Ferguson, Missouri turned into a war zone Wednesday night, with police unleashing tear gas, rubber bullets, and smoke bombs on protesters. It didn’t have to unfold that way.

Well-functioning police departments take steps in order to avoid precisely the kind of escalation that took place. That includes holding officers accountable for their actions after-the-fact, obviously. But it also includes lots of preparation, in order to make sure police know how to control crowds with only the force necessary to maintain order and keep the peace. As Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor and former police department investigator for the Department of Justice, explains, “There are lots of things other than discipline to hold a police agency accountability—training and retraining, thinking about incidents in a way that’s sort of problem solving in a way.”

Here are some of those steps:

1. Spend five to fifteen minutes on force training every day: A specific type of police training, called roll call training, involves issuing brief refreshers on good policing practices. In addition to keeping the officers informed, it lets supervisors zero in on potential problem areas. Topics might include when it’s appropriate to use a taser, if it’s okay to point a gun at a person, and what exactly constitutes protected speech. With the right training, for example, cops should know that videotaping police is not generally grounds for arresting citizens and journalists, who do have constitutional rights to record.

2. Make officers file reports for every use of force, even seemingly small ones: Requiring officers to fill out a for every single time they use force is another good practice. Typically, departments will require officers to report any use of force—not just firing a gun or using tear gas, but also the simple act of aiming a weapon at somebody. Simply requiring such reports can have a powerful deterrent effect, reminding officers using force should be a rare occurrence.“Part of the point of use of force reporting is to remind your officers that force is not routine,” Schlanger said. “Force is really serious. When the state summons up force against one of its citizens, that’s a big deal.”