Minneapolis: Muslim cop who shot unarmed woman was fast-tracked onto police force

Mohamed Noor was a symbol of everything that Minneapolis officials valued most. They could point to him and say: See? We are not “Islamophobic.” We celebrate diversity. We love our Somali Muslim community, and when they see how they are loved, they will end all jihad activity, because violent jihad is just a reaction to injustices that Infidels perpetrate.

And so it was very important to the Minneapolis Police Department, and to city officials, that Mohamed Noor succeed. And even if he didn’t, nothing would be done. The Minneapolis Police Department kept Mohamed Noor on the force not because he was a competent police officer. He obviously wasn’t. There were three complaints against him in two years. A neighbor reported that Noor was “nervous” and “jumpy” and had “little respect for women,” but Noor could have marched into Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges’ office and announced that she would henceforth be his infidel sex slave, and he would have remained on the force. To have removed him would have been “Islamophobic.”

And now we discover that he graduated from a fast-track program to get onto the force in the first place. They had to have him. His competence as a police officer was always secondary to his ethnicity and religion. Justine Damond suffered the consequences of this identity-based policing. If the Minneapolis Police Department hired and fired police officers based solely on their fitness for the job, and not on their usefulness as symbols of Minneapolis’ commitment to diversity and resolve to fight “Islamophobia,” Justine Damond would be alive today.

“Fast-track training put officer Mohamed Noor on Minneapolis police force,” by Jennifer Bjorhus, Star Tribune, July 22, 2017 (thanks to Robert):

Minneapolis made a significant financial investment in Mohamed Noor.

The officer who fatally shot Justine Damond graduated in 2015 from the city’s accelerated police cadet program. The seven-month training is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement.

The Minneapolis program covers tuition at Hennepin Technical College and pays trainees a $20-an-hour salary with benefits while they work to get licensed. After that their salary bumps up….

Former police chief Janeé Harteau, who resigned late Friday, stood by Noor’s training last week.

“We have a very robust training and hiring process,” Harteau told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. “This officer completed that training very well, just like every officer. He was very suited to be on the street.”

Not everyone is sold on the fast-track training. In Minnesota, the more traditional route to a job as a peace officer includes a two- or four-year degree in criminal justice or a related field. The state is unique in its educational requirement for officers, although Wisconsin has a similar requirement.

James Densley, who teaches criminal justice at Metropolitan State University, said he thinks too many cadet programs are “all tactics and no strategy,” overemphasizing assessing threats and conducting tactical protocols.

“The cadet program is rigorous, no doubt, but it is also an immersive paramilitary experience, taught by practitioner faculty without advanced degrees, and I suspect it leaves students with a limited view of the profession,” Densley said.

Critics of police training across the United States have called it long on command and control and short on instructing common sense approaches to slowing down confrontations and defusing hostile situations….

Nate Gove, head of the state Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST Board), which controls police training and sets learning objectives for the schools, said the nontraditional routes are no less rigorous in Minnesota than the traditional ones. The learning objectives are the same, he said, and include teaching and modeling de-escalation techniques.

“They still have to meet the learning objectives before they get signed off to take the exam,” Gove said. “There’s not some difference in that.”…

When asked on Thursday whether Noor did well in his field training, Harteau said, “He absolutely did.”

“We have a very robust field training officer program which, I’ve been told by the training officers, he did well,” Harteau said. “There was no indication there would be

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/07/minneapolis-muslim-cop-who-shot-unarmed-woman-was-fast-tracked-onto-police-force any issues.”