “it’s you or him or her, and we want it to be you.” If they were going to make a mistake, cadets learned, it should be the one where they walked away alive.

Even in classes focused on techniques meant to mitigate violence, such as de-escalation, the instructors still underscored the importance of remaining vigilant, prepared for violence, and prioritizing officer safety above everything else. During the de-escalation class at two different academies, the instructors shared the 1998 video of Laurens County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Kyle Dinkheller’s murder. The three-and-a-half-minute video shows a traffic stop gone wrong that culminates in Dinkheller’s guttural, panicked screams and strained breathing as he dies at the side of his patrol car. Before playing the video, one instructor explained, “Even though we’re talking about de-escalation today, I’m not watering down officer safety. Do not drop your guard.” After the video was over, another instructor warned, “I hate going to funerals. Don’t make me go to your funeral because you were using your words when you shouldn’t be.” Although using words was great where possible, these lessons highlighted, if used incorrectly, they could be your last.

By the time the cadets reached graduation, they had spent hundreds of hours hearing that they are at war, that the “bad guys” should be identified through profiling, and that gaining competence in violence is the only way to survive. Cadets’ bodies are physically conditioned to assume that everyone is armed, to act swiftly and decisively, and to shoot as soon as they perceive a deadly threat. Given this training, it is not hard to understand why some police officers end up shooting unarmed civilians who run away, turn around suddenly, or reach into their pocket to grab a phone or wallet; that is what they were trained to do.