When a police officer in Cambridge, Mass., punched a black male Harvard student in the stomach multiple times while subduing him this month, the nation was reminded yet again of how quickly confrontations between the police and civilians can intensify beyond what the situation seems to call for. (The student was naked in public and apparently behaving erratically.)
Much of the recent conversation about police violence in the United States has focused — quite rightly — on concerns about racism and the flagrant abuse of power…How can police officers be better trained to remain calm and defuse tense situations?
An unexpected model comes from the field of health care, a profession that has found ways to address the incidence of violence in encounters with those it aims to serve.
Boston Health News 