Kill me.
[D
Put it down. Put it down! Put the knife down! Taser! Taser! Taser!
This is what de-escalation training looks like for the Baltimore City Police
Department.
Before becoming police officers,
recruits receive more than a thousand hours of entry-level training.
Sixteen of those hours teach them how to stabilize a situation before
using force.
No justice, no peace!
The training was implemented after the death of Freddie Gray - a young Black man
who died after officers from this department took him into custody.
We knew we had to make some changes, and on the training side,
we knew we had to get this de-escalation program right.
But the Baltimore community is still reeling,
and many wonder whether the department has changed.
That's the American way, is to use force.
That's how America became America.
You seem like you're stuck.
I didn't want to be a Baltimore City police officer before.
I feel like Baltimore City police officers have a bad name about themselves,
and we have to change that. And change it together.
Black lives matter!
In a year when millions took to the streets across the country to demand police
reform.
Say his name! George Floyd!
We went inside the Baltimore Police Department to see how de-escalation training
actually works.
Lieutenant Scott Swenson starts off the training by showing recruits a video of
the moments leading up to George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis
police.
We don't know how Floyd ended up on the ground.
One officer is pressing his knee into Floyd's neck,
which we see clearly in this video taken only seconds later by another
witness standing in front of the grocery store.
So based on your training, knowledge, and experience to this point,
what's some issues that we can address?
The weight of the officers on the body of the victim makes
it hard for him to breathe.
We talk a lot about time in de-escalation, and our good use of time.
8 minutes, 46 seconds. Time to intervene there? Yes. OK.
What does physically intervening, what does that look like?
You grab him and take him off. Physically grab? OK, are you ready to do that?
Yeah. You're sure? Positive. Two of those officers, four days on.
It's easy to sit here in this room and say you'll intervene, but will you?
Will you? Make your mind up.
My cousin's in there. He's off his meds. He's by himself.
I think he's armed with a knife.
The program was developed by a nonprofit called the Police Executive Research
Forum. Go away, man. Turn!
It was designed for police encounters with someone who does not have a firearm
and is experiencing a mental crisis.
Sir, Officer Coleman, BPD. This is not worth it. There's always other options,
sir.
The program encourages cops to create distance between themselves and a suspect.
Sir, put the knife down. Don't come back in here!
And find cover to protect themselves instead of reaching for their weapons.
This tactic gives officers more time to strategize how to respond.
Taser! Taser! Taser! Trainees carry
a replica taser and gun, and it's up to them to choose which to deploy.
Put the knife down. Put the knife down for me please, sir. Scott
Swenson brought the de-escalation program to the city in 2016.
The concept was new for many cops,
steeped in a culture that prioritizes speed.
Years ago, officers were trained with some old conventional methods.
You must act quickly at all times. If you don't act quickly, you can get hurt,
or worse, killed.
Sir, stop! Go away!
De-escalation was when a suspect stops resisting, you stop using force.
Not getting tunnel vision is probably the hardest part.
It's realizing that there is an entire world happening outside of what's going
on.
You found yourself doing that?
Mm-hmm. Drop the knife! Taser! Taser! Taser! No!
In the very first scenario,
it would have been a better idea for me to shut the door and reassess that way,
but as he's coming at me, that's all I see.
Is you talking to somebody with a behavioral crisis like this,
as effective as you maybe being behind cover and having the weapon at the
low-ready?
It's almost like teaching them to do what they believe a
cop, you know it's like the opposite of what the cop should do.
But the training isn't as common-sense as you might think.
This is heavy. I
went through it and quickly realized it took a lot of multitasking.
Do we know the family member's name who is outside of the apartment waiting? No,
that's all the information the dispatch has.
OK, got it.
Baltimore PD. What? Go away! What's wrong? What's,
what's going on? No, go away. Stop where you're at! Back up a little bit.
Let's back up a little bit. Hey Bob, I just want to have a conversation.
Take two more steps back. You're going to take me to jail?
We're going to take you to the hospital if that's OK. Can I trust you?
I think you can. Turn!
I'm getting the taser out. Do you mind putting your knife down? What happened?
Oh, OK. Two years ago your daughter was born.
She ain't my daughter, though. But you raised her like a dad,
did you not? I hear what you're saying.
This is difficult to go through today. Why don't you come over to me,
we talk about this?
You were very thorough with your questions. You were like bang, bang, bang.
And I was just like, I was a little taken aback.
They have their own language and it felt really prohibitive to like,
not know what to say and when to say it. So I was just relying on like,
all I know, which is talking.
Active-duty officer Angel Villaronga de-escalated an incident with a man holding
a knife back in 2017.
That was before he says he trained in de-escalation.
Angel's body cam recorded the scene.
I'm not dealing with life no more, sir.
Why?
I'm done with it. Officer Villaronga, by the way. You can call me V.
