POLICE EDUCATIONAL MODELS & PUBLIC DISSENT Luis Alberto D’Elía University of Alberta, AB, CANADA

1. POLICE EDUCATIONAL MODELS & PUBLIC DISSENTLuis Alberto D’ElíaUniversity of Alberta, AB, CANADA CESE CONFERENCE 2006 – Granada

2. DEDICATION To my lovely and supportive wife and children. To those who have been tortured and killed for peacefully protesting.

3. INTRODUCTION Context: Police and the global narrative of security My research question: appropriateness of public police educational programs to respond to the protesting public. “How prepared are police officers to police public demonstrations?”

4. Paradox: keeping the peace & enforcing the law • Police powers & police discretion: relevance of police education

5. Police Training in Canada • common teaching and program-planning approaches • guided by a traditional, classical and structuralist theory of education (Wotherspoon, 1998) • planning approach follows hierarchical, rigid, less-democratic models more so than designs adopted in Europe (D’Elia, 2002). • Stansfield’s finding (Stansfield, 1996) for the Ontario Police College (OPC) recruit-training program “old education paradigm” “rigid, hierarchical, authoritatian, and content-oriented structure…” (ibid).

6. Use of police power in public demonstrations (some cases from Canada) • APEC in Vancouver • Summit of the Americas in Quebec • G8 meeting in Kananaskis

7. Police education & officers’ decision-making • Canadian police “excesses” >> human rights violations • political interference factor • police management or rank officers’ decisions based on their TRAINING (Canadian, Dutch, German)

8. The Canadian Programs • The Ax Police Service • All police instructors take a university “curriculum design” course • Important pedagogical value • Planning model: Knowles’ • Linear, sequential, constrained needs-assessment, limited or no consideration of players’ power & interests, socio-cultural context, institut. constraints etc • Evaluation: 1.instructors, 2. team-mates & supervisors, 3. self-eval, 4. occasional community survey* • Budgetary allocations: Chief (assisted by Deputy-Chiefs) • Program power characteristics • mandated - the audience (trainee group) is prescribed (Cervero & Wilson) = little room for planner to make decisions • negotiating interests through networking (among training staff) and bargaining (with management) • Planner is internal & in a hierarchical work structure • power relationships reflect hierarchical differences & division of labor.

9. Most Recent Data • Confirmation of Inadequacies • Positive developments on policy • Ax Police planners answerable ultimately to the Chief. Yet, at a lower level, to the main stakeholders. Nevertheless, ultimate decisions >> chief committee How these inadequacies can be resolved? • The AxPS management argument • the decision-making on training program planning >>good “educational” will or empathy of chief? • the decision-making on training program planning could not be left to the existence or not of good will or empathy of chief committee members towards professional, sound educational decisions • A more democratic process >> autonomy of educator managers

10. educational models and theory of Canadian police training-program planning • achievement of professed goal: Respond to community needs? • quality pedagogical values in experiential cultural sensitivity programming • structural constraints and power asymmetries inherent in the institution likely thwart the educators' efforts to respond to the philosophy of the police institution • Inadequate, rigid, sequential, authoritative program-planning model further limits the ability to attain ultimate aim of responding to community needs. • A general lack of a participatory, experiential and comprehensive human rights education before or after graduation puts officers at a disadvantage vis-avis community advocacy and understanding of dissent.