In the wake of several law-enforcement-involved shootings across the United States, Hillary Clinton called for more police training during the first presidential debate Monday night.

  • Former Oviedo Police chief is a police practices consultant
  • Chuck Drago: "Officers need to understand the community"
  • Drag also says department leaders "should embrace more training"

But, what would that training look like in Central Florida?

"Police officers should be training in how to de-escalate a situation," said Chuck Drago, the former Oviedo Police chief.

Drago is a retired police chief, but he often spends his afternoons at the Orange County Courthouse testifying as a law enforcement expert and police practices consultant.

"Our officers need to understand the mental ill, our officers need to understand the community," Drago said. "Our officers need to have a relationship with the community, our officers need to know how to de-escalate situations so that they don't hurt people unnecessarily."

Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings held his eighth-annual Crime Summit on Wednesday. The event partly focused on the relationship between deputies and the community members they have sworn to protect and serve.

"Training and proactive things we're doing to talk about disproportionate minority contact," Demings said. "We're teaching that curriculum through all of the local law enforcement agencies, and we actually have been doing that now for the last several years. We have renewed funding and those efforts will continue to make certain that our law enforcement officers have the type of sensitivity to bias- based policing."

Drago, who has more than 35 years of experience in law enforcement, said he is far from anti-police. He thinks department leaders should embrace more training so that officers have all the tools they need to prevent some deadly decisions.

"Community policing is having a relationship with the community where they feel they can trust you (so) that when an officer uses force against somebody, that the department is the first one to say, 'We're going to investigate this and we're going to make sure that the officer used lawful force against that person,'" Drago said. "When you see a department who comes out defending the officer before any facts are even out, then there's a problem."

A spokesperson with the Orlando Police Department referenced the department's annual report, which states Orlando Police is focused on de-escalation and shoot/don't shoot decision-based training.