Story Produced by the Concord Monitor, a member of
CONCORD, NH – Due to the state of emergency issued in response to COVID-19 this March, John Scippa was forced to temporarily shut down New Hampshire’s sole training facility for law enforcement on the same day he took over as its director.
Less than three months later and in the midst of an ongoing public health emergency, Scippa is shifting resources to an entirely different and deep-seated national crisis. The tragic circumstances surrounding George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25 has triggered a groundswell of outrage and activism reminiscent of the Civil Rights Movement. At the heart of those efforts are calls to dismantle racism and institute comprehensive police reform.
As the new leader of the Granite State’s only police academy, Scippa planned to re-evaluate the training programs and courses available to new recruits and in-service officers. He is now doing so with greater urgency and through a different lens in light of Floyd’s death and the demonstrations that persist, including in the academy’s own backyard of Concord.
One of his first initiatives is the creation of a newly assembled task force that includes educators, civil rights activists and law enforcement officials who will critique the academy’s diversity and cultural dynamics training, and make recommendations for improvement.
“The tragic and avoidable death of Mr. Floyd caused by the failure of the police to properly use arrest techniques has caused many people to reach out to me,” Scippa wrote in an open letter to the community. “Everyone’s questions and concerns center around three main areas of concern: police training in the area of use of force, police training as it relates to diversity, and police training in the area of communications and de-escalation.”
The questions residents are now posing to their police chiefs in Merrimack County are similarly categorized. As people react to what happened in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, they want to know that officers in their communities have received the latest diversity training, and that chiefs are revisiting and revising department-specific policies that dictate when the use of force is and isn’t authorized.
“Every chief’s eyes should be open on their policies right now. That is the backbone of everything,” said Pembroke Police Chief Dwayne Gilman. “We can fall into everyday life and sometimes the policies, while there, are in the backseat a little bit. It’s time to bring them into the front seat and go over them and go over them again and make sure we’re on the right path.”
But that process can’t take place in a bubble, chiefs said. If real change is going to occur, it needs to happen nationwide and be consistent across agencies.
New Hampshire has the benefit of one police academy, meaning that every recruit receives the same training before he or she is certified. Still, each department has the leeway to develop its own policies and procedures within the confines of state laws. Additionally, all New Hampshire officers don’t have the same access to training during their career, as those opportunities often depend on the size of an agency and a municipality’s budgetary constraints.
Training ground
Every new recruit hired by a local, county or state law enforcement agency must attend and successfully complete the police academy, and pass a psychological evaluation, medical exam, physical fitness test and background check, among other requirements, to wear the badge. Officers hired to work full time complete a 16-week residential academy and once certified must engage in a minimum of eight hours of ongoing training each year.
Students at the academy study the criminal code, constitutional law, emergency driving, use of firearms, defensive tactics, de-escalation techniques, communication skills and more. Use of force in its many forms is covered throughout the academy’s curriculum, Scippa said.
“It’s really important to note that during all of those classes we’re teaching them how to use a level of force when appropriate, but we’re also reiterating that they should always deploy, when safe to do so, de-escalation tactics,” Scippa said.
The academy does not teach chokeholds, strangleholds or neck restraints as part of its curriculum for new recruits or as part of its instruction for in-service officers.
The use-of-force technique, which is not criminally banned in New Hampshire, has come under intense scrutiny since Floyd’s death nearly three weeks ago. Floyd, a black Minneapolis resident, died on May 25 at the age of 46 after being handcuffed and held down by a white police officer who kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. That officer is now facing a charge of second-degree murder.
Several of the region’s police chiefs who spoke to the Monitor in recent days said they view chokeholds and neck restraints as a lethal use of force that is not taught or permitted at their agencies, even if their use-of-force policies don’t explicitly ban them. They said the one rare instance they could envision an officer using that level of force is if his or her life was in grave risk and other options were not available.
“Any time you have to grab someone around the throat, I think you’re asking for trouble,” Gilman said. “That being said, let’s say I’m being choked and I am losing my airway, I am going to do whatever is necessary in that moment to survive.
“Should officers just be grabbing people around the neck and choking them when they resist? Absolutely not,” he continued.
Scippa said New Hampshire officers are taught that once a person is in police custody and handcuffed, they need to immediately transition to an after-care mentality and recognize that they are now responsible for that individual’s welfare.
“The application of force needs to cease immediately upon recognizing that it’s no longer necessary,” he said.
Chiefs said good communication skills are and must continue to be the foundation of an officer’s job. De-escalation and verbal tactics should be revisited often at every department to help prevent high-risk and high-liability events, they said.
“The use-of-force continuum, which is part of every officers’ annual training, starts with you just showing up,” said Concord Police Chief Brad Osgood. “Sometimes that alone will deter certain activities, but it often is combined with some sort of verbal communication to diffuse or de-escalate the situation. Just by engaging in a dialogue, officers will find that more times than not, more than 95 percent of the time at least, that no further response is needed.”
As activists mount calls for police reform in the United States, local chiefs say they’re thinking critically about their own practices and doing internal reassessments to make sure their officers have what they need to be effective on the job.
Franklin Police Chief David Goldstein said he is conducting regular check-ins with officers about what is unfolding across the country to ensure they’re getting the support and resources they need.
“I can’t answer for Boston police or Colebrook, N.H., or any other agency, I can only answer for Franklin and what we do here,” Goldstein said. “We will do the best we can do – that’s our contribution and it has to be our focus.”
Room to grow
During the police academy’s review of its current curriculums for both new recruits and in-service officers, Scippa said he will actively seek input from the state’s chiefs about what their needs are and about what lessons they’d like to see incorporated or enhanced moving forward.
As an initial step, Scippa has convened a working group to evaluate the academy’s cultural dynamics and diversity training, which is required course instruction for new officers. Representatives of the New Hampshire’s American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in addition to law enforcement leaders and professors from the University of New Hampshire and Keene State will review lesson plans and make recommendations.
“I knew we needed to take a hard look at this right now under the circumstances we find ourselves in today and in light of the tragedy that occurred out West,” Scippa said.
While chiefs see the re-evaluation of that curriculum as a positive step forward, they’re also calling for more opportunities for officers who have years of service under their belts, including in diversity, crisis intervention and community policing.
“If you go to one class and say, ‘I went to that class a long time ago, I’m good.’ Well, that doesn’t cut it anymore,” Gilman said. “It’s like learning math. If you don’t work with math every day, those skills aren’t going to be there when you need them.”
Now, maybe more than ever, a chief must know the strengths and weaknesses of the officers on his or her force and help build them up in areas where they’re lacking confidence or instruction, Gilman said.
Every police department in New Hampshire could benefit from more diversity training, Osgood said. He also spoke about the importance of a 40-hour crisis intervention training program, which was first developed in Memphis and is now used throughout the country to better equip officers to deal with individuals in crisis and those living with mental illness.
“We really need to make crisis intervention training mandatory for all police officers and not just available to a few,” Osgood said. “This type of training is so hard to find and only two people from each department are allowed to go at a time, meaning I can send only up to four people a year.”
Both Gilman and Osgood agreed that the academy needs to revamp its training for in-service officers, and that Scippa, who is a 29-year veteran, is taking over at an opportune moment to do so.
“We really need to get out of a routine of scripted training and really broaden our training cycles, and we certainly want to rely on the academy as a sounding board,” Osgood said.
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