The little-known vocation of consecrated virginity

Washington D.C., Jun 7, 2020 / 03:54 pm (CNA).- A researcher who studies policing best practices told CNA this week that George Floyd’s arrest and death in Minneapolis reaffirm the need for de-escalation training and, ultimately, a culture of policing that recognizes “the sanctity of all human life.”

In the video of the May 25 arrest, an officer with the Minneapolis Police Department can be seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes after he was taken into custody. Floyd could be heard saying “I can’t breathe” several times. He died soon after.

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)— a Washington D.C.-based independent research and policy organization that studies best practices in policing— in 2016 released a report detailing 30 Guiding Principles on the Use of Force and training guide for police departments.

“Ultimately, this report is about the sanctity of all human life,” the opening line of the report reads.

“It’s so important because it really, in one term, one sentence, really crystallizes what policing is all about: the sanctity of human life, the importance of putting others before yourself, recognizing that even though someone may have committed a crime, they deserve to be treated decently and with respect,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF, told CNA June 4.

The report does not deal with situations where a suspect is using deadly force— such as when a person is shooting at officers or bystanders— in which case, a police officer must act to protect themselves or members of the public.

Instead, it focuses on incidents where a suspect is unarmed, or armed with a weapon other than a gun— what it describes as “incidents where officers do have time to assess the threat and develop a response that best protects everyone, including themselves.”

In the vast majority of these cases, Wexler said, a suspect may be suffering from mental illness, a disability, or may be impaired because of alcohol or drugs.

Though all the details of George Floyd’s arrest are not yet clear, videos of the incident seem to show that Floyd was in some way impaired, Wexler says. He was not armed.

“There was something going on in his life that was altering his behavior,” Wexler observed.

“He looked like he was having trouble standing; he’s definitely impaired in some way…I didn’t see any violent behavior. I didn’t see the necessity of what they did, of having to hold him down.”

No shots were fired during George Floyd’s arrest, but nevertheless, Wexler said he “didn’t see at all the necessity for the force that was used on him.”

“It’s a tragedy. It’s just a tragedy on so many levels,” Wexler commented.

He added that another of their guidelines is “Duty to Intervene.” He explained, “if someone was doing something wrong and there were other officers there, the other officers had a duty to intervene, meaning to try to change what that officer was doing.”

Wexler said in the case of a person behaving erratically, officers should be trained to slow down the situation, keep a safe distance, and above all, communicate as clearly as they can with the suspect.

Wexler himself was inspired, in part, by UK police departments, who usually have to respond to incidents without using deadly force. In Scotland, fewer than 2% of the country’s 17,000 officers are armed.

As part of the process, PERF took 25 police chiefs from the United States to Scotland to learn de-escalation techniques.

Scottish officers have to rely on their communications skills, tactical defense skills, and typically non-lethal equipment such as a baton, chemical spray, and handcuffs.

“They step back, and then they start talking and communicating, because they don’t have a gun. In the United States, if someone pulls out a knife, the first thing a police officer will do was reach for his gun and aim it at the person. There’s a big difference in approach,” he said.

In addition to impairment or mental illness, a suspect may also have other disabilities that officers have not been trained to handle appropriately.

In 2013, a man with Down syndrome named Ethan Saylor died of injuries sustained after three off-duty sheriff deputies forcibly removed him from a Maryland movie theater when he tried to enter without a ticket.

The report recommends that police departments coordinate with local mental health professionals to train officers on how to engage with people with disabilities.

PERF’s 2016 report contains many evidence-based recommendations to reduce the number of people killed by police, and the number of officers killed in the line of duty.

For example, the report recommends a ban on police shooting at moving vehicles unless the suspect is using deadly force from the vehicle— a move which greatly reduced the deaths of both suspects and officers in New York City after it was implemented in 1972. Cities like Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. have since adopted similar policies.

In crafting the original report, PERF consulted with hundreds of police chiefs over the course of two years, and looked at countless case studies and reports to put together their findings and then their training program.

PERF also consulted with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York— who was at that time the chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities— as well as with Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, who lent his support in helping the group’s training programs for the Chicago Police Department.

Wexler said Cardinal Dolan was particularly supportive of the language of “sanctity of life” in the report. Over the years, he said, “I’ve gotten some really wonderful feedback about the sanctity of human life.”

The report emphasized that most officers involved in controversial use-of-force incidents should not be faulted, because their actions reflected the training they received.

One of the biggest problems in changing the culture of policing is the patchwork of 18,000 police departments all across the country, each with its own training for officers.

“There are no national guidelines on de-escalation,” Wexler said.

“When people would say, ‘We want to de-escalate this situation,’ that term hadn’t been defined. What we did is we operationalized that term and we now teach it.”

When PERF first released its guidelines in March 2016, they were met with harsh criticism from both the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police.

“We cannot reasonably expect law enforcement officers to walk away from potentially dangerous situations and individuals in the hope that those situations resolve themselves without further harm being done,” the organizations said at the time in a joint response to PERF’s initial report.

Wexler said today, after four years, the report’s recommendations are “no longer controversial.”

“Many of the larger agencies have adopted them. The number one guideline, the sanctity of human life guideline, has been embraced by many departments,” he said.

Many U.S. police departments that have already incorporated de-escalation techniques into their training have seen positive results.

The report points to the Seattle police department, whose officers interact with some 10,000 people a year with mental illness and, thanks to their training, very rarely have to resort to force of any kind.

Seattle has a large number of people experiencing homelessness, and Wexler said training that helps officers understand their situation can help to avoid fatal conflicts.

For example, some homeless people sleep with a knife for protection, he said. So if an officer confronts them, their first reaction may be to go for their knife— not to attack the officer, but as a measure of self-defense.

