On social media, Richard Whitehead is a warrior for the American right. He
has praised extremist groups. He has called for public executions of
government officials he sees as disloyal to former President Donald Trump.
In a post in 2020, he urged law enforcement officers to disobey COVID-19
public-health orders from �tyrannical governors,� adding: �We are on the
brink of civil war.�

Whitehead also has a day job. He trains police officers around the United
States.

The Idaho-based law enforcement consultant has taught at least 560 police
officers and other public safety workers in 85 sessions in 12 states over
the past four years, according to a Reuters analysis of public records
from the departments that hired him. A Washington state training
commission in 2015 temporarily banned Whitehead from advertising courses
on its website because of instructional materials that referred to a
turban-wearing police officer as a �towel head� and contained cartoons of
women in bikinis, according to emails from the commission to Whitehead
that were reviewed by Reuters. Other marketing literature touted
Whitehead�s �deception detection� technique that, among other things,
teaches officers not to trust sexual-assault claimants if they use the
word �we� in referring to themselves and their assailant.

The commission was responding to a student complaint citing �offensive
slurs� and �blatant misogyny.� Whitehead said in an interview that the
commission had given too much credence to one student�s opinion and caused
him to lose business. Since then, he said, he has expanded the section of
his course that caused that controversy, adding more �pot-stirring�
material, including a slide that ridicules transgender people: �Suspect is
a gender-fluid assigned-male-at-birth wearing non-gender-specific clothing
born Caucasian but identifies as a mountain panda.� Whitehead said such
barbs are intended to push back against pressures on law enforcement to
espouse left-wing views on gender or race.

Whitehead is part of a trend in pushing a radical-right political agenda
to American police forces. He�s one of five police trainers identified by
Reuters whose political commentary on social media has echoed extremist
opinions or who have public ties to far-right figures. They work for one
or more of 35 training firms that advertised at least 10 police or public-
safety training sessions in 2021, according to a Reuters analysis of
scheduling data from policetraining.net, the main site where local
departments connect with trainers. The news organization also reviewed
materials describing classes by specific training companies.

The five trainers have aired views including the belief in a vote-rigging
conspiracy to unseat Trump in the 2020 election. One trainer attended
Trump�s January 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol that devolved into a
riot, injuring more than 100 police officers. Two of the trainers have
falsely asserted that prominent Democrats including President Joe Biden
are pedophiles, a core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Four have
endorsed or posted records of their past interactions with far-right
extremist figures, including prominent �constitutional sheriff� leader
David Clarke Jr. and Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs, who is being prosecuted
for his involvement in the Capitol riots.

RELATED CONTENT

Trump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of 2020 fraud �evidence�

Trump campaign demonized two Georgia election workers � and death threats
followed

Campaign of Fear: The Trump world�s assault on U.S. election workers

Shielded: How an obscure legal doctrine called qualified immunity protects
police accused of excessive force

For cops who kill, special Supreme Court protection

Whitehead adheres to the constitutional sheriff philosophy, which holds
that county sheriffs should ignore any law they find unconstitutional. The
growing movement claims sheriffs are the supreme law enforcement authority
in their jurisdictions � more powerful even than the U.S. president. A
spokesperson for the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers
Association disputed the characterization of its views as extreme and said
it was neither right- nor left-wing.

In interviews, Whitehead and the other four trainers also said their
beliefs are neither extreme nor far-right. Some said posts that appeared
to urge the overthrow of the U.S. government were intended as humorous or
figurative. They said they keep their politics separate from their
training, which they said focused on officer safety.

Whitehead was listed in a database of members of the Oath Keepers, a far-
right anti-government group, that was leaked in September by the nonprofit
Distributed Denial of Secrets, which says it aims to publish data in the
public interest. The members list included some 15 other people who
identified themselves as law enforcement trainers and dozens more who said
they were retired officers or trainers, or firearms instructors, according
to a Reuters review of the data. The anti-government militia group focuses
on recruiting police and military personnel, according to some experts who
track extremism, and claims to have thousands of members. Oath Keepers
founder Stewart Rhodes was charged with seditious conspiracy for his role
in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. He has pleaded not guilty.

Kellye SoRelle � an attorney for the Oath Keepers who has called herself
the group�s acting president during Rhodes� pretrial detention � did not
respond to a request for comment on the law enforcement officers listed in
the database.

Whitehead told Reuters he was an Oath Keeper for about a year, in 2016 and
2017, and continues to support its ideology of �defending the
constitution.� He said he filmed a promotional video at an event of a far-
right militia, the Real Three Percenters, when Whitehead ran for sheriff
of Kootenai County, Idaho in 2020. He praised the Three Percenters, who
train for armed resistance of what they call a tyrannical U.S. government,
as being �all about community� and also defending the constitution.

Private trainers work in an unregulated industry that largely has evaded
the heightened scrutiny of U.S. policing in recent years in the wake of
high-profile police killings of civilians. Trainers like those identified
by Reuters, a half dozen police-training specialists say, highlight a lack
of standards and oversight that allows instruction that can often
exaggerate the threats that officers face, making them more likely to
respond with excessive force in stressful situations.

U.S. law enforcement officers receive far less initial training at police
academies than their counterparts in comparable countries, said Arjun
Sethi, a Georgetown University adjunct law professor and policing
specialist. That opens �immense commercial opportunities� for private
trainers to fill the void with ongoing training of active-duty officers,
often �in a politicized manner� that normalizes biased policing against
Black people and other communities, he said.

�Suspect is a gender-fluid assigned-male-at-birth wearing non-gender-
specific clothing born Caucasian but identifies as a mountain panda.�

Slide from a classroom presentation by police trainer Richard Whitehead,
ridiculing transgender people

Private trainers typically advertise their courses to police and sheriffs�
departments, who often pay for their officers to take them. But
individuals can also seek out and pay for courses on their own to satisfy
government or department requirements for ongoing training. The courses
vary widely in content and in price, from hundreds to thousands of dollars
per attendee.

State-based oversight institutions, often called Peace Officer Standards
and Training agencies, set requirements for police training, such as the
types of classes and minimum teaching hours that officers must complete.
But the institutions have little power in most states to influence course
content or set standards for private police trainers, in part due to
budget constraints, said Randy Shrewsberry, a former police officer. He
saw unregulated police training as such a problem that in 2017 he founded
the California-based Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform.

Some officers will subscribe to the extremist ideology of their trainers,
Shrewsberry said, because they perceive instructors as having authority
and credibility. �Bad training is instilling bad behavior,� he added.

Whitehead disputed the assertion that police trainers need more oversight,
noting that many states review course material. �That seems regulated to
me,� he said.

Support for QAnon, election conspiracies

On social media, some trainers have echoed core tenets of the QAnon
conspiracy theory, which holds that some prominent Democrats and Hollywood
celebrities are part of a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals.

Kansas-based trainer Darrel Schenck teaches firearms classes through his
own company as well as through the law enforcement division of the
National Rifle Association (NRA), the leading U.S. gun-rights lobby.
Schenck has voiced the belief that Democrats are pedophiles, called
reports of violence during the U.S. Capitol riots �fake news,� and
declared the 2020 election illegitimate, commenting: �election fraud is
the real pandemic.