Episode 8: Academy Training

In recent years there has been a small shift in how the police should frame their goals, and how police academies should train new recruits.  The “guardian” approach to policing emphasizes community service, democracy, procedural justice, and de-escalation.

Shifting from a warrior training framework to a guardian framework may be a false dichotomy choice.  Both frameworks are like the opposite sides of a coin: both are necessary to make the coin.  It may be media "copiganda" that forces the warrior perspective on the police and the public.

Joining us on the podcast to discuss a shifting focus for the police training academy is Dr. Beck Strah, who is an Assistant Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Roger Williams University.  He serves as the primary investigator on a statewide evaluation of Rhode Island’s Crisis Intervention Teams training programs.  Dr. Strah is a 2020 graduate of Northeastern University.

Beck also hosts a podcast called Prison Breakdown where we discuss prison news, issues, and history. 

Don't forget to like, FOLLOW, and share. Sharing this podcast or an episode is one of the best complements I can receive, which will help grow the show.

And don't forget to provide a review. Giving five stars is never a bad idea.

Feel free to email me your comments using the "send us a text" option, or at the following email address: policeinservicetrainingpodcast@gmail.com

Bluesky: @policeinservice.bsky.social

Transcript

Welcome to the Police in Service Training Podcast.
This podcast is dedicated to providing research evidence to street level police officers and
command staff alike.
The program is intended to help the police and law enforcement community create better
programs, understand challenging policies, and dispel the myths of police officer behavior.
I'm your host, Scott Phillips.
Does anyone remember this phrase, we're going to kick ass and take names?
When I worked in Houston, we would say we're going to crush crime and suppress evil.
We always laughed at ourselves because we knew the reality of police work, that while
always potentially dangerous, the actual risks were fairly low, as long as you knew what
you were doing.
But those idioms are in line with how we were trained in the academy.
According to Michael Branch, a professor at Hartwick College, police training programs
incite fear and suspicion among recruits.
And this particular form of police training produces and reproduces a sense of precariousness
and danger in police work.
At the risk of warranting an explicit rating for this episode, the warrior approach to
training is scaring the shit out of police recruits.
In recent years, there's been a small shift in how police should frame their goals and
how police academies should train new recruits.
The guardian approach to policing emphasizes community service, democracy, and a few other
features that I'm sure our guests will address.
But like any change in any organization, new ideas can be met with suspicion, if not outright
resistance, particularly if the change focuses on fundamental aspects of an organization
or occupation.
Joining us on the podcast today to discuss a shifting focus for the police academy training
is Dr. Beck Strah.
Beck is an assistant professor in the School of Justice Studies at Roger Williams University.
He currently serves as the primary investigator on a statewide evaluation of Rhode Island's
Crisis Intervention Teams training programs.
Prior to his doctoral work, he was employed as a correctional deputy in the Snohomish
County Washington Jail.
Dr. Strah is a 2020 graduate of Northeastern University.
Welcome to the podcast, Beck.
Good evening, Scott.
Thank you for having me.
Well, my pleasure entirely.
I read some of your work, and it was kind of interesting, at least to me.
And I thought, well, this is something that police everywhere, whether it's an officer
or an academy director or chief, would be interested in.
But before we get into the research, I wanted to ask, as we said, you spent a few years
in the correctional field.
How did you shift your attention to policing?
So at the time, I was interested in going more, taking my career further into the domain
of law enforcement.
And then I realized how much I missed school.
But for this project, it was opportunity.
I had done some research in my graduate program at Seattle University, and my mentor and my
program chair at the time, Dr. Jackie Helfgott, had started on a grant with the academy to
evaluate this shift from warriors to guardians.
And Jackie and I had worked together on some sex offender research when I was in my master's
program.
And she knew that I had intended this career shift towards academia eventually.
So she asked me if I would like to work on the study with her.
And it was also giving back to the community in my own way.
