The Phoenix Police Department has been in the spotlight for months, since the Department of Justice released a scathing report into its practices. Federal investigators found the Phoenix police use excessive force and violate people’s civil rights.
Then, body cam video was released showing officers beating and tasing a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy named Tyron McAlpin. The case is now raising questions about how officers deal with people with disabilities.
McAlpin’s attorneys said he couldn’t hear officers when they told him to stop as they pulled into the parking lot where he was walking.
Yesterday on The Show, we heard from Jon Meyers, director of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, who made the argument that law enforcement in our state are not getting enough training on how to deal with people with disabilities, which can often be invisible.
After the McAlpin case came to light, Gov. Katie Hobbs called on the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, or AZPOST, to issue reminders to all law enforcement in the state that there is a training available on this front, the result of a collaboration between AZPOST and the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing.
Matt Giordano, executive director of AZPOST, did the governor’s bidding, but said AZPOST doesn’t track how many officers took it — and he does not think it should be mandatory.
Giordano joined The Show to discuss the training that does exist and why they created it.
Full conversation
MATT GIORDANO: And it really all started with the conversation I had with Jennifer Longdon. She's a former state representative. We had worked quite closely together during my time with the Phoenix Police Department when I was a commander of the Community Relations Bureau. I actually built out the first ever cross disabilities Police Chief advisory board and Jennifer was our chairperson.
So Jennifer reached out to me because she had been contacted by the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing asking about potentially pushing legislation to create mandatory training in that area for law enforcement. So naturally Jennifer contacted me and I'm a huge proponent of ensuring that officers have effective communication skills, so I was on board with training. I just wanted to stay away from making it mandatory.
I thought we could accomplish what we all want to accomplish if we worked together, created really good training. And then I turned around and pushed it out to the 158 agencies and roughly 15,000 peace officers in the state of Arizona. And it was, in my opinion, incredible successful.
LAUREN GILGER: As you mentioned, you wanted to make sure this was not mandatory at the time. I want to ask you about that because there have been efforts by others in this community. The Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council in particular in the past to make this mandatory and something that officers have to take on an annual basis that's been rejected in the past by folks at the Legislature. What's your concern about making it mandatory? Why not?
GIORDANO: Well, it's just talking with my peers around the country in other states that do legislate specific training topics. It becomes very cumbersome, it becomes cumbersome for us to track, you know, almost 15,000 peace officers and, and what they've accomplished throughout the year as well as we really made a shift years ago to push back to the individual agencies for their chief and sheriff to decide what is in the best interest of the communities they serve.
Training hours are limited, you know, for, for an officer to take training, he or she has to be pulled off the street. And that, that's why in person training is very hard to coordinate. And again, when you look at different agencies around the state, they have different needs, they have different abilities, you know, take a Phoenix, it's not a problem for them to run what they call an annual module and bring 50 officers down every Friday to get training. And I know the Arizona Commission did that for Phoenix back in 2015 or 2016. And it worked really well.
Now translate that through a different smaller agency where they might only have five or six officers. How do you take them off the road? And how do you get a trainer to come up and teach them? So, in my opinion, it was much easier for us to create a digital training platform that we could push out. That an officer can actually sit in their patrol car anywhere in the state as long as they have internet connectivity and take part in the training. I felt like that was a better use of everyone's time and it was more efficient.
GILGER: What about training for officers when it comes to people with other kinds of disabilities? I know there's been a lot of increased awareness around folks, especially with developmental disabilities, disabilities that are, you know, invisible, right? But could very well change the way someone responds to law enforcement. Is that included anywhere in any of the mandatory or optional trainings that you have?
GIORDANO: That is all included in our basic academy curriculum. So in addition to what we've been talking about now is advanced officer training. We also set the curriculum for the 17 statewide regional academies every new officer must go through. So we have an interpersonal communication block that's 12 hours long and it covers all of the things you just mentioned.
GILGER: OK. Do you think that there is a sense among officers because I've heard this from some critics in light of recent events that they're, that they're not well enough trained to deal with folks with various disabilities and that they would like to be more well prepared.
GIORDANO: You know, I've heard that too. And I've heard it the other way as well. I've never come across a chief of sheriff that says their people are overtrained. So I think officers are always looking to obtain more training and I think it all comes down to communication. I, I truly believe that effective communication is the foundation of good police work.
And I really think that it just comes down to that and learning how to communicate with all members of our community will make you successful as a police officer.
GILGER: Let me ask you, Matt, in light of recent events, there's been a lot of focus on law enforcement right now, how they interact with people with disabilities. Research will show that people with disabilities are more likely to have negative interactions with law enforcement because of some of these issues we brought up.
And disability advocates are sort of saying, you know, there's, there's not enough training for officers in Arizona on this front right now. Do you think there's enough, would you like to see more? Would you be willing to work on continuing training for officers on this front?
GIORDANO: No, absolutely. And that's why we have the training that we developed years ago, still on our public facing website and we still make it available to a training coordinator around the state is because again, we're always looking to create the best possible peace officers for the entire state that we serve.
GILGER: So, so it sounds like though you think Matt that the training that's out there right now and that you've kind of reissued to officers recently is enough if they know it's there, it does not need to be mandatory. Tell us a little bit more about what's in there and, and if they listen to it, if they go through it, what they will learn.
GIORDANO: You know, I, I, if they go through the training, what they'll understand is that the success of police work really boils down to effective communication. You know, what we're trying to teach officers is to look for cues and, and I'll go back to our basic academy curriculum. I just reviewed a scenario the other day where it's the recruit responds to a call for service reference a suspicious person in the parking lot appears to be looking into vehicles.
So when the officer arrives, the actor, is wearing unbeknownst to the recruit is wearing ear buds and they intentionally as part of the scenario or not to look at the officer, not to engage the officer, look away and act as though they're not hearing the officer and what we're trying to teach the officers in that, in that scenario is to look at the cues and not to immediately believe that the person is being non compliant. We really want them to understand is what are you looking at? What is the person doing? What are their behaviors? And again, look for different ways to address them.
It's the same, it goes back to crisis intervention techniques and, and teaching officers when they respond to calls for service with members of the community. If you see someone that looks agitated, walking around, pacing, fists clenched, maybe talking to themselves, that's not an automatic sign of non compliance. You know, start assessing it, looking at it, trying to understand, try to engage them, lower your voice, don't be threatening, don't invade their space and give them time.
Because again, as peace officers, time is almost always on our side. And if we just slow things down, communicate effectively and, and try to resolve the situation, it can oftentimes be done without, without any use of force being necessary and where it's not even required. So again, we're, we really think the training out there is viable. We think it's appropriate. We think it's been well received and we, again, we just, in my opinion, we just got to get back to effective communication to ensure that we can connect with our diverse community. We serve a diverse community. And oftentimes when you respond to a call for service, you don't know that.
But we're trying to teach these young men and women entering this career and throughout their career on how to look at things holistically, how to look from the outside in and not just assume that someone is non compliant based on their behaviors. Now, we do deal with people, they are non compliant and we've taught officers how to deal with that. But again, oftentimes it's just effective communication to figure out what is going on with that person you're interacting with.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Tyron McAlpin.
