Police Training and Reform Topics: How Culture Impacts Acceptance

There are many new training programs being offered to police officers, and policy reforms are almost as prevalent.  This is no surprise, as both training and reforms are intended to improve modern policing.  What is less understood is the multi-dimensional aspects of training and reforms, and the diversity of police culture, which can impact the acceptance of both training topics and policy reforms.  Trey Bussey joins the podcast to discuss the complex relationship between all three concepts, and that police leaders need to consider this relationship if improvements are going to be successful.

Main Topics

• All training is not created equal.
• Police culture is a diverse as any other culture.
• Most officers, regardless of their guardian or warrior orientation, look favorably on most training topics, but they see police reforms differently.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

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. I have two complaints today. First, the phrase police culture is a catch-all excuse that the media and public often use when they focus on policing re problems. It's like blaming kids for all crime that occurs. It is a simple and for the most part inaccurate understanding of a subject. During the past ten to fifteen years, any time someone calls for some type of police reform, the police culture is often pulled into the conversation. The thought that there is a single ubiquitous police culture is not supported by any research. It is similar to any suggestion that there is a single American culture or a single Canadian culture. It dismisses regional differences, racial differences, and any remaining ethnic differences that some of us still carry from our foreign-born parents and grandparents. So to say there is a single American culture is silly, and the same goes for the police. People think if we just give the officers more training, the problem would be solved. There's also a growing body of evidence suggesting that while training is often very helpful, just adding more training for police officers may not get you where you want to go. To unpack both culture and training and how they relate to improving the police, I'm joined by Trey Bussey. Trey is the lead author of an article titled The Relationship Between Warrior and Guardian Mindsets and Support for Police Reform. Trey is a graduate student in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati, and his research centers on policing with an emphasis on crime and place, public opinion, and police use of force. Thanks for joining the podcast, Trey.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah, thanks for having me on today, Scott. I'm always excited to talk about this.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

You know something that's funny. Most uh researchers are excited to talk about their research, but they never get the opportunity to spread the word beyond their department if they're lucky.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

So uh maybe a conference every now and then, but yeah, for the most part, that that is the case.

unknown 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Okay, so now as I said, you're a graduate student, you're very early in your academic career, uh, but you will be on the market in the fall. Not that this is you know a marketing opportunity for you. And you've actually, congratulations, got a few publications under your belt. In this particular case, you decided to try to untangle police culture training and aspects of police reform. This is uh bit more challenging than most people would think. Uh, what draw your attention or what drew your attention to this topic?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah, so one of my primary research interests is police training. And as you mentioned, trainings really became one of the main ways that policymakers, police leaders, and and the public kind of think is the way to reform policing. You know, anytime there's a high incident or a high profile incident on the news, one of the first things that everybody says is, well, they just need to train more. And training is important, obviously. That's not to say that training isn't important, but there's a little less consensus about what actually works as far as police training and police reform goes. And then even more importantly, why it works or why it might not work. So this article that we're talking about today is part of a larger grant-funded project that I've been working on with um Drs. Kyle McLean, Justin Nix, Jeff Rojek, and Jeff Alpert. And it's a de-escalation training evaluation that we did in Virginia Beach Police Department. So as part of that, this kind of leads us back to this broader question of you know, why do some trainings and reforms not produce the outcomes that we think they will? And one of the potential explanations is officer buy-in, which is really related inherently to police culture. We decided to, and we'll talk more about it, but we decided to do a survey and ask about some of these different cultural orientations, and then also um just get a better idea of what officers think about specific training topics and reform proposals.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

