ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Todd Axtell can’t forget the time, as a young St. Paul police officer, when he and his partner responded to a call about a drunk man who wasn’t welcome on the front porch of a home.
“It looked like he had his worldly possessions packed into a backpack and a thick wallet full of papers, it was like his personal filing cabinet,” said Axtell, now the city’s police chief.
Axtell’s partner looked for the man’s identification, pulling out papers from his wallet and littering them on the lawn.
Axtell said he felt shame and embarrassment about how his fellow officer was treating the man. He picked up the papers and informed his sergeant that night he wanted to ride alone going forward; he didn’t tell him the reason why. The officer didn’t stay with the department much longer.
As Axtell has looked back through the decades at what happened, he says now he wishes he had “shown the moral courage at that moment to interrupt that officer.”
All St. Paul officers are currently going through training in moral courage - the concept of doing what’s right in the face of fears or challenges, especially in the heat of the moment, the Pioneer Press reported,
The workshops were already planned when George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody in May, and the case has given more urgency and attention to the duty for officers to intervene. In addition to officer Derek Chauvin, who was seen on video pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck and is charged with murder, three other officers who were present are charged with aiding and abetting.
“To me, the core of this training is about understanding your role as a police officer and it’s not just cleaning up the mess another officer has created, but having the moral courage to interrupt that mess from occurring to begin with,” Axtell said.
After moral courage training, all St. Paul officers will be learning this year about Ethical Policing Is Courageous (EPIC), which is a peer-intervention program developed by New Orleans police.
Chad Weinstein, who is president of Ethical Leaders in Action and developed the moral courage training, said officers already make decisions daily that show such courage, but it’s not a topic that’s often discussed in law enforcement.
“You are primed for physical courage,” Weinstein, of St. Paul, told seven officers going through his training. “The hackneyed cliche is you run toward gunfire. … Moral courage is the same characteristic, but it’s less obvious because the risk factors are less obvious. … It’s having a difficult conversation (with a fellow officer), it’s intervening when an officer is doing something wrong, it’s facing your own shortcomings and owning your own mistakes.”
What are some of the challenges to moral courage? Weinstein asked officers to write their thoughts on pieces of paper, which they taped on a wall.
“Fear of being ostracized,” one described. Another wrote about not having adequate resources or personnel. “Media/social media,” showed up on another card.
Weinstein, who rides along with officers before doing training in a department, said he’s heard officers in the past talk about fear of making a mistake when using a force - using too much or under the wrong circumstances. “That fear makes you vigilant, that’s good,” he said.
This summer, with the intense scrutiny that law enforcement is under, Weinstein said he heard officers express a new fear as he went on patrols. It was, “I’m going to do it right and I’m still going to be held criminally liable,‘” he said.
“That fear is part of many officers’ psychology and it’s a tremendous obstacle for moral courage,” Weinstein said, who emphasized it’s also, “a call for morale courage.”
St. Paul officer Lou Ferraro, who attended the training, said he sees community trust as tied to ethical policing.
“The community expects this,” said Ferraro, who has worked in St. Paul for 18 years and patrols on the East Side. “It’s not that it hasn’t happened, it’s just talked about more now.”
When Floyd died, Minneapolis police already had a policy in place about officers’ duty to stop colleagues from using excessive force. And attorneys for the two rookie officers who are charged said they voiced their concerns about Chauvin’s actions in the moment.
The situation “really drives home the importance of officers standing up for what is right, regardless of the internal or external social implications,” Axtell said. “When you’re an officer, some of the peer pressures can come into the job and we have to make sure with certainty that all of our officers understand it’s not just the right thing to do, but it’s your job and it’s your expectation to stand up for human beings, regardless of circumstances.”
When people in any type of business or organization feel like their bosses treat them fairly and have their back, it’s easier for workers to have moral courage, Weinstein said.
Weinstein, who the police department is paying $32,500 for 42 training sessions, said he’ll facilitate conversations among senior St. Paul police leaders about how to use the input he’s gathering from officers.
He will also be providing moral courage training to Maple Grove officers and is talking to approximately six other agencies about it.
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