Glenn Stover is a former Lewiston School District teacher.

The events of this year, especially in Minnesota, have triggered an avalanche of reactions both here in the USA and abroad. Most of the complexities of these events are unseen; ulterior motives, hidden agendas and a haze of misinformation, where we’re often left frantically grasping at conjecture and wild speculation.

Some of us, however, informed by real-life experiences from the not too distant past, can calmly and clearly assess a trend — a sort of hurdle in the ongoing, ever morphing social experiment we call democracy. Our current foreign entanglements in the Middle East may overshadow recent domestic events, but they will not disappear them.

First, some credentials. I was a federally trained police officer, and also had training in military police intelligence. The organizing principle of our training was the Constitution. In fact, we took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” 

During training one day, the instructor announced that we were on standby-alert for possible mobilization and deployment, by the commander in chief, President Johnson, to … Detroit, Michigan. The 101st Airborne Paratrooper Division, some of whom I trained with, was deployed under the Insurrection Act, to assist the National Guard and the Detroit Police Department. 

During the Detroit Uprising, as it came to be known, 43 people died; 1,189 were injured, over 1,400 structures were burned, over 500 buildings were completely destroyed and 5,000 residents were reported to have been left homeless. 

Of the people killed, a few were the result of actions of civilians (shopkeepers defending their livelihood for example), in addition to one by the Army, 11 by the Michigan National Guard and 22 by the Detroit Police Department. To me these numbers are not merely a one-dimensional body count report; they also reflect the level of screening, training and experience of each law enforcement group.

President Johnson was so perplexed by the magnitude of the travesty that had occurred — in an America that he perceived as being more united and more law-abiding — that he signed Executive Order 11365 establishing the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders while parts of Detroit were still smoldering. 

The Kerner Commission, as it was called, was bipartisan. The findings were revealing. Three factors stand out: the existence of de facto segregation in the population, escalation of tensions by way of police brutality and a pervasive philosophy of white supremacy within the department and elsewhere. 

As I view and review many of the circulating videos of the immigration agents’ actions in Minnesota, my own experience as a federal police officer serves as a kind of beacon, bringing me deeper into the realities of the human side of being a law enforcement officer.

Many questions arise: What were all the conditions of the event — daytime, nighttime, sense of security of the location, familiarity with the neighborhood? Were there established allies or unfriendlies within the neighborhood? Do past experiences at this location inform or slant the officers’ approach? What level of training were the police officers operating under? What level of skills, both natural and learned, were the officers bringing to, or lacking in, the situation? What were the states of mind of the police officers involved? Is he or she having unusual stress in the family or on the job?  What drew them to this particular career?

And the shootings: we were trained to only unholster our gun when we intended to use it — not brandish it to bluff or threaten. The very presence of a gun in the hand introduces and greatly increases the probability of lethal force.

One glaring example of this is the various videos documenting a horde of immigration and border agents swarming on Alex Pretti, resulting in his death — a homicide in which it is yet to be determined whether intent or recklessness was a factor. There are cries of murder by some witnesses and some even say it had the appearance of a summary execution. 

Just from the videos, the mental state of some of the agents appeared to me to be what we called in the military a berserker/blind rage syndrome. It is a dissociative disorder; a violent overreaction disproportionate to the situation. Often amnesia accompanies the period of violence; situational awareness is replaced by tunnel vision. Logic and consequences are abandoned. 

The human elements of these confrontational aggressions appear to be quickly stuffed into the same bag as the body of evidence, then ushered off the public stage and whisked into a procedural fog. What’s left for the public forum is a fill-in-the-blanks narrative where the storyboards are shaped by the initial shock, indignation — righteous or otherwise — and guesswork of the storytellers.

This, in no way, exonerates the individuals involved. They are not let off the hook. The question that looms larger in my mind is: how did they get hooked … what was the bait?

The answer to that lies somewhere in the purview of the highest corridors of bureaucracy, where the architects of political gambits stay up late at night.

Before being accepted into a law enforcement position in the military, one is administered a General Technical (GT) entrance exam, a vocational aptitude assessment before you are offered a specific job. One might be more suitable as a clerk, medic or cook for example. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers, as seen in streets across the country, are often not required to take this exam.

The current training for Maine state trooper is 24 weeks. That includes 18 weeks of basic law enforcement training, a residential program, six weeks of Recruit Training Troop specifically for recruits and approximately 360 hours paired with an experienced field training officer in a real-world patrol situation, a kind of supervised on-the-job training. You must be at least 21 years of age.

Currently, our governing body has been fast-tracking, with no apparent imminent danger or threat, the process to be trained and put in the field as an ICE agent. Age requirement has been dropped from 21 to 18. Training has been reduced from 13 weeks to eight or even six weeks. There is a $50,000 sign-up bonus, student loan repayment or forgiveness up to $60,000 and job offers are extended to some applicants in as little as six minutes at large-scale career expos. There are also reports of recruits sent to training before background checks — more like a fast track to incompetence.

In recruiting for any employment an in-depth job description would include not only duties to perform but also working conditions and physical/emotional demands. While I was on the job in the military my life was threatened both verbally and physically dozens of times. I was, at one point or another, kicked, slapped or punched in virtually every part of my body. It was part of the job.

We were trained not to take it personally and get into a power play during an incident that then escalates to where all parties involved begin to feel unsafe.

By assignment, I have been paired on patrol with people with authority issues: bullies, racists and culturally insensitive types. They always raised my level of concern.  If I had been in a more supervisory position back then, I would have recommended remedial training or dismissal. That kind of whistle-blowing, by a patrol officer, places a good cop into the moral dilemma of breaking the unspoken oath of the “Blue Wall of Silence” that serves as a shield to misconduct, further exposing the whistle-blower to severe internal retaliation.

Training aside, these jobs, that we the people are funding, are ones of public service. We all recognize public servants in our local communities: the volunteers at school functions, firefighters, people who organize clean-up days around town to reduce pollution, pick up garbage and so on. These are humble campaigns.

So as our democracy seems to be sputtering along and the Constitution groans under the weight of misplaced powers, what can we do?

First and foremost is to recognize that we the people are the source of power that is delegated to those who represent us in the service to our country. We have not lost that power. Perhaps our collective power has grown flabby and would benefit from more vigorous exercise.

We can petition the government for all training manuals and documents of official procedures for hiring ICE agents; we own that material.

And we can show up, where and when it matters, as a gentle reminder to public servants that, in this modern era of a cellphone camera in virtually every hand, there is no place that is not looking.