I may have stolen some of your thunder with my opening rant. Uh, as I was reading this, uh again a lot of information came floating back to me about uh about how to change police, police culture, you know, after years of doing this. You you get used to some stuff and you still get annoyed by other things. So I was ranting a bit, which I admit to. Uh but why is this area of inquiry, you know, why why is this relevant to the police? Why do they care about you know training?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah, well, I mean, I think police are constantly being asked to change, whether it is training or reform. And I and I will say that throughout this conversation, I may kind of use those terms interchangeably. So I I think that training is an easier example to use for like kind of what we're talking about today, but you know, I just want to throw that caveat out there. But I mean, the police are constantly asked to change. That might be a new training, a new policy, new technology, new accountability mechanisms. The list goes on. But I mean, agencies really only have a limited amount of time and money. So the the question isn't just like, does this reform sound good? Or can we can we get our officers to train more? The question is really like under what conditions is this change actually gonna work. So, for example, if officers are receptive to training or reform, then maybe an agency needs to focus more on the quality of their training or the implementation or you know, whether it's reinforced afterwards. On the other hand, if officers aren't receptive to a training, then even a good training might not really translate into police practice. So to me, this line of research is really important because it can help agencies actually like diagnose where the problem is. You know, I mean, they no police officer wants to waste their time on an initiative that doesn't work. So if we can better understand some of these issues, then it can help them make more informed decisions and make training and reform successful long term.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Right. This is actually a much more complicated uh gig than most people think, which is you know what I was getting at with with my with my proof you know the introduction. It takes a lot of time, people just don't realize how how how complicated it is. Now, in the introduction section of your paper, you had mentioned that uh some training programs have demonstrated what's the word uh acceptance by by the officers. They they they go in, they take the training, they come out, they survey, and they say, Yeah, I like this. I think it was a great idea, it was pretty good, it helps me out, whatever it might be. But questions remain regarding their long-term performance or their actual street behavior after they've been trained. Can you expand on this a bit from from your intro?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, of course. This is a great question, and but quite frankly, the the current evidence base we have on this, like we're we're still trying to sort this out. And this is maybe more of a research problem than it is something that police need to be concerned with, but it's still relevant to what they do on a day-to-day basis. So again, I think de-escalation training is a good example of this. Like it sounds great on paper. We give officers surveys after they go through a training, they say they like it, um, they might even use it in the field, but then we don't really see these reductions in these relevant outcomes that we always talk about. So we might, you know, officers might say they liked it, but then we don't see reductions in use of force, or we don't see reductions in injuries, or we don't see, you know, fewer citizen complaints, or whatever, whatever the outcome is that we're curious about. So when police agencies and researchers evaluate a training, we kind of assume this linear process where like officers attend this training, they learn something, they use it in real life, and then it magically fixes this problem, whether it be force or injuries or you know what whatever the outcome may be. Right. That's the process.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

I've said this before. There's always a nice, tidy linear process to these things. And somewhere along the line, that that that linear process breaks down. I apologize. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Oh, of course. No, I mean I I think there's there's two problems here is that like it this can break down at any point. So officers might like training, but they don't learn that much. Or they might learn new material, but then they aren't motivated to use it. Or maybe they are motivated to use it, but then it's not reinforced. So after a few months, it kind of drops off and they quit worrying about it. Or again, they might use the skills they learned, but it doesn't fix the problem that we think it's gonna fix. So when we say does a training work, I mean, we need to be really clear about what we mean by that. Again, there's all these different ways that a training could work on paper. I mean, it could be fun to do. Like, you know, a lot of trainings in VR now. VR training might be fun, it might be like a video game, but it's not maybe not a great use of time if officers go through that training and then it doesn't translate to any tangible real life change in behavior or outcomes or whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah, which is exactly what we're trying to do. When you train them, you're training them to do something either better or or different than they were before. And but if they're not, where is it breaking down? You you also indicated that a variety of factors, and this maybe is a good translation tra uh transition, a variety of factors can impact whether police reforms or police training uh initiatives are successful. What are some of those factors that you haven't hit on already?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, so I mean your audience is hopefully going to be well aware of some of these, but first and foremost, I would say the quality of the initiative matters. I mean, all training programs are not the same. Some training programs are much better than others. And on the other hand, on the flip side of that, some problems require more than a one or two-day training. I mean, there's some things that are are gonna, if you go through an eight-hour course, like there's just certain problems, whether it's using force or communicating or I mean, and it doesn't even have to be something like an officer involved shooting that has really intense ramifications. I mean, it could be a training on report writing. I mean, if you've been writing a report the same way for years, and then suddenly you use a new system, it might be really hard for you to learn that new system. That doesn't that doesn't carry the same weight as whether the police are shooting somebody or whatever it may be. But I mean you you you can obviously relate to my point. Like some some some what is the old phrase, bad habits are hard to break. I mean, that goes with anything, especially when it comes to your your daily job. Um kind of related to that, I mean, another problem is implementation and sustainability. I mean, a good a good training might be good on paper, but if your instructors aren't good, if your training setting isn't good, I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why even a good training might not actually be implemented correctly. And then on top of that, it might not be sustained. So again, you know, if your line level supervisors aren't reinforcing a policy change or something that was learned in training, and it might not last after. I mean, we see this a lot, a lot of de-escalation training, a lot of different trainings that are that are a hot topic right now. We see this deterioration over time where people are really good at doing this as soon as they get done with the training, but then we do a nine-month follow-up and nobody remembers what they learned. They don't even remember going through the training, you know?

