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March 26, 2024

Inside 'The Danger Imperative' with Michael Sierra-Arévalo

Step into the realm of law enforcement with Bruce Anthony as he engages in a pivotal dialogue with Dr. Michael Sierra-Arévalo, the insightful mind behind ‘The Danger Imperative.’ This episode is a deep dive into the intricacies of policing culture, where we unravel the layers of officer safety, confront the systemic issues at play, and discuss the avenues for substantial reform. Dr. Sierra-Arévalo brings to the table his extensive research and expertise, shedding light on the often unseen challenges within the policing system and the critical need for a shift towards more community-centric strategies. As we dissect the content of ‘The Danger Imperative,’ listeners will gain a nuanced understanding of the balance between maintaining order and fostering trust within communities. This conversation is not just about the problems but also about the potential solutions that can lead to safer neighborhoods and a more just society. Tune in to this essential episode that promises to enlighten, provoke thought, and inspire action towards the evolution of modern policing.

In an era where understanding and empathy are more crucial than ever, we dissect the mechanisms of fear, the constructs of officer safety, and the stark realities behind the badge. This episode is a must-watch for anyone passionate about cultural diversity, racial issues, and the urgent need for systemic change. 

Don't miss out on this compelling journey through the shadows of American policing, where history meets the future, and dialogue sparks transformation. #UnsolicitedPerspectives #InsideTheDangerImperative #SystemicChange #CulturalDiversity #PolicingCulture #OptimizingPoliceTraining #PoliceSystemReform #PoliceTactics #PoliceTrainingReform #PoliceViolence

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Unsolicited Perspectives

About the Guest(s):

Dr. Michael Sierra-Arevalo is an author, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, and associate director of the Liberal Arts Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University and has a background in studying policing and violence. Dr. Sierra-Arevalo's research focuses on the danger imperative in policing and the impact of violence and death on the soul of policing.

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Michael Sierra-Arevalo discusses his book, "The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing." He shares insights from his research on the preoccupation with violence and officer safety within the policing institution. Dr. Sierra-Arevalo explores the cultural and systemic factors that contribute to the danger imperative and its impact on police behavior. He also highlights the need for a deeper understanding of policing beyond the media portrayals and emphasizes the importance of recognizing the systemic nature of the issue.

Key Takeaways:

  • Policing has been consistently preoccupied with violence and danger over the past half-century, despite empirical evidence showing a decrease in officer mortality and an increase in officer safety.

  • The danger imperative is a lens through which officers view their work, emphasizing the importance of violence and officer safety at every level of the policing institution.

  • The danger imperative is a product and a cause of police culture, perpetuated through training, videos, bulletins, and other mechanisms that reinforce the preoccupation with violence.

  • Policing inequalities and violence disproportionately affect marginalized communities, but the danger imperative affects all people, albeit to varying degrees.

  • Simple and inexpensive measures, such as improving lighting, fixing broken facades, and increasing the number of behavioral health treatment centers, can contribute to reducing crime and violence in communities.

Notable Quotes:

  • "This is not a story of bad apples. This is not a story of especially immoral or incompetent officers. This is a story about systems." - Dr. Michael Sierra-Arevalo

  • "The danger imperative is a manifestation of police authority and power, which officers are taught is absolutely necessary to prevent things from escalating." - Dr. Michael Sierra-Arevalo

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Thank you for tuning into Unsolicited Perspectives with Bruce Anthony. Let's continue the conversation in the comments and remember, stay engaged, stay informed, and always keep an open mind. See you in the next episode! 

#OptimizingPoliceTraining #PoliceViolence #LawEnforcement #PoliceTrainingOverhaul #RevolutionizingPoliceTraining

CHAPTERS:

0:00 - Intro, 1:03 - Dr. Michael Sierra-Arévalo Background, 5:48 - Policing vs Gangs, 8:24 - Research Methodology Insights, 11:55 - Defining Community Policing, 13:53 - Officer Safety Explained, 19:01 - Significance of Sierra-Arévalo's Book, 20:42 - Systemic Danger Perception, 26:50 - Liquid IV Sponsorship, 29:46 - Understanding the Danger Imperative, 35:15 - Police Culture Formation, 38:18 - Addressing Racism in Policing, 45:05 - Unexpected Research Findings, 50:20 - Solutions to Policing Issues, 53:15 - Police Training Oversight, 56:25 - Non-Policy Solutions for Policing, 1:04:00 - Outro, 1:05:15 - Bruce’s Final Thoughts

Explore Dr. Michael Sierra-Arevalo 

🌐 Website: Michael Sierra-Arevalo Official Website (https://www.sierraarevalo.com/)

📧 Email: Reach out to Michael at msa@utexas.edu

🐦 Twitter: Connect with Michael on Twitter (https://twitter.com/michaelsierraa)

📸 Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/michaelsierraa/)

📚 Amazon: "THE DANGER IMPERATIVE: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing" (https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Imperative-Violence-Death-Policing/dp/0231198477/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

www.unsolictedperspectives.com

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Thank you for tuning in to 'Unsolicited Perspectives.' We hope you enjoyed this episode featuring unique and authentic views on current events, social-political topics, race, class, and gender. Stay engaged with us as we continue to provide insightful commentary and captivating interviews. Join us on this journey of exploration and thought-provoking conversations, and remember, your perspective matters!

Transcript

00:03.60
Bruce Anthony
So like I said at the top I'm here with Dr Michael sierra Arevolo he's an author of the danger imperative violence death in the soul of policing assistant professor in the department of sociology and an associate director of the liberal arts. Honors program at the University Of Texas at Austin he has a ph d in sociology from Yale University and he has a b a in sociology and psychology from the University Of Texas at Austin Dr. Michael thank you for joining me on today's episode it's my pleasure to have you on here.

00:37.49
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Oh pleasures all mine. Thank you so much for having me.

00:40.97
Bruce Anthony
Absolutely So I always start with every interview. How did it all begin. Can you tell me a little bit about your background.

00:50.42
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
So I was born in 19 I'm just kidding. Ah so um I mean do do we want to talk about sort of like my my family background or just sort of how the project started because we are they're interrelated it turns out. Yeah for sure.

00:54.49
Bruce Anthony
Ah.

01:00.50
Bruce Anthony
So let's start with the family background and then the sort of next question after that will be how did were there any influences from your background that led you into your field of study.

01:13.80
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Yeah, for sure. So it's that this is something I've been reflecting on a little bit recently. Um, so it turns out that sort of by happenstance. My family is a policing family just not in the U s Ah so my grandfather was an officer in the Colombian National police.

01:22.82
Bruce Anthony
Here.

01:29.85
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, which is a branch of the military in Columbia unlike the Us we have a civilianized police force here. Um, and my mom served in the Us military she served in the army which is why I wound up in Texas originally she was stationed at the bamsey medical center at for Sam Houston after I was born in Binghamton New York um and even my uncle served in the army in. Columbia and so it turns out you fast forward 25 years or so and that was something that I connected with officers about when I was in the car with them in the interim though I went to graduate school and my initial project was going to be about gangs I was really interested in studying.

01:57.00
Bruce Anthony
You.

02:09.13
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, different ethnicities of gangs, black gangs Latino gangs Potentially Asian gangs or white gangs and I was really interested in ideas of of culture. Do these do these groups think about things like honor and family and.