And that's the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Center runs both corrections and
police academies.
So it meant I would be able to give back to the place that gave me roots and corrections
and work with some people there who I appreciate and respect.
Great.
Now, one of the things I was going to ask you about, but you kind of answered it here,
is the idea that policing research has been done in so many different topics, hot spots,
body cameras, use of force, those kinds of things.
So I was really happy to see a little bit more research in the area of academy training
because it's just almost vacant.
There's very few studies out there that look at academy training.
I mentioned Dr. Branch, who was the person that was the push towards changing academy
in Seattle?
I can't recall her name.
Sue Rahr, former sheriff of King County.
Okay.
So these are all important topics that we really need more research on this.
So before we dig into your study, can you give us an overview of why this area of inquiry
is valuable and relevant to policing in general?
In the past 10 years, but especially since 2020 or so, society has become more aware
of the power possessed by police and more critical of this power.
And we know that there are many communities where police are noted for their abuses of
authority and these antagonistic relationships with inner city minority communities.
But it is important to think about policing more critically in this way and recognize
that police are there to serve their communities, not have these standoffish relationships with
the people therein.
So much of what's emphasized in police-based media are these crime-fighting elements of
police work where police are dominant, they have their guns drawn, they're kicking down
the door, they're ready for the shootout.
But the reality of policing, I'm sure you can speak to this as well, it's much more
about problem-solving and they need the community's help to make that happen.
The warrior perspective alone is perhaps more detrimental to police-community relationships.
It's more antagonistic.
So when we blend it with the Guardian perspective and focus on building relationships with community
members and de-escalating conflicts and teaching people communication techniques, upholding
constitutional rights, we have a chance of police maybe creating more of the relationships
we want to see and we're seeing more procedural justice in action.
And we know that the optimal time to teach someone is before they're out on the road.
We're planting seeds in people before they even go on duty.
So teaching trainees before they're starting the police career is a good way to start on
the right foot before they fall into more defined behavioral patterns that you might
see throughout a career.
So could you, as we dig into your research, can you give us, if there were a dividing
line between the warrior and the guardian, how would you describe those two differences?
So the elevator pitch version I always give is the warrior is the kick down the door,
get on the floor, slap the cuffs on approach that we see in action movies.
Guardian is more about procedural justice and diversion and crisis intervention teams,
teaching people communication skills, teaching people to de-escalate.
In the academy, there's even market differences in academy training itself where we see the
warrior is all about paramilitary environment, there's more marching, there's when we would
see staff, we would have to brace against the walls with our hands up to our chests
and hello sir, good day sir, nice to see you.
And they got rid of all that because that's not real life.
That doesn't benefit officers in any real way.
When they get to their precinct, when they start duty, it doesn't have any real benefit.
And they got rid of any kind of physical discipline, like push-ups.
So they cut all these elements out of the warrior academy to make it more guardian-centric.
Okay, yeah, I was doing some training probably about two months ago in two different academies
and one of them was a little bit more flexible, but you're right, they were standing against
the wall when I was walking down the hall and I'm just some Chinook in a tie and a shirt.
And then I was in the second academy and when they came back from their break from
the prior lecture, they were getting on felony stops, which is a hard act to follow when
you're going to be teaching hotspot policing.
They came in, they filed in, stood at their chairs and just stood there.
And I didn't know what to do because nobody said anything to, the director didn't tell
me what was going to happen.
I was in there by myself and I said, because I'm me, okay, what the hell happens now?
And somebody said, we stand here until you tell us to sit.
I says, I, well, I won't get into what I did, but I said, I'll go sit down and relax, you
know, chill out.
But, but that was, it was almost scary for me.
Now, when I went through the academy, there was a lot of that, not the same stuff, but
the same approach to the, you know, people want to kill you way of thinking.
And so, and so, so, uh, branches isn't, isn't far off, you know, when he says this is, there's,
they're scaring the hell out of people.
