Every cop remembers the day when he or she was fresh out of the academy and finally working.
Hammond Police Probationary Officer Collin Lopez, 21, just four months into the job faces his shifts with unbridled enthusiasm, Hammond Police Field Trainer Lt. Steve Kellogg said during a recent “Surviving Verbal Conflict” training session.
“Lopez here, he’s an excited guy,” Kellogg said, as the young man smiled. “We need to remember how cool this position really is.”
The class took a look at techniques in verbal de-escalation, or tactics to make sure situations in which the police are called don’t end up becoming violent. To accomplish this, officers must remain calm, refrain from profanity and above all, exercise empathy with everyone involved in every situation, Kellogg said.
In Porter County, officials with the sheriff’s department there said because deputies cover almost 500 square miles and often arrive on a scene alone, they work to de-escalate situations immediately because it can be several minutes before backup arrives.
In an age where most everyone has video capabilities on their phones, officers need to remember they work in a fishbowl, and while image isn’t everything, it does mean a lot where they’re concerned, Kellogg said.
“We’re always being watched, and even more so now, so we have to adapt to change,” Kellogg said.
Two years ago, when Hammond Police Chief John Doughty implemented new training plans for his 200-plus member force, departments nationwide were starting to realize through videos getting posted to social media that there were in fact issues with the way officers were treating subjects, Kellogg said. While most officers maintained their cool, many were belligerent enough to be a problem.
By May 2015, Hammond added body cameras to its arsenal, and Doughty, Kellogg said, saw the opportunity for retraining instead of constant write-ups. When an officer turns in a report that indicates there may have been an escalation, Kellogg reviews the video from the incident to determine whether or not the officer was acting in good faith.
If there was a problem, however, Kellogg then determines the amount of retraining the officer needs and takes them through it, he said. They sign their names on a sheet showing they’ve been retrained, and that goes in their file instead of a disciplinary letter.
The efforts have definitely been noticed anecdotally, Kellogg said. Morale improves because officers don’t feel like they’re constantly being written up, and more often than not, they’re able to correct their behavior on their own before it escalates.
“One of our guys was making an arrest, and when he put the guy on the ground and was trying to cuff him, the guy was fighting him. So he said, ‘Get your arm back here, or I’m going to break it,'” Kellogg told the class. “Well, while what was happening wasn’t incorrect, he knew he shouldn’t have said that, and he addressed it with us right away.”
Being kind and empathetic doesn’t mean anti-force, Kellogg was quick to point out. It just means telling the person what’s going to happen and not lose their cool even when people seem to go out of their way to try and provoke officers to behave badly.
“We have to separate people from the situation, and we need to stay above all the negative,” he said.
Deputies with the Porter County Sheriff’s Department go through annual training for dealing with people with mental illness and disabilities including autism, said Chief Jeff Biggs.
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“It does have an element of de-escalation,” he said, adding those techniques include giving a suspect a toy or rubber bracelet. “It changes that person’s mentality right away.”
While officials from the department often attend training specifically for de-escalation, they find those tactics are already in use here, Biggs said, in part because of the sheer geography of the county.
Biggs worked for the Valparaiso Police Department for five years, where backup was immediate. The situation is vastly different in rural areas.
“A lot of times you’re the only police in a 10-mile radius, so you have to calm people down,” he said. “A lot of times you’ve got to play a little bluff with somebody and use stall techniques like it’s not a big deal until backup gets there, and then you have the right amount of people to handle the problem.”
Part of the defensive tactics for an officer is to diffuse a situation from the outset, said Sgt. Jamie Erow, the department’s public information officer.
“You know what the end situation is going to be but you just diffuse the situation until backup gets there,” she said. “The last thing we want to do is go hands on with someone.”
Michelle L. Quinn and Amy Lavalley are freelance reporters for the Post-Tribune.