02:09.44
Bruce Anthony
A.

02:16.44
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

02:23.00
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
These different values differently and that was deeply influenced by some of my mom's work when she was getting her Ph D while she was raising me and my sister in high school. Well sorry while while I was in high school. Um, and so she was looking at Caregivers of Alzheimer's patients and for a lot of her work is around how it turns out if you just change the language from English to spanish.

02:29.65
Bruce Anthony
And right.

02:42.15
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Definition and what the words mean change a lot and so culture mattered to me a lot even growing up I had a sense of the values. The assumptions that we bring to the world fundamentally shape how we see things and so I get to grad school I immediately get attached to a violence reduction project called project longevity in New Haven

02:47.43
Bruce Anthony
Um, and he.

03:00.88
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Which is all about reducing shootings and violence at the street level and that's where I meet cops for the first time. Um and I was you know I mostly had a view of police deeply informed by the media at that time you know I had ah I had only the most fantastical romantic sense of what cops did but when I met them.

03:04.99
Bruce Anthony
A.

03:19.89
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
They were just pretty mundane. They were pretty average. They you know they looked a certain way. They were overwhelmingly white and they were all men a lot of bald heads and big biceps. But they were they were otherwise like relatively normal people who talked about normal things like overtime and days off and um, that stuck with me until. Michael Brown was killed in 2014 in Ferguson ah, and that's when I began to see as a grad student I began trying to read which is what what grad students do a lot of is reading and I was kind of finding out alongside people that we didn't seem to know all that much about the police empirically.

03:39.54
Bruce Anthony
A a.

03:47.99
Bruce Anthony
Right.

03:56.79
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, this was before websites like the counted and other nonprofits and journalistic groups put together datasets on people shot by the police but in 14 I was seeing headlines like we don't even know how many people are shot by the police and that didn't sit well with me I started looking for even basic information about things like how many police are there.

04:04.79
Bruce Anthony
Um, me.

04:07.96
Bruce Anthony
I Think a.

04:16.50
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And it turns out our census of the police in the US was like already a decade old at the time which struck me as a real problem and so I grew less and less convinced that I was going to be able to answer my my growing questions about the how and the why of policing through something like a survey and so I decided to.

04:20.54
Bruce Anthony
Home. Okay.

04:35.20
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Take it back to the 1970 s when these first studies were done in the get into a car and so that is a mixture of sort of where I came from and what I was interested in intersecting with what I was developing a sort of a scholarly interest while I was in graduate school.

04:38.00
Bruce Anthony
With.

04:48.43
Bruce Anthony
So you brought up something your original focus was in gangs and I'm not going to put you on the spot. But I've said that police is kind of an another institution of a gang. Just.

04:55.30
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um.

05:06.37
Bruce Anthony
Looked at differently was there were there some commonalities that you found between the ethos of gangs and policing as far as that communal I don't know kind of camaraderie.

05:16.30
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
A me.

05:23.26
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
A.

05:24.86
Bruce Anthony
That's in gangs that might also be in policing that sticking by 1 another and standing up for 1 another no matter what.

05:33.30
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, so I take your your question and it resonates like I don't want to take the metaphor too far. Um, and it's for and it's for a couple of reasons. Um, so at the most at the most shallow level the simple level some things ring very similar. Let's start.

05:38.33
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

05:50.17
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Super simple, mostly male, very similar between street gangs and cops. Um colors very very similar. Um, there's a clear ingroup and a clear outgroup. That's very similar. Um the use of violence as a means for solving problems very similar.

05:51.13
Bruce Anthony
Okay, right right in.

06:09.98
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
I think that it's important to underscore that as serious a problem as things like gang violence are and communities that struggle with this problem would be the first to tell you this is a serious problem. Um, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the police were special because they are the state.

06:20.00
Bruce Anthony
A.

06:28.56
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so I think that gangs are a serious problem and there are some commonalities I think the difference is that when Gangs use violence that is essentially roundly illegal are our analysis of what we do about the problem of police violence.

06:29.18
Bruce Anthony
Um, my.

06:37.92
Bruce Anthony
Right.

06:44.93
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Has to account for the fact that the vast majority of the violence that they use is legal. We've defined it as such. It's within policy now legal and moral are 2 very different things and legal and just are 2 very different things but the metaphor I think begins to break down when you begin to see.

06:50.83
Bruce Anthony
Um.

06:53.61
Bruce Anthony
Right in.

07:01.81
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
How big the apparatus around policing is that supports them not just in terms of billions of dollars but the legal protections they have the public support that the police enjoy that gangs do not. That's where I think we have to begin to draw that clear distinction. But as far as things like in-group and out-group and we call it cohesion.

07:18.75
Bruce Anthony
Are.

07:20.76
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, within groupss there is a very strong sense of cohesion within policing as well.

07:24.20
Bruce Anthony
Okay, so you start this research and how do you go about trying to find the answers to to the questions that that you initially had and that are continuously growing as you're doing the research from this. Outdated data that you had to go all the way back to the 70 s and I'm going to assume because you're younger than I am that your research was in the mid two thousand s like before 2010 or around that time.

07:55.79
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, no, the book was based on work that is from 2014 to 2018 so again I I was interested starting with the killing of Michael Brown and so I essentially got in the car. Yeah correct.

07:58.44
Bruce Anthony
24 right so that was 202014 right okay so you got this outdated data. That's going back forty years forty five years. Yeah 1970 how did you get the answers to your questions.

08:12.86
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um.

08:18.25
Bruce Anthony
As your and and what questions what new questions developed as you were continuing to do research.

08:18.67
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah.

08:25.18
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Yeah, so an important distinction when I say data is that there's all kind all different kinds of data. Um, and so I think we often think of quantitative stuff Surveys and numbers and figures and line graphs. Um, and we've had that data and some of that is quite old when I say.

08:29.48
Bruce Anthony
The.

08:40.61
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Like kicking it back to the seventy s That's when these original policing scholars got into a car and that's data too with qualitative data observations and interviews and just observing the world around you to understand how other people understand the world and make sense of it and so I wanted to use that tried and true method of being there.

08:47.76
Bruce Anthony
Um, in.

08:59.81
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Seeing what other people see to understand versus having them report to me. Oh like what is your life like based on the survey question that I made up with 5 responses I want to be there and talk to you on the street with you. Um.

09:02.31
Bruce Anthony
Right. Um, we have.

09:13.72
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And it's you know I think this is actually a story about research generally is that no one is really uncovering brand new things I think part of what I uncovered or what I show is that policing has been shockingly consistent over the past half century

09:27.57
Bruce Anthony
He.

09:29.59
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so scholars from the 1950 s were talking about how important danger is in the minds of police officers so in the danger imperative. Um, the book that I wrote from data on 2014 to 18 That's still actually really consistent. This idea that officers are deeply preoccupied. With violence and danger. The wrinkle is that while in the 1970 s that was actually the peak of what we know about officer mortality killed in the line of duty um, policing has been growing safer over the past half century and yet the rhetoric is very consistent and that is the sort of intervention that I was interested in.

10:01.82
Bruce Anthony
Um, hey.