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Right. It's all it's I got a lot going on in my head right now. But one of those things is that it it could be that you're not whatever you're trying to train the person to do better, they might not do frequently in order to get to that point of being able to practice it. If you're trying to train somebody to do a good traffic stop, they can do traffic stops eight hours. You know, one every half an hour, they can do 10, 15, 16 traffic stops. If you're trying to train somebody to do uh a better job at use of force, officers don't use force frequently to begin with. So they don't get the opportunity to practice what they learned, and it might be months before they get into the position of being able to do that. And getting to your I don't mean to rant a little more again, but maybe this is my rant uh rant podcast for the for the year. Um training can include, I've I've seen people uh provide training to their officers on a PowerPoint presentation via computers. Here's a link, take the training, and there's no audio. Then some of them have audio versus you know getting people in the seats. And then when you you do training with people in the seats, uh I'll be honest with you, I'm all for a four-hour block of training in the morning and then they're done. Because by the time the afternoon rolls around, sometimes these people are really dragging. And unless there's a pot of coffee in the room, you're not getting the same kind of attention to the training, no matter what it is. And so those are the again, those are the kinds of things that they're not in your article, but these are the kinds of things we have to consider. Yes, we gave the officers training. Well, what kind of training was it? How good were the trainers? Was it you know in class, uh, audio, as you said, VR? I mean, they can be fun. I've never done those, but I've also done training with the um the simulators where it's the room simulator. So the training can come in all kinds of different forms.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

I was just gonna say one other thing that kind of leads into our next point is buy-in. There's a lot of different reasons why officers may or may not be bought in to participating in a training or implementing a reform. And we'll get more into this, but I mean, a lot of times there's a disconnect. I mean, you know, if a police chief hasn't been on the street in five, ten, fifteen years, and they suddenly get all fired up about a training or a reform, you know, that doesn't like the the guys and gals that are out on the street every day may not see the utility in what the command staff is saying. I mean, that and that's just one, you know, that's just the tip of the iceberg with buy-in. Officers don't enter into a training, for example, as they're not just some like passive person that's just there, right? I mean, they come in with pre-existing beliefs.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Sure. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

They come in with like ideas. Once they go through the training, they have ideas about whether it actually translates to real life. I mean, there's all these different things that can dictate officer buy-in, which kind of leads back to the point of this article, which is really getting a better understanding of, you know, kind of how police culture weaves into all of this.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Right. And that's actually my next question. So thanks for the helpful transition here. I guess I barely touched on the diversity of police culture, and I suspect that many listeners already understand this. Still, can you can you tell us what the past 20 to 30 years of research has told us about the idea of a single police culture?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yeah, so historically, people have always kind of talked about police culture as if it's just this one thing. Like this assumption that everybody in policing thinks the same, they all have these overarching values that are the same and largely prioritize the same things. But we know, and your audience knows, that this is far too simple. I mean, we know from research that officers do not all think alike. And you you mentioned this, you know, in the intro. I mean, culture varies across region, across state, but it also varies across agency, and it even varies within agencies across officers. I mean, it can vary by assignment, shift, rank. I mean, I work with agencies across the state of Ohio, and you can see this in real life. I mean, if you spend a few hours at a police department, there's uh oftentimes a clear difference just from one shift to the other. I mean, morale might be high on one shift and it might be poor on the next. I mean, one shift might be, you know, they might be fired up to go out and work, and then the next shift they're fine sitting around all day. I mean, the point being is that this idea that policing just has this monolithic culture where everybody is the same is simply not true. And the the key point that I'd like to make that really relates to the article is that when we when we think historically about how police culture has been kind of considered this one thing, I mean, we know that cultural orientations vary across officers, you know, based on kind of what I was just talking about. So the one of the main points that we made in this article, and like the the way we measured it was at the officer level. I mean, we're gonna talk about the study. We we send out surveys to officers, not agencies, because officers vary in their priorities and how they approach their job. This isn't just some agency-wide thing where everybody agrees with each other about everything, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:10

