Column: The root of the problem with the police: a warrior mentality

The rapid rise in police shootings has shocked many in America in recent years. Policemen once held in esteem as trusted officers who “protect and serve” are increasingly being shown acting irrationally, killing the innocent, and lying about what happened until a video shows the truth. Something has gone way wrong, but what?

The answer lies in something called “The Warrior Mindset.” After 9/11 and the war in Iraq, arrogant men who thrive on war and killing started offering “training camps” and “seminars” to police officers in the U.S. Whole departments were lured into some of these, unaware that they would be subject to psychological conditioning intended to change their perception of the world.

Instead of being public servants protecting their community, they became “warriors” — in a life-and-death struggle for survival 24 hours a day with everyone, everywhere. To them, death lies just around the corner and can literally come from any person they meet, no matter how innocent or harmless they appear to be.

They are to trust no one. They are to have a plan to kill at the slightest threat. Their only goal is to survive another day when they will go out again to the “war zone.” Personal safety requires they exercise unquestioned command of every situation, resulting in them barking out harsh commands that demand immediate obedience. And when someone shows the slightest hesitation or question, they see an “enemy combatant” and instantly, an innocent person can end up being shot to death by an officer.

A groundbreaking article exposing this was “Law Enforcement’s Warrior Problem,” published by the Harvard Law Review in 2015. There it explains how officers’ personal safety transformed into this paranoid mindset.

This is a threat to the peace and stability of our whole society. No one likes to be disrespected. Being barked at for no reason by an officer who is ignoring civility, ignoring facts, and worse yet, ignoring the law, is bound to cause otherwise compliant people to react, insisting on their right to be treated fairly. The officer’s demand for unquestioned obedience is not correct. Officers are not above the law. And worst of all, their “warrior” mentality creates the very situation they so fear.

In Minneapolis, the mayor recognized this some time ago and banned this training from the police only to have the head of the police union defy him and offer the training to any officer who wanted it. Even now after the death of George Floyd, the union head is defiant, insisting the officers were fired without “due process” — something they surely didn’t give George Floyd.

I don’t know to what degree we have this in Hawaii, but for our own well-being as a people, we need to eliminate this from our police forces in America.

We need to have officers who see themselves as members of the community and who do policing for it, not to it. The vast majority of people that an officer encounters on any given day are not at war with him, and most officers will probably never encounter such a person in their lifetime.

For six years now we have watched unjustified police shootings continue, and many victims’ names are now engraved on our consciousness. Yet repeatedly prosecutors have refused to bring charges and juries have failed to convict. The public’s sense of injustice has been building until recently, when it suddenly went over the top.

So what will we do now? Listen? Humble ourselves and change? Hold these men accountable for their actions?

Or have a full-scale war with the police?

Chuck Jonas is an accountant in Kailua-Kona.