10:07.50
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And really honing in on how is it that despite empirical observable statistical increases in officer safety and wellness a decrease in mortality. They're still talking about their job as if it's more dangerous than ever. Why is the war on cops this thing that we're talking about right now despite changes. Would suggest your job is growing safer over time. Um, and oddly enough that wasn't the conversation that I was interested in first having when I got in the car at first I wanted to talk about community policing which was something I'd been thinking about and reading about at the time it was you know in the air after Michael Brown was killed committee policing is going to save the world. And all I got was boilerplate responses all I got was you know, ah you know community. We were a community polacing department. It's all about relationships and I just wasn't seeing it. They were mostly just taking calls. They I wasn't seeing a lot of community policing. Um, yeah for sure.

10:55.62
Bruce Anthony
What can you for my audience and I guess for me, can you give kind of a clear definition of how community policing would be a different strategy than what they typically do.

11:08.15
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Sure so it's ah if I were to ask a hundred police officers. What is community policing I'm going to get 200 different responses. Um, so in theory pull community policing is not a definable strategy which is part of the problem.

11:11.83
Bruce Anthony
Yeah, okay.

11:21.25
Bruce Anthony
A.

11:23.40
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
It's more of like a general philosophy or an ethos which is that we need to co-produce public safety with the public and as part of that you want to engage as an officer in positive non-enforcement interactions with the public to get a sense of what matters to them. What problems they think exist in their community and then use that as a launching point for creating strategies to solve the problems that the community has itself pointed out to you as being things that they care about and the community can get involved not only in the defining the problem part but also sometimes in the actual problem solving itself.

11:58.80
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

12:00.88
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
The issue is that community policing it. It has become essentially anything that you want to call community policing coffee with a cop ice cream conhens with an officer police athletically community meetings doorknot like it is everything and nothing which is why. I Think when I asked officers. Originally what is community policing they were like I don't know it's this thing that we do and relationships and trust and um, which was a very different conversation than when I began to ask them about this term they kept using which was officer safety they kept saying officer safety Officer safety Officer safety. If I asked them why they stopped a car here and not there officer safety. Why don't you wear your seatbelt officer safety. Why did you pull them out of the car officer safety Officer safety officer safety and that was sort of ah the light bulb moment of I think I might be concentrating on the wrong thing I should probably concentrate on the thing that they are talking about constantly.

12:53.38
Bruce Anthony
So is officer safety a definable thing or is it subjective depending on the particular officer What they deem as safe for them.

12:54.00
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Which is officer safety.

13:05.13
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Sure so in some ways It's very consistent Officer safety is ah a largely unassailable unquestionable thing that matters and it can be boiled down very simply right? It's something.

13:09.90
Bruce Anthony
Fucker.

13:19.82
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Officer safety is me taking steps to make sure that I am not injured or killed simple. How individual officers go about ensuring officer safety is where you see more movement right? There's a spectrum there and how you're going to go about doing that. But the the underlying assumption that officer safety.

13:32.76
Bruce Anthony
Here.

13:38.99
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Officer survival is key for me every day while I'm on patrol as an officer that is not something that varies markedly between officers at least not based on the information and the data that I've gathered.

13:48.87
Bruce Anthony
Okay, so you've done ride Alongs and you've like boots on the ground you didn't do the survey questions and you said a boots on the ground I Want to see and experience what it is that you're seeing and experiencing and you're saying.

13:52.79
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Okay.

14:02.82
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And.

14:06.30
Bruce Anthony
You kept here in officer safety and there was an overwhelming theme of of danger is danger fear or is it just hey everything around us and everything that we do is dangerous because I'm not knocking cops at all I think it is an important job.

14:15.17
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah.

14:25.64
Bruce Anthony
We need cops. It is a dangerous job but I had a friend who was a firefighter and I said I think your job is more dangerous than a cop and they said nowhere cops job is more dangerous and I said well actually like you're going in to fight a fire. Are there some calls where there's not a fire of course.

14:31.66
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, a.

14:43.68
Bruce Anthony
But when you're going in to fight a fire fires. Are you? You don't They're unpredictable as people are but fires are absolutely unpredictable and you don't have a measure really truly to truly fight a fire when it's unpredictable as in cops have guns. So if somebody else pulls a gun on you.

14:49.79
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um.

14:58.27
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Oh.

15:03.60
Bruce Anthony
A cop a cop has kind of an equalizer. So is it fear in that danger or is it just hey you know our job is dangerous. This is what we have to do.

15:06.87
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah.

15:17.56
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
That's an interesting question. So using the firefighter example as a jumping off point I think one of the obvious distinctions between how police talk about the danger of their work and how firefighters talk about the danger of their work is that fire doesn't have agency right.

15:23.50
Bruce Anthony
Um, a so.

15:34.97
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Fire has no free will fire is a physical phenomenon and in that sense fire I Know you're saying fire is unpredictable and that's true to some extent but there's actually like a science around firefighting like we know there are certain techniques for fighting certain kinds of fires. You don't address a chemical fire the same way you address like a house fire.

15:35.80
Bruce Anthony
E.

15:44.14
Bruce Anthony
Nothing here.

15:53.12
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, there are clear steps and procedures. And importantly, you're not worried that the fire hates you police often. Talk about a public that hates them that wants to hurt them that wants to see them dead and I think from your firefighter friend's perspective. That's likely coloring.

15:58.27
Bruce Anthony
Okay, yes.

16:11.20
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
How they think about which job is more dangerous. Um, there is something very emotional about the idea of somebody a person choosing to harm you in a given moment and we can talk about why they're choosing to harm you but for an officer The why is pretty irrelevant if someone pulls a gun on them.

16:14.60
Bruce Anthony
Ah.

16:28.77
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Or somebody tries to to punch them or stab them and so from that perspective I think that it's a useful comparison. But that's a big difference is the agency of the fire now fear versus danger I've never met an officer who said I am afraid.

16:28.81
Bruce Anthony
Um, right.

16:45.56
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And I think it would be unlikely for them to say as much I've had officers tell me some cops walk around scared but no, 1 ne's admitted to it and I think for any officers that happen to listen or any officers that hear this ah they will use words like I'm not scared I'm prepared I'm not scared I'm aware now.

16:52.48
Bruce Anthony
Um, a.

17:04.26
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
That might just be because of an outside researcher is asking and no one likes to admit that they're scared ah but they don't view it as fear at least not in the not in the ah interactions that I had they view it as well. We see the worst of the worst we see a world that most people never see and that's very true people don't really have a sense of just how much awful shit.

17:06.66
Bruce Anthony
Here.

17:23.80
Bruce Anthony
Yeah, little bit that that's okay, that's okay, all the episodes are explicit so that that's that's why label a mass are you? okay.

17:23.73
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
The the police see I'm sorry my allowed to curse just Okay, okay, ah okay, um, um, and so that much is very true police see awful things all the time. Um, and so where.

17:37.19
Bruce Anthony
Hear me.

17:43.51
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Vigilance turns into Fear. It's hard for me to draw that line I think it's certainly the case that there are some officers that walk around scared Um, but I don't think that you necessarily have to assume they're Afraid. To see the kinds of outcomes that I talk about in the book.

17:59.15
Bruce Anthony
Um.

18:01.59
Bruce Anthony
Well let's talk about your book the very first question. Why is it important for our audience the listeners the watchers to read your book.