So now a similar point needs to be understood regarding uh receptivity to reforms, uh, how receptive people are to this new thing. Isn't that isn't that part of your study as well?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yeah, so we measured perceptions of training and reform. And I I kind of mentioned this earlier. These aren't completely mutually exclusive. I would I would kind of say that oftentimes training is a type of reform, but a reform can include things that aren't training, right? I mean, there's all kinds of different policy changes or technologies or initiatives that don't teach officers how to do something differently. But you know, I I think the the difference between training and reform, especially from a receptivity standpoint, is really at least for the most part, training is often considered as like, hey, we're teaching you this new thing, or we're giving you this new knowledge, or we're trying to help you, you know, do your job differently, hopefully better. Reform is I mean, to quite frankly, reform is typically more restrictive. It's more of this thing of like, we're changing what you do, or we're limiting what you do, we're limiting discretion, or we're increasing accountability, or you know, whatever it may be. So as far as receptivity to reform, I think it's different because like if we think about receptivity to training, it's really does this translate to real life because officers like it and want to use it? I mean, reform is more of a like if we change this policy on paper, does this actually point being with all of this is that when we think about training, it's it's really this thing that officers participate in. But when we think about receptivity to reform, it's more of a a change, it's more of a restriction. So when officers are receptive to it or not, that the things that dictate that are going to be a little bit different. And I think the results, as we'll get into shortly with the with the study that we did, really kind of reinforce this idea that officers generally seem to like to train, but that might depend more on you know the different topics, like if they see a utility in what they're learning. And then reforms are a little different because if a reform is perceived as bad, then the receptivity to that is going to be very low, and for good reason. One of the reforms that we asked about in our survey is qualified immunity, and almost nobody thought that that was reasonable. But I mean, I've I've been all over the state of Ohio and across the country, and I've never once heard an officer endorse removing qualified immunity, right? So there's really more of a it's not just like do I use this in real life, which is more how training is evaluated, but it's like how much does this impact my day-to-day job, and is this restricting me from doing my job the way that I see fit from an officer standpoint, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Right. So so let's let's dive into the study then. Let's talk about that. Um simply stated where was it done? How did you collect data? Because you did mention it's from the officers, which is of course, you know, probably the you know where the rubber meets the road, so it's the best thing to take it, take a look at.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Yeah. So again, this was part of a larger project. So we surveyed officers from three agencies across the country. So we sent these by email, so it was through Qualtrics, like an online survey platform.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Um, we sent the survey to Chattanooga, Boulder, and Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

So we got partial responses from about 263 officers, and most of them did the full survey. So our final sample was a little bit smaller, but it was essentially about anywhere from 200 to 230, depending on the analyses we were running. So again, the basic idea was to really get a better understanding of which training programs and reform initiatives officers supported. So a lot of research has looked at, you know, like if officers go through a specific training program, or if an agency does a specific reform initiative, then maybe somebody surveyed them or talked to them and asked them what they think about that specific change. But nobody's really surveyed officers and just said, hey, here's this list of training topics, or here's this list of reform initiatives. Like, what do you think about each of these? So first and foremost, we really just wanted to get a better idea of like what do police actually think about these different topics. And then again, um, we really wanted to get a better idea of officers' cultural orientations. So we asked them a series of questions about their it was really geared toward their warrior orientations and their guardian orientations. So I think both of those are pretty self-explanatory, but the warrior mindset's really kind of focused on like the the questions are really focused on like this crime fighting mentality and like preserving order and maintaining authority, that kind of stuff. And then on the other hand, the guardian orientation is more um communication focused and service-oriented and kind of community-oriented. So the idea here is that we wanted to measure these different cultural orientations and then see if they were related to whether or not officers endorse training and reform.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

