They get trained by state institutions usually but the program in my state is sixteen weeks. For reference, a lot of work in Afghanistan is more policing than war fighting and we trained for a year plus. The issues around policing are somewhat complex city to city. For instance, my city is fairly large and has ~300 cops and calls that aren't actively violent typically go unanswered and crimes go unprosecuted for a litany of reasons. No matter what city you go to, it's near ubiquitous that there is some kind of major problem with policing. I say policing in the context of the DA + police.

It's also important that we care about what kind of training. Our state requires standardized police academy training for 18 weeks but you still get pumped full of garbage like killology. My friend's husband became a cop and within a month of his training he picked up bullshit like "always sit facing the exit in public places" and literally playing with his service M4 like a damn nerf gun, sweeping their living room and "clearing" the other rooms in their apartment. Even my actual gun nut brother knows that's bad.

Yeah, if he's practicing sweeps and draws in his house that's not good gun culture. From everything I've read and heard, cops are being taught the violent parts of what we're taught in the military but they're not being trained on warrior culture and ethos, which involves a lot of restraint and regulation alongside situational awareness. Pair that with not learning basic weapon safety rules and it's a recipe for disaster.

They are trained to be aggressive and escalate. More of such training won't make them better.

I doubt that if you put someone from National Guard or FBI in charge of national training that they would not focus on descalation.

You are militarizing incompetent institutions (with military grade hand me downs) which have far less trigger discipline than actual military.

The issue is not that these cops are undisciplined. It is that they are doing what they were trained to do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/02/14/...

Issue is not that they are incompetent. Issue is that they know fully well they can get away with it. And real world proves them right almost every time.

Improving training might be a good idea, but why make it federal?

<< why is no one there pushing for a federal level single training institution and increased academy training.

Well at least here the answer is somewhat simple.

There is a deep ingrained level of distrust for federal government. It has been there since country's foundation and the past few decades have done nothing to lower it ( and one can reasonably argue it has only increased ). In a sense, the reason is structural.

<< It needs to be federal, standardized, and just longer than the few months training US cops have.

FWIW, FBI is effectively federal police. I think you will agree that they had their fair share of, uhm, not great behavior.

<< I mean knowing my local government incompetence I would be pretty nervous in having people with guns being trained by a local institution.

The whole point of cop that is local is that people will not, ehkm, revolt, because random guy from NY got plopped in AK and does not understand the basic environment they are in.

I personally prefer local. I think last year I went to our local quarterly neighbors/cops outreach and I was largely happy with what the sheriff had to say, because it dealt with MY local issues and not some pre-ordained stuff from the top.

Like I said, the issue is structural, because US is a massive country.

Why federal level? State level would more than suffice.

Because plenty of states would just enshrine the shitty status quo into law? States have freedom to enact police accountability right now and just don't. The only way to make it happen will be federal supremacy on the issue. Federal standards on government application of violence should not be contentious. I should be able to cross state lines and not deal with terrible police departments just because an independent state decided to not fix this issue.

Then the question is why is state government doing the "wrong" thing? Is it undemocratic? Or do people in different locations want different things?

Why have states at all rather than one federal government that decides all laws?

Some things are reasonable for different states to do differently, but having a minimum bar for police training should not be one of those things. Lot's of things should have minimum bars set federally that states are free to improve upon. Why should policing be so different across different states? Are humans innately different once you cross a state line? Why should justice work differently across state lines?

> Some things are reasonable for different states to do differently, but having a minimum bar for police training should not be one of those things

I disagree. Since having radically different roles and powers for police, rasically different organizational structures for poloce, or not even having anything that exactly fits the typical concept of “police" are also within the acceptable variation, and all of those factor in to minimim quals, minimum quals for police absolutely are legitimate.

"You ask for miracles, I give you the F.B.I."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...