Police training plays a crucial role in the development of police officers. Because the training of police officers combines various educational components and is governed by organizational guidelines, police training is a complex, multifaceted topic. The current study investigates training at six European law enforcement agencies and aims to identify strengths and challenges of current training organization and practice. We interviewed a total of 16 police instructors and seven police (...) coordinators with conceptual training tasks. A thematic analysis was conducted and results organized in the two main themes evident across all six law enforcement agencies: organization of training and delivery of training. Results show that governmental structures and police executive boards are seen as the primary authorities that define the training framework in which police instructors operate. These administrative structures regulate distant and immediate resources, such as available training time, training facilities, equipment, and personnel. Within the confines of available resources and predetermined training frameworks, results indicate that police instructors thoroughly enjoy teaching, creating supportive and motivating learning environments, and applying their personal learning perspectives to training. Nonetheless, police instructors are critical of the level of training they are able to achieve with the available resources. (shrink)

Police officers must be able to make an accurate appraisal of a lethal encounter and respond with appropriate force to mitigate the threat to their own lives and to the lives of others. Contemporary police deadly force training places the cadet in mock lethal encounters, which are designed to simulate those occurring in the real lives of law enforcement officers. This Reality Base Training is designed to provide cadets with experiences that require their reactions to be (...) within the law, policies and procedures, and ethics while undergoing a very stressful, emotional, and physically dynamic situation . Three police cadets provided written accounts of their deadly force training experiences in the RBT format. The descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used to analyze the data and to synthesize a general psychological structure of their experiences. The results reveal the perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors reflecting the role of consciousness and psychological subjectivity in the participants’ understandings and decision-making in the simulated situations. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to identify the possibility of using the sensorimotor method for modeling variable situations of the use of physical force by police officers and organizing the level structure of the sequential use of variable situations for training cadets and students of educational organizations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The scientific novelty lies in identifying the effectiveness of sensorimotor method in situational training of police patrol officers, which makes it (...) possible to rank simulated situations of the use of physical force, including combat techniques of struggle by levels of complexity, and thereby realizing the didactic principle of consistency and accessibility of learning educational material. As a result, the effectiveness of the use of the developed sensorimotor method for teaching police patrol officers to use the physical method was proved. (shrink)

Police officers around the world must often select between equally unappealing, uncertain courses of action in an attempt to achieve the best outcome. Despite the immense importance of such decisions, there remains a lack of understanding in the study of individual differences in police decision-making. Here, using a sample of senior police officers recruited from decision-making training events across the United Kingdom (n = 96), we used the Least-worst Uncertain Choice Inventory For Emergency Responses (LUCIFER) to (...) measure the effect of maximization on both domain-specific (police) and domain-general (military) decisions. In line with a wealth of research on traditional “consumer” decisions, we found that police officers who were “maximizers” found decisions more difficult. Gender and previous military experience also influenced the process of decision-making. Specifically, police officers with military experience took more time to assess the situation but were faster to choose a course of action and commit to it. Female police officers also were slower to assess the situation. As recent events show, the outcomes of police decisions have significant consequences for the public, the officers involved, the police force as a whole, and the wider population, yet psychological research has yet to fully explore the role of individual differences in how such decisions are made. While this study does not seek to identify factors associated with “good” or “better” decision-makers, it provides strong support for the need to factor in perspectives of the individual when creating theory, or applied tools, in support of police decision-making. (shrink)

Police officers often encounter potentially dangerous situations in which they strongly rely on their ability to identify threats quickly and react accordingly. Previous studies have shown that practical experience and targeted training significantly improve threat detection time and decision-making performance in law enforcement situations. We applied 90-min traditional firearms training as a control condition and a specifically developed intervention training to police cadets. The intervention training contained theoretical and practical training on tactical gaze (...) control, situational awareness, and visual attention, while the control training focused on precision and speed. In a pre- and posttest, we measured decision-making performance as well as response preparation and execution to evaluate the training. Concerning cognitive performance training, the number of correct decisions increased from pre- to posttest. In shoot scenarios, correct decisions improved significantly more in the intervention group than in the control group. In don’t-shoot scenarios, there were no considerable differences. Concerning the training of response preparation and execution in shoot scenarios, the intervention group’s response time, but not hit time, decreased significantly from pre- to posttest. The control group was significantly faster than the intervention group, with their response and hit time remaining constant across pre- and posttest. Concerning the training of tactical action control, the intervention group performed significantly better than the control group. Moreover, the intervention group improved the tactical handling of muzzle position significantly. The results indicate that a single 90-min session of targeted gaze control and visual attention training improves decision-making performance, response time, and tactical handling of muzzle position in shoot scenarios. However, these faster response times do not necessarily translate to faster hit times – presumably due to the motor complexity of hitting an armed attacker with live ammunition. We conclude that theory-based training on tactical gaze control and visual attention has a higher impact on police officers’ decision-making performance than traditional firearms training. Therefore, we recommend law enforcement agencies include perception-based shoot/don’t-shoot exercises in training and regular tests for officers’ annual firearm requalification. (shrink)

In 1983, the British police adopted their first public order policing manual, laying the foundations of a secretive archive. The manuals and training materials produced in the intervening years provide an untapped repository of affective thought. This article reads the 1983 and 2016 training materials for their atmospheric insights. It develops the term police ‘atmotechnics’ to describe interventions that are specifically designed to affect the crowded atmosphere of protest or other disorder. The manuals reveal a gradual (...) shift from interventions designed to evince fear and awe, to ones that seek to calm crowds. But more importantly, they underline a shift from a linear understanding of atmotechnics (as a prelude to ‘the use of force’), to an affective feedback loop where specialised officers are deployed to ‘sense’ mood changes among crowds, allowing senior strategic and tactical decisions to take account of atmospheric conditions. (shrink)

