The Globe’s Dan Glaun and Sean Cotter have a good piece on the paramilitary-style training at the State Police Academy, where Enrique Delago-Garcia recently died after a boxing exercise. Says one former cadet of the ridiculously over-the-top training program at the academy, ‘It starts there — the whole culture.’ And it’s a culture that’s helped produce scandal after scandal at State Police. It’s a culture that, from the very start, has prioritized brawn over brains, weeding out potentially excellent troopers who just weren’t macho enough for their boot-camp-style instructors.

Btw: Worried about police departments becoming overly militarized in general? Read the Globe article and all the source comments. It all starts in the hiring-and-training process.

Btw II: The Hub Blog mind drifts to this quote from the Untouchables, when beat-cop Jim Malone (aka Sean Connery) says of finding ethically sound police officers: “If you’re afraid of getting a rotten apple, don’t go to the barrel. Get it off the tree.”