I was looking at YouTube and I came across this video of a college student working outside of his dorm. He was collecting trash as part of a work study when a cop came up to him and started questioning him about his reasons for being there. The young man then pulls out the only ID he has which happens to be a student ID.

The cops questioned him about having identification with his address on it. As many of you know, school IDs do not have addresses on them, and depending on the student they might not have driver’s licenses. Well, as the student tries to explain that he doesn’t have anything else, the cops starts asking him about his birthday and all hell starts to break out.

This is the reason so many black children are killed in the line of fire. The student was rightfully upset, but he didn’t understand that he was risking his life by walking around not following directions. In my opinion, this cop tries to insinuate that this kid is becoming a threat to him. He was saying trigger words like threat, weapon and things such as that which would have warranted the use of a gun.

After the video continues a man walks outside the building and confirms the identity of the student which prompts the policemen to ask the man to talk to the student due to the student being upset over the encounter. This situation was in bad need for conflict management from the start. It’s time for policemen to start taking the deescalation training seriously. I recall going to a conference once with two young officers sitting behind us and they laughed and goofed around nearly half of the training. If we want things to get better on the outside, we need to make sure we are teaching better on the inside.