Bruce Praet is a well-known name in law enforcement, especially in California. He co-founded a company called Lexipol that contracts with more than 95 percent of police departments in the state and offers its clients trainings and ready-made policies.

In one of Praet’s online training webinars, he offers a piece of advice that policing experts have called inhumane. It’s aimed at protecting officers and their departments from lawsuits.

After police kill someone, they are supposed to notify the family. Instead of delivering the news immediately, Praet advises officers to first ask about the person who was killed to get as much unflattering information as possible. 

Reporter Brian Howey started looking into this advice when he was with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. This week on Reveal, he delves into his finding that officers have been using this tactic across California. He also finds that the information families disclosed before they knew their relative was killed later affected their lawsuits against law enforcement departments. 

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in November 2023.

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