The nation’s largest police force has started training officers in when and how to intervene if they see a fellow officer behaving badly.
The New York Police Department has enrolled in the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement Project, or ABLE, a nationwide program hosted by the Georgetown University Law Center, police officials say. The program teaches officers to step in when another officer—including a higher-ranking one—uses excessive force or goes against police department guidelines.
More than 70 police departments large and small, from Orlando, Fla., and Washington, D.C., to Lafourche Parish, La., have enrolled in the program since it launched last June. Last month, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced that each of the state’s roughly 550 law-enforcement agencies will be required to complete the program.
The program’s creators say it has become a popular initiative with law enforcement in the wake of the protests that erupted across the country after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis police custody.
The NYPD said it plans to certify 125 instructors through the program. The instructors will then provide the training to the department’s 35,000-plus officers, police officials said. NYPD officials said they hope to roll out the initiative departmentwide by the end of 2021.
NYPD Inspector Michele Irizarry received her instructor certification through the bystandership program at the end of last year, making her the first NYPD officer to complete the program.
Inspector Irizarry said during Black Lives Matter demonstrations last summer she saw officers under her command in Manhattan lose their cool and lash out at protesters.
“I definitely saw officers get heated and officers get baited time and time again,” she said in an interview. “If these officers had some of the skills of ABLE, we might’ve been able to prevent some of the issues—even just as simple as an officer yelling back at a protester.”
Mr. Floyd’s killing was recorded and the video was shared widely on social media. In the footage, three officers stand aside while a fourth keeps a knee pressed to Mr. Floyd’s neck for around eight minutes. The killing sparked a national conversation about police brutality and racism.
The ABLE project traces its roots to the New Orleans Police Department, which in 2014 implemented an early version of the program as part of its consent decree with the Justice Department, the result of a federal investigation that found widespread violations of law and policy by the city’s police.
The program’s founders said the program applies a template developed years earlier from lessons learned in operating rooms, airplane cockpits, military bases and college campuses: that a “duty to intervene” means nothing if others in the room aren’t empowered to speak up. “Active bystandership” is not about whistleblowing or turning on a fellow cop, but looking out for each other, they said.
“These departments, for understandable reasons, have taught chain of command and hierarchy from the very first moment that anyone’s at the academy,” said Jonathan Aronie, an ABLE co-founder and an attorney at law firm Sheppard Mullin who in 2013 was appointed the federal monitor to oversee the New Orleans Police Department. “We are literally redefining a core aspect of something they’ve been taught before any other part of policing.”
The Yonkers Police Department became the first city in New York to enroll in ABLE. To help generate buy-in from the city’s roughly 600 officers, the city’s police commissioner asked not only the department’s wellness officer but also the president of the patrol officers’ union to serve as two of three certified instructors.
“It’s about avoiding misconduct, avoiding police mistakes, and promoting health and wellness,” Yonkers Police Commissioner John Mueller said. “Is anyone going to raise their hand and say, ‘I’d rather be unwell and unhealthy?’”
The NYPD has made a push to implement new training for its rank-and-file after some of its policing of Black Lives Matter protests over the summer led to several investigations of police misconduct.
A city Department of Investigation report in December said the NYPD mishandled the demonstrations, deploying officers with insufficient protest training and relying on crowd-control tactics that at times heightened tension. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time that he intended to incorporate the report’s recommendations.
New York state Attorney General Letitia James filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD on Jan. 14, accusing officers of using excessive force on protesters and unlawfully detaining legal observers. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in response that the city was already making changes to the NYPD and a monitor wouldn’t help accelerate the process.
NYPD Chief Kenneth Corey, who oversees the department’s training bureau, said he hopes the ABLE program teaches officers to help one another keep their composure during a protest or volatile situation.
“The ask is, when you see your partner on the edge of losing it, that they’re no longer going to be able to contain their emotion, it’s time to tap them out,” Chief Corey said.