POLICE ETHICS – Abstract Mark Lauchs -/- Police are an essential part of the justice system. They are the frontline actors in keeping the peace, social stability and cohesion. Thus good governance relies on honest policing. However, there will always be at least a small group of corrupt police officers, even though Australians are culturally averse to corruption (Khatri, Tsang, & Begley, 2006). There have been many cases where the allegations of police corruption have reached to (...) the highest levels of a state police force (Blanch, 1982) and, in the case of the Fitzgerald Inquiry (Fitzgerald, 1989), ended in a commissioner being convicted of corruption. -/- Any public official who places their own interests before those of the public have corrupted a system in which they are supposed to act as agents of the public, will undermine the good governance of a society (Lauchs, 2007). Police officers attract offers of corruption because of their ability to enforce or ignore the law. Police who are unethical or in financial stress are vulnerable to offers of illicit payments. Longstanding arrangements of corruption within a police branch can lead to a corruption network between police and criminals. Organised police corruption constitutes “social behaviour, conducted in groups within organisations, that is powerful enough to override the officer’s oath of office, personal conscience, departmental regulations and criminal laws.” (Punch, 2000) it is an even greater threat to the community because the damage done has more impact than the sum of the individual acts of corruption. This chapter will discuss the types of police corruption and focus on the organisation as the source of core police culture. -/- . (shrink)

This essay confronts police corruption historically and conceptually, isolating noble cause corruption as a neglected yet powerful motivator of corrupt police behavior. Noble cause corruption is defined in some detail and several specific suggestions are made regarding police training programs to address the issue.

When police abuse their duties, it undermines the state's internal security. It creates a crisis of legitimacy of police because people detest them for their abuse and tyranny. In 1957, IACP (the International Association of Chiefs of Police) developed an ethics tool Code of Ethics for law enforcement. Nevertheless, training has been focused and emphasized on techniques and tactics of policing. Ethics is not the part of presell of the training. The Code of Ethics is (...) pronounced once in a life only during pass-out day. Police face dilemmas in real-time situations with people and society. This is why, this article is concerned with ethics a tool, and procedures to reduce police abuse. (shrink)

Advances in technology have transformed and expanded the ways in which policing is run. One new manifestation is the mass acquisition and processing of private facial images via automatic facial recognition by the police: what we conceptualise as AFR-based policing. However, there is still a lack of clarity on the manner and extent to which this largely-unregulated technology is used by law enforcement agencies and on its impact on fundamental rights. Social understanding and involvement are still insufficient in the (...) context of AFR technologies, which in turn affects social trust in and legitimacy and effectiveness of intelligent governance. This article delineates the function creep of this new concept, identifying the individual and collective harms it engenders. A technological, contextual perspective of the function creep of AFR in policing will evidence the comprehensive creep of training datasets and learning algorithms, which have by-passed an ignorant public. We thus argue individual harms to dignity, privacy and autonomy, combine to constitute a form of cultural harm, impacting directly on individuals and society as a whole. While recognising the limitations of what the law can achieve, we conclude by considering options for redress and the creation of an enhanced regulatory and oversight framework model, or Code of Conduct, as a means of encouraging cultural change from prevailing police indifference to enforcing respect for the human rights violations potentially engaged. The imperative will be to strengthen the top-level design and technical support of AFR policing, imbuing it with the values implicit in the rule of law, democratisation and scientisation-to enhance public confidence and trust in AFR social governance, and to promote civilised social governance in AFR policing. (shrink)

This essay confronts police corruption historically and conceptually, isolating noble cause corruption as a neglected yet powerful motivator of corrupt police behavior. Noble cause corruption is defined in some detail and several specific suggestions are made regarding police training programs to address the issue.

In this article, we explore some of the roles of cameras in policing in the United States. We outline the trajectory of key new media technologies, arguing that cameras and social media together generate the ambient surveillance through which graphic violence is now routinely captured and circulated. Drawing on Michel Foucault, we suggest that there are important intersections between this video footage and police subjectivity, and propose to look at two: recruit training at the Washington state Basic Law (...) Enforcement Academy and the Seattle Police Department’s body-worn camera project. We analyze these cases in relation to the major arguments for and against initiatives to increase police use of cameras, outlining what we see as techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic positions. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, we argue for a third position that calls for field-based inquiry into the specific co-production of socio-techno subjectivities. (shrink)

As part of the Dutch national science program “Professional Games for Professional Skills” we developed a stress-exposure biofeedback training in virtual reality for the Dutch police. We aim to reduce the acute negative impact of stress on performance, as well as long-term consequences for mental health by facilitating physiological stress regulation during a demanding decision task. Conventional biofeedback applications mainly train physiological regulation at rest. This might limit the transfer of the regulation skills to stressful situations. In contrast, (...) we provide the user with the opportunity to practice breathing regulation while they carry out a complex task in VR. This setting poses challenges from a technical – as well as from a user-experience perspective. We illustrate how we approach these challenges in our training and hope to contribute a useful reference for researchers and developers in academia or industry who are interested in using biosignals to control elements in a dynamic virtual environment. (shrink)

