Today’s increased service demands and the scrutiny placed upon public safety professionals have resulted in a growing need to master verbal conflict management skills. When negative verbal encounters escalate to the point where physical intervention is used, criticism often results when it is later discovered that there is little evidence of verbal de-escalation techniques employed by officers. This is particularly true when incident video and audio reviews are utilized. In some cases, it has become clear that the verbal actions of the public safety responders served to escalate the situation. Administrators are now asking, “Is this an area in which the training tape has run out? Have we adequately trained our personnel to successfully manage and respond to verbal confrontations in a professional manner?"

The process of recruiting, vetting and hiring qualified applicants represents one of the greatest challenges confronting law enforcement. Agencies are looking to new recruiting strategies well beyond putting out the “help wanted” sign. This is particularly true as agencies recruit men and women of the millennial generation.

A promotion to a supervisory position is an invitation to enter the world of risk management. Far too many supervisors are learning about these challenges through the process of trial and error—at great expense to themselves, their agencies, the people they lead and the public that they serve. It is vital to agency operations that supervisors are continuously considering the ramifications of their leadership decisions in the context of liability and risk management.

Toxic employees are few in number, but their ability to hurt your agency can’t be overstated. They distract from your mission and create unnecessary stress. They intimidate supervisors and demoralize their peers. They’re the perpetual plaintiff who games the system to get their way. You can probably think of someone like this at your agency, but you aren’t sure how to effectively deal with them. Confronting the Toxic Officer is not a traditional leadership course, but it will help you develop effective strategies for dealing with this small but toxic part of your workforce.

A new level of society-wide transparency has accompanied technological developments in recording and in individuals’ ability to engage in public expression through social media. This has presented law enforcement agencies with new opportunities in identifying suspects, solving crimes and holding officers accountable to agency standards of conduct. It has also presented these agencies with significant challenges. Most notable of these challenges is a level of transparency and scrutiny for officers—on and off the job—that is unprecedented.

Police-community relations is, by all accounts, the most critical issue facing law enforcement in America today. This training seminar presents law enforcement leaders with solutions, based on empirical research and actual practice, for improving citizen satisfaction, citizen confidence, and citizen support for law enforcement officers. This training utilizes the findings from social scientific research to identify what factors influence citizen satisfaction with the police, then provides real-life case study examples to illustrate each of the solutions identified by the research. This training is suited for law enforcement leaders of any rank who engage in directing agency operations and assist in forming departmental policies.