美国国家公共电台 NPR More Police Training Key To Determining Who Is A 'Good Guy' With A Gun

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

How is it that police officers sometimes shoot the wrong person? That question has grown more urgent after recent police killings¹ of two black men. Emantic Bradford Jr. was killed while running from a shooting at an Alabama mall. Security guard Jemel Roberson died while trying to break up a fight in Illinois. Both men had guns at the time. Amid protests, police want the public to better understand their situation and trainers want to find how to encourage police to make better split-second decisions. Here's NPR criminal justice correspondent Cheryl Corley.

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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) What do we want?

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Justice.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) When do we want it?

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Now.

CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE²: For days in Hoover, Ala., a suburb just outside of Birmingham, there have been protests for Emantic Bradford Jr. The 21-year-old black man was shot and killed by a white police officer. Pandemonium³ broke out after a shooting at a mall injured two people. Some witnesses said other people pulled out their own guns for protection. And police later admitted Bradford was not an assailant. Earlier in Illinois, a police officer fatally shot 26-year-old Jemel Roberson. He was a security guard at a nightclub in a Chicago suburb and had subdued⁴ a gunman who wounded others during a fight at the bar.

JOE LOUGHLIN: There are no good outcomes in these cases.

CORLEY: Joe Loughlin, a former Portland, Maine, assistant police chief, studies deadly police shootings. He says people don't have realistic information about policing, especially in chaotic⁵ situations.

LOUGHLIN: Every officer that has been involved and I've been on scene with and talked to in my work says it really wasn't a decision for me. It just was a reaction. I just had no choice. I reacted to what was in front of me at the time. I don't know if this guy's a good guy or a bad guy.

CORLEY: And with so many guns and concealed⁶ carry laws in the country, police say their job is increasingly risky⁷. There's no official count, but the nonprofit Small Arms Survey estimates Americans possess nearly 400 million legal and illicit⁸ firearms. Former police officer David Klinger heads the criminology department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He says because police often have to make split-second decisions in situations where guns are involved, good training is essential.

DAVID KLINGER: And one of the points of training should be that merely because an individual has a firearm or some other weapon does not mean that they are an individual who needs to be shot.

CORLEY: Police fatally shoot about a thousand people each year, and many of those shootings are considered justified⁹. About 50 cops a year lose their lives from gunshot wounds. Some are blue-on-blue incidents where law enforcement mistakenly kill one of their own, like the case of Jemel Roberson. There's some dispute over whether Roberson could be clearly identified as a security guard. Pete Blair is the head of an active shooter response training center at Texas State University. He says in situations where there's active gunfire or the threat of it, police are under a lot of stress.

PETE BLAIR: Whenever anybody's under high stress, that tunnel vision starts to kick in, and their field of view is really narrowed, and they may miss key identifiers of somebody as security or another police officer in there.

CORLEY: And he says there are ways to overcome that.

BLAIR: Part of it is teaching them an effective scanning sequence about how to look at the person that they're potentially going to engage, to look at key areas for identification, that kind of thing.

CORLEY: Active shooter training has increased around the country in recent years, but with about 18,000 police departments, methods are more patchwork¹⁰ than consistent. Activists¹¹ say what really colors the decision police make in shooting incidents is racial bias¹². Benjamin Crump is the lawyer for the family of the man killed in Alabama. He says that was at play when Emantic Bradford Jr. was shot by police.

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BENJAMIN CRUMP: He saw a black man with a gun, and he made his determination that he must be a criminal.

CORLEY: Former assistant police chief Joe Loughlin says that's not how most police work.

LOUGHLIN: We look at things by behavior. Are there jerks out there? Are there bad cops? Sure. Are there racists out there? Of course. But by and large, the vast majority are considering what's presented in front of them.

CORLEY: Frank Zimring, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley, says data show African-Americans are more at risk when it comes to being killed in police shootings. The reasons vary. Some studies say what's at fault is a systemic culture of racial bias in police departments that affects officers of all colors more than individual attitudes. Zimring says what's needed is more research examining the thousands of chaotic cases, like the Alabama and Illinois shootings, to help police devise better procedures.

FRANK ZIMRING: And until we do that, the situation is going to be unmanageable as a kind of a chronic¹³ condition. And it's horrendously¹⁴ threatening to civilians¹⁵ and terribly threatening to police.

CORLEY: And the police trainers say there's evidence when police are trained how to approach situations and better interact with people, the level of violence between them and citizens can be reduced. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.

1 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 pandemonium   

n.喧嚣，大混乱

参考例句：

• The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium,and the din was terrific.整个门厅一片嘈杂，而且喧嚣刺耳。
• I had found Adlai unperturbed in the midst of pandemonium.我觉得艾德莱在一片大混乱中仍然镇定自若。

4 subdued   

adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He seemed a bit subdued to me. 我觉得他当时有点闷闷不乐。
• I felt strangely subdued when it was all over. 一切都结束的时候，我却有一种奇怪的压抑感。

5 chaotic   

adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的

参考例句：

• Things have been getting chaotic in the office recently.最近办公室的情况越来越乱了。
• The traffic in the city was chaotic.这城市的交通糟透了。

6 concealed   

a.隐藏的，隐蔽的

参考例句：

• The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
• I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。

7 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。

8 illicit   

adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He had an illicit association with Jane.他和简曾有过不正当关系。
• Seizures of illicit drugs have increased by 30% this year.今年违禁药品的扣押增长了30%。

9 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

10 patchwork   

n.混杂物；拼缝物

参考例句：

• That proposal is nothing else other than a patchwork.那个建议只是一个大杂烩而已。
• She patched new cloth to the old coat,so It'seemed mere patchwork. 她把新布初到那件旧上衣上，所以那件衣服看上去就象拼凑起来的东西。

11 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

13 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

14 horrendously   

参考例句：

• Speedy they may be, but chipped ID cards are horrendously insecure. 芯片身份证也许便捷，但却极不安全。 来自互联网

15 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。