18:05.53
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Sure.

18:14.77
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
I Think that people should read the danger imperative because it's entirely likely that how you think about the police is not based. On fact I think that we all get views of what policing is through movies.

18:26.67
Bruce Anthony
Um, he.

18:31.45
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And through television shows and even the coverage in the media. You only see the most overt errors made by the police. You don't see the day today interactions you don't see the day-to-day violence which is not shootings. It's grabbing people. It's pushing people. It's handcuffing people. And I think that the conversations that we have around policing tend to focus on the most extreme outcomes if you want to understand how the day to day reality of policing is part and parcel of those extreme outcomes. This is a book that helps you understand that this is not a story of bad apples. This is not a story of.

18:55.62
Bruce Anthony
Um.

19:08.58
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Especially immoral or incompetent officers. This is a story about systems and I think that that is a crucial piece that a lot of the conversation around policing even from folks that read the newspaper and are are informed. They don't see the system and this book shows you the system from the day that officers walk into the academy.

19:28.60
Bruce Anthony
Are 8

19:28.80
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
The day that they retire how danger and violence is emphasized at every level of the policing institution and what that means for police behavior.

19:37.30
Bruce Anthony
O Okay I don't want to get too much of the book away because I want ah my listeners to go and buy the book and read the book. But I'm very interested when you say systems um without giving too much away because like I said we want people to go and buy and read your book.

19:45.10
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
M.

19:54.00
Bruce Anthony
How do systems. Ah, ah, imprint danger into an individual's mind which you would think that they would become a ah police officer for this noble desire to better their community. And not to say that that ever changes. But there's an idea like you said of what we have of cops and policing and then there's this kind of if you grew up in the 80 s like I did cop shows law and order is still out. There Sv you is still out there and these movies cops were these.

20:19.68
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah.

20:28.20
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Are.

20:31.94
Bruce Anthony
Things that you actually wanted to aspire to be how you go from that to you know my job is really dangerous right? Maybe I didn't realize how dangerous this job actually was and and the system as you say kind of almost feeding that feeling.

20:43.40
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah.

20:49.20
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, for sure. Yeah I think that a lot of officers do join with the best of intentions they want to contribute to their communities. They believe in the need of providing safety. They believe that there are some people that are. Ah, victims of crime and violence and they want to protect people and I think that's a very real thing. It's I'm not discounting that as a motivation for joining the police department at all. But it turns out that when you join the police academy you are shown a different version. Um, now to be clear Tv and movies emphasize the danger of policing all the time.

21:11.60
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

21:20.73
Bruce Anthony
Um.

21:24.32
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Like how many how many gun battles have you seen in a police movie or a police show and so I think that is actually in line with a lot of what the academy's showing. It's just a little bit more graphic and it hits a little bit closer to home and so 1 example from the book that I talk about is the most famous Youtube video that non-police have never heard of.

21:25.50
Bruce Anthony
Right.

21:44.41
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And it's a Youtube video which details the gruesome murder of deputy Kyle Dinkeller in Georgia almost thirty years ago ah in short, the video is used within police academies to underscore for new recruits. Just how dangerous their job is and the cost if they are unwilling or unable to use violence in defense of their own lives and now I've talked about this video and I write about it in great detail in the book and even just the description is is pretty graphic. Um, there's a reason I don't show the video and any talks that I give.

22:13.44
Bruce Anthony
Um, okay.

22:17.55
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, anyone that anyone that youtubes it pleases like huge content warning. It's incredibly graphic. Ah, but its graphic its graphic nature is precisely why it's used in police training you hear an officer take their last breaths you hear them screaming in terror as this driver. Ah, shoots at them hits the multiple times comes around the side of the car executes the officer that is just 1 example that is used in police academies across the country to emphasize for officers just how dangerous their job is and how necessary it is for them to not think about their job in purely. Um, romantic terms of justice and honor and courage and instead like your job is about survival and all this other stuff serving the community all this other stuff around community policing and procedural justice like none of that matters when it comes to the moment of truth. And you need to understand that your job was about survival.

23:15.52
Bruce Anthony
I I was literally getting rated before you pointed out to that. You said that you know movies and television shows do point out the violence of police officer but I would also say it kind of romanticizes it and this video is a shell shock saying no.

23:33.27
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Oh.

23:33.30
Bruce Anthony
This is what you're signing up for this is the real isn't that a good thing isn't it a good thing to let these new recruits know hey what you saw in the Tvs and movies this romanticism of the violence of being a cop or detective or is is is okay, there's that here's the real. Isn't that a good thing to kind of shock these people out of that romanticized idea of what policing is.

23:57.97
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
So the word real is really important here. So it is certainly true that deputy Dink Heller was murdered on the side of that road and other officers have been murdered and will continue to be murdered in various contexts in the course of their work. We're talking about though is how much emphasis you put on that and so if this is a video that is sometimes shown in the first or second day of the academy and it is continually referenced and other videos of this are shown and so one thing that I talk about in the book is that it's not that these things don't happen.

24:19.40
Bruce Anthony
Yeah.

24:24.44
Bruce Anthony
A.

24:37.42
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
It's that the perceived probability of these catastrophic things happening is amplified again and again and again and again. So even if I restrict the number of videos that I show to let's call it 10 videos of an officer being murdered in a. In a traffic stop or at a domestic violence call I have now shown you probably 9 to 10 more examples of an officer being killed than will happen in your entire career. So there is something in your department to be clear, not across the entire country. Um, so it is important.

25:08.99
Bruce Anthony
Um, right.

25:15.58
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
To show officers that this is something that happens I think that where we begin to go into dangerous Territory. No pun intended is when we teach officers that this is something that needs to be in the back of your mind during all interactions because no interaction is safe and anybody might choose to harm you at any moment. I Think that that is something that is not really considered all that often in the context of police training and policy is that what are the unintended consequences of emphasizing for recruits and for officers once they've graduated that any call might be their last.

25:50.69
Bruce Anthony
You there.

00:04.99
Bruce Anthony
So Dr Michael we we we've talked about the videos that are shown um throughout training to to kind of imprint how serious and dangerous your job the job of being a police officer is would you say there's. A sense of dread of danger and what other tools besides videos do does a system use to imprint. This is a dangerous job.

00:35.20
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
For sure. Um, similar to the conversation around fear right? where where vigilance becomes dread I think is is an open question but I do think that if we think about dread as something like a very emotionally laden expectation.

00:49.60
Bruce Anthony
A a.

00:51.83
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Then I 100 % think it's dread. Um, and so what I what I describe in the book. What the danger imperative is is a lens that officers wear that is centered on the preoccupation with violence and the provision of officer safety that is what the danger imperative. Is and it's constructed. It's something that's recreated very intentionally within policing. It's not accidental and it's not something that is simply downloaded by police in the academy and then they use it it when they go out instead. It begins in the academy and progresses through their entirety of the time that officers spend in the police department. So as far as other examples ah number 1 they will continue to show videos like the dink Keller shooting. Ah in lineup these are called lineup training videos but you can find you can go to Youtube right now and there's now because of the advent of social media and the internet. There is an endless supply of videos of officers getting in fights or getting shot at or traffic stops gone bad this is very different from thirty years ago when departments would trade vhs tapes right? or you'd only have the dash camps from your own department now there's a bottomless pool of examples that you can show in your department.

