PART II.  THE RESPONSIBILITY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES that come with it. In addition, law enforcement officials who have responsibilities related to arrest, detention and treatment of detainees should receive appropriate training for those particular tasks.132 Those responsible for mentoring new recruits during their “on-the-job” training should be the recipients of similar training that enables them to know what their recruits have learned. More importantly, mentors must understand that their role is to help instil a work attitude that is based on professionalism, respect for human rights and dignity, a willingness to learn, and handling oversight and scrutiny in a positive and constructive manner, and should set an example for such characteristics. Especially in the case of reforms that affect law enforcement rules and practices, care must be taken that trainers and mentors do not reinforce the “old” operational code, hence frustrating the reforms.133 This means they should be carefully selected, and mentored themselves to ensure they comply with the reform agenda. In principle, those that have been implicated in human rights violations or abuses in the past should not be allowed to mentor new recruits. Those in command positions should be properly trained and prepared for the specific responsibilities they bear, in providing effective supervision (i.e. direct command during operations), preparing for operations, including developing tactical plans, and evaluating operations and actions in order to learn from them and take adequate measures to prevent recurrent mistakes. This also implies that when a law enforcement official is promoted, additional training should be provided commensurate with the new responsibilities, including on the use of force. In most countries there are specialized management training institutes for leadership positions, regardless of their entry degree. It is crucial that the training is in clear connection with the operational side of law enforcement, so lessons learnt from law enforcement practice can be distilled into training, as per principle 20 of the BPUFF which states that “law enforcement agencies should review their training programmes and operational procedures in the light of particular incidents”. A regular exchange of trainers who go back into operational practice and vice versa is recommended. This is also important in view of new instruments, technologies and tactics that may have been developed, either in practice or theory. Information on the person responsible for the training contents and record of updates should be accurate and transparent. Use-of-force training: practical, realistic and scenario-based Use-of-force training should be scenario-based, with emphasis on those scenarios that the new recruit is most likely to encounter in practice. Through working on these real-life scenarios the recruit learns to assess a situation in order to identify options how to solve it. Principle 20 of the BPUFF tasks governments and law enforcement agencies to “give special attention to issues of police ethics and human rights, (...) and to alternatives to the use of force and firearms, including the peaceful settlement of conflicts, the understanding of crowd behaviour, and the methods of persuasion, negotiation and mediation, as well as to technical means, with a view to limiting the use of force and firearms”. Indeed, recruits should learn how they can handle conflict situations in ways other than through use of force. They should learn how to de-escalate tension, make use of communication skills such as mediation and negotiation, and understand different tactics they might deploy. See CAT, article 11; Committee Against Torture, General Comment 20, para. 10. See Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), 2012, Resistance from a training unit can thwart policy reforms, pp. 37-38. 132  133  55