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Police chiefs react with disgust to Minneapolis death, try to reassure their own cities
May 27, 2020 1 min, 57 secs
Police chiefs across the United States, many of whom have been pushing their officers to de-escalate tense situations and decrease their use of force, responded with disgust Wednesday to the death of George Floyd after an encounter with Minneapolis officers and moved to reassure their communities that they would not tolerate such brutality.

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo fired four officers within 24 hours, and the heads of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Major Cities Chiefs Association promptly issued statements of support for that move and denounced the prolonged suffocation of Floyd captured on cellphone video and soon streamed around the world.

Floyd is deeply disturbing and should be of concern to all Americans,” said the Major Cities Chiefs, headed by Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.

I stand with Chief Arradondo of the Minneapolis Police Department with the swift action he took once he was made aware of that video.”.

For police officials who have been moving to improve relations with their communities by reducing their use of force, it was a sobering setback.

“There’ll be a tendency for people to look at that horrible video and say, ‘Nothing has changed,’ ” said Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum, which trains police departments nationwide in de-escalation techniques.

Police departments largely have better training now, Wexler said, and PERF’s often-promoted theory that officers respect the “sanctity of life” was cited by Arradondo in his first news conference.

Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus tweeted that the video showed an “indefensible use of force that good officers everywhere are appalled by … Conduct like this anywhere makes it more difficult for police everywhere to build community trust.”.

Though groups such as PERF and civil rights organizations have pushed for de-escalation training, at least one measure of police use of force has not changed in recent years: fatal officer-involved shootings

Fatal Force: Police shootings database

Police departments were to submit their data on a variety of force incidents, “which will provide the public with necessary facts about law enforcement use of force in the course of their duties and ultimately strengthen the nation’s confidence in law enforcement.”

But at the Major Cities Chiefs conference last May, Amy Blasher, the head of the FBI’s crime statistics management unit, said only about 20 percent of the nation’s departments were submitting data

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