Just do your job, man. This is our job!
It's not your job. Yes it is! What were you worried about in that moment?
He was just going to go for it.
He's going to just take his chance so somebody can shoot. At the end of the day,
you know, I do have a uniform. I do have a job to do,
but killing you today is not part of my job. This is not a rehearsal.
This is not for play. It's real.
The community is hurting. Our crime level is so high.
Our homeless level is so high.
The community needs Baltimore City police officers that's just not here for a
paycheck. They're here because they care. So why Baltimore?
I chose Baltimore City because I think that this is where I can make the biggest
impact. One year of experience with Baltimore City,
it's probably equivalent to 10 to 20 years anywhere else.
How do you think it is to hear from like a community perspective that new
officers come.
Here because they see it as a challenge?
It doesn't have to be seen as a challenge.
You just needs to come in knowing that you're going to have to protect and serve
a community that you don't live in.
People come from New York, come from New Jersey, come from different places,
and they don't know Baltimore.
And people that's not born and raised in Baltimore,
they don't understand how I feel like. This is my home.
I lived in 1620. That was the first time I ever saw a drug line.
I guess it was like 1976 or '77.
And they used to go in between our building and the Dunbar apartment building.
They would go in the front and come out the back. How old were you?
I guess I was 6 or 7.
Ray Kelly is part of a group who helps to monitor the Baltimore Police
Department to make sure it's following through with promised reforms.
My subject matter expertise doesn't come from any
years of college. I'm from the streets. I've been arrested.
I've been mistreated by police. How are you, soldier?
Today, he works as a liaison between the community and officers to empower
residents to hold police accountable.
We have to train police officers
that enforcement isn't the first option.
What are your thoughts on de-escalation as a
solution?
I think that de-escalation should be one of the first lines
of defense.
But the scenarios have to be realistic and
reflective of the communities that these officers will actually serve.
The police in our community has always been the last resort.
Ray was born a couple of years after the Baltimore riots of 1968 following the
killing of Martin Luther King Jr.
The period of civil unrest left parts of the city in ruins.
This community's been so disinvested in over the past few
decades that we've learned to take care of our own.
A recent academic study with Baltimore residents found that more than 60% of
respondents were not satisfied with the department.
More than half said they witnessed police using excessive force.
Ray has seen it firsthand. He lives in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood,
blocks away from where Freddie Gray was arrested.
We never saw positive policing in our
communities. We were kind of taught to stay away from the police.
The video we're about to show might be disturbing to watch.
Baltimore officers arrested Freddie Gray in 2015.
Shorty, that was after they tased him like that.
The video shows the 25-year-old struggling and screaming while officers drag him
into a van. I've been recording. I've been recording.
He sustained a neck and spinal injury that led to his death a week later.
A moment of silence for Baltimore. A moment of silence for the world.
Thousands of people took to the streets to protest police brutality.
We have probable cause to file criminal charges. Yes! Yes!
Having to deal with the subsequent riots, a lot of officers quit at that time.
We knew we had to make some changes.
Afterwards,
a federal investigation found the department routinely made unconstitutional
stops, searches, arrests, and used excessive force.
It also found that African Americans were disproportionately affected at every
stage of enforcement activity, a trend that's true across the country.
It was clear that recent events including the tragic in-custody death of Mr.
Freddie Gray, had given rise to a serious erosion of public trust.
The Baltimore PD then introduced de-escalation training after the Obama
administration demanded police reform to address systemic problems in the city.
Were you thinking about what BPD needs to do better?
Sure, sure. I had trained a lot of the officers involved,
so I took it very seriously.
I didn't realize that you trained some of those officers,
and so I'm just curious to know what that training looked like.
They would have went through the typical 80 hours of defensive tactics.
Sixteen hours of the baton.
They wouldn't have gotten the de-escalation training program as you saw it
today.
There's no comprehensive list that shows how many police departments train in
de-escalation.
But a recent CBS survey of 155 police departments found that a
majority had some sort of de-escalation training. Still,
that represents only a fraction of the almost 18,000 law enforcement
agencies in the United States.
I guess I'm wondering if it takes something like a Freddie Gray
incident for police departments to change.
A lot of changes are often written in mistakes of the past.
Sometimes it takes a catalyst to force you into looking at what you're doing
and making the necessary changes. You got to have empathy.
Sometimes that's just not taught. It's just grown into you.
We're talking about cultural change.
We're changing a system of policing that's been established
for 160 years here. Do not let them scare you. Hold your ground.
The call for change spread throughout the country over the summer,
and it's likely to continue.
People need something to believe in.
The hope is that one day we won't have to deal with
another Freddie Gray incident, a George Floyd.
If we can eliminate the killing of unarmed Black men by the police,
then that'll rejuvenate
nationwide hope that things can change around the country.