Now in your paper, something you wrote, and I'm going to quote this because I just want
to make sure I'm clear on it, uh, uh, though the profession of policing is rooted in ideals
of public safety and preserving civil liberties.
Modern police culture is, um, I'm sorry, modern police culture has strayed from these notions
running toward a mindset where the police have become warriors at war against the public.
They serve to swear these, they swore to serve and protect.
I'm stumbling through this quote, so I apologize.
Now you had mentioned that the bulk of police activity also, you say this in your article,
deals with minor problems such as disturbances or even just writing reports, uh, after an
event takes place.
And I tried to look up the quote and I couldn't find it, but I, uh, I, I remember something
to the effect of policing is hours of boredom, boredom punctuated by moments of terror.
Now not to be too picky about this, but isn't it hard for the culture of the police to hold
these diverse perspectives?
They're trained for something that doesn't happen too frequently.
In fact, if you look at the training information, they're trained on a lot of things that almost
never happen, the danger and the threat kinds of things, but they exist in an environment
that requires, as some people would say, a soft or sympathetic approach or understanding
approach.
Can you comment on that?
Yeah.
So I'm going to say that language is important and the culture in which we train people,
it's crucial for setting a standard for the next generation of police officers and the
standards that they're going to hold the people who can affect cultural change years from
now.
Warrior, if we're looking at the two diverse perspectives, Warrior has this implication
of we're this invading force in the community.
We don't need that.
We don't necessarily even want that.
We need a police force who emphasizes procedural justice.
They're willing to work with the community.
They are part of the community.
In an ideal world, we have police working with community members, having meetings, coming
up with solutions to issues that real people face, a government that works for us, not
against us as the people.
And police can be trained as warriors in part, but that's not all there is to the job.
It's also crime prevention, it's conflict resolution.
You're assisting people.
You're dealing with locally based issues.
And it's not a bad thing if we cut down on this militarism that's drawing this fine line
in the sand between us and them that's happened in this line is becoming more and more defined
over time.
Right?
So maybe we know that police shouldn't be a war with the people they serve.
Maybe we get a better, like a police force that is more responsive to the needs of the
public.
If we integrate this guardian perspective, it's not it's not or it's and is kind of
the way I'm trying to phrase it.
Oh, okay.
Very good.
Yeah.
You can do both at the same time, as long as you're training them in a way that they
understand both are available to them.
Absolutely.
We're not trying to compromise officer safety.
We're giving them more tools in the toolbox and de-emphasizing some of the tools that
have gotten police to this place where they really need a PR shift.
Okay.
So can you give us a quick overview of how you did your study?
I remember it was interviews, correct?
Interviews.
Yes.
So for this study, I was brought in at this part of the study by Dr. Joy Pollock, an author
who I had read a few of her books and greatly admired her.
She's a prolific author and there's nobody better I could have learned from to learn
qualitative research and interviews.
So together, Joy and I conducted interviews with 28 police officers in Washington state.
17 were new officers who were trained under the warrior curriculum and had graduated the
academy at least six months prior.
11 of the officers had graduated the academy at least five years prior.
So we had them divided into these are warrior trained and guardian trained officers in these
two groups.
And we started off the interview process by interviewing a few of my friends from Corrections
who had become police officers.
And then we figured it would be more productive if we didn't just rely on the bond of friendship
and worked off of a list from the academy.
Yeah, you went for the low hanging fruit.
Sure.
Yeah.
We were hoping for a snowball approach and it really just petered out fast.
We thought, all right, let's rethink our strategy.
And we would contact police chiefs over email and explain our study and request participation
from officers.
Most police chiefs were remarkably cool about it.
And then we carried out interviews over Zoom or in police precincts or in other public
places like a hotel lobby or a coffee shop.
And interviews lasted 45 to 60 minutes or so.
And we lobbed questions focused on police experiences with academy training, the warrior
and guardian models asking what they thought about them and how the training had informed
their overall patrol behaviors.
