Calls for better police training have been heard often since Philando Castile was killed at the hand of a St. Anthony police officer one year ago this week. That's the back story that made Gov. Mark Dayton's recommendation Thursday that a new state law enforcement training fund be named for Castile a well-intentioned response to a widely felt need.

But the immediate and sharply negative reaction of several police unions indicates that Dayton's recommendation may be counterproductive. The only good reason to attach any name to that fund is to encourage full and open-minded participation by rank-and-file cops in training intended to improve their work in increasingly diverse communities.

Minnesota police need to learn how to prevent deaths such as Castile's. Naming the training fund after the fallen St. Paul school lunchroom worker may close some police minds to those lessons before they are offered. The Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board will better assure that the lessons of the Castile tragedy are learned if they set aside Dayton's idea about the fund's name and focus instead on the training regimen the new $12 million state fund will underwrite.

Ironically, the need for that training was revealed anew by Thursday's howl of protest from police union leaders. Complaints like the one from Jake Ayers, president of Law Enforcement Labor Services, that Dayton was "kick[ing] law enforcement to the curb once again" by linking Castile's name to the training fund, betray an insensitivity to the communities police officers are sworn to serve.

To be sure, St. Anthony officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter in connection with Castile's death. But a criminal acquittal does not mean Yanez's actions on July 6, 2016, were optimal. Many of the Minnesotans grieved by what happened that night near the State Fairgrounds would welcome less defensiveness and more evidence of self-reflection from the state's police associations.

The suggestion by the head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis that the training fund should be named instead for an officer killed in the line of duty reveals a tin ear for community concerns. Police officers' safety is important. But Castile's mother, Valerie Castile, exhibited a better grasp of the purpose of the new training fund when she said it was created by the 2017 Legislature "because at the end of the day, everyone wants to go home."

That understanding should guide the POST board's work as it shapes the training curriculum. Dayton's appointment of Clarence Castile, the slain man's uncle and a St. Paul police reserve officer, to the board should help make it so.

The governor said Thursday that he intended attaching Castile's name to the training fund to be a healing gesture that could bring Minnesotans together. It says much about the state of police-community relations in this state that it did not. And that makes the work that the training fund will sponsor all the more pressing.