Since these latest incidents, there has been much talk about the need for retraining officers; and there have been repeated calls from an outraged public for investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. But training and federal investigations are ineffective responses to allegations of police misconduct. We know how to solve this epidemic; we just need to find the political will to do it.
Retraining is useless when officers view people of color as “f--king animals”—the words shouted by a police officer at a crowd in Ferguson protesting the killing of Michael Brown. All of the training and retraining in the world are of no moment if officers see the people they are charged to protect and serve as subhuman and dangerous.