And Joy did the majority of the interviews.
I was able to participate on the first 10 to 15 or so.
So I relied significantly on her.
She was our boots on the ground living in Seattle still or Seattle area.
And she managed a lot of them that I'm really grateful for.
So OK, bottom line, were they accepting of the guardian approach?
And you said you studied people before it was implemented and afters.
What can you tell us?
So we know that police are often resistant to change.
I don't know how much you experienced this, but I think one researcher from the 70s described
changing police culture as bending granite.
And I've always liked that quote.
And some of the new officers, the newer officers generally exhibited this really accepting
view and understood why the change was happening and embraced it.
But they also had pushback from their senior colleagues who would call it, oh, you guys
are too soft now or you guys are hug a thug.
They're seeing it as a sign of weakness compared to this authoritative model that the
guardian or sorry, that the the warrior perspective had pushed in the past.
Still, we didn't actually get much of this pushback from any of the veteran interviewed
officers in the study who were more generally supportive of this idea of police as
caretakers of their communities.
So new officers generally pretty supportive of the model.
They generally saw the functions of police as serving both people and the best interest
of their communities. There was this acceptance of both warrior and of guardian principles.
And the trained officers realized it's often contextual to bringing just the warrior or
just the guardian all the time isn't always going to be the tool in the toolbox that you
need. So it's important that they brought both.
And this also reflects what we saw in the prior research on warrior and guardian models.
And it makes sense given that they're they're leaving this guardian based academy.
They're going back to an agency where their peers, their training officers, their
superiors are more likely trained under this warrior based system.
So we can't expect it to flourish.
We're going to plant those seeds and it will flourish.
And everything's guardian doesn't work that way because police culture also exists as
it has been. But the model officer here is one who can handle calls.
They can show people dignity, they can show respect, but they can also use force as a
tool to prevent harm to themselves or others.
And some of the takeaways, most of the takeaways were largely positive for guardian
trained officers. And many of them highlighted the importance of communication skills,
de-escalation techniques, professionalism, and some felt the trainings were really
helpful in helping police find their why, like their purpose as police officers and
protects against burnout overall.
And CIT training was also a major piece here where the crisis intervention teams and
the interviews, the interviewees generally found that they were using these CIT
techniques on the daily, helping de-escalate, helping to talk people down,
helping to better communicate with people and get on the level rather than yelling
commands. They found that this was actually a better tool for this.
I thought it was fascinating when I read that one of the one of the respondents, the
quote, I don't have it in front of me, was basically, though, an officer needs to be
a Jedi master, you know, calm, cool, collected, you know, mellow and a bad ass when
necessary. Yes, I actually after you had mentioned it to me, I wrote that down.
They're supposed to be a Jedi warrior.
They're badass when they need to be.
Otherwise, their role is working with people and keeping the peace.
And that's a quote from a friend and my former training officer and a mentor of mine,
Ian Edwards, who was assistant commander at the Academy afterward.
And it's like it's this false binary we're getting here, right, where people are
equating it to one or the other.
It's not necessarily compromising officer safety to teach them guardian values.
It's making officers better communicators and less likely to jump to force
unnecessarily. It's it's also potentially cutting out this unnecessarily hyper
masculine element that we're seeing emphasized in media around law enforcement.
And that affect maybe it's helpful for recruiting young men who see excitement a
law enforcement career, but it's not good for public relations.
And it's helped us help bring us to a place where police reform seems more and
more important over time.
Yeah, I was talking to somebody about hotspot policing.
I may have mentioned this on one of the prior podcasts.
I lose track. I'm older.
I repeat myself, but he was talking.
It was a police officer in hotspots when he said when he deals with people he
knows already that the criminals, the bad actors, call it what you will.
Sometimes we're having interactions, you know, informally on the street.
They see each other. They're talking and the officer says, you don't always need
to be an asshole to an asshole.
