Friday, August 19, 2016

DOJ pushes for “implicit bias training” for local police officers

DOJ pushes for “implicit bias training” for local police officers | Power Line:
"Conservatives and some liberals have reached a common way to express sympathy (maybe genuine, maybe not) with the police.
They like to say that when officers kiss family members goodbye in the morning, they don’t know whether they will return home to them that evening.
This is true.
But here’s a concern I have heard mentioned:
When officers kiss their families goodbye in the morning, they don’t know in what spirit they will return home to them that evening.
Officers who police crime infested neighborhoods may well return home dispirited.
Take the neighborhood in Milwaukee where a black officer killed Sylville Smith.
Image result for “implicit bias training cartoonAs Rich Lowry points out, three people were murdered last weekend within blocks of where the officer shot Smith on Saturday afternoon, and five people were killed in total over a nine-hour period Friday night and Saturday morning.
Lowry notes that Smith had a long arrest record.
It included arrests for a shooting, a robbery, carrying a concealed weapon, theft, and possession of heroin and cocaine.
He beat a shooting rap at a jury trial in 2015 when a witness recanted, allegedly after Smith intimidated him.
...But never fear.
The U.S. Department of Justice has an answer.
It has been pushing localities to provide “implicit bias training” for police officers and will require federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors to undergo it. 
Loretta Lynch is a big fan.
Joe Davidson discusses this development in a column for the Washington Post. Davidson’s report is deficient, though.
He never tells his readers what “implicit bias training,” or for that mater “implicit bias,” is.
We are told what “implicit bias” it is not.
It’s “distinct from explicit bias”.
We are also told that “it is something we all carry around unconsciously in one form or another.”
But what is it that we “all carry around unconsciously” and how does it manifest itself?..."

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