All right. So so you asked the respondents um questions to get to their uh level of warrior or co or uh or guardian mindset. Can you quickly mention which topics or subjects you asked for the training? Because there were like seven or eight different things about types of training, or seven or eight different types of reforms. Can you just you know give the listeners a quick quick idea about what those topics were?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah. So again, we really wanted to include training programs that are popular right now, but also and more importantly, like are actually being implemented across the country. So I mean it would it wouldn't make much sense about to ask about a training topic that might be interesting, but nobody's doing it. So we wanted them to be practical.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

So we asked about several different training topics. Um, some of them were focused more on you know police citizen interactions per se. So this is stuff like de-escalation training, but also crisis intervention and implicit bias training. And then the other ones were more what you might call reform, not reform, routine or tactical focus. So this was stuff like defensive tactics, um, training on investigations, DUI stops, Fourth Amendment issues, and then active shooter response, stuff like that. Yeah, so when we get to the reforms, the items were a little broader, but the same logic kind of applied here. So we really wanted to include proposals that are currently relevant in public debate and policy discussions. So we asked about um banning chokeholds, prohibiting no-knock warrants, um, expanding civilian oversight, creating duty to intervene policies, co-responder programs, and then, as we mentioned, ending qualified immunity.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Now, before we get deeper into the results, just generally speaking, what were the officers' views about the different training topics and the different reform topics?

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yeah, so training was viewed pretty positively across the board. So almost every officer in our sample thought that active shooter response, defensive tactics, and fourth amendment training was important. And then just below that, about 90% or 9 out of 10 of the officers in our sample thought that de-escalation training and then crisis intervention and training on investigations was important. So even the two that received the least amount of support from the officers that filled out our survey still, I mean, they were still above 50% endorsement. So every single training that we asked about, you know, a majority of the sample thought was important or very important. When we get to the reform items, that looked a little different. There was much more variation. So again, the big takeaway on training is that officers were generally receptive to all of it, and they were really receptive to quite a few topics. When we get to the reforms, there was a couple that received quite a bit of endorsement. So duty to intervene policies were pretty highly regarded. Really? Okay. And yeah, and co-responder programs received fairly high support.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

But after that, I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in co-responder. Those who are like the where you have an officer and uh somebody who can deal with mental health uh crises. Is that is that am I accurate there? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Yeah, so the general idea there is that officers and some type of mental health professional might both respond to an incident. So there's a for lack of a better term, a subject matter expert there to handle or help handle the situation correctly.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Okay, it's interesting to know that that that was rated fairly high as far as a reform that they were receptive to.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

I'm sorry, keep going. Yeah, of course. So after that, again, the uh support levels dropped off. So fewer than half of the officers viewed all of the other reforms as reasonable, and then very few supported things like prohibiting traffic stops for non-moving violations, and then as I mentioned, um ending qualified immunity did not receive much support.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Now, with respect to let's get into the findings a little deeper, with respect to those officers who considered themselves guardians and those who saw themselves as warriors, what did you find as far as their their acceptance of the training and reforms?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah, so the simplest version is that officers who were more guardian-oriented were more supportive of both training and reform.

unknown 28:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Now, on the other hand, officers who were more warrior-oriented were largely indifferent when it came to training, so they didn't they didn't really have perceptions either way, but they were much less supportive of reform. But I think this makes sense because some of the training topics that we asked about, you know, as I mentioned, a lot of the training topics were kind of all over the place. There were some that were more about interactions, but there were others that were more like traditional topics like defensive tactics or active shooter response.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

So I think it makes sense that you know, just because you might score higher on the warrior scale doesn't necessarily mean that you're resistant to training. You know, as far as the warrior or the guardian mindset, I think it does make sense that, you know, if you're more service-oriented or more, you know, you're you endorse more communication-minded topics that you might be more open to not only training, but also doing various types of reform initiatives.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Now, what other variables, because I I read your article, but I want you to you know talk to the listeners, what other variables such as race, rank, or uh other characteristics, you know, you included those in your study and what did you find about those?

