Dolan Consulting trained members of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on verbal de-escalation from September 5-8, 2017. The Train The Trainer Course helps participants become teachers of verbal de-escalation techniques and gives them the tools they need to teach others how to defuse potentially volatile situations.

Why are we conducting performance evaluations and how are they making the agency better? These are fundamental questions for agencies that require standardized performance evaluations. Without clearly answering these questions, supervisors are often put in the position of pursuing the “path of least resistance” when it comes to conducting performance evaluations. This path is understandably […]

Criminologists have documented that as young law enforcement officers progress through their careers, there is a tendency to develop cynical views toward the general public. The public primarily calls the police when things have gone wrong and, therefore, officers are overexposed to negative events and to bad citizen behavior. As a result, officers can often […]

Law enforcement is a high-liability profession. Lawsuits against law enforcement officers and agencies absorb an inordinate amount of personnel time and agency resources. Officers and supervisors have to be interviewed or deposed, attorney fees have to be paid, documents have to be gathered and copied, meetings are held with city officials, and insurance companies must […]

Dolan Consulting Group is committed to the principles of community-oriented policing. Unfortunately, we sometimes encounter push back from attendees in our courses that suggest community-oriented policing strategies are some form of a “hug-a-thug” philosophy that is soft on crime and criminals. We are often baffled when we encounter such views as we struggle to understand […]

Decades of extensive research in psychology has revealed that people respond to rewards and punishments in the workplace.1 Law enforcement officers are no exception. We are generally motivated to engage in, or refrain from, specific behaviors because of the rewards and punishments associated with those behaviors. Private industry often links pay and other rewards to […]

Psychological research has suggested that about 80% of the U.S. population is made up of agreeable people.1 Agreeable people are generally honest, seek to get along with others, are open to suggestions, and are compliant to most rules and authority. They can be young or old, rich or poor, male or female, and of any […]

Rollcall Wisdom – Why Do We Need to Say the Pledge?

Rollcall Wisdom – People Talk

Rollcall Wisdom – Knock It Off

Rollcall Wisdom – Community Policing

Rollcall Wisdom – Guardians of the Peace

Rollcall Wisdom – Brush ‘Em Off

Rollcall Wisdom Introduction

Rollcall Wisdom Introduction

Rollcall Wisdom – Smiley Gilbert

It seems like common sense that if you want someone to do something for you, you would simply ask or tell that individual what you need to be accomplished. It would seem that this strategy of simply telling people what you need, is a better strategy than expecting people to intuitively know or read subtle […]

Rollcall Wisdom – Sterile Cockpit Rule

A number of sources have claimed that public employees are influenced by implicit biases. The U.S. Department of Justice, the Police Executive Research Forum, and the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, for example, have suggested that law enforcement officers hold unconscious, implicit biases against people of color.1 It has been argued that these implicit […]

In our Surviving Verbal Conflict® and Winning Back Your Community courses we caution law enforcement officers to avoid using what is called the ‘language of the street.’ The language of the street refers to profanity and other abrasive language often used by the criminal element in some neighborhoods. While most officers agree that using this […]

Far too often today, I believe, police officers are being ‘rope-a-doped’ by manipulative people out on the street. Taken from the tactic famously employed by boxing legend Muhammad Ali, the ‘rope-a-dope’ is when a challenging or manipulative person says things that are intentionally crafted to get under your skin, make you angry, and get you […]

The national problem of “gypsy cops” is not a new one. Toxic officers engage in misconduct in one agency after another over the course of a career and, in the meantime, inflict damage to agency reputation and morale along the way. These officers leave one agency where they are widely known to be a serious […]

Leadership in law enforcement, especially at the street level, is extremely important at a time when there is evidence of de-policing in certain neighborhoods and communities across the country, contributing to rising crime levels in those areas.i There is a strong temptation for many officers, in light of a barrage of negative media attention and […]

In the wake of a significant increase in officer deaths from violent attacks and unceasing criticism by media outlets, political figures and other groups in 2016, citizen satisfaction and confidence in the police in America has actually rebounded from a pattern of decline that has been going on since the early 1970s. In 1968, Gallup Poll data showed […]