Hats off to Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall for the big raise she just gave our cops. Still, there is more that must be done.
Being a good cop is one of the toughest jobs anywhere. Unfortunately, we have too many examples of poor policing.
It isn’t a few bad apples who kill about 1,000 people each year. Rather, it is dedicated cops whose training has failed them — and the country. The U.S. lags woefully behind many nations in police training, leading to needless fatalities and undermining public trust in law enforcement.
The call to “defund the police” is not only a poor choice of words, it’s wrongheaded. We should provide cops with far more resources if we want better policing and fewer officer-involved shootings.
Police in western European countries get two to three years of training. The average in this country is 17 weeks. In Utah, cadets typically get 16 weeks. In Salt Lake City, they get 22 weeks, followed by 16 weeks of on-the-job training with a veteran officer.
Cops shoot and kill 3.42 people per million in the U.S. But French police shoot and kill 0.17 people per million per year, German police shoot and kill 0.09 per million and in Great Britain, it’s 0.016 per million.
Our police are trained to use deadly force if they believe their lives or others could be in danger. That’s a lot of discretion. But the international standard requires police to protect the right to life of every suspect — which means police don’t shoot fleeing suspects. Other agencies should follow Mendenhall’s lead to keep and recruit good people. But without significantly more training, progress will be lagging. Our cops deserve it and so do our citizens.
Christopher Smart, Salt Lake City
