Police In-Service Training

Send us Fan Mail We’ve all seen the movies in which a suspect is being interviewed by a bad cop and a good cop.  The detectives badger or con the suspect to a point of offering a false confession just to stop the process.  In the real world it is believed that false confessions make up 13% of wrongful convictions.  In the realm of evidence-based policing a relatively new approach to conducting sus...

Send us Fan Mail A sign means something.  When you see a stop sign there’s no mystery about its meaning.  Some signs are not as clear, and we have to interpret their meaning.  For example, when someone sees neighborhood disorder or social incivilities, such as obvious drug dealing, these serve as warning signals about the potential for crime victimization.  This can then lead to a fear of crime. ...

Send us Fan Mail A society wants order and the police were developed as the government vehicle to achieve that goal.  There is often tension between the goal of order and how it is achieved.  The tension often results from errors on the part of the responding officer.  This explains why alternative methods for dealing with lower-level social disorders have been explored.  Nevertheless, alternative...

Send us Fan Mail Mental health calls to the police can be challenging for many reasons.  One of the primary problems with sending the police is that they are not usually properly trained to handle a person experiencing a mental health crisis.  The past few years have seen shifts from a law enforcement to a service response.  The Co-Responder model melds police officers and social service clinician...

Send us Fan Mail Increasing the number of female police officers is a challenge for police agencies.  While there has been ample research on this topic, the issue remains, and so the research continues.  Dr. Kathleen Padilla, from the School of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Texas State University, joins the podcast to discuss her 2024 study exploring the advice current and former female of...

Send us Fan Mail The goal of this podcast is provide the police community with research information to improve their work or help solve a problem.  I could not do this without the research that is produced by scholars who have a solid working relationship with police agencies.  It’s helpful that this topic itself, police-researcher collaborations, has been studied to understand the motivations and...

Send us Fan Mail There are many new training programs being offered to police officers, and policy reforms are almost as prevalent.  This is no surprise, as both training and reforms are intended to improve modern policing.  What is less understood is the multi-dimensional aspects of training and reforms, and the diversity of police culture, which can impact the acceptance of both training topics...

Send us Fan Mail The answer to problems in policing is better policing, not its abolition.  If the move to eliminate policing were successful, “people will hate you.”  That was the response of Dr. Paige Vaughn, assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina.  In this episode, Dr. Vaughn explains that studying the public’s perception of...

Send us Fan Mail Policing tactics are directly related to those used to improve public health (e.g., the impact of abandoned housed on crime and interventions to reduce gun violence).  Policing can also benefit by including success stories along the lines of those used by many industries: counting the number of accident-free days.  Dr. Branas, the Chair of the department of epidemiology at Columbi...

Send us Fan Mail Policing includes more than just law enforcement.  Crime reduction is a thinking game: how can the police succeed while also saving their own time and resources?   Hunter M. Boehme, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, joins the podcast to discuss what I call “less formal” methods for reducing crime. Ma...

Send us Fan Mail If a police officer is facing a critical incident they may delay their decisions because of something called “decision inertia.”  Officers don’t freeze up, but delay or fail to make decisions due to uncertainty.  Paradoxically, that uncertainty can be the result of training or agency policies that are intended to guide behavior.  Dr. Brandon May explains the issue, and discusses h...

Send us Fan Mail Understanding a police agencies history, both successes and failures, provides important insights for creating transparency and accountability.  Dr. Craig Uchida, from Justice Security Solutions, discusses his historical research at the LAPD, and explains some of the recommendations for improving policing, which can be made permanent in an agency. Main Topics Examining organizatio...

Send us Fan Mail The Use-of-Force Continuum is intended to provide guidance for police officers on the appropriate, proportional level of force to use when trying to gain compliance.  There seems to be a logical progression in the modern continuum, constructed in with the goal of minimizing an officer’s use of force.  This research found that physical force (soft and hard) as a ‘lower’ force optio...

Send us Fan Mail A police officer’s mental health can be impacted by more than just the personal and physical trauma they experience on the street.  Moral injuries are less tangible but similarly harmful events that can contribute to psychological and depressive disorders.  Dr. Lorraine Smith-MacDonald explains moral injuries and how they can impact police officers. Main Topics Moral injuries are...

Send us Fan Mail Trauma-informed interview training can help street-level police officers and investigators when interviewing sexual assault victims.  The training applies a victim-centered approach for understanding how trauma impacts memory and behavior.  Dr. Bradley Campbell discusses his research that evaluates the effectiveness of Trauma-informed interview training. Main Topics •Sexual assaul...

Send us Fan Mail Organizational Justice is a close relative or Procedural Justice.  And if it’s important for officers to treat citizens in a procedurally just manner, it is also important for police supervisors to treat their officers in an organizationally just manner.  Dr. Scott Wolfe explains the application of Organizational Justice in police agencies and how it can mediate the occupational s...

Send us Fan Mail Checklists are intended to improve the efficiency of people who have to perform in a complex work environment.  Dr. Cory Haberman joins the podcast to discuss his research into the effectiveness of using checklists in policing.  He also talks about the use of virtual reality tools in policing research (including a mildly embarrassing story of learning to use VR goggles for the fir...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Gene Paoline discusses his research into police academy training in the United States.  Using Bureau of Justice Statistics data from their census of police academy’s, Gene and his colleagues identified six basic themes of academy training.   Main Topics Police academy training has not changed substantially in nearly twenty years. There is an imbalance in academy training (acad...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Renee Mitchell joins the podcast to discuss evidence-based policing, and that law enforcement agencies have an ethical obligation to institute, whenever possible, policies and programs that are sound and supported by research. Main Topics Medical research provides empirical evidence to support a doctor’s decisions; it’s not guesswork. Appling evidence-based research to policin...

Send us Fan Mail Police body-worn cameras (BWC) have been around for several years, and a large number of studies have examined their acceptance by officers and their impact on use-of-force incidents.  Recent research expands on more subtle aspects of the use of body cameras.  This week Dr. Vincent Mousseau discusses his recent research, looking at officer’s views of activating body cameras when e...

Send us Fan Mail Human trafficking is not the first thing you might think about as a policing issue, but it occurs everywhere.  In this episode Dr’s Gibbs and Strohacker from Penn State Harrisburg discuss their research that indicates training is imperative for street-level officers to recognize human trafficking.   Main Topics •While human trafficking is portrayed in a sensational manner in enter...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Robin Engel takes a deep dive into police de-escalation, an approach that includes techniques to reduce the tension that can be part of any police-citizen interaction.  The tactics are designed to minimize the use of force by resolving incidents peacefully.   Main Topics Until recently, de-escalation research was non-existent and seen as potentially threating to the officers....

Send us Fan Mail There have been many questions about police proactive behavior and its impact on crime.  In 2020 two events caused police officers to “back off” on their street activity.  Dr. Jessica Huff explains the research into de-policing and how a reduction in proactive behavior lead to an increase in some types of crime. Main Topics Police officers backed off on their proactive behavior as...

Send us Fan Mail A police officer’s body camera can record the objective reality of an event, but the officer’s recall of the event will often be inaccurate.  Dr. Louise Porter from Griffith University joins the podcast to discuss her research exploring the memory and recall of police officers who are exposed to high-stress events. Main Topics -Dr. Porter discussed the perceptual distortions as th...

Send us Fan Mail Police officers are trained to use deadly physical force as a last resort.  They are also trained to reduce their own risk of death.  Active shooter events, however, require a different behavior formula.  Officers are trained to move toward danger, and there is an expectation that they should “kill the killer” (as stated by a Florida Sheriff after the active shooting incident at t...