I just thought there was, you know, an inch, you know, kind of harsh backhanded
compliment to somebody.
But that was just a different way of saying it.
But I just, you know, found that fascinating that you don't have to have
to be an asshole to an asshole.
Men, the same thing with the way people say things to cops.
Cops have imaginations.
The Jedi, the warrior was I thought that was fascinating.
Now, I'm going to get off the Jedi for a second.
As I read your article, there was something else that struck me.
It wasn't part of your research.
But when I when I read work by somebody else, that makes me think if I have the
opportunity, I like to ask them about it.
In some cases, a warrior framework for policing is actually expected by the
public, at least that's what I'm thinking.
People want the police to make, say, drug arrests.
They want them to arrest the bad guys with the violent criminal records with the
guns. People want the police to be properly equipped if there is an active
shooter event. Now, look at the recent events in the past few years, the cases
where officers did not properly behave like a warrior is expected to.
So while there's a police culture component to what you're talking about,
isn't the public's expectation, which the police are actually trying to satisfy,
part of the problem?
I would agree that it is part of the problem.
And people are people is part of the bottom line where maybe we're expecting
too much of them. But it is so ingrained in culture that warrior policing is too
often accepted as a status quo.
Like this is the default.
This is our baseline for policing.
And we give we give police a lot of power in our society, though.
And so we should be critical of people in society who have that power and who are
occupying this warrior role and how they use it.
And it's not just one source, but it's it's media, police media in general, is
this copaganda that has and how it sold us on expecting police to behave in
certain ways, even when the media is not reflecting what police do in their day
to day behaviors. If the media actually reflected that accurately, people would
be much more bored watching police driving around, making stops.
That's that's not as interesting to people.
But but what the media is putting out there is this this unrealistic expectation,
perhaps. But just because an officer is trained as a guardian, it doesn't mean
they lack the skills to get by in dangerous situations, even though we have
these saltier veterans scoffing about guardian training.
It doesn't leave people unprepared.
As you said, it's the guardian and the warrior are this Jedi warrior, like
where they can be peaceful when they need to be.
They can they can break out skills, kick ass if they have to.
Yeah, I was reading something that might have been part of your article that had
to do with the older officers that they're mellow.
They know they know the streets.
They've so somebody once wrote they've they've they've reached their stride.
They know what the job is. They know what it's all about.
There's no reason to get all worked up.
It's not going to be activity every night all the time.
And so maybe that's the kind of thing with the older officers.
They're actually, you know, if you had this conversation with them,
they would appreciate, yeah, I'm kind of doing that already.
The the the guardian model, you mean?
Yes. Yes, absolutely.
And that's something that I think we did mention in the article.
Like they are being salty about it.
But a lot of these guys are engaging in these behaviors already.
They just don't know they're doing it.
They they they want to shit on this.
They they want to talk trash about this this new model.
But it's something they don't really understand is part of the problem.
If you are addressing, we've all done it before, but they're not experts on it.
They're not trained in it.
And therefore it's in it's something they're attributing to newer officers.
Oh, these guys are soft when they don't know.
Right. Yeah.
This also because my mind wanders and when I'm reading these things
and again, no joking around, because of my age years ago,
when ADHD was was identified,
it was, you know, something that was not new.
It had existed before this, but nobody ever labeled it as such.
So even though the officer might be salty,
then they're not in the mood to get into tussles all the time.
So they're going to try to deescalate.
They're trying to use a calm language.
They're going to use humor to deescalate these situations
in a way that, you know, doesn't force them to put into a harsh situation.
So they're actually doing that guardian, taking a guardian approach to things.
We have we have actually a few minutes left, so we're doing good here.
But can you identify a few of the implications for police practice,
police personnel and police leaders from what your research tells you?
Absolutely. I did want to touch on what you're saying there, too.
Like it even applies to corrections where you don't have to use force all the time.
You get if you look at corrections in police, they have a fair amount
of overlap in terms of like the population you're talking to.
