TalkCampus app tackles mental health
Danner Revitalization project underway
The Collegian Th NEWS, PAGE 8
FEATURES, PAGE 5
Issue 2 • Friday, Sept. 25, 2020 •
/deltacollegian
DELTA’S SHINING STAR
deltacollegian.net
Academic Advisor Brandon Leake crowned champion of NBC’s talent-show competition ‘America’s Got Talent,’ introducing millions to spoken-word poetry READ STORY ON PAGE 6
PHOTO BY CHRIS HASTON/NBC
POST Academy prepares recruits for a changing landscape of police, community relations BY HANNAH WORKMAN Editor in Chief
With policing in the national spotlight this past summer, many police academies are changing training strategies, including Delta College’s Police Officers Standards and Training (POST) Academy. “We have spent a lot of time reviewing, debriefing and discussing current events in policing,” POST Academy Director Tammie Murrell said. Current events include police-involved incidents relating to the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, which sparked nationwide conversations about police brutality, specifically against minorities. “We are being very intentional about talking about sensitive, often racerelated topics, which can be uncomfortable for some recruits,” Murrell said. However, Murrell believes it is necessary to have these discussions in order for recruits
to recognize that historic failures of the police have created “cultures of suspicion and distrust” amongst minorities. “Moving forward, we must take responsibility and ownership of the failures of the policing profession and work diligently and consistently to fix what is broken and repair relationships with our communities, especially communities of color,” Murrell said. One way the POST Academy is trying to accomplish this is by implementing the tenants of procedural justice into its program. According to Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, “procedural justice emphasizes the need for police to demonstrate their legitimacy to the public in four areas — voice, transparency, fairness, and impartiality.” The POST Academy has implemented the tenants of procedural justice into its program for the past five years,
Murrell said. Murrell said the POST Academy also stresses the importance of a “community bank account,” which serves as an analogy to a bank savings account. “The police have opened this community bank account by following the tenants of procedural justice,” she said. “Police officers work hard day in and day out to make small deposits of trust and legitimacy into this account.” Though when incidents like the killings of Taylor and Floyd occur, Murrell said there is a massive withdrawal of trust and the effect is the police have less of the community’s respect. “Honest, hard-working officers nationally must begin the difficult work of repairing relationships and make deposits into the account to replenish it,” she said. In addition to the implementation of procedural justice, POST is training recruits on the “duty to intervene.”
Recruits are hard at work on an assignment at the beginning of the Fall 2019 session. PHOTO COURTESY OF TAMMIE MURRELL
“This is the notion that if any officer witnesses any act of excessive force or criminal and unethical behavior by any officer, regardless of seniority or rank, it is the duty of the witnessing officer to not only
intervene, but to report the behavior,” Murrell said. The training to become a police officer is long and extensive.
See POLICING, page 8
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