Donald Trump and subsets of America’s police unions are kindred spirits in that they’re card-carrying members of Victim Industrial Complex.

“The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” said Bob Kroll, shouting to cheering MAGA Red Hats at a 2019 Minneapolis event. Kroll is head of domestic terror cell Minneapolis police union and, from where I sit, has no f*cking business speaking at a klan rally. But there he was, true aggrieved victim (emphasis mine):

“The first thing President* Trump did when he took office was turn that around… he decided to start let cops do their job, put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of on us.”

Zero percent of those claims is true; 100% of that partisan tyrant-fluffing babble is nonsense. And yet—even after Philando Castille was murdered in ’16 for driving-while-black-with-broken-taillight in nearby Falcon Heights—Kroll inexplicably remained in a position to decide if George Floyd lived or died.

Just call it Murder-ology

Actually Kroll was offered numerous off-ramps by Minnesota officials to stop murdering black and brown residents, but he refused every time. In response to the Castille murder Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey banned police training that turns officers into Call of Duty computer-game cartoon soldiers. In response our good pal Bob Kroll said “nah man that order is lame so now we’re gonna offer the training for free.”

Brainwashing police to remove internal-ethics judgment so they can feel freer to kill is exactly what contributed to murders of innocent black men

That specific type of police grooming—referred to as “warrior training” and “Killology“—is the hill Kroll wanted to die on. And to this observer, brainwashing police to remove their internal-ethics judgment so they can feel freer to kill is exactly what contributed to the murder of these innocent black men.

“It’s not about killing, it’s about surviving,” Kroll said, as reported by Mother Jones’ Isabela Dias. If police are trained to think they’re “surviving” incoming fire in Fallujah then spraying bullets and kneeling on necks is a logical defensive posture.

The “Killology” training guru in question is Dave Grossman, a wildly popular author and motivational speaker, who has infected many of America’s police forces with lethal nonsense. Mother Jones‘ Bryan Schatz picks it up from here:

Over the past two decades, Grossman has achieved semi-celebrity status as an authority on aggression, close combat, and the psychology of violence. He literally wrote the book on killing, On Killing. His books have been translated into several languages and he says they are required reading at the FBI Academy and many law enforcement academies. He’s lectured at West Point and claims to have conducted trainings for every federal law enforcement agency, every branch of the armed forces, and cops in all 50 states. For more than 19 years, he’s been on the road, leading seminars and trainings nearly 300 days a year. He has a black belt in Hojutsu, the Japanese art of shooting. (Grossman did not grant my request to attend one of his police trainings, nor did he agree to be interviewed.)

[snip]

The military has long taught its troops to kill through a process of conditioned response—aim, shoot, aim, shoot—that’s meant to override the part of the brain that asks, “Should I be doing this?” By refining this approach, Grossman and others claim, the US military boosted its kill ratio—the percentage of frontline soldiers who actually shoot to kill—from between 15 and 25 percent during World War II to as much as 100 percent during the Vietnam War. (These figures and the scholarship behind them have been fiercely debated.) Grossman takes this a step further. Rather than simply conditioning soldiers and police officers to shoot without hesitation, he teaches them to embrace their responsibility to kill. “Killing’s not the goal,” he cautioned in a 2004 interview with Frontline. “But we all understand that killing is the likely outcome.”

If that narrative doesn’t horrify you let me check your pulse and make sure you’re heart is beating. What’s amazing to me is that other police departments are practicing de-escalation with fabulous results; those efforts are in direct conflict with “Killology” nonsense that is, apparently, required in FBI training.

This approach to policing is outdated and ineffective and ‘some of it is dangerously wrong’—Seth Sloughton, former cop and law professor (Mother Jones)

Now that Derek Chauvin is on trial for murdering George Floyd it’s obvious that de-escalation isn’t reaching folks who need it most.

Erik Prince’s Blackwater lurking behind curtains

In the mind of Iraq-war contractor-thug Erik Prince, “deescalation” is a foreign concept. And yet his mercenary-murderers have trained fully dozens of police forces around the country, including Charlottesville, Va., where my parents live; as well as Atlanta police, and weird governmental bodies like Iowa Department of Natural resources (does that body really need kill training? I’m thinking not).

And so. You’ll hear defense attorneys in the Chauvin trial assert that George Floyd was a casualty of normal “public safety” practice when we all know—based on evidence I’ve presented here—that is a bold-faced lie. There is a culture of killing in segments of police departments and unions that has been perverted and objectified in the same way pornography is.

Why don’t you ask these Minneapolis residents on their porch watching George Floyd protests about excessive force by police:

We send our kids to class to be smarter. We go to graduate school to get better at our craft. What do you reckon the end result would be if you train police to be zombie killers? You know the answer. And George Floyd learned the hard way. 😡

Banner image credit: screengrab of Today Show’s report on Twitter

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Will Pollock is a perpetually crabby New York City escapee based in Midtown Atlanta. He’s a freelance multimedia journalist, media analyst and author of two books (award-winning Pizza for Good & Leaving Triscuit), with more on the way.

In 2001, Will earned his Masters from The Medill School of Journalism, graduating with highest honors from the magazine sequence. As permanent member of Journalism’s National Honors Society, he’s been active in monitoring, writing and blogging about media and journalism ever since he graduated.

Obsessed with good storytelling and journalistic excellence, Will uses snark, humor and reason to distill dumb shit and make it fun. He’s a seeker/maker of non-consensus news, and helps you cure crankies by finding the nut in every story.

As for-profit media continues to fail us, it’s more important than ever to find reliable sources. Authentic storytelling exists—you just have to look for it. On this blog you’ll get ideas, not ideology. Sass with class. Reporting with rapport. Evidence with a touch of evil. You get the idea.

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