01:49.79
Bruce Anthony
I have.

02:01.48
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
To your officers so that reinforcement continues to happen. Another example that happens at lineup which is when officers get together before they go out on patrol to be counted like I'm here I'm here here's your assignment etc. Um, in one department that I was in there called Hots sheets. They used to be on paper Now they're all via email.

02:09.52
Bruce Anthony
Um, if.

02:17.41
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, but it's just a list of all the violent crime that has happened in the city over the past shift or so now importantly, these are all violent crimes. They're ah aggravated assaults their robberies their homicides. But there's an important little beginning of each one of those incidents on a hot sheet.

02:22.17
Bruce Anthony
A.

02:36.66
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And it's OFcrSFTY or something similar. It's for office safety. That's why you're being told about every single one of these incidents now ostensibly you can use these descriptions of the victim and the suspect to find somebody and arrest them for the crime that was committed.

02:43.22
Bruce Anthony
Um, of it.

02:53.17
Bruce Anthony
Right? if.

02:55.70
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
That's the ideal scenario I've never seen that happen in practice never did I see somebody actually use one of these hots sheetets as a means to stop somebody or arrest somebody. The likelihood is perishingly low, but that's going to be what Lisa somebody being arrested what it does show every shift.

03:08.92
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

03:14.20
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Is that violence is real. The violence is out there and if you for a second think that violence is exaggerated look at all these cases of violence that I can show you. There's new ones every single shift that I can show you about how real violence is and it's for officer safety you need to be concerned about this. Um.

03:21.57
Bruce Anthony
A.

03:31.75
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Those those ah the more direct ones. Um, there's another example that comes to mind also from West River which is my department on the West coast. Ah, it's called an officer safety Bulletin now Traditionally officer safety bulletins were restricted to your own department as in you would provide a bulletin to officers. But.

03:42.80
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

03:51.48
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Hey, we have reason to suspect that there is a particular group that has made threats against officers be on the lookout very common sort of thing to see in a bulletin because of and a wide and growing intelligence network in the Us something that I call the threat network you actually crowdsourcing incidents. Threat from across the country and so one example that I saw in West River was ah a printout the initial bulletin came from the Baltimore police department and it showed a picture of a super soaker watergun that had been hollowed out and somebody had hidden a shotgun inside and so that was the bulletin was like you need to be on the lookout because people.

04:10.43
Bruce Anthony
Henry.

04:23.00
Bruce Anthony
Wow.

04:28.83
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
People or there is the possibility that water guns now have guns hidden inside so be aware of this. But once you look a little bit closer at the bulletin. The story gets a little bit muddier. So first of all the bulletin was from like 2005 so nine years before I observed this in two thousand and fourteen fifteen

04:45.19
Bruce Anthony
So okay.

04:48.17
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
The initial water gun was found by 1 department in Florida not Baltimore and it turns out that the seizure of that weapon of the weapon inside. The water gun was put into ah an original bulletin by another police department in Florida.

04:53.75
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

05:06.33
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so it's this weird sort of threat telephone that happens where if you can find an example of threat in 1 place at 1 time this gets disseminated to departments potentially across the entire country and what that does in practice is emphasize to officers that a threat to police anywhere is a threat to police everywhere. Whether or not there's any reason to suspect that this is happening on the West Coast is besides the point an officer someplace found this which means that we have to be ready for it here as well.

05:32.33
Bruce Anthony
Now in your Book. You talk about police culture. How do these bulletins these these the danger the videos of danger the dread of Danger. How does that affect police culture.

05:56.76
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
The way I describe it in the book is that these examples are both a product and a cause of culture. So there's ah, there's a perpetual question about well what came first. Structure or culture is culture something that emerges or something that exists outside of our institutions like schools or police departments or hospitals and what I try to argue in the book is that it's not to say that police are the only people that care about danger or threat I think that's very obvious.

06:28.15
Bruce Anthony
Are.

06:30.71
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
But imagine if at your job. Well let's take my job as a professor daily bulletins about the threat of violence don't make a lot of sense in my world. Why well because it doesn't fit into the other parts of the structure in which I exist.

06:46.66
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

06:49.10
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Didn't go through a socialization process where I was told about how dangerous my job was I'm actually not expected to do anything about violence I'm certainly not expected to arrest people in my job So these bulletins don't make a whole lot of sense in the context that I live in within my cultural context as a professor but it turns out within policing.

06:56.36
Bruce Anthony
Not.

07:08.78
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
the values the assumptions the emphasis on violence means that something like a officer safety bulletin or hotsheets or these videos they make perfect sense and once you begin to use these mechanisms to reinforce the values and assumptions of that institutional space like. Preoccupation with violence the necessity of ensuring officer safety the possibility that the public may try and hurt you at any moment you actually begin to recreate the very culture that you're basing those things off in the first place and it becomes a self-perpetuating phenomenon you can think of it as almost a cultural inertia and so it's difficult to say for sure.

07:39.33
Bruce Anthony
A.

07:47.36
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Was it the bulletins that made the culture or was it the culture that made the bulletins I think it's more useful to think about what are the things that are sort of speaking to each other. What's in dialect. What's what's causing this self-perpetuating phenomenon of the danger imperative in part because I only observe police in 2014 to 2018

08:03.26
Bruce Anthony
A.

08:05.79
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
My my informed suspicion is that you saw this emphasis on officer safety and survival likely kick off in the 1970 s when we saw police deaths. Ah we saw their peaks in the 1970 s we saw the beginning of sort of what you might think of as modern gun culture. In the 1970 s this is part of another project that I'm beginning to work on. But um I can't speak to it conclusively. But I do believe this culture existed for a long time and what I'm looking at right now is how does it continue to exist today.

08:24.48
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

08:36.53
Bruce Anthony
So you said it all started from Michael Brown what did your research tell you about interaction with the police with other ethnicities cultures genders if there was difference in ah the way they would interact with other genders.

08:46.47
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Way.

08:54.10
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
So when I began the work in 2014 I think that my prior was that I would see really clear evidence of overt racial animus um in my right alongs with police and to be very Frank I didn't see it. I didn't see examples of racial epithets I didn't see examples of um overt brutality. For example, which I've been asked about like well what tell me about the times that you saw officers you know, be brutal and I didn't see what I think I didn't see a um I didn't see ah a beating. Um.

09:26.91
Bruce Anthony
Here.

09:29.70
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Like you would see capture on for Youtube or something like that those things happen but I didn't see them and I think that they are in the grand scheme of police interaction rare. What I think I did begin to see was that the system that I talk about in the book is one in which. Even if I were to make the assumption that officers are perfectly egalitarian they don't see race. They're perfectly not racist. Let's think let's imagine we have a perfect filtering mechanism and we don't have any racist cops nothing else has changed in the system segregation still exists.

09:57.25
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

10:06.53
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Broken school still exists the rest of structural racism continues to operate as it always has and I'm going to be sending officers because of where crime and violence are again because these things are social. They're something that's generated by poverty and disinvestment I'm going to keep sending cops to the same places and they're going to be preoccupied with their safety in same places. And so it makes perfect sense that I would see inequalities in police violence concentrating in the same places over time now to be clear I think the assumption of perfectly Egalitarian officers is a very strong Assumption. We have mountains of evidence to to suggest.