The Roman Inquisition against Heretical Depravity, also known as the Holy Office, established in 1542, and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books, announced officially in 1572, undertook to protect Italy from ideas and practices that menaced the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in this world and the salvation of its members in the next. This grandiose public-health program required trained and dedicated thought police to receive and evaluate alarms from the public and, when business was bad, (...) to seek out sources of infection themselves. The resultant records of accusations, investigations, trials, condemnations, expurgations, and exceptions, if extant in its entirety, would go far to fill.. (shrink)

The police are routinely recognized for displaying heroic virtues associated with combat. I take a contrarian position in this paper. Part I begins with the claim that if bravery is to be prioritized in policing, then bravery should be part of the police’s routine roles and responsibilities. However, bravery is not central to what the police do every day, and, therefore, shouldn’t be prioritized (in recruiting, training, and so on). Conversely, Part II claims that if the (...) virtue of honesty is centrally connected to the police role, then it should be prioritized in policing. Because honesty is deeply connected to the police’s routine roles and responsibilities, it should be prioritized. By turning away from misconceptions about the police, the hope is that we will be in a better position to see both the practical and the moral importance of virtue in policing. (shrink)

Individual differences in police dog handlers The Polish adaptation of the NEO-FFI inventory was used in the present study to assess the personality of dog handlers. For diagnosis of the emotional intelligence, the Polish scale Popular Questionnaire of Emotional Intelligence was used. There were 601 participants out of the total estimated number of 1408 police dog handlers in Poland. The results were compared with normalization tests for the measures used. The personality profile and emotional intelligence of dog handlers (...) differ significantly from general population. Described in the NEO-FFI terms, police dog handlers are characterized by very low neuroticism, slightly above average extraversion, slightly below average openness to experience, a little above average agreeableness, and very high conscientiousness. In terms of emotional intelligence, they demonstrate higher control and understanding of emotions. It seems that the results obtained in the study may become relevant for the recruitment and training of police officers. (shrink)

Under conditions of physiological stress, officers are sometimes required to make split-second life-or-death decisions, where deficits in performance can have tragic outcomes, including serious injury or death and strained police–community relations. The current study assessed the performance of 122 active-duty police officers during a realistic lethal force scenario to examine whether performance was affected by the officer’s level of operational skills training, years of police service, and stress reactivity. Results demonstrated that the scenario produced elevated heart (...) rates, as well as perceptual and cognitive distortions, such as tunnel vision, commensurate with those observed in naturalistic use of force encounters. The average performance rating from the scenario was 59%, with 27% of participants making at least one lethal force error. Elevated stress reactivity was a predictor of poorer performance and increased lethal force errors. Level of training and years of police service had differential and complex effects on both performance and lethal force errors. Our results illustrate the need to critically reflect on police training practices and continue to make evidence-based improvements to training. The findings also highlight that while training may significantly improve outcomes, flawless performance is likely not probable, given the limits of human performance under stress. Implications for the objective reasonableness standard, which is used to assess the appropriateness of force in courts of law, are discussed. (shrink)

Since the first edition was published in 1989, Character and Cops has been considered the bible of police ethics training. The book is a comprehensive guide to the ethical challenges faced daily by police officers, especially in times of heightened security. The updated sixth edition features a new foreword by David Bores, a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States military police, and a new chapter titled 'From War Veterans to Peace Officers,' which explores policies for (...) incorporating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan into the domestic police force. (shrink)

The summer of 2020 witnessed perhaps the largest protests in American history in response to police and vigilante brutality against the black community. New protests are still erupting every time another suppressed video, such as of Daniel Prude, surfaces, or another killing, such as Breonna Taylor’s, goes unpunished. As communities demand meaningful reform, the point – or pointlessness – of “implicit bias training” takes on renewed urgency. Implicit bias trainings aim to raise awareness about the unwitting or unwilling (...) prejudices and stereotypes that shape our habits of thinking, feeling, and navigating through the social world. These trainings have been widely adopted by businesses, schools, and law enforcement agencies. Do they make any difference? -/- Although I conduct implicit bias trainings myself (including for courts, judges, police, and attorneys), I share many critics’ concerns. Many trainings are too brief and oversimple, and too often their real function is to permit organisations to “check a box” to protect against litigation, rather than to spark real change. But “implicit bias training” is just another way of saying “education about implicit bias,” and, like all kinds of education, it can be done well or poorly. If implicit bias is one important piece of a large and complex puzzle, then education about it – when done right – should have a meaningful role to play in helping us understand ongoing inequities and enact reforms. (shrink)

We conducted a narrative review of existing literature to identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for officers who police in democratic societies to successfully manage potentially volatile police–public interactions. This review revealed 10 such KSAs that are frequently discussed in the literature. These KSAs include: knowledge of policies and laws; an understanding of mental health-related issues; an ability to interact effectively with, and show respect for, individuals from diverse community groups; awareness and management of stress effects; communication (...) skills; decision-making and problem-solving skills; perceptual skills; motor skills related to use-of-force; emotion and behavior regulation; and an ability to treat people in a procedurally just manner. Following our review, we conducted semi-structured interviews with researchers who specialize in police training and adult education, interactions with individuals in crisis, and racialized policing, as well as two police trainers with expertise in de-escalation and use-of-force training. These interviews confirmed the importance of the 10 KSAs and highlighted two additional KSAs that are likely to be critical: understanding the role of policing in a free and democratic society and tactical knowledge and skills. To ensure that police–public interactions are managed effectively, police trainers may want to focus on the development and evaluation of these KSAs—something that is not always done currently. (shrink)

