Archive for the ‘Rank and Leadership’ Category

Police Psychology | Officer Involved Shootings – Collateral Damage

Posted: June 30, 2016 in Rank and Leadership
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Police Psychology | Officer Involved Shootings – Collateral Damage

Chief George Filenko, Round Lake Park Police Department

It was early New Year’s morning 2006. The phone rang jolting me out of a sound sleep. The gruff voice on the other end of the phone was then Task Force Commander Bill Valko. Commander Valko was a veteran Waukegan cop who had seen just about everything bad you could see in police work. We held a common bond in that we were both from Chicago eventually relocating to the “burbs”. Bill would call me “Humboldt Park” referring to my old stomping grounds on Chicago’s west side. 

“We’ve got an OIS (Officer Involved Shooting) in Beach Park that’s a real cluster.” Beach Park is a suburb located in Northern Lake County that borders Waukegan on the south and Zion on the north in the Lake County Sheriffs jurisdiction. (more…)

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Police Psychology | Mass Casualities

Posted: June 15, 2016 in Rank and Leadership
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Police Psychology | Mass Casualties

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

In light of the Orlando night club shooting this week, I wanted to give you some information on the effects this kind of tragedy can have on first responders and what can be done as a police police lineleader or psychologist to help the situation.  Unfortunately, I have worked on too many mass casualty situations, from TWA Flight 800, to the embassy bombings in Africa, to both World Trade Center bombings and quite a few in-between.  Being in the New York area I still have cops processing their work at 9/11 and Flight 800.

First off let me explain the concept of “burst stress.”  Burst stress is the norm for police officers and first responders.  Sgt. Friday of Dragnet said it best when he described police work as hours and hours of boredom surrounded by moments of sheer terror.  Burst stress is that sheer terror.  It is the amusement park rides that jerks you into the air and tosses you upside down to be caught just before you descend to your death (or puke in my case).  In the amusement park it is fun for many (I actually hate those rides) as you know that you will probably not die or else the amusement park would have closed years ago.  It is also over in a few seconds, then you go on.  Not quite that way when it happens in real life.  A first responder is in that situation, then he or she goes home and tries to get some sleep, wakes up the next morning and returns again to the same  situation sometimes for weeks.  It’s not just feeling the jeopardy, but also seeing the death that makes them confront their mortality.  When you handle mutilated bodies you picture yourself, your children and many others in that position and it is not pleasant.  It haunts you. (more…)

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Police Psychology | Motivation – Back to the Basics

Posted: May 24, 2016 in Rank and Leadership
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Police Psychology | Motivation – Back to the Basics

Lt. James Kiernan, Southampton Police, NY

 

As a student of leadership for over two decades I have examined the complexities of leading over, through and around the generational divide.  What is true for sure is that different generations are motivated differently due to different frames of reference.  Or, are they?

The answer is yes and no.  While it is essential to understand the differences in the people that you lead, there are far more similarities then you may think.  The basics still remain the same.  As long as the new generations are still being produced by human beings and are human themselves, basic motivation theory will always apply.  While the pursuit of fulfilling a need may look different for different generations, the innate desire for satisfaction of each basic need is the same for all.  (more…)

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Police Psychology | Thinking Outside the Box

Posted: March 1, 2016 in Rank and Leadership
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Police Psychology | Thinking Outside the Box

 

Police psychology would tell us that sometimes you have to “think out of the box.” I wanted meatballs the other day! I got it in my brain to make meatballs, and my 9-year old daughter loves meatballs, so I wanted to make police psychology, pasta with meatballsmeatballs. I didn’t want to make beef meatballs with spaghetti in tomato sauce one of her favorites; I didn’t want to make Swedish meatballs with gravy, but I had this urge to make a meatball, lighter with a different taste. Maybe in a white wine sauce. I was driving so I had the luxury of being able to think, something that I don’t get to do often (parents will understand that). I got thinking “out of the box” of spaghetti and meatballs and there was a lot of room out there. Veal would make it lighter, and replace most of the parsley flakes with sage, I was on the road to making something totally unique. I ended up with radiatori pasta with veal meatballs made with sage and fresh Parmesan in a white wine, Gorgonzola and walnut cream roux. It was delicious. (recipe below)

How do you “think out of the box?” I mean life is a series of problems that must be solved, how do you go away from the routine solutions and come up with something that is out there? How do you make something ordinary into something impossibly creative? How does a little Italian girl from New York City, which must have a million little Italian girls, all of a sudden have outlandish tastes, wear an egg to the Grammy’s, and become Lady Gaga? It’s summed up in one word…. (more…)

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Police Psychology | How Policing Can Be Improved with Science

Posted: January 5, 2016 in Rank and Leadership
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Police Psychology | How Policing Can Be Improved with Science

 Marcus Clarke is the author of psysci.co a psychology blog that examines the latest research and explains findings in simple terms.

Police forces around the world face increasing pressure, from cuts to funding to new forms of crime, so ensuring policing standards are maintained and crime rates reduced can be difficult. But one resource that police stakeholder’s often underutilize is science.

Police departments have a tendency to resist lessons from science and nobody really knows why, a general cynicism that science can’t provide the answers may be the problem or it may seem like a personal insult that police departments can’t improve things by themselves. But the truth is that science for all its complexities, when broken down to its basic is a simply evidence based trial and error that can be utilized in by an industry, sector or establishment to provide iterative improvements.

Police Psychology | So how can science help with the small policing stuff?

A large part of a police officers job is to de-escalate situations, while this is unarguably a skill that is built up over time and with experience, even the most proficient police officer can say or do the wrong thing in a highly stressed situation. Police officers are almost universally trained how to introduce themselves in different situations but as police dashboard cams have revealed time again that a standardized approach is rarely implemented and that this one factor alone can have a dramatic effect on the outcome of a situation. (more…)

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