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah, so we obviously wanted to include some different demographic characteristics and some what you might call agency characteristics like rank and stuff like that, just to make sure that, you know, when you do research, you don't want we didn't want warrior or guardian to just be a proxy for something else. So you obviously want to consider all of these other factors that might matter. So beyond culture, uh there's a few findings worth noting. First, we found that minority officers were more supportive of reform compared to white officers, which is pretty consistent with some prior research, especially on issues related to reform. But I will note, and I think this is an important caveat, that the majority of our sample was white. I don't remember right off the top of my head what it was, but I mean it was a clear majority. So I I would interpret those findings with a little bit of caution just because there wasn't much variation there.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

All right.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

And then the second thing we found is that officers in administrative positions were more likely than patrol officers to view training topics as important. Which again, I think this makes sense because if you're in an administrative role, you might think more about policy and training and maybe just organizational risk in general compared to you know the people that are out on the street every day. One thing I'd like to point out is that again, we included some variables like officer sex, years of experience, their educational attainment, whether they're a supervisor. Um we controlled for the agency because we you know we surveyed three different agencies, and we didn't find that any of those were meaningfully associated with the outcomes we looked at.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Which I really think even experience, that's a little that's just a little surprising.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah. So I don't know if that got kind of washed out by like the administrative role. Right. You know, being significant in the model. Like maybe if you just have a certain amount of experience at those agencies, then you're you're just in a you know a higher rank, quote unquote, or you're in a chief or an assistant chief or a commander or whatever it may be. But yeah, I mean the fact that all of those were insignificant in our model, I think really speaks to the cultural findings and makes them more important. Because I mean, it we found that the warrior and the guardian in particular, like those two mindsets were the they had by far the strongest effects in our model. Like they explained, you know, the differences in our outcome much more than anything else that we measured. So I I mean I think that really makes the point that cultural orientations do vary meaningfully across officers. They do matter as far as whether or not officers are receptive to various changes, and that you know, they're not just a proxy, like it's not just that this group of officers are warriors, or this group of officers are are guardians, or whatever it may be. And one thing I will note, and I think it's important just for the listeners, is that the warrior and guardian mindsets aren't mutually exclusive. Like you could you could hypothetically be high or low in both. Like, I mean, it's not just that like it's not like we had half a sample that was a warrior and half a sample that's a guardian. I mean, you individually, as a police officer, could be a warrior and a guardian, or hypothetically neither, even though that's much more unlikely.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Yeah, it's it reminds me, and I'm gonna that the name's gonna um the name is going to escape me, but this was some of the earlier research from probably the 70s. Maybe it was Van Monten, but it doesn't matter that he identified four typologies. And uh that this was I think it was the you're what you seem to be describing as the ones that he called the Lalo's, like Laylo and stay out of trouble. But you know, uh but yeah, that's interesting that you you can be a little bit of both, you don't have to be one or the other.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

I was gonna say I I think that your audience knows that. I just want to I I just want to make it clear that we didn't we didn't categorize officers as either a warrior or a guardian. I mean, because because in real life those aren't mutually exclusive. There's probably a time and a place for both of those, right? So yeah, again, I wanted to throw that out there.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

Yeah, that's and then which is good because uh to understand that uh the situational factors can pop up where the guardian has to become a warrior, doesn't have a choice. You mentioned you brought up the active shooter uh uh part of the uh the training. So yes, there are times where an officer doesn't matter what their mindset is, otherwise, uh they're gonna have to deal with this this incident in in a way that's you know maybe not completely natural uh in internally, culturally, but it's something they'll be they'll be able to do because it's part of the job. But but that leads us, I guess, to in another good good transition. What what are the implications for police, whether it's the the leaders or practice of of policing?