BackgroundPublic Safety Personnel are routinely exposed to human suffering and need to make quick, morally challenging decisions. Such decisions can affect their psychological wellbeing. Participating in or observing an event or situation that conflicts with personal values can potentially lead to the development of moral injury. Common stressors associated with moral injury include betrayal, inability to prevent death or harm, and ethical dilemmas. Potentially psychologically traumatic event exposures and post-traumatic stress disorder can be comorbid with moral injury; however, moral injury (...) extends beyond fear to include spiritual, cognitive, emotional or existential struggles, which can produce feelings of severe shame, guilt, and anger.ObjectiveThis scoping review was designed to identify the extant empirical research regarding the construct of moral injury, its associated constructs, and how it relates to moral distress in firefighters, paramedics, and police officers.MethodsA systematic literature search of peer-reviewed research was conducted using databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, APA PsychInfo, CINHAL PLUS, Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. Included studies were selected based on the inclusion criteria before being manually extracted and independently screened by two reviewers.ResultsThe initial database search returned 777 articles, 506 of which remained after removal of duplicates. Following review of titles, abstracts, and full texts, 32 studies were included in the current review. Participants in the articles were primarily police officers, with fewer articles focusing on paramedics and firefighters. There were two studies that included mixed populations. Most studies were qualitative and focused on four topics: values, ethical decision-making, organizational betrayal, and spirituality.ConclusionPublic safety organizations appear to recognize the experience of moral distress or moral injury among public safety personnel that results from disconnects between personal core values, formal and informal organizational values, vocational duties, and expectations. Further research is needed to better understand moral distress or moral injury specific to public safety personnel and inform training and treatment in support of public safety personnel mental health. (shrink)

Though the federal government covers much of the cost of counterterrorism instruction, it has surprisingly little control over who is chosen to conduct the training. Structural problems abound. There is no unified system of expert evaluation or regulatory authority to impose quality control. The Tenth Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” has been interpreted to (...) mean that police powers, and officer training, are the preserve of the states. By design, state and local law enforcement is not the responsibility of the federal government, and neither is officer training. While the Department of Homeland Security offers certification, this only means that approved courses are eligible for DHS funds. If the course is paid for by other means—by a regional source, or by another federal department—DHS accreditation isn’t necessarily required. Even DHS money, once received by a state or local police department, can often be used for trainers without DHS accreditation. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how the broader social development to understand behaviour and personhood as shaped by neurobiology forms a predominant narrative among police officers. Drawing on an ethnography of the Dutch police force and 73 interviews with officers, I examine first how they use neurobiological terms to describe and account for their embodied sensations as well as civilian behaviour. Second, I describe the functions these narratives have, that is, why officers use them. Finally, I show how neurobiological discourses (...) are learned and (re)produced during training. Results indicate that officers invoke neurobiology both as facilitator of and explanation for action. The latter raises questions as to what extent neurobiological discourse obscures police responsibility and accountability. A more thorough understanding of how neurobiological discourses are used to understand and account for actions is relevant, given the growing pressures on public professionals to legitimise their work. (shrink)

This article explores how sexualities and space are constitutive of each other in that sexualities are enacted and encoded in and across different scales and sites. In particular, this article aims to investigate how space and heteronormativity interact to complicate once more distinctions between spatial categories such as public/private and, more importantly, urban/rural through the gateways of the train station around the turn of the 20th century. Against the background of urbanization, changes in transport and the particular dangers that were (...) associated with cities and towns from the late 19th century onwards, this article is interested in looking at how train stations as locations of displacement function as sexualized spaces while at the same time providing opportunities to police and govern non-conformist female sexuality. The transformation from rural ‘good’ sexuality to ‘dangerous’ urban sexuality took place precisely at the arrival points in the cities so that train stations became hugely symbolic in collective and individual constructions of sexuality. We argue that a distinctive spatial perspective generates innovative interpretations of social interactions within a given historical context. (shrink)

Establishing common ground in police investigative interviews is essential in preventing misperceptions and miscommunications, to enable a witness’s best evidence to be collected. However eliciting a consistent account of an allegation from individuals with an Intellectual Disability (ID) is dependent on the skill of the interviewing police officer and the communicative competence of a witness with ID. Acknowledging the specialist nature of this process, the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act in England and Wales allows trained intermediaries to (...) facilitate communication between vulnerable individuals in legal settings such as forensic interviews. Intermediaries i.e., communication specialists, often recruit legally permitted low technology communication aids such as line drawings to facilitate interviews. Typically, common ground is established through shared attention and talk but this article uses multimodality Conversation Analysis to analyse the manner in which common ground in intermediary-mediated police interviews is established in other ways, i.e., firstly, through recruiting and using low technology communication aids in real interviews, and secondly through the embodied physical actions associated with manipulating those aids. Line drawings are examined here, enabling the answers given by witnesses with an ID to be semantically aligned with the questions being asked by the interviewing officers, by establishing common ground. Aids are shown to bypass documented difficulties with attention and staying on topic that individuals with ID typically experience, thus enabling them to verbally provide investigation-relevant evidence. (shrink)

For Aristotle, virtues are neither transcendent nor universal, but socially interdependent; they need to be understood chronologically and with respect to character and context. This paper uses an Aristotelian lens to analyse an especially interesting context in which to study virtue—the state’s response when social order breaks down. During such periods, questions relating to right action by citizens, the state, and state agents are pronounced. To study this, we analyse data from interviews, observation, and documents gathered during a 3-year study (...) of riot policing in the U.K. In doing so, we contribute by joining a number of other conversations within JBE, suggesting detailed empirical examination of this context is useful in opening up considerations relevant to ‘virtue’ elsewhere. This extreme context helps us raise interesting and empirically informed questions that can encourage future theoretical and empirical contributions to virtue in business ethics. One such question is on the role of habituation in virtue, which is not just the inculcation of a reflex or automaticity, but can also refer to a trained and developed tendency to behave in the right way, for the right reasons, at the right time. Whilst we stop short of a simplistic alignment of habituation and virtue, we show ways in which it can inform understanding of both courage and phronēsis. (shrink)

