The Law Enforcement Professional: A Thorough Overview

Overall General Course Goal(s):
1. To equip law enforcement officers with comprehensive knowledge of constitutional principles, focusing on areas such as reasonable suspicion, probable cause, search and seizure, use of force, and interactions with individuals under investigation. This course is designed to enable law enforcement officers to demonstrate a thorough understanding of various police-citizen interactions, including voluntary contacts, investigative detentions, and arrests. Participants will be equipped with the knowledge needed to navigate these interactions in a manner that upholds constitutional rights and ensures lawful and ethical policing.
2. To equip law enforcement professionals with a comprehensive understanding of bias, both conscious and unconscious, and its potential effects on their perceptions and behaviors. Participants will develop skills to identify and address biases within themselves, ensuring that their law enforcement practices are impartial and respectful of individual rights.
3. This course will help to create a deeper understanding of the critical role that effective human relations and interpersonal communication skills play in enhancing police effectiveness, reducing conflicts, and minimizing legal and safety risks. Participants will gain insights into the challenges of inconsistent training and poor supervision and will learn about the benefits of clear agency policies to guide and assess officers' communication behavior.
4. Physical fitness is often overlooked after the academy. Participants will learn about the legal requirements for physical fitness standards, the importance of job-related physical performance assessments, and the methodologies to develop effective, defensible, and inclusive physical fitness standards that align with the needs of law enforcement duties.
5. Mental health interventions in safety-sensitive occupations is important. Participants will explore the complex dynamics between individual rights, public safety, and employer responsibilities, while gaining practical knowledge about voluntary counseling, requiring mandatory mental well-being counseling, and initiating Fitness for Duty Evaluations based on specific circumstances.
6. This course aims to deepen participants' understanding of community policing as a dynamic problem-solving model integral to both individual and organizational effectiveness. By delving into the core principles of community policing, including procedural justice, legitimacy, and engagement, participants will develop a comprehensive appreciation of its role in nurturing community partnerships and co-producing public safety.

Learning Objectives:
1. Participants will have developed a deep understanding of the legal and ethical implications of constitutional policing, and its significance in maintaining public trust and legitimacy. Participants will be prepared to make informed decisions in the performance of their duties, while respecting citizens' rights and minimizing the risk of civil liability.
2. By the conclusion of this course, participants will be able to recognize the impact of biases on individual perceptions, emotions, and behaviors, and understand how biases can manifest in law enforcement interactions.
3. Participants will be able to apply a range of effective communication techniques and strategies in various law enforcement interactions. They will understand the significance of verbal and nonverbal behaviors, paralanguage, active listening, empathy, anger management, and communicative tactics in building rapport, defusing conflicts, and promoting positive outcomes in officer-citizen engagements.
4. Participants will be able to comprehend the foundational concepts and ethical considerations underpinning mental health practices in safety-sensitive occupations. Participants will gain insight into the delicate balance between individual employee rights and public safety, as it relates to on-the-job mental health difficulties.
5. Officers will be able to comprehend the significance of emotional and spiritual well-being for the law enforcement profession, recognizing the impact on their overall performance, job satisfaction, and their personal lives.
6. After engaging with the material, participants will develop the capacity to apply the principles of community policing in real-world scenarios. Participants will comprehend the nature of community policing, encompassing procedural justice, legitimacy, respect, engagement, trust-building, partnerships, and problem-solving.

SUMMARY

Law enforcement is under a microscope. Law enforcement immunity has been removed. In the U.S., the profession is the most litigated against and pays out the most settlements. These circumstances make understanding the core elements of a good law enforcement officer very important.

Officers sometimes make mistakes, citizens bait them into making mistakes, and citizens make mistakes. In every case, it is a good bet that a lawsuit will follow. Lawsuits against police are ruining careers and are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. In New York City alone, taxpayers paid out $175.9 million in civil judgments and claims for police-related lawsuits.

In today’s very politically charged environment, a professional law enforcement officer must keep “at the ready” key emotional and cognitive management concepts and techniques such as:

• Emotional Intelligence- Officers are taught to think rationally not emotionally. They are given tips to help keep their emotions from controlling their professional actions. Policing can cause mental and emotional challenges in the most even keeled of officers. Do not shy away from counseling and regular mental health. It can save your career, or your life.
• Bias and Implicit Bias- Word choices and responses to people of color or of other nationalities can trigger an issue. The way we think about people and events affects the way we feel toward people and events. The way we feel about people and events affects the way we behave toward them. Bias, then, is likely to affect behavior even when we didn’t wish for it to do so. We all have a variety of biases, positive and negative, caused by a lifetime of socialization. Can we ever truly control our emotions and their visible outcroppings? The answers will be rooted in our self-awareness and our willingness to take steps to control – “manage” – our emotions, long before the critical moment in which they will otherwise “leak” into our behaviors, without asking our brain’s permission. Otherwise, we will be less patient, worse listeners, less empathetic, quicker to anger and more volatile. None of this is good. But with self-awareness and effort beyond just our good pre-incident intentions, we can bring about better outcomes in contacts with each other, and with our service clientele – our community.
• Community PolicingWorking with the public will always be more effective than working against the public. Community Policing is not as much about community relations as it is about problem solving – solving the problems of public safety and security. It is in and of itself an effective model of both leadership and risk management. Community Policing requires relationship and engagement with the community, of course, which is an application of the long-valued notion of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Naturally, government works best when it is with the consent and involvement of the governed. Community policing is democracy – applied to policing. It is the people, a community, policing itself in partnership with its police service, co-producing public safety.
• Physical Fitness- No one can deny that law enforcement work requires some level of physical fitness. The physical demands of the job may be infrequent, but when an officer is in a situation that requires some physical readiness, the inability to perform can have disastrous consequences – for the public and its members, the individual officer, his/her work-partner, and the agency itself. Doing something is so much better than doing nothing in this vital area. With the benefit of expert advice and scientific guidance, it is easily possible to create and implement a successful physical fitness routine. Doing so will increase officer and agency effectiveness, improve odds of officer safety and survival, and reduce a wide array of costs and liability exposures. Most importantly, we can better assure that all officers can actually do their jobs, especially in those infrequent but highly critical moments.
• Constitutional Policing- What are your Constitutional duties? What are citizens’ Constitutional rights? Remember, some individuals may know the law better than you do, so be sensitive to such individuals. Constitutional Policing is a “most important” core competency for law enforcement officers. The federal Constitution underpins the proper function of government, and therefore policing, in our society. It establishes some of our almost sacred personal rights and freedoms. Violations of the federal constitution can cause evidence suppression in major cases, massive civil liability, criminal prosecution of law enforcement officers, career devastation and, of course, loss of public trust, legitimacy. But avoidance of these awful negatives is not the best reason for an officer to follow the Constitution. The best reason is a shining positive – keeping faith with the oath of office.

This course is comprehensive. It will give every officer an overview of their duties, responsibilities to the public, and tools to safeguard their emotional, spiritual, and physical health.