The issue in the Minneapolis police shooting

[Lee-Lee]

119. I just saw where the officer who shot had 21 months on the job and his partner just a year

Now my criticism of this may be off because of my experience, I never had the luxury of riding with a partner once I was past training. My department had 5 officers per shift (only 4 half the time because of vacations, sick time, court days and training that took people off shift) to cover 500 square miles so we rode solo once we were past our FTO period.

But if you have an agency with the manpower and budget to have two person cars it would make much more sense to have partners paired with differing levels of experience. You learn a lot on your first 1-5 years from the more experienced officers. Two inexperienced officers riding together are just learning together and can often be setting up bad habits. The guy with 9 more months experience isn't a mentor. One experienced paramedic was once talking to me about how a local EMS agency had lost all its experienced people, and in his words "when the freshmen are all learning from the sophomores you are setting yourself for long term problems" and that fits here too.

I am curious if this speaks to more systemic problems in the agency with leadership, or maybe high turnover and a lack of experienced officers.