Top things you may have missed about policing this week
News and opinion from outlets across the country compiled by Policing the USA
After fatal shooting, BLM calls out lack of crisis intervention training
Only half of the officers in the Sacramento Police Department have completed crisis intervention training — a task funded by $750,000 of taxpayer money, some of which the department has pocketed, Black Lives Matter activists say.
The department agreed to train officers after the fatal 2016 shooting of a mentally ill man who was running away from cops.
Sacramento's police chief contends that 577 out of 650 officers have been trained and that the department didn't need as much money as initially thought to complete the program.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg has ordered a training review stating that some activists' concerns are valid.
Inmate works for solution to addiction
A man in the middle of a 10-year federal prison sentence might be the last person you'd go to for recovery advice, but Lawrence Hartman is giving it.
The former attorney and Columbia Law School graduate wrote "101 Tips for Staying Clean and Sober" based on his own experiences battling an addiction that led him, at least in part, he says, to commit fraud. Hartman, 52, is slated to be released from the Miami Federal Prison Camp in 2021, but his book is already being used to help people struggling with addiction. He hopes it serves as inspiration so folks won't have to go to prison, like he did, before they realize they're addicts.
After Harman committed fraud, he lived as a fugitive. Prison was rock bottom, he said, and it forced him to change.
Kicking handcuffed person gets cop charged with assault
New Jersey Officer George J. Manganaro was charged with assault and suspended after a 911 call on Thanksgiving morning.
In response to the call, Manganaro arrived at Carneys Point Township, N.J. Not a lot of details have been released, but at some point he handcuffed the suspect and then allegedly kicked the person in the face.
Last year, Manganaro sued a local activist, a councilwoman and the government of Penns Grove and its school district after he was injured while on duty. "From that night forward my career would never be the same," Manganaro said.
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