This article offers a detailed examination of the content of predictive policing applications. Crime prediction machines are used by governments to shape the moral behavior of police. They serve not only to predict when and where crime is likely to occur, but also to regulate police work. They calculate equivalence ratios, distributing security across the territory based on multiple cost and social justice criteria. Tracing the origins of predictive policing in the Compstat system, this article studies the shift (...) from machines to explore intuitions to applications removing the reflexive dimension of proactivity, thus turning prediction into the medium for “dosage” metrics of police work quantities. Finally, the article discusses how, driven by a critical movement denouncing the discriminatory biases of predictive machines, developers seek to develop techniques to audit training dataset and ways to calculate the reasonable amount of stop and frisk over the population. (shrink)

When animals are trained to function in a human society (for example, pet dogs, police dogs, or sports horses), different trainers and training cultures vary widely in their ability to understand how the animal perceives the communication efforts of the trainer. This variation has considerable impact on the resulting performance and welfare of the animals. There are many trainers who frequently resort to physical punishment or other pain-inflicting methods when the attempts to communicate have failed or when the (...) trainer is unaware of the full range of the potential forms of human-animal communication. Negative consequences of this include animal suffering, imperfect performance of the animals, and sometimes risks to humans, as repeated pain increases aggression in some animals. The field of animal training is also interesting from a semiotic point of view, as it effectively illustrates the differences between the distinct forms of interaction that are included in the concept of communication in the zoosemiotic discourse. The distinctions with the largest potential in improving human-animal communication in animal training, is understanding the difference between verbal communication of the kind that requires rather high cognitive capabilities of theanimal, and communication based on conditioning, which is a form of animal learning that does not require high cognitive ability. The differences and potentials of various types of human-animal communication are discussed in the form of a case study of a novel project run by a NGO called Working Elephant Programme of Asia (WEPA), which introduces humane, science-based training and handling methods as an alternative to the widespread use of pain and fear that is the basis of most existing elephant training methods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:138 In 2010 the city of Colorado Springs was strapped for cash. Government officials announced that they would either have to raise revenue through increased taxation or cut public services—­ in some cases rather severely—­ including, perhaps, police and fire protection, and even more basic bits of municipal infrastructure. The city shut down one-­ third of residential streetlights and closed public restrooms. Citi­ zens were outraged, but a (...) majority of voters had recently defeated a proposed tax increase. It’s tempting to suppose that the city was trying to teach its citizens a lesson: if you want public services, you have to be willing to pay for them. Colorado Springs is, and has been for some time now, a died-­in-­the-­wool small-­government, anti-­tax-­increase, fiscally conservative town. As Colorado Springs resident Bo Sharifi put it, “As soon as I hear government [say] ‘Oh, we need more money’... I guess I kind of automatically assume there’s probably some other things you could probably cut before firemen, policemen, city lights and that sort of thing.”1 On the surface, that seems reasonable. So... what comes to mind? How about food stamps? What about WIC? Of course these are federal services, not funded by Coloradans alone. There’s government, and then there’s government. Well, how about... well... what? Doesn’t the government spend money on all sorts of things we could very easily do without? Perhaps. Isn’t it part of our job to know or to decide which things these are? If we don’t trust government, even more obviously we don’t trust it with our money, though we pretty clearly have no idea how public funds are actually allocated or spent. When asked whether he remembered the proposed tax increase that the city had voted against, Sharifi replied, “maybe.” Bo and his wife were charged $125 to have Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century By Steven Cassedy Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014 JOHN MARIANA Book Reviews 139 their streetlight turned back on. Bo’s wife Sara viewed this as extortion. “By shoveling out a hundred dollars to turn on a streetlight that we kind of felt was supposed to be on anyway, that it was giving them what they wanted,” she said. They who? One resident wrote the city of Colorado Springs a check for $300 to turn the lights on for his entire neighborhood. City Councilwoman Jan Martin pointed out to him that the total cost to the individual Colorado Springs taxpayer to keep the streetlights on—­and to fund the maintenance of public parks and medians, as well as community centers and pre-­recession-­level police and fire services—­by approving the tax increase would have been: $200. He replied that he would never vote for a tax increase. In other words, as the reporter who covered the story (Robert Smith) observed, he would rather pay more to keep the streetlights on in his own neighborhood than to pay for all city services combined. Smith remarked that “Colorado Springs was stepping away from one of the things that we take for granted in most American cities: that we’re all in it together—­ at least when it comes to basic services.”2 As near as I can tell, this is the moral of Steven Cassedy’s exceptionally timely Connected: that we’re all in it together. For much of the book Cassedy merely traces the history of the emergence in the consciousness of ordinary Americans of the concept of the social network, but he is not so much talking about the notion of a network society as such, as I understand him. Or, at any rate, the network society as such is not really his main concern. He is talking about the idea of social, political, national, and ultimately global and universal human interconnectedness that was a distinct product of the complex networked structures (both concrete and abstract) that came to constitute modern American life in the twentieth century (and of course life pretty much everywhere ), and about our understanding of ourselves as so networked.3 On this... (shrink)

