El Cajon shooting puts focus on police de-escalation training

Slow it down.

Police haven’t always been trained to think that way. They’re supposed to take immediate control of a situation, resolve the problem and move on to the next call. There are always more calls.

But the recent spate of fatal police shootings of unarmed black men — including Tuesday’s killing of Alfred Olango by El Cajon police — is fueling a movement by agencies across the country to expand the training officers get in de-escalation techniques. Through role-playing with real-life scenarios, they are taught better communication skills aimed at helping them defuse situations that might otherwise turn violent.

“It’s the direction law enforcement needs to go,” said former San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne. “We need to spend more time on when to shoot as opposed to just how to shoot.”

Although de-escalation has been a part of recruit training for years, it’s generally been just a small part. A survey last year of almost 300 law enforcement agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit “best practices” organization based in Washington, D.C., found that recruits on average receive 58 hours of training on firearms, 49 hours on defensive tactics and just eight hours on de-escalation.

In-service training for veteran officers also gives little attention to it, according to the survey.

The issue is drawing renewed interest after a summer marked by fatal police shootings and riots in Milwaukee, Wis., Tulsa, Okla., and Charlotte, N.C. Two weeks ago, police officials in Chicago, beset by use-of-force controversies, began sending all 12,500 of their sworn officers through mandatory, two-day de-escalation training. That follows similar efforts in Seattle, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

It’s not publicly known what kind of de-escalation training officers receive in El Cajon, which has had six other officer-involved shootings in the past five years, two of them fatal, both white women. Department officials did not respond to a request seeking information about training.

Not much is known at this point either about everything that led up to the fatal encounter between Olango, 38, and two officers, Ricardo Gonsalves and Josh McDaniel, both 21-year department veterans.

Police were responding to reports of a man walking in and out of traffic and acting erratically when they found him in a parking lot behind a downtown restaurant. They said he ignored their commands, pulled something out of his pants pocket and took a “shooter’s stance” in the direction of one of the officers.

Gonsalves shot him with a gun, and McDaniel fired a Taser. The device in Olango’s hands was an electronic cigarette.

A witness took a cellphone video of the shooting and turned it over to police, who made it public on Friday along with surveillance video from a nearby business. The release of the videos came after three nights of what officials described as increasingly violent street protests.

El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis said even though the investigation is continuing, the videos were released in the interest of transparency and to correct ongoing misinformation being circulated in the community about what happened.

In the footage, Gonsalves approaches Olango, who walks away. They maneuver back and forth. Then McDaniel comes in from the side.

The whole encounter on camera lasts less than a minute.

New guidelines

De-escalation techniques can be especially useful while dealing with people who are mentally ill or emotionally disturbed, according to experts.

In Olango’s case, family members and friends said after the shooting that he was upset by the recent death of a close friend. His mother said he was having “a mental breakdown.”

The incident started Tuesday afternoon when Olango’s sister and members of the public called police, with the sister saying her brother wasn’t “acting like himself.” Dispatchers sent the call out as a “5150,” someone who may be mentally ill. In a video posted on Facebook after the shooting, the sister wailed at police: “I called for help. I didn’t call you to kill him.”

About 25 percent of fatal police shootings in the country involve people with mental health issues, according to data collected by the Washington Post — 172 of the 716 shootings so far this year. A 2013 study by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriff’s Association said the figure is closer to 50 percent.

As the Police Executive Research Forum survey found, police in general get little training on how to interact with the mentally ill. That can be a problem, according to experts, because an ongoing shortage of mental-health treatment services leaves people to call 911 for help in a crisis. The first ones there are usually officers carrying guns.

“We really have to take a second look at the training we are doing in this country,” said Chuck Wexler, the research forum’s executive director. “It’s not kept up with today’s demands.”

His group issued a report in March called “Guiding Principles on Use of Force” that highlights 30 recommendations for improving policies, training, tactics and equipment. Several pertain to de-escalation, including one that says it should be “a core theme of an agency’s training.”

During a difficult situation, communications between officers and the person they are encountering should begin at a “low level,” according to the guidelines, with police talking calmly in a normal tone of voice and asking questions instead of shouting orders. When possible, they should use distance and cover to “slow the situation down” and provide time to communicate and develop options.

“Officers should not unnecessarily escalate a situation themselves,” the guidelines say.

Lansdowne, who along with hundreds of other police personnel from around the country participated in conferences that helped shape the guidelines, said he thinks they’re the right approach, especially when it comes to dealing with people who are mentally or emotionally disturbed.

“They often don’t respond well to commands and orders,” he said. “You’ve got to back off and calm it down.”

In San Diego County, mental-health related calls to law enforcement have been skyrocketing, even as overall crime has dropped. Since 2009, those calls went up 84 percent in the county, while the population increased just 5 percent.

On difficult calls, local police agencies can call in Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams, which pair an officer with a mental health clinician. About three dozen teams are spread around the county. Among other information, clinicians have access to electronic medical records, which can provide crucial background on the person they are dealing with.

“Often by talking to someone, we’re able to have them de-escalate and we find some common ground,” said Dr. Mark Marvin, director of the program.

The research forum guidelines say teams like that, patterned after the Crisis Intervention Team model started in Memphis in the late 1980s, have proven especially effective in defusing potentially deadly encounters.

On Tuesday, the team assigned to El Cajon was busy elsewhere when the call came in about Olango and wasn’t able to reach the scene before the shooting.

Police pushback

The push toward more de-escalation training has drawn backlash from police unions and rank-and-file officers, some of whom dismiss the emphasis on better communication strategies as “hug a thug.”

Harvey Hedden, executive director of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, told The New York Times, “The concern we have is that hesitation might end up having an officer getting killed or assaulted.”

When the research forum was holding conferences on the use of force, Robert Lehner, the soon-to-retire chief in Elk Grove, talked about an incident that happened in Eugene, Ore., where he used to work. The department’s lead trainer in crisis intervention approached a mentally ill woman during a traffic stop. She shot and killed him. “If anyone would have had the training to defuse that,” Lehner said, “he did.”

The guidelines acknowledge those concerns. “There will always be situations where police officers will need to use force, including deadly force, to protect the public or themselves. Nothing in these Guiding Principles should be interpreted as suggesting that police officers should hesitate to use force that is necessary to mitigate a threat to the safety of themselves or others.”

Lansdowne said he’s heard resistance from “the old cadre that doesn’t want to change.”

“But it’s time,” said the retired chief. “We get it. Law enforcement is resilient, innovative and very much wants to do the right thing.”

At the news conference Friday releasing the videos of the shooting, Chief Davis said his department will evaluate what happened, as it does after any tragedy involving one of its officers, to see what if anything they might do better next time.

“It’s all part of the growth process,” he said.

Staff writer Pauline Repard contributed to this report.