10:37.30
Bruce Anthony
Yeah.

10:40.21
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Officers are not perfectly egalitarian and that racial bias and overt racism are real and exist in police departments today. What I want to highlight for listeners and for readers is that if you think this is a story of especially racist cops you're you're missing the boat here this the story of a system.

10:54.90
Bruce Anthony
So.

10:59.74
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
That in many cases protects those officers but it doesn't depend on those officers I could perfectly well-meaning person and put them in a police department and they are going to do things in the name of officer safety that at the aggregate in the macro level look like inequalities and police violence.

11:05.53
Bruce Anthony
Um, and.

11:18.77
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Break down a long race and that break down a long gender. Um, and I think an important point as well for listeners is that I saw officers use violence against black people against white people against Latino people. My particular method of observing directly is not really good for making claims about. Ah, percentage of officers did this versus that because again I don't have a random sample I don't It's not designed to make that kind of claim but this is something that affects all people we have other data which shows that it disproportionately affects black people and latino people and men. But I've seen a black officer. Be incredibly disrespectful and aggressive towards a white woman like this is not like white women are not utterly insulated from this. This is a problem about the system but to be clear someone that looks like you or looks like me if I was a betting Man. We have a higher likelihood of being treated disrespectfully and treated aggressively. Then my wife or a white woman who is in her home which is the example that I that I observed and talk about in the book.

12:17.42
Bruce Anthony
Could that be can part of that be attributed to the fact that and in in a way police officers have a lot of power and can't that affect even the most secure and. Angelic Persons Ego Just the fact that you have this power you said there at the beginning that everything our laws are kind of set up to protect police officers and protect their safety wouldn't that lead to.

12:49.63
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Earth.

12:55.61
Bruce Anthony
Not necessarily an ego trip but a kind of puff your chest out power trip when dealing with put people.

13:02.81
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, ah.

13:05.11
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
So the word that comes to mind which I describe in the book or the phrase. The concept is called command presence and so this is something that's explicitly taught to officers and it's emphasized not only in the academy but in their field training which is a period right? when you become a sworm police officer. You usually have it depends on the department but you have. Several months of like on the job training with a ah field training officers essentially like watching you and you go from just watching to them just watching you do the work and only jumping in if you need help but command presence is key the whole way through and the idea of command presence. Um. I've sort of described it as something like a demeanor which exudes competence confidence and authority and I've seen officers use command presence to great effect right? This might not be popular with some of my more ah my more liberal colleagues but like there is a time and a place for people to raise their voices.

13:58.90
Bruce Anthony
If.

14:00.80
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
There is a time and a place for someone to say hey I'm talking now you there you there you come with me, you know there is a time and a place and I've seen officers do this to great effect. The problem is that not all officers. Um do it to great effect and to be very blunt. Some officers are just assholes.

14:17.13
Bruce Anthony
Okay, yeah.

14:18.98
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And this this gets framed as command presence because Command presence is necessary to ensure control and within the context of the danger imperative control or what prior scholarship is called maintaining. The edge is absolutely necessary. Because if you lose control of the interaction you have opened the door for catastrophe you have introduced the possibility that this person is going to go from just being rude and being disrespectful and verbally resisting you are allowing the possibility of this escalating to potentially Lethal violence.

14:40.85
Bruce Anthony
Yeah.

14:54.73
Bruce Anthony
Is.

14:56.78
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so command presence is a manifestation of police authority and power which officers are taught is absolutely necessary to prevent things from escalating I think when rubber meets road and we get out into the real world some officers use command presence in that. Ah, that. Imperative to maintain control as an excuse for being assholes.

15:21.57
Bruce Anthony
Okay, um, what were some of the during your research what were some of the key things that you saw that that either sparked interest in you. In in a positive or a negative way just instances while you were just riding along or where you were in police stations where there where there's certain certain things that you saw or observed and you were just like huh. That's interesting or Wow I didn't see that coming.

15:49.24
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Sure. Yeah, so 1 example comes to mind. It's from chapter 4 which is the chapter is called going home at night. It's all about the behavioral effects of the danger imperative what do officers actually do as a result of seeing the world in a particular way that's focused on violence. And so I was in I was on the West Coast again um but I'd actually seen the behavior on the East Coast and it was the behavior was an officer touching the trunk of the car sometimes the tail light sometimes it's the lid of the trunk during a traffic stop so on their way to the driver's side window if they're doing a driver side approach or the passenger side for a passenger side approach. They'll touch the trunk. And I made note of it in the East Coast but then I saw it happen again on the West Coast and I was like okay so this is not just like a department thing. This is something broader and so I asked the officer that I was with um, ah I think Officer Menendez was his name and I asked him hey it's like I noticed that you touched the trunk of the car I've seen this before. Um.

16:31.71
Bruce Anthony
We here for them.

16:44.84
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
But I'm curious like why do you do it and he said oh it's to make sure the trunk is closed I said okay well why does that matter he said well you're checking to make sure the trunk is closed because you want to make sure there's not a gunman hiding in the trunk who's waiting to jump out and attack you and I was like ok um, have you ever heard of that actually happening. And he said well no so ok and so we'd had. We had some good report at this point he was a young Mexican-american Guy he'd only been on for like a year at that time and we're basically the same age and so we're like we're we're just we you we're chopping it up or friendly and it ok well like you can admit that the probability of there being a gunman in the trunk is.

17:12.29
Bruce Anthony
So with him.

17:23.16
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Exceedingly low and his response was telling he said sure it's low, but that's how we're trained like we don't train to stop granny we train to expect like the worst possible outcome. Ah, it doesn't happen often that people do fight you and I was like Wow you know like. Yeah, and sort of like a mathematical Sense. He's not Wrong. There is always a non-zero probability that there could be a gunman hiding in the trunk. So You know what? if it makes you feel better and this simple thing of checking the trunk clothes could it that there's no real cost to it right? just touching the trunk.

17:57.52
Bruce Anthony
Evening.

18:00.84
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
You're not being rude to anybody. You're not handcuffing Anybody you're not drawing your gun. You're just you're just touching the trunk of the car. It's like okay like this seems like a relatively low cost thing that you could do to enhance your safety um like ok and this stands out in contrast to what I consider to be very high cost things. In fact, so high cost that they actually can get officers killed. Um.

18:20.50
Bruce Anthony
Um.

18:20.78
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And that example is about wearing seatbelts like I mentioned that earlier in our conversation officers very frequently. Don't wear their seatbelts despite engaging in very dangerous driving and the logic is that it's for their safety. Um, which might not make a lot of sense.

18:36.76
Bruce Anthony
Ah, it doesn't so I maybe you can explain it to me where where it does make sense because it does not make any sense to me.

18:43.33
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Sure sure and so this is I think it's both 1 of the most mundane examples but 1 of the most I think illuminating examples about how the danger imperative works as ah as a filter.

18:56.58
Bruce Anthony
Me here.

