Alarming DOJ report: Poor training in Philly leads to scores of cop-involved shootings

Alarming DOJ report: Poor training in Philly leads to scores of cop-involved shootings

The report, commissioned at the request of the Philadelphia Police Department, makes 91 recommendations ranging from better training to more transparency in what is seen as a corrupt force.

A federal Justice Department report that was released yesterday blames poor training on the high amount of police shootings in Philadelphia.

The Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office spent a year looking at the use of deadly force by officers in Philly and found a whopping 48 issues, resulting in 91 recommendations for change, according to a Philly.com report.

The department conducted the study after the city’s police commissioner, Charles Ramsey, asked for a review in 2013 when a Philly.com report determined that there were a high number of police-involved shootings despite the fact that violent crimes against police were dropping.

The 174-page report states that the police department “has much work to do” to uncover policy, training, and operational “deficiencies,” as well as “an undercurrent of significant strife between the community and the department,” according to the Philly.com report.

The COPS report notes that there is a distrust in the ability of the Philadelphia Police Department to investigate itself, and that a lack of transparency continues to foster that distrust.

The authors of the report determined that officers in the city don’t get the training they need to handle deadly force policies, and recommended that annual training and some reality-based scenario training might be used to remedy that, as well as the issuance of stun guns to all uniformed officers. In addition, a unit that is dedicated to investigating deadly force incidents should be set up.

The report also recommended that police shootings of unarmed suspects should be reviewed by an external agency. A total of 15 percent of individuals who have been shot by police since 2007 have been unarmed, according to the Philly.com report.

In all, Philadelphia police have shot 394 people from 2007 through 2013. About 80 percent of those shot were black, and 98 percent of them were male ranging in age from 13 to 62 but averaging 20 years old.

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