Law enforcement organizations invest in ongoing education of employees on various topics concerning diversity, equity and accountability. Such education is designed to ensure the highest levels of performance and to earn the trust of the public. Traditional approaches to education, however, have proved challenging. The effectiveness of what passes as “training” is unregulated, and negative attitudes and beliefs about mandatory educational programs themselves may sabotage any possible benefits for policing. Utilizing a 2-wave, pre-/post-education panel design (N = 263), we (...) demonstrate significant, even dramatic attitude and belief change among members of a police department concerning the value and importance of implicit bias education. That the program succeeded in promoting positive attitudes and beliefs offers a possible path forward given that law enforcement desires a rational, science-based approach to improving professional conduct and police-community relations, and given increased demands for implicit bias education as a component of police reform. Self-reported attitude change is most emphatically not an indication of reduction in bias in the trenches of policing. Nevertheless, positive shifts in attitudes and beliefs about bias education is a notable step forward as it likely reduces resistance to procedures and policies for individual and institutional reform that might otherwise remain elusive. (shrink)

Economic migration, international mobility and refugee crises have brought about both risks and opportunities. Alongside the socio-economic and cultural potential to capitalize on they have generated challenges that need to be addressed. In such an increasingly globalized and diverse world, intercultural competences have become strategic resources underpinning the concept of democratic citizenship and social integration. The objectives of the present article are thus two-fold: firstly we want to explore the concept of cultural cognition and highlight the importance of intercultural and (...) diversity awareness, and, secondly, we intend to present and discuss the results of intercultural training sessions for uniformed services conducted within the “Open Lodz” project (Otwarta Łódź POWR.03.01.00-IP.08-00-3MU/18) (2019-2022) coordinated by the University of Lodz in collaboration with the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź, the Municipal Police, the City of Lodz Office and the City Guard in Łódź. The project was aimed at enhancing foreigners’ quality of life and functioning in Poland. With this goal in view project activities, addressed at two groups of beneficiaries, namely foreign nationals and frontline workers (police, city guard officers, and municipal clerks) focused on improving communication skills (linguistic and cultural competences). (shrink)

While living a life based on universal principles is well accepted by many, the reality of living acts as a great detriment to those who want to centre their lives on these timeless truths. Further, institutional mechanisms and work environments do not conform in general to such principle-centred living. The agents of the state, especially those in the police, have to work under tremendous obstacles and pressures from within and without, and often get a bad reputation, sometimes undeservingly. Moreover (...) their value systems may also degrade in these environments, a direction that requires to be altered by the ‘guardians of the law’. It is important to bring about alignment of values and ethical perceptions of state administrators with some universal laws. The Buddhist practice of vipassana mediation can play a significant role in such transformations, as is evident from the responses from Delhi Police personnel who underwent vipassana in one of their training programmes. Vipassana has made significant differences in the lives and perceptions of these trainees—both at the professional and personal level. This paper introduces these concepts and cites evidences from the feedback sheets of trainees to recommend worldwide adoption of such practices for those who occupy seats of power and responsibility. The feedback shows positive and very encouraging trends in all dimensions—work related, humanitarian, family and self—in other words, in professional, personal and deep inner lives. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that police performance may be hindered by psychophysiological state changes during acute stress. To address the need for awareness and control of these physiological changes, police academies in many countries have implemented Heart-Rate Variability biofeedback training. Despite these trainings now being widely delivered in classroom setups, they typically lack the arousing action context needed for successful transfer to the operational field, where officers must apply learned skills, particularly when stress levels rise. The study (...) presented here aimed to address this gap by training physiological control skills in an arousing decision-making context. We developed a Virtual-Reality breathing-based biofeedback training in which police officers perform deep and slow diaphragmatic breathing in an engaging game-like action context. This VR game consisted of a selective shoot/don’t shoot game designed to assess response inhibition, an impaired capacity in high arousal situations. Biofeedback was provided based on adherence to a slow breathing pace: the slower and deeper the breathing, the less constrained peripheral vision became, facilitating accurate responses to the in-game demands. A total of nine male police trainers completed 10 sessions over a 4-week period as part of a single-case experimental ABAB study-design. Results showed that eight out of nine participants showed improved breathing control in action, with a positive effect on breathing-induced low frequency HRV, while also improving their in-game behavioral performance. Critically, the breathing-based skill learning transferred to subsequent sessions in which biofeedback was not presented. Importantly, all participants remained highly engaged throughout the training. Altogether, our study showed that our VR environment can be used to train breathing regulation in an arousing and active decision-making context. (shrink)

This paper describes what could be labeled “best practices” in teaching ethics to those entering the criminal justice, criminology and related professional fields. The underlying focus of the discussion is on the “self” and reflects the beliefs of the authors in the pedagogic thesis that ethics awareness begins with individual social actors and their existing world views. Thereafter, self awareness of ethical dilemmas and internal safeguards against unethical behavior are defined by those same individuals. Lastly, the process continues when the (...) social actor gains an internalized, self-generated, accountability for one’s own actions. That self accountability may morph over time, depending on circumstances, but individual social actors remain effectively protected from unethical behavior as they master their own ethical challenges and live within their individualized sense of ethical purpose. To make these arguments the authors describe the background for an effective learning paradigm for the study of ethics that can be used in university level criminal justice courses, criminology classes, and police training sessions. This pedagogic approach is theoretically informed and used in classes designed to teach ethics to criminal justice professionals, criminology students who are entering a variety of professions. (shrink)