And in corrections, we would look at the guy who, as a corrections deputy,
you look at the officer who's dumping people on the floor every opportunity
they get, somebody twitches funny, put them on the floor.
That person is not respected.
The person who's much more respected as a corrections officer
is the person who can use a language to get by and use communication skills.
Hey, come on, let's knock this off, let's cut this down.
And I got you show people a little bit of respect
and you get so much more respect in return.
And that's going to make your job easier.
It makes their lives easier.
Sorry, I figured you might want to edit that part in.
That's fine.
That's fine.
We're going to just keep going with this.
But anyway, so overall, some of the implications,
because we're getting people tuning into the podcast,
which I'm very pleased about from all over the country
and a couple of other countries as well.
So this might be a substantial shift for the police.
OK, before before we get into that, then, yeah, you studied this in Seattle.
Have you seen this shift anywhere else?
So I've not studied it elsewhere.
I know that there has been some discussion of it.
And I was just going through a a.
Corrections orientation for I teach at the women's prisoner,
I teach research methods, and as part of the orientation,
they were talking about some warrior and guardian based concepts
in the training itself, so it looks like there is a rollout
of these guardian concepts in our correctional training academies,
even here in Rhode Island.
Otherwise, it's not been something I pursued more
in my my course of research.
It's I specialize more and went more toward like CIT evaluations.
But it is something that is of constant interest to me.
And it it's consistently relevant.
And and how we're we're working with police
and how police academies are teaching police to conduct themselves.
Is this something that we should either promote
or the other police leadership should promote, even if it's not a complete shift,
but small components of of in the academy.
The deescalation is now being part of academy training.
There were a few other things that procedural justice you mentioned.
Those are now becoming more prominent in the training
in getting it in into the the recruits
repertoire of information.
So so so this is really important to get this in there,
even if it's in small portions, when you agree.
Yes, absolutely.
I think even piecemeal, the teaching communication techniques,
that doesn't hurt anything.
And in fact, it's going to make an officer better at their job.
And let's let's recognize that warrior policing and militarization
themselves have damaged perceptions that we have as a society
of police legitimacy in the United States.
And we need change.
And we don't want our police to be these urban soldiers.
It doesn't help when they lead with this branding,
especially in marginalized communities or disadvantaged communities.
If you want people to trust the police, police should be showing that respect.
And focusing on procedural justice and protecting people in their communities,
helping them solve problems and upholding civil liberties.
Excellent. Well, back, I really do appreciate your time.
This has been, I think, very illuminating for some people.
They're going to take a look at this and say, OK, maybe this is something
we need to start in the academy if they're not doing it already.
Oh, absolutely. And as far as other implications,
there is still this pushback from older generations.
And it's so important that we even educate them on what the Guardian model is.
It's easy to be wary of something that we don't really know about.
We all fear change to some degree.
If I've been a cop for 30 years and someone comes in, knocks on my door
and says, we're going to change how you're doing your job.
I might be salty about it, too.
So requiring training for police of all ranks and tenures, it's super important.
And once people get a better understanding of what this guardian paradigm is
and what it entails, it might be easier to sell people and its usefulness
and build a culture in a direction that's more productive for the future of policing.
Excellent way to close it out.
Beck, thank you once again for your time.
I really do think this is helpful for people and I appreciate your time.
Thank you for having me, Scott. I appreciate it.
Have a great day. You too.
That's it for this episode of the Police In-Service Training Podcast.
I want to thank you, the listener, for spending your valuable time here.
If you like what you have heard, please tell a friend to subscribe on Apple
podcast or wherever they get their podcasts.
Please take a moment to review this podcast.
If you have any questions or comments, positive or negative,
or if you think I should be covering a specific topic,
feel free to send me an email at policeinservicetrainingpodcastatgmail.com.
Police In-Service Training is all one word.
Or you can find me on Blue Sky using the handle at policeinservice.bsky.social.
Have a great day.