18:58.76
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so remember the danger imperative is a lens. It's sort of think of it as violence tinted glasses that you can put on and it highlights particular threats by definition. It means that it doesn't highlight other things and so when I asked officers So What multiple officers like why don't you wear your seatbelt. It's even required in policy like you're trained in the academy to wear your seatbelt like you're supposed to I'll say well. The seatbelt would prevent me from getting to my firearm if I needed it to address a threat. Ah the seatbelt might get hung up on my equipment because they often particularly if you have an external vest.

19:29.45
Bruce Anthony
You have.

19:31.46
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
You'll have your body cam additional magazines O C spray radio like all kinds of stuff on your chest and they think well it might get cut up on my gears I'm trying to get out of the car quickly to chase a suspect or to address again to address a threat or to lend aid to an officer or something and so as a result they choose to not wear their seatbelt. Now that all makes sense in the context of the danger imperative where you're emphasizing the threat of violence and systematically muting the much more likely threat of plowing into a light pole or a school bus or another police officer.

19:56.37
Bruce Anthony
Right? so.

20:08.68
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so these 2 examples are sort of on opposite ends of the ah call it the cost spectrum touching the trunk of the car is not particularly costly, not wearing your seatbelt is deeply ironic and dangerous in that. Not only is it not probabilistically likely.

20:16.12
Bruce Anthony
Right.

20:26.62
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
But you're actually in the name of safety engaging in a behavior that is drastically increasing the likelihood that you get injured or killed on patrol. It's just not by somebody with a gun.

20:34.49
Bruce Anthony
So okay, so what is your idea for I don't know if it's improving or just having a different tactic. For policing and policing policies and training police.

20:55.45
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
So I'll start in in 2 parts. 1 is what I think of as sort of the low hanging policy fruit. Ah, and so I am a firm believer that we're not going to train our way out of this problem.

20:56.29
Bruce Anthony
Okay.

21:06.99
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
I'm increasingly skeptical of calls for yet 1 more training whether it be procedural justice training or cultural sensitivity training the evidence that those things change police behavior in big ways is essentially doesn't exist if there are effects. They're relatively small. Um, but.

21:20.99
Bruce Anthony
Me If what.

21:25.57
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
If you were a reform minded and you wanted something that you could do today? Um I think that you change what kind of training you allow in departments and so one thing I talk about in chapter one survival school is about someone named lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman is a former west point professor. Turn celebrity police military trainer and he is the self-professed founder of the field of killology. He's written several bestselling books including on killing and on combat and he's transitioned from teaching essentially just soldiers about what he calls sort of the psychology of violence to also training police departments. Um.

21:58.70
Bruce Anthony
You know? okay.

22:02.70
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
So some departments bring him in to train people I think that they should stop doing that. But even if they don't bring him indirectly they often as I saw on my southwestern site in sunshine. They have his teachings in the official Curricula The official training documents say things like you must become the predator to catch the predator or.

22:21.56
Bruce Anthony
Wow! yeah.

22:22.40
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Or survive the predator. Um, again, the low hanging fruit is just stop doing that just don't make things worse similarly I think we should stop using taxpayer dollars to send officers to these third party trainings which are usually something that's required for departments to do because they don't have the manpower to do all their training in house.

22:39.10
Bruce Anthony
We know.

22:41.24
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
And so they start letting officers go to private training companies to fulfill their state mandated training hours for the for the year um I think that you should stop funding that with your tax dollars and my tax dollars I think that state post which is the police officer standards and training or peace officer standards and training boards or commissions. Whatever it's called in the state. They should also do a top to bottom audit of who they've approved to give training currently. The oversight is relatively minimal once you get approved to be a trainer. There's like no oversight of what you actually tell officers in these trainings. Um, and I think that's a problem and it's this wild west scenario where.

23:04.28
Bruce Anthony
Man.

23:13.46
Bruce Anthony
Wow.

23:20.43
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
If you get this golden ticket of being an approved trainer and the bar is not particularly high to be an approved trainer. You can kind of teach whatever you want in its for profit and all of it is paid for with your dollars and my dollars So that's the policy end. Yeah please.

23:32.15
Bruce Anthony
Okay I have a quick question we're we're both talking about public servants in a way teachers and police officers. Um I know because I studied um secondary education in college and and went into the classroom that the. Oversight for teachers is extraordinary. Why wouldn't there be a similar situation for the oversight for the people that are teaching or training the police officers I'm just it's I don't understand why that wouldn't be the case fact of the matter is I'm just now for the first time finding out. A lot of what you're saying as far as the training and the privatizing of the training of the police department I had no idea that any of this even existed I had no idea that my tax dollars are going towards police officers being trained by private companies I had no idea about this. So. Why is there. Not an oversight for the training the teaching of people that are supposed to be defending and policing our communities as there would be for teachers for every single thing that they teach.

24:46.48
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um I think it's a an incisive question particularly in the current political moment in which we're at where we're you know without going too far down this train of conversation. We're pulling books off shelves where ah, we're undermining public education. We want to privatize it.

24:56.30
Bruce Anthony
Um, any right right.

25:02.86
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
I Think that the scrutiny of schools um is shocking considering the lack of not public scrutiny because we have news stories and we have other things to look at police departments. Um, but you would think that we should have access to the data they produce even that seems to be a high bar for us.

25:16.77
Bruce Anthony
If.

25:21.67
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Right? Like Austin just opened. It's like revamped to data portal and it doesn't offer a ton of stuff in it. Some departments are further along than others but ask anybody who's tried to get information from police a police department. How easy it is to get body cam footage or arrest wrecks or any of that stuff. It's usually battle by foia.

25:37.42
Bruce Anthony
Yeah.

25:39.22
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, which they can resist in various ways. So why I think the why is a much bigger story about politics and history I think that politicians in particular are very well aware of the political power that's wielded by not only things like a police union.

25:45.10
Bruce Anthony
Me.

25:56.10
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, but by political interests that align themselves with the sort of call like a law and order value system and that any critique of police is viewed as something that is un-american it is a threat to democracy. It's a threat to safety and when you get down to brass Tacks I think that the.

26:01.30
Bruce Anthony
Sounds infinite.

26:15.59
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Budget items for a police department are always going to go towards overtime and cars and officers and training is one of the first things that gets cut. Um, and so when that happens and you cut training even just training Academy instructors with just the bodies to teach the stuff. Um.

26:31.26
Bruce Anthony
We have.

26:34.53
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
It ends up getting outsourced and it it gets outsourced to private companies. That's the policy.

26:38.68
Bruce Anthony
Okay, so that was the policy. That's the policy. So the other part to that question is um, what are some of the practices that can that could be changed outside of policy.

26:53.66
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Outside of policy and so I might have ah I might have spoken out of turn so there is policy. It's just not going to be operating within policing and I think that's a key distinction. So one is like what can a department achieve. For example, do today.

26:54.82
Bruce Anthony
Yeah, so.

27:01.12
Bruce Anthony
Um, you okay.

27:06.72
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, so I notice I'm not talking about federal change in part because the federal government can't make local police departments do stuff it can incentivize it with funding and that kind of stuff but it can't make them do stuff which is why a chief I think has to be the person who decides or a city council makes it ah a priority at the local level.

27:10.79
Bruce Anthony
May hit.

