Trauma-Informed Policing Course

Our newest addition to the REPAIR Program course offerings is our 3-week, 12- hour curriculum on Trauma-Informed Policing. This is one of the 5 priorities for Police Reform determined by the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing. In the Council’s words, “Officers who are trained to identify and address trauma in the community, and who have a heightened awareness of their own exposure to stress and trauma and seek help as needed, are better equipped to police in an equitable and respectful manner.”  This course aims to address those professional development needs by promoting a trauma-informed approach to policing that will enhance officer wellness as well as community relations.

We offer 2 different versions of this course. The first is designed for law enforcement leadership, who, as a prerequisite, must first participate in the REPAIR leadership course, which covers essential material on social identity, deeply divided societies, and the history of policing, not covered in depth in this course.

The second is a more introductory and accessible version designed for lower rank officers who are not required to first participate in the REPAIR course, but will encounter its material through their department’s own Training of Trainers designed curriculum. 

This course follows the same model as our REPAIR leadership course, including self-led reading assignments, interactive and reflective exercises, and discussions. It is also asynchronous, but designed so that students are moving through the material at the same pace and learning each section’s content during a one-week period. This serves to maximize participant engagement with each other and with the instructor in order to create a robust learning environment with productive discourse and a vibrant exchange of ideas, solutions, and best practices.

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The course covers the following topics:

1. Understanding Deeply Divided Societies
2. Impacts of Direct and Vicarious Trauma on Officer Wellness and Safety
3. Policing in Traumatized Communities

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The  goals of the course are:

1. To understand the defining features of a deeply divided society and the consequences of living in such a society.
2. To emphasize the ways in which policing can promote adaptive resiliency in a deeply divided society.
3. To reinforce the need for law enforcement personnel to be self-aware of the impacts of direct and vicarious trauma on their own personal wellness.
4. To sensitize law enforcement personnel to recognize and address trauma and apply that knowledge to increase cultural understanding between officers and the communities they serve.

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