Your local police may be trained for violence. They shouldn't be. | Opinion

Apparently, the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was justifiable. So was the police killing of Eric Garner in New York City.

I learned these surprising conclusions during a weeklong use-of-force training for law enforcement by Force Science, a private company hired by many law enforcement agencies across the country. I was there in my capacity as the elected district attorney of Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee.

As DA, I often have to make decisions about whether to prosecute police in officer-involved killings. So I could better evaluate those cases, I wanted to get educated firsthand on what kind of training law enforcement officers receive.

One thing I learned was a DA can't prevent police killings if the police are trained to kill.

I went in expecting a fairly neutral discussion of the law, with a series of practical dos and don'ts, with illustrative examples of when force was and was not appropriate. I got nothing of the kind.

It was only afterward that I looked up the company and realized it has long drawn criticism from academics and police reform advocates, has been shunned by several police agencies, and yet is a widely used and influential source of training for police.

What does 'I can't breathe' mean? Depends on who you ask.

The overall tone of the sessions was siege mentality. In the training, we were told: "We don't punish people anymore, so we're creating moral psychopaths." Therefore, police should always be afraid of violence from citizens, because "the psychopaths are watching us."

Instructors mocked the idea of "de-escalation," and of using "trained mental health officers" to accompany police in mental health cases.

The prosecutions of the officers accused of killing Floyd and Garner were "witch hunts." The chokehold used to kill Garner had nothing to do with his death, despite medical examiners' conclusions that called that into question.

Indeed, the instructors said concerns about chokeholds were overblown. If a suspect says "I can't breathe" repeatedly, that means he can breathe – otherwise, he wouldn't be able to say anything.

'Put them in an ambulance and let them die there'

More troubling was the reliance on what some critics have called pseudoscience to justify fairly broad justifications for police force – for example, shooting at unarmed civilians from 21 feet away is justified because a civilian can rush a cop quicker than the cop can unholster his gun and fire.

The company's own self-published "studies" supporting its conclusions have been criticized by scientists for lacking methodological rigor. (Force Science disputes such characterization, leading to a debate within the law enforcement community.)

In my training, I was told that positional asphyxia, a cause of death of suspects improperly restrained by police that is recognized by the National Institutes of Health, was a myth. On the other hand, "excited delirium" ‒ a condition where agitated suspects are supposedly impervious to pain, possess "superhuman strength" and can die inexplicably, thus justifying lethal force and in-custody deaths ‒ was not a myth.

Never mind that "excited delirium" as a medical condition has been debunked by studies and experts and is not recognized by the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The instructor acknowledged that some states have banned the use of the term, but joked they're now simply using a different term to get around criticism from the political left. This same instructor jokingly suggested, to great laughter, that police should "just put them in an ambulance and let them die there."

Perhaps most troubling was that of the dozens of real-life situations involving use of deadly force described in detail, none was ever deemed improper. Always, the police officer was justified.

At worst, in controversial situations, the instructor would simply say, "The optics are bad."

More than 1,000 people are killed by police each year in the US

According to the lead instructor, police should be held to a more lenient standard than civilians. For example, police should be able to view the bodycam video before giving a statement about an incident, which is a privilege we don't usually afford civilians accused of acts of violence.

Even when the trainers made arguably valid points – for example, in the adrenaline rush of a deadly encounter, it's understandable that a frightened officer might continue firing multiple rounds even after the immediate danger has apparently passed – our justice system is less willing to give such grace to accused violent offenders who don't wear badges.

More than 1,000 people are killed by police each year in the United States, with roughly 80,000 seriously injured. The vast majority of such incidents are justified, but each incident erodes public trust in police.

This makes the community less willing to give police the kind of cooperation we need to enhance public safety. It's been my experience that even when officer-involved killings are non-prosecutable, they're often preventable, which highlights the importance of proper training.

Good training can reduce the need for police use of force, increasing safety for the officers, the suspects and the wider community.

My own experience with the training, sadly, did not give me confidence.

Steve Mulroy is the elected district attorney for Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes the city of Memphis. His office prosecuted the police killing of Tyre Nichols.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Your local police may be trained for violence. They shouldn't be. | Opinion

Reporting by Steve Mulroy, Opinion contributor / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published July 11, 2026 at 5:03 AM.