27:24.35
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
We are going to do the following with our training curricula or the chief says we are no longer funding these trainers or this kind of training until we've audited it. You could do that locally and I think that's where the action is going to be local and state but at a ah much bigger ah level much a much higher level. I think that we need to change our conversation around officer safety and public safety as being somehow 2 different things we often discuss those as 2 separate problems officer safety is something that officers deal with because they get guns and invests and you know what like you need to ensure your safety on the street and we also have all kinds of laws and policies that are. Sort of in the background that give them the powers to essentially use violence to protect themselves. But that's talked about somehow as separate from the strategies and the goal of ensuring public safety and I think that we need to stop talking about these two things as separate. Because I think that we're actually in a position where we could enhance public safety as in reduce crime and reduce violence in a way that is that is twofold one actually enhances safety for officers, 2 and 2 doesn't require major investment or major. Major structural change on the part of police. What am I referring to turns out, we actually know about a bunch of things that can do things like reduce crime and violence that don't require you to send somebody with a badge and a gun you can reduce crime and violence by doing things as simple as improving lighting in an area you can reduce crime and violence by.

28:53.53
Bruce Anthony
Um, here.

28:55.88
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Fixing the broken down facades of abandoned buildings and greening these vacant Lots Philadelphia recently tried this and saw reductions in crime and violence. Ah there's evidence which suggests that if you plant more trees in urban areas that you can reduce crime and violence because it turns out that ambient temperature. Is related to crime and violence a recent study from a group of economists also found that if you were to increase the number of behavioral health treatment centers at the county level. You can reduce the number of assaults specifically against police officers and so it turns out there's a whole bunch of things that we could be trying that.

29:25.61
Bruce Anthony
Here. So.

29:32.95
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Reduce crime and violence that directly affects the public and by extension reduces crime and violence on the same streets that police officers spend their time on I think police should be the first one supporting these kinds of endeavors in part because it means less work for them. But it turns out that unions and departments. Very often oppose anything that would reduce the dominance of police in the conversation around public safety and I think that's an economic story I think that's unions and departments looking out for their budget lines looking out for those line items. They know that if other people are.

30:00.12
Bruce Anthony
Are.

30:08.90
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Working on crime and violence that well maybe we don't need a bit as big of a police budget and that means less overtime and that means less officers and so I would like to see a world where officers and departments and large organizations like the international association of chiefs of police. The paternal order of police benic Benelli association. All these big orgs.

30:12.67
Bruce Anthony
A.

30:27.56
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Increasingly call for non-police things like lighting and facades in trees and public health that actually can keep their officers safe too and can reduce crime and can reduce violence.

30:38.20
Bruce Anthony
So Basically improving local infrastructure and and given people that live in these communities with burned out buildings and abandoned buildings and these empty lots a little bit of sunshine and hope and then that. And in effect can reduce violence and crime is that a really really simplistic way of saying. Um what you said is that if you give people a little bit of hope then.

31:01.40
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
I Think that.

31:10.37
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Sure.

31:14.37
Bruce Anthony
Most of the time people turn to crime or violence because they have no hope not to say that there aren't people who are just violent because there are but a lot of people um turn to crime and violence because they got no other options that.

31:22.26
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
M.

31:31.28
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Um, yeah I think that's a I think it's a key a key point right? I think that there are some people that if you want to think of it as a spectrum and being violence prone they're higher on that end of the spectrum that much I think is true and in the world of human variation and I think that that's right, but.

31:32.39
Bruce Anthony
Poverty.

31:38.36
Bruce Anthony
Thank you.

31:44.95
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Similar to police violence I don't think that violence out in the world is a story of bad apples and bad people. It's a story of systems. It's a story of poverty. It's a story of disinvestment. It's story of broken schools and bad health care and food deserts and lead in the water. That's what that's what drives macro patterns in violence and so for something as simple as improving lighting and greening lots and facades.

31:48.93
Bruce Anthony
Yeah.

32:04.95
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Doing me wrong if I could with a straight face say the answer is fixing poverty and had a way to do that I would say that but I don't right I don't have a magic fix Inequality Lever or a turn back the clock on structural racism and redlining and segregation Lever I don't have it.

32:10.50
Bruce Anthony
Right? Yeah, but.

32:20.39
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
But what I think you are pointing to is that there are relatively simple. It turns out very inexpensive options for reducing crime and violence and I think that fundamentally this is something that some of my colleagues have written about like violence is real and we're trying to stop the bleeding. And there's a variety of ways to do that. It's just that for a very long time. We have treated police as the only and best option to do that and I don't think that that's accurate and I think that there are a lot of unintended consequences both in terms of financial and human costs. To relying on the police. So single-mindedly to solve not just violence and crime but social problems writ large because we send police to do a whole bunch of stuff mental illness and arguments between their mom their kid that doesn't want to go to school today and arguments between neighbors and this person didn't give me a receipt so I called the cops.

33:03.50
Bruce Anthony
Um, yeah.

33:13.95
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Why are the police going to this like why? um and officers themselves will tell you that like I don't know why I'm being sent to this. This is not a police matter. You want somebody arrested or somebody like what do you want here? and so I think ironically enough the things that I'm suggesting would accomplish getting things off the plate of police.

33:14.48
Bruce Anthony
Um, direct.

33:22.43
Bruce Anthony
Um, a.

33:31.22
Bruce Anthony
A.

33:33.82
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
But very often. There is tremendous political resistance to doing something besides policing. Um, and that's I think a deeper that's a deeper symptom of what's been written about as a culture of control that exists in the US.

33:41.55
Bruce Anthony
Um, a.

33:50.40
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
The idea that we solve problems through Coercion. We solve problems through violence and I think I and many others are increasingly calling for something besides cops and bars and guns and bullets and handcuffs to try and address problems Mental Health doesn't need handcuffs most of the time. Arguments don't need guns most of the time often you need social workers and healthcare and those are things that we have disinvested in for decades and I think we should turn back the clock on that if we can.

34:18.85
Bruce Anthony
I think that was an excellent final point to conclude this interview this has been I've learned a lot during this interview I know my audience will have learned a lot um during this interview this. Ah. Everybody I implore everybody to go out there and get Dr Michael's book the danger imperative violence death and soul of policing Dr Michael is there anything else that you want to say to my audience out there before I let you go.

34:46.90
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Ah, first. Thank you for listening for any that are interested. The danger imperative is available on Amazon anywhere books are sold would love for you to get a copy leave a review. Also if you want to reach out to me directly. You can find me at wwww.dangerimperative.com you can shoot me a message. You can find out more information about the book including a sneak peek of some pictures from the field which are not included in the book by and large and you can also find me on Twitter you can find me on Instagram at Michael Sierra that's s I e r r a and then just add one more a at the end of it Michael Sierra a

35:19.53
Bruce Anthony
Thank you again? Dr Michael for coming on the show I really appreciate it.

35:23.73
Dr Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Thank you so much for having me I really enjoyed it.

 

 

Michael Sierra-Arevalo

Author / Professor

Michael Sierra-Arévalo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Associate Director of the Liberal Arts Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

His new book, "THE DANGER IMPERATIVE: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing", shows how policing’s preoccupation with danger shapes police culture and violence in the United States.

Sierra-Arévalo's research on policing, firearms, and violence prevention is published in leading journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Criminology, Law & Society Review, and the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.

His writing and research are also widely featured in media, including The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Times Higher Education, Slate, GQ, and NPR.

He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University and his B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.