Law Enforcement Executives
The Center for Aggression Management offers scientifically reliable solutions for the most common challenges facing law enforcement executives today. We all know that no violence prevention works 100% of the time, but we offer scientifically reliable violence prevention that law enforcement can count on.
1. Can Citizens Rely on Law Enforcement to Prevent the Next Mass Shooting?
According to research, from the Moment of Commitment (when a person decides to pull their weapon and start shooting) to the moment when the assailant discharges his first round, just two seconds elapse. Within five seconds victims are dead, dying or wounded. As a law enforcement executive, you know you can have the best, most responsive tactical team trained in the most advanced active shooter skills with all the most advanced equipment; yet too often, the tactical team will arrive stepping over dead citizens or officers who were slain during the horrific first few seconds of an attack. Previously, there was little that could be done without incredible luck, because someone actually did “see something and say something.†Too often for reasons of political correctness (San Bernardino) or that observers simply do not want to get involved, nothing is said, and your officers arrive on the scene too late to prevent injury or death.
2. Good Cop/Bad Cop:
Chuck Harold, of SecurityGuyRadio.com, a former law enforcement professional, has 51,000 weekly listeners. Approximately half of his listeners are current law enforcement professionals. Chuck says that Chiefs of Police often have a problem with “alpha†males and females within their agencies. They need a means of defining and assessing aggressive behavior, from acceptable friendly trash-talk between officers to potentially threatening language cloaked in trash-talk. Officers are humans too. Once officers learn these definitions and realize the nature and consequences of their statements or actions, they tend to move away from aggressive behavior. For those few who too often exhibit aggressive behavior with citizens or other officers, CAPS makes it far easier to define, identify, measure, monitor, and de-escalate so as to prevent further incidents and/or offer remediation for the officer.
3. The Pantaleo Effect:
Community trust of local law enforcement is existential to our American society, and unfortunately it has dwindled as of late. Cases like Mr. Eric Garner, who died while being arrested by New York Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo in 2014, illustrate the issue. The community has rallied behind the family of Mr. Garner rightly emphasizing that he didn’t deserve to die. The New York Times reports that it was Mr. Garner’s death that galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. The leader of the city’s largest police union closed ranks with Officer Pantaleo insisting he didnt deserve to lose his job and pension. Neither side seems to trust the other to do the right thing. Twenty-five years of research has demonstrated in the absence of trust behavior becomes increasingly more aggressive. We see this as community members in Harlem and Brooklyn dumped buckets of water on members of the New York Police Department (NYPD). As the Eric Garner case and subsequent spate of NYPD officer soakings seem to show, minority communities are growing more and more distrustful of law enforcement. Buckets of water may not seem very serious, but if law enforcement cant earn the trust of their community, then buckets of water today could become violence tomorrow and seriously undermine the structure of our nations society. Its all part of what I and others are calling the Pantaleo Effect.
4. Restoring Public Trust to Avoid the Alternative:
As trust is diminished, aggression emerges, which may start with buckets of water and too quickly escalates to expressions of violence (riots and officers being shot). Many police officers are increasingly leery of getting out of their vehicles to solve problem for fear of being blindsided by the very members of the community they strive to protect.
5. School Resource Officers in our Schools:
Come learn about how and why our Critical Aggression Prevention System (CAPS) works. Register for our next free one-hour CAPS webinar!
The Solution:
The solution is for law enforcement to implement an unbiased, systematic approach. They must apply the law equally and transparently in a way that the communities they serve can understand and trust. CAPS embodies this solution. It is the only system that is scientifically validated and produces evidence-based best practices for the agencies that use it. CAPS has the ability to demonstrate to any observer, including community oversight committee members and the DOJ, that enforcement decisions were made strictly on the basis of objective, observable behaviors without regard to race, ethnicity or gender. CAPS has three components that distinguish it from other systems: Aggression First Observers’ Training, Certified Aggression Managers’ Training and the CAPS’s Meter of Emerging Aggression (MEA) Mobile Software Service. Because we cannot train all people with all skills, the Center for Aggression Management trains Aggression First Observers using our scientifically validated MEA to observe “objective measurable observables†and report. Next, we train a small core group of Certified Aggression Managers (creating scalability) to observe and engage. Finally, we put in place the CAPS’s MEA Mobile Software Service. MEA uses no culture, gender, education, age, sexual orientation or mental illness in its assessment. The MEA measures only aggressive behavior and assesses this behavior on a scientifically validated scale of aggression. This is what the FBI and Secret Service refer to as “identifying someone on the path to violence.†Thus, CAPS does not violate HIPAA or the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or FERPA in our Schools. We believe that law enforcement trainers should go out into the community (civic centers and churches) and train citizens to become Aggression First Observers. By doing this, minority community citizens can learn that law enforcement officers are using objective, measurable observed behavior, not skin color or ethnicity, and more importantly they have the skills to de-escalate aggressors before things become violent. This could go a long way to develop lost rapport and trust among minority communities. Police officers will receive scientifically validated, objective, measurable observables from citizens trained as Aggression First Observers making their efforts for more reliable, effective and efficient. In working together to solve community issues, trust and respect can be restored. The unique CAPS approach can enhance law enforcement’s ability to reliably prevent violence, and thereby develop a stronger trust relationship with its communities. To better understand the CAPS system and process, law enforcement and community leaders can view this video or contact me at JohnByrnes@AggressionManagement.com or 407-718-5637 .