The proliferation of recording devices has resulted in a new reality for police officers: encountering civilians who are recording them as they do their job. While the Supreme Court has yet to give law enforcement officers a clear definition of the constitutional right to record (subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions), the writing is on the wall. The overwhelming majority of courts that have taken up the question have concluded that the First Amendment prohibits officers from infringing upon a civilian’s right to record them in public while performing their official duties. This is particularly true when there is no question as to whether or not the civilian was lawfully present—meaning that the civilian was not ducking below police tape or otherwise placing themselves into a position where they are putting officer safety and/or investigations into jeopardy. Arrests motivated by the fact that a recording was taking place where a civilian was lawfully present have been tossed out by local prosecutors and have resulted in a multitude of lawsuits and settlements. Yet the YouTube® footage going viral often shows officers angrily asserting the act of recording is illegal.

In response to this clear momentum, law enforcement agencies across the country are publicly acknowledging that recording officers is not an arrestable offense in and of itself, absent exigent circumstances. Many of these agencies are also instructing their personnel to respect the First Amendment right of civilians to record. But how many of these agencies are actually training their people to recognize that a civilian’s right to record in many instances is not an affirmative defense to charges independent of the act of recording? It is crucial that officers have a keen understanding of the difference between arresting someone for recording them in public versus arresting someone while they happen to be recording them in public. This distinction is a crucial one.

Situations in which officers approach a suspect and are confronted with a camera are now commonplace. If officers “over-correct” in their interactions with the public and refrain from taking actions they would otherwise deem appropriate due to a misunderstanding of the limits of the First Amendment right to record, police operations and public safety could suffer.

This webinar is designed to provide public safety professionals with an overview of the existing leadership development training offered by DCG throughout the country. We will discuss the process of influencing individuals by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while achieving the goals of the organization. In addition, we will review the concepts of developing the right mindset, performance theory, management, supervision, leadership, and principles of motivation. Lastly, it will reveal what effective leaders do to improve morale and organizational effectiveness

Webinar Outline

• Discovering What Effective Leaders do to Improve Morale & Organizational Effectiveness
• Performance Theory
• Developing the Right “Mindset”
• What Employees Say They Admire Most in Managers & Supervisors
• Chief Dolan’s Motivation Keys:
  • Raise Expectations, tell them why, and involve team members in decision making, particularly in those areas impacting their work environment.
  • PRIME PEOPLE FOR SUCCESS!
  • Show them what right looks like (Military Phrase)
  • Demonstrate enthusiasm whenever and wherever possible.
  • Keep Your Sense of Humor!
  • Put talent where it wants and needs to be.
  • If you don’t know what motivates a person, ask.
  • Constantly recognize individual and team successes; it’s critical to moving the organization forward.
  • It’s OK to SPAR respectfully at meetings; it avoids Group Think and the Abilene Paradox.
  • “Keep it fundamental” Simplicity   
  • Trust, Delegate and “Inspect What You Expect.”
• “Chief Dolan’s Proximity Conundrum” & “Knock it Off” Principle
  • “Why do supervisors and managers find it so difficult to hold subordinates accountable and track performance?”
  • “An increase in the frequency of ‘Knock it Off Meetings’ directly corresponds with a decrease in Disciplinary Actions.”
• Review Webinar Take-A-Ways & Closing Comments

When applied properly and consistently, coaching serves to minimize the need for formal counseling and disciplinary action. Understanding why leaders fail to coach & counsel before matters get out of hand is vital to organizational success.

All employees want and deserve honest candid feedback regarding their achievements, growing potential and areas where improvement is needed. Holding back either negative or positive feedback significantly diminishes personal and organizational goal attainment.

Feedback sessions are not ordinarily disciplinary in nature. They are used to provide team members, peers and superiors with opportunities to recognize performance excellence and identify areas for growth and improvement.

“You’ve got to have great athletes to win, I don’t care who the coach is. You can’t win without good athletes, but you can lose with them. This is where coaching makes the difference.”
– Lou Holtz

This webinar is designed to provide public safety professionals with an overview of the existing DCG Performance Coaching and Counseling curriculum including a pdf student workbook.

Webinar Objectives:

• Essentials of Supportive and Corrective Feedback
• Implement Key Strategies Proven to Improve Productivity and Morale
• Fundamentals of Conducting Meaningful Coaching Sessions
• Effectively Confront Negative Performance Issues Free from Emotional Stumbling Blocks,
• Effectively Identify and Confront Problem Employee and Supervisory Behaviors

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 webinar will review the fundamentals of Community Policing & Problem Solving as well as utilizing 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 webinar is designed to provide public safety professionals with an overview of the existing DCG Community Policing & Problem Solving: Winning Back Your Community curriculum including a pdf student workbook. The webinar is suited for law enforcement leaders of any rank who engage in directing agency operations and assist in forming departmental policies.

Webinar Objectives:

• Policing Strategies Throughout The Decades
• Problem Solving with SARA
• Relationship Between Social Disorder and Community Engagement
• Pareto 80/20 Rule and Community Quality Of Life
• What has experience and empirical research evidence revealed about what police can do to improve citizen satisfaction?
• What steps can law enforcement agencies take to improve citizen satisfaction?
• Factors found to influence general citizen satisfaction with the police
• Bringing Everything into Congruence
• The Future of Policing & Leadership Thoughts
• Closing Comments

This course introduces law enforcement personnel to effective, evidence-based strategies for policing domestic violence in a way that improves officer safety, increases victim safety, and seeks offender accountability regarding crimes of intimate partner violence. Using empirical research findings as a foundation, this course will expose officers to four types of intimate partner violence batterers.

The course will reveal how each batterer type developed differently responds differently to criminal justice interventions. It will discuss what evidence-based actions officers can take to increase the likelihood the victim will cooperate with the prosecution process and leave the relationship for good. It will reveal the factors that increase the likelihood an officer will be assaulted at the scene, and the factors correlated with officer survival of assaults at these calls. It will address how to use information and physical evidence to help determine which party was the primary aggressor. Finally, it will discuss how to present documentation of the incident in a manner that best increases the chances for prosecution and conviction. This course is appropriate for any law enforcement personnel, including probation officers and prosecutors, who deal with cases of intimate partner violence.

The role of today’s School Resource Officer is a vitally important and complicated one. Research has indicated that SROs see themselves as are far more than agents of law enforcement in schools. In addition to their law enforcement duties, SROs have often described their role as that of a social worker, an educator, and mentor to students.

Research has also indicated that, compared to patrol officers, SROs spend more time on non-crime service related activities, such as giving advice, medical assistance and community relations activities—all in a unique school environment.

In addition to this broad spectrum of day-to-day responsibilities, SROs are also highly likely to be the first on scene in active shooter and other critical incidents where children are placed directly in harm’s way.

This training provides SROs with the core principals, real world case studies and case-specific de-escalation techniques that will improve their ability to safely and effectively serve in this key agency role.