BlueLivesMatterBY OFFICER BLUE
Denver, CO – Denver Broncos Linebacker Brandon Marshall recently agreed to take Denver PD’s shooting simulator training after speaking with Chief Robert White.
“Coming in here, I thought it was going to be kind of like a ‘Call of Duty’ thing,” Marshall said. “You’re not going to just go around and shoot the bad guys.”
Brandon Marshall continued, “You have to de-escalate the situation, talk somebody off the ledge. I think that it’s more difficult than what people think, trying to sit there de-escalate the situation.”
Marshall didn’t say if he changed his mind on policing, but he did say, “Some of the situations that these officers have to go through, with the stress levels and their life being threatened, or other people’s life being threatened and the various decisions that they have to make, I think it’s very difficult.”
In September, Brandon Marshall was the third NFL player to jump on the Kaepernick bandwagon and kneel during the nation anthem to protest police. Marshall kneeled for half of a season before standing again. The Broncos linebacker cited a new police de-escalation policy as his reason to stand again, but another possible motivation for him was because his kneeling cost him two valuable endorsement deals.
In the end, this training in a controlled environment was only a very brief glimpse of what officers have to go through.