_Radical Research_ explores the view that research is not a neutral tool to be employed without bias in the search for truth. Rather the radical roots of research are to be seen in the focus on freedom and emancipation from blind allegiance to tradition, ‘common sense’, religion, or powerful individuals and organisations. _Radical Research_ introduces and draws upon leading contemporary debates and data gathered from a diversity of funded projects in; health, education, police training, youth and community, schools, (...) business, and the use of information technology. This book presents a radical view of research in a way that enables both beginner and the experienced professional researcher to explore its approaches in the formation of their own views and practices. It progressively leads the reader from discussions of case studies to critical explorations of the philosophical and methodological concepts, theories and arguments that are central to contemporary debates. In essence, this book shows how to design, develop and write radical research under conditions where ‘normal’ research rules apply and it offers a ground-breaking and proven alternative to traditional research techniques. (shrink)

There is a rather striking video currently used in police training. A firearms officer is caught on video shooting an armed suspect. The officer then gives his account of what happened, and there is no suggestion that he is tying to fabricate evidence. He says that he shot the suspect once; his partner says that he fired two shots. On the video we see four shots being deliberately fired. Memory, it seems, is an unreliable witness in situations of (...) stress. (shrink)

Адресовано курсантам и слушателям образовательных учреждений, учебных центров, центров дополнительной подготовки, курсов повышения квалификации системы МВД Российской Федерации.

This article explores the process of “re-imagined scenarios,” through which the moments of contact with the 9/11 hijackers were developed into scenarios that came to play a central role in U.S. counterterrorism training and policy. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with trainers, government officials, and police officers, it is argued that these scenarios do not recreate previous encounters, or conjure up possible futures, but instead rely on “the elasticity of the almost” to reactivate the past. The re-imagined scenarios (...) call forth "a certain array of recognizable elastic points," through which options for alternative movements are invented. (shrink)

Front-line employees (FELs) facing double challenges of handling demanding supervisors and irresponsible customers in organizational settings. Performance of service organizations exceedingly reliant on knowledge sharing within organizational employees. FLEs develop the destructive emotions of revenge attitude from abusive supervision and customers’ mistreatment and diminish knowledge sharing. This work aims to determine the effect of abusive supervision (ABS) and customer mistreatment (CMT) on the development of revenge attitude (RVA) and felt obligation (FTO) reduces the knowledge hiding behaviors. Moreover, the FLEs categorical (...) factors of work experience and gender vary the effect of knowledge hiding. Survey data from 201 FLEs police officers. Structural equation modeling partial least square regression (PLS-SEM) SmartPLS 3.1 was utilized to test the model. Study results confirm that ABS and CMT significantly impact the RVA, and FTO reduces the RVA. Moreover, RVA influences the evasive, playing dumb, and rationalized knowledge hiding behaviors, and FTO significantly streamlined the knowledge hiding behaviors. FLEs personal attributes of experience and gender moderates the knowledge hiding behaviour and analysed with PLS multiple group analysis (MGA). The study contributes to the knowledge hiding in service work settings FLEs facing internal and external pressures. Service firms need to train the FLEs to manage the customer with the established working standards and work with the supervisor exceeding expectations. Study limitations and future research opportunities were reported at the end. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent police brutality has reminded people in the United States of America that racism and discrimination toward Black Americans is still prevalent. Evidence supports the claim that many Black Americans experience racial trauma due to the relatively common occurrence of discriminatory racial encounters in their life. Racial traumas are events of danger related to real or secondary experiences of racial discrimination that may cause psychological, emotional, or physical injury. The goal of this article is to identify the ethical (...) complexities for psychologists in addressing racial trauma among Black Americans. First, the article describes examples of racial traumas for Black Americans and their impact on overall mental health. Second, there is an in-depth analysis of ethical issues for psychologists relevant to racial trauma in areas such as competency, discrimination and harassment, bias, assessment, training programs, and harm. Finally, recommendations for psychologists are provided to address racial trauma among Black American clients, students, supervisees, and colleagues. (shrink)

