Current Events > Meet the man who is teaching cops to kill without hesitation or remorse

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https://www.insider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-trainer-teaching-officers-how-to-kill-2020-6

• Dave Grossman's "Bulletproof Mind" is teaching law enforcement agencies across the United States militarized tactics in which officers are told to see themselves as "at war" on the streets.
• The retired Army ranger and former West Point instructor has been teaching his classes for more than two decades.
• He focuses on a concept he's dubbed "killology," or the study of killing, and uses it to teach officers to kill with less hesitation.
• Agencies have started turning away from the courses in recent years, after it was discovered the Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile had taken one of Grossman's courses.

One of America's top police trainers is teaching officers to be "emotionally, spiritually, psychologically" prepared to kill people on the job.

If you're prepared to kill, Dave Grossman says, it's "just not that big of a deal."

"I am convinced from a lifetime of study, if you fully prepare yourself, in most cases killing is just not that big of a deal. For a mature warrior who has prepared their self's mind, body and spirit for a lifetime, for a mature warrior whose killing represents a clear and present danger to others, it's just not that big of a deal," Grossman said in 2015, while speaking in front of a group in a segment filmed for the 2016 police militarization documentary "Do Not Resist."

Grossman also enticed his audience by noting that killing can lead to great sex.

"Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex. There's not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it," he said in the same course.

The retired Army ranger and former West Point instructor, teaches a course called "The Bulletproof Mind," where he teaches officers the logic behind killing. He offers online classes through Grossman Academy for $79.

His overly aggressive style prepares law enforcement officers for a job under siege, where they're front line troops who are "at war" with the streets. Officers need to be prepared to battle the communities they're told to protect, Grossman has said. And ideally in Grossman's eyes, officers need to learn to kill less hesitantly.

Grossman, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Insider, is part of a larger industry of controversial militarized and fear-based police training educators, that also includes psychologist William Lewinski at the Force Science Institute in Minnesota, whose work has been called "pseudoscience" by the American Journal of Psychology.

Law enforcement agencies including the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol, and hundreds of other jurisdictions have taken Grossman's courses over the last 22 years, Grossman told Men's Journal in 2017. At least one police shooting death has been connected to the course the 2016 killing of Philando Castile. The officer who killed Castile had taken a Bulletproof class with Grossman just two years before the shooting.

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FursonaNonGrata posted...

I am convinced from a lifetime of study, if you fully prepare yourself, in most cases killing is just not that big of a deal.

FursonaNonGrata posted...

in most cases killing is just not that big of a deal.

FursonaNonGrata posted...

killing is just not that big of a deal.

FursonaNonGrata posted...

killing is just not that big of a deal.

...fuck's sake.

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Grossman's courses focus on the study of killing, or 'killology'

Since retiring from the US Army in 1998, Grossman has traveled to all 50 states to teach his Bulletproof courses to law enforcement agencies, according to his website. Grossman's bio on the website says he's on the road "almost 300 days a year" teaching seminars.

As part of the course, Grossman is paid by local law enforcement departments to train officers in his warrior-based philosophy of "killology," which he describes as "the reactions of healthy people in killing circumstances (such as police and military in combat) and the factors that enable and restrain killing in these situations."

For years his classes were held through the Illinois-based organization Calibre Press that, according to its website, works to train "smarter, safer, more successful law enforcement officers."

A Bulletproof manual from Calibre features data on "combat efficiency," "perceptual distortions in combat," and post-traumatic stress disorder, and includes information on "fear-induced heart rate increase," surviving gunshot wounds, and Bible verses that distinguish killing from murder.

"What does a predator do? They kill. Only a killer can hunt a killer," Grossman said at one seminar filmed by The New Yorker. "Are you emotionally, spiritually, psychologically prepared to snuff out a human life in defense of innocent lives?"

Craig Atkinson, the filmmaker behind "Do Not Resist," told Insider that he attended one of Grossman's Bulletproof courses upon an invitation from the Ohio State Patrol's SWAT team in 2015. He said Grossman's military background seemingly makes it difficult to distinguish at-war soldiers from police trying to protect a community.

"He doesn't see the separation between Fallujah and Ferguson," Atkinson told Insider. "And so he thinks of the police as the first line of defense to Al Qaeda, and there's no difference." He said he and a producer who attended the session were "appalled" by what Grossman was teaching law enforcement.


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Grossman's course faced criticism from a watchdog agency after Philando Castile's death

Grossman's course came under scrutiny in 2016, when it was revealed that St. Anthony Officer Jeronimo Yanez, who shot Castile during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis, had taken a Bulletproof Warrior years earlier. In 2017, Yanez was found not guilty on all charges in connection to shooting and killing Castile.

The Minneapolis-based watchdog organization Communities United Against Police Brutality said in a 2018 information pamphlet shared with Insider that the claims Grossman makes in his courses are "Like a foundation full of cracks." The organization said much of Grossman's work is unverified and lacks peer reviews.

"It's one thing to claim to discover a phenomenon that's under-researched and then try to learn more for the general advancement of knowledge. It's another thing to operationalize ideas drawn from controversial, fatally-flawed, non-peer-reviewed research. And that's what Grossman is doing: Preparing police officers to interact with the public they serve by telling them they are "warriors," by insisting that "WE. ARE. AT. WAR.!," and by encouraging them to question any previous training they've undergone," the organization said in 2018.

The organization added: "Grossman routinely puts cops on high alert in his seminars by insisting on a mythical exploding murder rate or decrying 'the systematic ambush, murder, and execution of cops.' Officers routinely hear that 'every single traffic stop could be, might be, the last stop you ever make in your life.' Awakening officers' fear that their work continually puts them in lethal danger, Grossman begins cultivating fear of the public and a readiness to kill."




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DK9292 posted...

...fuck's sake.

Police across the entire country are being brainwashed by training like Grossman's and police union leaders who prop him up. They believe that they're superheros fighting for their lives every day and they see every single citizen as a potentially deadly threat.

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Bumperino

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This is what your "increased training and funding" would go to.

Defund the police and remove people like this from society.

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@Patchwork @Mark_DeRosa Have your departments done any training like this? I've read some stuff about how some departments have phased it out over the years but the dude is still actively training people in some departments.

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well there's your problem

well one of them at least

Yeah the big brave "warriors" protecting their honor stomping on and shooting unarmed civilians.

Thank you for your service /s

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John Oliver had a segment on this guy. He's a real fucking whack job
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Can't get over the part where the cop was bragging about how he killed someone in a shootout and then went home and had the best sex he's had in months. There people are fucking psychopaths.

And the quote about them being samurai

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Why is it that this sort of Jason Statham wannabe tough guy masturbation nonsense being central to police training doesn't surprise me at all?

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Also can we take a second to appreciate how perfect the guy's name is

Gross man.

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FursonaNonGrata posted...

@Patchwork @Mark_DeRosa Have your departments done any training like this? I've read some stuff about how some departments have phased it out over the years but the dude is still actively training people in some departments.

No, its not a departmental type of training for us. Ive known a few guys outside of our department who have gone on their own to his talks and shit, but its not anything my department would send us to.

Most of my trainings have been on interviewing witnesses/suspects, deceptive behaviors, hidden compartments, etc., not killing people.

Probably shocking for CE.


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