Austin's Police Academy: culture of hazing and violence

[Winehole23]

Just before the New Year's holiday, the city released the first of these audits (http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/pio/document.cfm?id=352525) from its Equity Office, and it was a scathing and unabashed take down of the APD training process. The report "recommends that City leaders suspend all cadet classes until APD leadership and Equity Office officials can develop and implement an equity-driven action plan that reforms and rebuilds APD’s Training division, including the training academy."


Among the biggest complaints was a culture of violence and hazing within the academy. "Interviews with former cadets revealed an academy culture that prioritizes physical aggression above all else. Multiple cadets stated that training staff subjected them to hours of grueling physical and psychological stress drills, refusing water to dehydrated cadets and engaging in other dangerous practices."


Training isn't just grueling, but demeaning and regressive: “In multiple interviews, cadets confirmed the narrative that an APD trainer asked a new cadet why they wanted to be a police officer, interrupting the cadet’s response by saying 'If you tell me you want to help people, I will punch you in the face.'”

[Winehole23]

The most severe portions of the training appear to have no relationship to preparing officers for any real-world tasks they will perform:

According to interview respondents, many of the academy’s trainers rely overwhelmingly on “violent”, “brutal”, “traumatizing” practices designed to “manufacture soldiers” rather than produce community-driven law enforcement professionals adept at de-escalation. Trainers place cadets in dangerous, demoralizing, and inhumane exercises with “zero regard for the health and safety of cadets.” Multiple cadets stated that they and their colleagues had been screamed at or punished for checking on one another or drinking water during intense physical drills, which last for hours in sweltering summer heat. Multiple cadets confirmed that they were deprived of water during extended physical drills in extreme heat. Data provided by APD confirms that a troubling number of cadets were treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration during the academy. Multiple cadets expressed that even though they hydrated heavily at home, as advised by APD training staff during orientation, it was impossible to avoid dehydration when training staff refused to allow them water during these extended physical drills. Cadets could not identify a plausible real-world scenario during which they would be deprived of access to water in extreme heat for extended periods of time. Multiple cadets expressed that this deprivation was rooted in nothing more than cruelty and had no basis in the reality faced by police officers. Some narratives, corroborated by multiple respondents, are simply too violent to understand how they were ever allowed to occur, including many cadets being forced to resign or risk serious injury in the face of seemingly endless “hazing” and “abuse.”


Interviews revealed that cadets were subjected to so-called "smoking sessions," which are:


unscripted, unscheduled physical and psychological stress drills that instructors instigate without notice. According to multiple interviews, these smoking sessions are often used as collective punishment for individual violations, though their use is just as frequently unexplainable. Some respondents indicated that Training division staff seemed to enjoy putting cadets through the stress drills, which often go on for hours during the summer heat. Multiple respondents claimed that cadets are refused water during these stress drills, that instructors punish cadets for looking at one another (even if checking the condition of fellow cadets), and that medical staff are not posted close enough to the cadets to assess symptoms of dehydration or heat stroke. Multiple respondents witnessed instructors refuse water and fail to render aid to cadets who were visibly suffering symptoms of dehydration. It is well documented that these practices resulted in multiple serious injuries to cadets.
https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2021/01/shocking-allegations-of-hazing-and.html

[Winehole23]

Nationally, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/slleta13.pdf), only 23 percent of training academies have curricula which is all or mostly stress-based, as is clearly the case in Austin. That means more than three quarters of training academies have eschewed that approach, but Austin PD clings to it.


The Equity Office highlighted the wastefulness of stress-based "teaching," separate and apart from the moral and ethical problems with it:



What benefit is it to eliminate brilliant candidates for the sake of maintaining a battlefield mindset? How much money is spent recruiting these bright, capable, highly educated, successful and diverse candidates, bringing them through a months-long recruiting process, vetting them intensely, dedicating an unknown number of personnel hours to interviews and investigations -- only to have them driven out of the academy by a culture of brutality, militarism and violence? What benefit is it to subject highly-qualified, diverse, committed cadets to training that is more intense than some military training programs?

[DMC]

:cry cops can't handle basic training

[koriwhat]

WH crying as usual about a whole lot of nothing. So shocking, you mean vets on the force haze cadets? You don't say? lmao

[Winehole23]

:cry cops can't handle basic training77% of PDs don't think cops need military style basic training.

why do you?

do you see being a peace officer and being a US troop as being equivalent functions?

[DMC]

77% of PDs don't think cops need military style basic training.

why do you?

do you see being a peace officer and being a US troop as being equivalent functions?

The defunded ones?

Basic training is easy, it's not Full Metal Jacket.

Basically LEOs are taught to act like they have firearms and that they could be in a gunfight at any time. Hey who does that sound like?

[Winehole23]

The defunded ones?

Basic training is easy, it's not Full Metal Jacket.

Basically LEOs are taught to act like they have firearms and that they could be in a gunfight at any time. Hey who does that sound like?You didn't read the article.

[Winehole23]

APD desperate to deep six the review

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[Thread]

APD desperate to deep six the review

1430217402533531660

Never understood the whole hazing practice to begin with, Winester.