Former Chiefs Want To Change Police Culture

Susan Rahr is a former sheriff of King County, Wash. and Betty Taylor is the former Winfield, Mo. police chief. Both say police training culture is too militaristic.

There is a television program coming up on PBS we'd like to tell you about. It's a two-night special program examining gun violence in the U.S. Two documentary films will be shown on Monday and Tuesday nights. The first peace officer examines whether local law enforcement agencies have become too reliant upon and are being changed by military equipment handed down from the federal government. This issue has been in the spotlight in the last year or so because of the way police departments have responded to civil unrest in places like Seattle and Ferguson and Baltimore. While many say the use of military-style equipment is necessary and appropriate, others suggest that the ready supply of this equipment has contributed to an unnecessarily aggressive and antagonistic policing strategy that ultimately does more harm than good.

We're going to talk about that with two people who were part of the discussion and know it well. Susan Rahr is a former sheriff of King County in Washington state. Now she's the director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission in charge of training police recruits in Washington state. We actually caught up with her in St. Louis. Sheriff, thank you for joining us.

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