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Going off what we just said, I I think the first important implication to really hit on is that obviously culture matters. Like the the results of our study found that officers who ascribe more to the guardian orientation are more open to training and reform. So you know, culture matters, but it's not just like what we talked about earlier, as far as culture historically being just this overarching thing. Culture matters, but you know, promoting this idea of a guardian mindset where we're you know prioritizing communication and being community-oriented, that kind of thing is important for promoting receptivity. But to your point and what we just talked about, I mean, I I would like to say the caveat here is that you know there is a time and a place for a warrior mindset. Like if I'm out in public and there's an active shooter, I mean, I I hope a guardian or I hope a warrior shows up, right? I mean, I so there's a time and a place, but I mean, as far as overarching culture and being receptive to beneficial changes, I think the big takeaway is maybe we should prioritize defaulting to the guardian orientation. Like that's probably the thing we should, or the police should prioritize, right? Because if we know that promoting a good culture, promoting a guardian culture is gonna make it easier to get officers to train and make that make it easier to make certain policy changes, then that might be a good avenue for for improving policing.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Right. Okay, sure.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

So yeah, so I'm not a police chief, I'm not a sheriff, so I'm not gonna pretend like I have you know this golden ticket or this you know high-level answer for improving culture. I mean, I I don't know what the answer is to improving culture, but I think it's a really important consideration. Like if you're a police chief or sheriff or whoever it may be and you want to implement a change into your agency, I think it's really important to consider your culture before you make that change. Like if you know that the culture at your agency is bad, but then you implement a new training or you implement a new reform proposal or whatever it may be, and then it doesn't work or it doesn't produce the results that you're expecting, then I mean I think it's time or it should be a consideration of you know taking a step back and saying, okay, how can I reframe how my officers or how my peers or colleagues think about this so that way, you know, as we move forward, it's like officers are gonna be more likely to see the benefits of potentially training more or the benefits of a reform proposal. Right. That's not to say that all reform has to be endorsed by officers before we implement them. I mean, there are some changes that maybe people aren't just gonna like, but for better or for worse, whether it be you know political pressure or pressure from the public. I mean, sometimes changes are gonna happen whether police want them to or not. But I think just generally, like if we just take a step back, then culture is a great place to kind of consider how how are how are my officers or how are my colleagues gonna think if we start training on this topic or that topic, or if we change this policy, is are they actually gonna do this, right? So I think it's a good a good starting point for considering you know barriers to changing policing. You know, related to that, I think it's really important that we found, you know, based on our results, I mean, it seems that officers are open to training. Like just generally, I mean, we found a majority of our sample thought that every single training topic that we asked about was important, and the distribution across reforms was a little different. Some were highly endorsed, some received almost no endorsement. So again, there's some nuance here, but just the idea that policing is completely resistant to change does not seem to be the case. I mean, it seems that, especially when it comes to training, the officers are pretty open to most topics, which I think is uh an important finding. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Yeah, the the um the the information you're providing tells us that, or tells police command staff particularly that look, if here are seven or eight or nine, whatever training topics, seven or eight or nine reform topics that you studied and you found some some differences, particularly in the reform. So police chiefs that might want to uh do this reform, they can't just say, okay, we need to train or we need to do this, and simply it's gonna it's gonna be accepted and taken in uh in in by the agency by the officers. This is as I've said to others before, policing is complicated, whether it's the officer on the street or for the command staff, and they have to recognize that look, I can't just uh put a new policy out there. Yeah, if I if I do, I have to understand where the officers' mindsets are already when it comes to this thing, because the the the they might resist it in some way, they might just take it right in. Again, but but if I don't know that as a commander, I've got to be ready for those problems. Exactly. Well, Trey, this was this was really good information. I I appreciate your time. I uh again talking about culture, reform, training, all of these things, it's it's it's a mix of things, it's a mix of of concepts that policing has to consider rather than just saying, okay, let's just train on this topic and be done with it.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Yeah, well, thank you for having me on today. Again, I always uh I love a good excuse to talk about what I've been working on. So so thank you for your time, and I I hope your audience um finds some some benefit from what we've discussed today.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

I'm sure they will. Thanks again for your time. You have a great day.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Yeah, you too, sir.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Take care. 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've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to review this podcast. If you have any questions or comments, positive or negative, or if you think I should cover a specific topic, feel free to send me an email, which you can find in the show notes. Or you can find me on Blue Sky using the handle at policeinservice.bsky.social. Thanks very much and have a great day.