Warriors trained to kill become Texas police in just three weeks

Texas humorist Molly Ivins once said, “All anyone needs to enjoy the state Legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people.”

The Texas Legislature proved in 2013 just how prescient she was when it passed Senate Bill 162, allowing military Special Forces personnel to become Texas peace officers with only three weeks of training — and that training can be online.

Not the 16 weeks the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement has determined is appropriate, not the six months of training the Houston Police Department requires of its officers.

Just 120 hours of training to carry a badge, a gun and the authority to stop, detain and arrest anyone they believe they should.

The Legislature basically said that highly trained combat personnel don’t need any significant law enforcement training and are otherwise fully qualified to police Texas communities.

Basic academy training includes classes on professionalism and ethics, the Bill of Rights, racial profiling, multiculturalism and human relations, Spanish, use of force, professional driving, communication and problem solving, and crisis intervention.

Recognizing this as a basic level of training, Texas requires a minimum of 643 hours of formal instruction to start serving as an officer or deputy.

Many departments require extensive training beyond the state minimum. Yet the Texas Legislature has chosen to go in the opposite direction and create a dangerous exception to this basic, minimum requirement.

Senate Bill 162 allows Special Forces personnel such as Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Marine Force Recon, Air Force Pararescue or Navy SEALS to become police officers with only three weeks of training.

For some reason, Texas politicians believed that completing a 120-hour supplemental peace officer course that only focuses on penal, traffic and family statutes was enough to make someone a qualified peace officer if they had extensive combat training.

Basically, they were saying that warriors trained to kill in combat are already highly qualified to be peace officers.

From warrior to peace officer in three weeks. How ironic — and wrong.

That supplemental peace officer course was designed to allow an experienced deputy whose license had lapsed to be relicensed.

It was not created to take a sailor trained in parachuting and reconnaissance techniques and turn him into a police officer doing traffic stops.

And it was not designed to turn an Air Force Pararescue medic trained to recover downed fighter pilots from behind enemy lines into a deputy responsible for investigating a high school fight on a Friday night.

Yet that is what day-to-day policing is all about.

In failing to require the formal basic police officer academy program for these combat warriors, legislators have done an injustice to the people they are supposed to serve — as well as to the veterans unknowingly being put into harm’s way.

Do Special Forces personnel have skills valuable to policing? Of course.

And organizations often hire expertise. If they investigate white-collar crime, they hire accountants. If they need pilots for their air fleet, they recruit experienced ones.

But they also send them through the basic academy program if they are going to give them the authority to lock people up for the rest of their lives, let alone kill them.

Three weeks studying the penal code doesn’t make a peace officer.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 4:45 PM with the headline "Warriors trained to kill become Texas police in just three weeks."