“In those kinds of situations, we ask the police to step back, begin communicating, get cover, get yourself safe. We don’t want any police officers to get hurt,” he said.

In addition, it recommends a prohibition on deadly force on suspects who pose a danger only to themselves; that departments document use of force incidents and report them to the public; and that departments make de-escalation a core theme of their training programs.

Wexler said he hopes police departments will use the various videos from the George Floyd incident to assess what went wrong and determine how such an incident can be prevented in future.

“This unfortunate video in Minneapolis will be a ‘training video,’ in the sense that they will ask officers to look at [the video], and then say, ‘Pick this apart. Tell me what happened here. Tell me what should have happened.’ That’s what’s different today— there’s a sense that we need to learn from these situations,” he said.

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Cheryl Sporie, chair of the board of trustees at St. Thomas Aquinas Academy in Marinette, Wisconsin, stands in front of the vacant Garfield Elementary school building in the Marinette School District. Sporie filed a claim against the district on… […]

Washington D.C., May 23, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Former students of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School have published an open letter challenging a recent decision they say undermines the Catholic identity of the school.

“The false choice you have set up, between embracing the truth of Catholic teaching and loving our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, is already spreading a culture of fear” graduates of Visitation wrote May 23, in response to the school’s recent decision to announce the same-sex legal unions of graduates in its alumni magazine.

“If Visitation’s leaders will not affirm Catholic teaching, the school cannot promise to be a home for students and teachers who do.”  

Visitation’s policy change was announced earlier this month in an email sent to the school community by Sr. Mary Birchmans VHM, who is head of the Salesian monastery that runs the school and the past-president of Visitation.

The graduates’ letter was published on the website of First Things magazine, and addressed to Birchmans VHM.

“Above all else, we write with sadness,” the letter says, while outlining the alumnae’s concerns with the policy and the rationale offered for it.

Although Birchmans was the lone signatory of an email to the school community announcing the change in policy, a group of pro-LGBT former students indicated on a private Facebook group that they had been in contact with her and organized support for the decision.

In her May email to the school community, Birchmans said she had been “reflect[ing] upon what it means to Live Jesus in relationship with our LGBTQ alumnae.”

“The Church is clear in its teaching on same-sex marriages,” Birchmans wrote. “But, it is equally clear in its teaching that we are all children of God, that we each have dignity and are worthy of respect and love.”

The sister also wrote that she had been praying over what she called the “contradiction” between the Church’s perennial teachings on human sexuality and the Gospel imperative to love.

In their own letter, the alumnae affirmed that they “share [the] desire to ensure that Visitation is a welcoming and inclusive community,” but noted that even if the school is determined to share same-sex union news of former students “there are loving and faithful ways to do so.”

The alumnae letter said that Birchamns’ explanation of the school’s decision “signals a fundamental shift in the administration’s approach to Visitation’s Catholic identity and Salesian charism.”

The former students said that Birchmans’ communications suggested a false conflict between Church teaching on sexuality and loving one’s neighbor which “betrays a deep misunderstanding of Catholic sexual teaching.”

“For Catholic educators to suggest that Church teaching is in error is misguided and offensive,” the alumnae wrote.

“Sexual union in marriage is only one among many possible paths to a life full of love; human dignity does not depend on sexual expression, and it is perplexing to hear a professed religious sister insinuate otherwise.”

The open letter accused Birchmans of “a heartbreaking betrayal” of the Salesian order’s founder by using quotes from St. Francis de Sales in an argument which seemed to pit the Gospel imperative of love against the Church’s teaching on same-sex unions.

The alumnae said Birchmans implied that those who affirm Catholic teaching “act out of hate.”

That implication, they said, would be an indictment of Pope Francis, St. Francis de Sales, and millions of faithful Catholics around the world.

The letter’s four signatories said they had been overwhelmed with private messages of support from other recent Visitation graduates who shared their concerns but believed they would be “rejected and condemned” if they came forward publicly.

Before the open letter was published, CNA spoke to several parents of current students who voiced similar concerns. Those parents said they are concerned that the school’s decision to publish same-sex union announcements is part of a growing pro-LGBT agenda within a small section of the school community.

One father explained to CNA that he believes the new policy for the alumni magazine would serve as an example for other Catholic schools to break with Church teaching.

“This isn’t just being watched by the immediate community. I’ve spoken to parents from other schools concerned this could be the start of a national trend [by Catholic schools] away from the Church and towards a progressive agenda,” he said.

“This isn’t what we want for our daughters, we make sacrifices as a family to get them to a school where the faith will be taught and nurtured, not undercut but the administration.”

One mother told CNA that the alumni magazine decision had crystalized growing concerns among the wider school community.

“This isn’t about one or two or ten families taking issue with something in a newsletter,” she said.

“A lot of families – a lot of us – have been concerned for a while now about a real move away from a truly Catholic identity to something just ‘in the Catholic tradition,’ and that’s not what we signed up for.”

Several parents told CNA that they have been in touch with the Archdiocese of Washington asking for newly-installed Archbishop Wilton Gregory to review the situation. While the school is under the direct oversight of the Salesian Sisters and not the archdiocese, the local bishop has a general responsibility for ensuring that all Catholic schools are faithful to Church teaching.

On May 15, a spokesperson for Visitation told CNA that “I can’t speak for the archdiocese, but I can say we have been in touch with them and our goal is to work with them as we move forward and remain committed to our Catholic identity.”

An official spokesman for the archdiocese declined to comment on the situation.

CNA also confirmed that Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Va., had written to the school’s administrators expressing the concerns brought to him by Visitation parents living in his diocese.

Georgetown Visitation was founded in 1799, and is the oldest Catholic high school for girls in the United States. Tuition is $30,100. Approximately 500 students are enrolled in the school.

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