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Criminal Psychology will be a modern, interdisciplinary resource aimed at students and professionals interested in the intersection of psychology (e.g., social, forensic, clinical), criminal justice, sociology, and criminology. The interdisciplinary study of human behavior in legal contexts includes numerous topics on criminal behavior, criminal justice policies and legal process, crime detection and prevention, eyewitness identification, prison life, offender assessment and rehabilitation, risk assessment and management, offender mental health, community reintegration, and juvenile offending. The study of these (...) topics has been increasing continually since the late 1800s, with people trained in many legal professions such as policing, social work, law, academia, mental health, and corrections. This will be a comprehensive work that will provide the most current empirical information on those topics of greatest concern to students who desire to work in these fields. This encyclopedia is a unique reference work that looks at criminal behavior primarily through a scientific lens. With over 500 entries the book brings together top empirically driven researchers and clinicians across multiple fields—psychology, criminology, social work, and sociology—to explore the field. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Is Enough, Enough?Megan HomsyThis was a case that stuck with many members of our transplant team for a long time. The patient was a 44-year-old Caucasian male evaluated for a liver transplant with a diagnosis of hepatitis C virus (HCV), originally diagnosed 11 years before the transplant evaluation. The patient met the criteria for the following substance use diagnoses: alcohol use disorder moderate in sustained remission, in a (...) controlled environment, opioid use disorder, severe, in sustained remission, on maintenance therapy, in a controlled environment, stimulant use disorder, amphetamine-type, severe, in early remission, in a controlled environment and stimulant use disorder, cocaine-type, severe in early remission, in a controlled environment.The patient had been living in a sober living housing program for approximately ten months prior to his transplant evaluation with me, his social worker. He had also been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. He had been intermittently linked with mental health services and had participated in numerous detox and substance abuse programs over the last ten years, with varying degrees of success. He was in dual diagnosis treatment (i.e., treatment for co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders) through his Suboxone clinic and was completing toxicology screenings on a biweekly basis.After concluding the minimum three months of drug and alcohol treatment set forth by the state's Organ Transplantation Consortium, the patient graduated from his sober living program, moved in with his sister, and was listed for a liver transplant.The patient was transplanted five months after his clinic evaluation. At the time of the surgery, the patient's Suboxone was abruptly discontinued and replaced with IV Dilaudid. Within days of his transplant, the patient frequently expressed concerns about his pain. Several medical services attempted to manage the pain medications, resulting in his pain management plan being changed repeatedly and much confusion over his current medication regimen. During his liver transplant hospitalization, the RN found the patient with a needle in his arm, and after a search of the patient's hospital room, the hospital police found drug paraphernalia and illicit substances. The patient was eventually discharged to an inpatient substance abuse program, which he left before completing the program and against medical advice.During his first year post-transplant, I attempted to arrange other various treatment programs for him (most of which he did not follow through with) and to find housing for him (as he had been forced to leave his sister's home after his relapse). Eventually, the patient was incarcerated on drug-related charges. Numerous times, the patient missed completing his labs and his post-transplant appointments. He did not refill his immunosuppressant medications, and for lengthy periods of time, he was unreachable by the transplant care team, which resulted in my team members and I calling the patient's family, other providers, and the police for safety checks.In the aftermath of these issues, my colleagues and I had to reckon with the realization that we had failed the patient. As a team, our transplant center created a task force to review this case and what to do in the future to prevent such breakdowns in patient care. We created protocols for managing patients who, at the time of their transplant, are on Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) such as Suboxone and methadone. Staff across the multidisciplinary team attended trainings regarding addiction, pain management, and best practices for MAT services. Additionally, our transplant center collaborated with our hospital's addiction treatment program for a streamlined referral process for transplant patients to addiction services.This patient's case and its sensational nature resulted in many conversations, both professional and unprofessional. Members of the social worker department became aware that personnel within transplant, though not involved in patient care, were inappropriately discussing this patient's case and engaging in unprofessional behavior. Said actions led to the termination of a member of the transplant team. I was placed in the unenviable [End Page E3] position of having to report this behavior to hospital management and legal teams to protect a vulnerable patient.The ethical challenge behind this case really stems from the transplant team attempting to balance two... (shrink)

In the article “Fifty Years of U.S. Mass Incarceration and What It Means for Bioethics,” Sean Valles provides an important reminder of the consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and identifies potential roles for bioethicists in addressing this system. My limited view—that of a physician who conducts court‐ordered investigations and monitoring of health services behind bars—is that the ongoing failure of most academic and professional organizations to be more effective in this much‐ignored area stems from the lack of (...) leaders and staff who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. As conditions behind bars worsen, and a new war on drugs recoils the spring of mass incarceration, there is a pressing need to train, recruit, and promote people who know the realities of the criminal (and immigration) justice system and its impact on health and well‐being. This step can bring a more powerful engagement of bioethics regarding housing, employment, and health care and policing, as well as the numerous and harmful elements of jails, prisons, and detention settings. I provide examples of partners I learn from in this arena, as well as some discrete and technical areas for possible investigation. (shrink)

This book stems from more than 30 years of experience in the development of practical law enforcement ethics training. It is written based on the real-world application of a wide variety of approaches to enhancing ethics awareness and decision-making skills. There has been an explosion of efforts to increase the emphasis on ethics in law enforcement. The most effective of these efforts involve our law enforcement officers themselves in (1) sharing ideas, experiences, and wisdom with each other and (2) (...) analyzing long-term consequences in a risk-free learning environment, before the need arises for making actual decisions or engaging in conduct. Accomplishing those objectives can be attempted with a variety of formats, presentations, and approaches. Instead of being shown how to “teach” ethics, readers will be given material and ideas on how to enhance existing ethics awareness and ethics skills with their personnel. Readers are provided with pointers on talking with staff, not “at” them, in order to foster awareness about how ethical values and standards to which they already subscribe apply in real-world law enforcement decision-making and conduct. A unique aspect of this text is that it is written primarily for line sergeants and lieutenants to use with their own in-service personnel. It contains material that is designed to be easy-to-present and non-intimidating. It is adaptable to briefings of limited duration as well as longer training sessions. There is substantial content to enable an agency to maintain an on-going program of recurrent, short-but-meaningful discussions with and among personnel. Most importantly, it is practical and down-to-earth–not theoretical or abstract. Also, the book is based on the belief that with a combination of interest and practice, any sergeant or lieutenant, or any officer or deputy, can overcome any self-perceived weakness and become an accomplished “ethics awareness discussion leader.” In addition to its primary audience, the book will also be a helpful resource for field-training officers, senior officers, non-sworn personnel, and law enforcement executives. (shrink)

Social injustice and calls to activism take many forms, whether in environmental, medical, legal, political, or educational realms. In this article, I consider the role of activism in ethics institute initiatives. First, as a case study, I discuss an activist initiative for police reform led, in part, by the Kegley Institute of Ethics at California State University, Bakersfield. Specifically, I outline the formation of the Bakersfield Police Department—Community Collaborative, created to review regional and national police policy and (...) training recommendations and to solicit and formalize community-sourced recommendations for policing reform and building trust and greater partnership between the BPD and community. Second, I discuss outcomes and implications of this project and consider its significance for understanding activist roles available to the community engaged ethics institute more generally. In this discussion, I explore practical dimensions and ethical implications of activist approaches in the work of an ethics institute. (shrink)