Police and citizen interactions occasionally produce violence and death, followed, in some cases, with community outrage, rioting and looting. Assuming that eliminating these occurrences would be a good thing, it's time to adopt a technique used in other parts of society to achieve that goal, namely education.
At some point long before a youth is even able to get a driver's license, the educational system should begin instruction on how an individual should respond to an encounter with law enforcement. Of course American children are witnesses during their lives to many thousands of hours of television news and drama based upon cop/criminal interactions but these generally focus on behavior that leads to disaster. A different approach is needed.
Junior and senior high school law enforcement safety programs would be much like other areas of instruction, typing and industrial arts, for instance. Student driver education would be a particularly relevant course.
But the use of lectures and media techniques isn't enough. There must be more realistic presentations. A special classroom should be constructed with a typical SUV parked in front of a squad car. The student should be seated at the wheel and with the lights of the room extinguished a siren would sound, lights would flash and two policemen would emerge from the squad car and go to each front door of the car. The student would receive the normal instructions in a real event of this kind, "Let me see your hands", "Get out of the car", shouted at the driver. The point is that this sort of an encounter isn't a daily feature of anyone's life. It's rarity means that it's the kind of an emergency that an individual should be prepared for, like learning the basics of artificial respiration to save a drowning victim or the use of the Heimlich maneuver if a friend gags on a hot dog.
Instruction of this kind should be a part of getting a driver's license.
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