The drills are among the most challenging tests at police academies, intended to teach recruits to defend themselves against combative suspects. Recruits may have to fight several instructors at once. Law enforcement experts say that when properly designed and supervised, they teach new officers critical skills for handling high-stress situations. Critics say they can put recruits at risk of physical and mental abuse that runs some promising officers out of the profession. Academies have wide latitude in running such exercises, given a lack of national standards governing police training. Nationwide, deaths and injuries have been blamed on a mix of trauma from punches and other force, overexertion, heat stroke, dehydration and organ failure. Lawyers for some Black and female former trainees have alleged that instructors targeted their clients with excessive force to try to run them out of the profession. Several of the deaths have been of Black men hoping to join disproportionately white police forces.
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