By Megan Sayles
AFRO Staff Writer
msayles@afro.com
As communities across the country continue to grapple with the consequences of police misconduct, a renewed focus has been placed on how officers are trained— especially when it comes to understanding and respecting civil rights and constitutional protections.
Ret. Maj. Neill Franklin, a former law enforcement veteran and training expert for the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department, spoke with the AFRO about the strengths and shortcomings of police education and whether more formal legal instruction could improve accountability and decision-making in the field.
AFRO: From your experience, what kind of legal education or training do officers typically receive, particularly on constitutional rights and civil liberties?
Neill Franklin: Every Baltimore police officer has extensive legal education in the academy regarding criminal law. This includes everything from traffic law, to misdemeanors, to felonies, to probable cause and reasonable suspicion.
Then, they get into constitutional law where we mainly focus on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment is related to people being free from unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. The Fifth Amendment talks about a person’s right to counsel and the right to remain silent during questioning.
When it comes to civil rights—though not extensively— we focus and train on protected classes of people. Obviously, we don’t want our police officers engaged in racial profiling. There’s extensive training on that. We teach officers that if they are going to detain or investigate someone they need to base it on their behaviors, not their race. The same goes for religion, gender and sexuality.
AFRO: Do you believe officers received enough education on civil liberties and constitutional rights, or are there gaps in training?
NF: Initially, I think they do in the academy, which is six months long. We don’t just sit them down in a classroom and give them a book or computer to read about case law. We do scenario-based training. We have modules where we act out street encounters and traffic stops. We start with easy scenarios and then build upon them.
However, we start to drop the ball during our field training program. After officers graduate from the academy, they go to their assignment in the field, and they’re paired with a field training officer. This is an officer who we’ve decided does a relatively good job in their work. We would like that to be true, but I don’t think that’s always the case.
The field training officer is not only supposed to monitor what they do, how they do it and then report on it, they’re also supposed to coach and train. If that field training officer is not up to par, then you have a subpar trainee. That program is as important, if not more important, than the six months of academy, and it needs more work.
Training and education should never stop. It should never even take a pause. We don’t spend enough time with police officer in-service training, and we need to find a way to do more. Sergeant and squad leaders need to be consistent coaches and trainers. They need to take every opportunity available to ensure that their people know the law and department policies, are treating people well and are not violating any of those laws and policies. When they do make a mistake, the sergeant should document it and hold training right away.
There are so many videos out there where police are violating the constitutional rights of people, and there are videos of police doing the right thing when they’re involved in difficult situations. We need to be taking those videos and showing them to our people before they hit the streets.
AFRO: How can a stronger grasp of constitutional law or civil rights lead to better decision-making for officers in the field?
NF: If we want to be effective as a police department and as police officers in reducing violent crime, then we have to make sure that we’re not violating the constitutional rights of people. I think our education is fine, but our immediate supervisors need to be consistently present when their men and women are interacting with members of the public.
The training gets lost in the field, and a lot of that has to do with the policing culture in many departments, which is poor. It’s very difficult to change culture. But, when a culture is so bad that you’re violating the constitutional rights of people, it needs to be dealt with by the administration in that department as soon as possible. The reason is that the public will learn very quickly that it cannot trust the police if they are violating someone’s rights.
AFRO: How has police training evolved over time?
NF: Training has gotten a lot better in my opinion. Unfortunately, I think a lot of that has to do with federal lawsuits, consent decrees and so on. A big way training has improved is that there are organizations, like the Police Executive Research Forum—a think tank that shares best practices in policing across the country.
Regulatory bodies have also been improved. Every state has a regulatory body that oversees police training and certifications, and they have gotten better with how they monitor training and track problematic police officers. But, they still have work to do.
The overall education level of command personnel has also improved. Years ago, they didn’t require a master’s degree for higher-ups in the administration, like deputy commissioners and majors. They didn’t even require a bachelor’s degree. Many departments now not only require that for the higher echelons, but even for the lower level officers.
AFRO: What are your thoughts on the idea of requiring police officers— especially those in supervisory or specialized roles— to have a law degree or undergo more formal legal education?
NF: If you require that, you’re going to be paying a lot more because getting a law degree is expensive, and it’s not for everybody. In addition to a bachelor’s degree, an alternative option could be requiring a certain amount of hours in law courses. I think a comprehensive constitutional law class would serve them well.
At the higher level, a lot of commanders, captains and majors do have law degrees, but that doesn’t filter down to the sergeants and the officers who are on the street interacting with the public. The challenge is getting them up to par.
It’s not complicated to avoid violating someone’s constitutional rights, but it has to be reinforced. It only takes one time for a sergeant to pull someone aside and say, ‘You can’t do that,’ or ‘Good job recognizing that you can’t do that.’
