Community engagement and trust is essential for law enforcement agencies and the people they serve to promote community stability, effective policing and officer and community safety. This Elevate Blue course will provide the law enforcement profession with tangible and practical tools for building positive relationships with the community; communicating effectively to enhance trust and transparency; empowering community members through problem-solving initiatives; and engaging with youth in age-appropriate and trauma-informed ways.

The Elevate Blue training course, Effective Violent Crime Reduction Strategies, aims to help law enforcement professionals engage community stakeholders and organizations to identify violent crime problems to address; and select, plan, and implement effective violence reduction strategies together. It highlights steps to take to implement a collaborative violence reduction strategy using evidence-based and evidence-informed violence reduction strategies that simultaneously achieve law enforcement and community goals and contribute to building trust between law enforcement and communities most impacted by violent crime.

This course includes sections on key foundations of leadership: Communication, Self-Awareness, Empowerment, and Accountability. This course is designed to enhance an officer's current skills in management and supervision and provide tools on how to become a more effective leader in their own agency. Leaders will explore topics such as emotional intelligence, trust, and managing conflict that will allow leaders to better understand their strengths, values and motivations, communication styles and how they can develop employees' skills to increase productivity across their agency.

When responding to public demonstrations, law enforcement must focus efforts on protecting individual rights related to assembly and free speech. This course will educate learners on how to be unbiased, listen actively, interpret accurately, and respond appropriately, while also educating students on crowd dynamics, mass arrests, and plans of action for responses to these mass demonstrations. This course emphasizes the importance of understanding the structure of a mass demonstration, de-escalation, and officer well-being. 

Officer Safety and Wellness is a critical topic for officers to learn in order to support themselves throughout their career and in life. Given the serious health risks associated with a law enforcement career, the "What Does Wellness Look Like?" curriculum will lay the foundation for maintaining a healthy lifestyle and optimal mental health, and encouraging officers to seek support from family, friends, and/or peers throughout their career. The course will include sections on Financial Wellness, Suicide Prevention, Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth, Physical Wellness, and Mindfulness.

Over the last decade, recruitment, hiring, training, and retention of law enforcement personnel have become increasingly challenging for law enforcement agencies across the country. Not only are agencies finding it difficult to attract and hire qualified applicants, but the rate at which employees are retiring and resigning continues to rise. This course shares best practices and innovative approaches to recruitment and hiring while also identifying issues commonly found in these processes. These four modules will provide learners with a greater understanding of the types of recruitment and hiring needs an agency may have and potential solutions for overcoming challenges presented. 

To reduce the potential for use of force incidents, law enforcement must utilize effective decision-making, adhere to the goals of principled policing, abide by Constitutional rights under the 4th amendment, and evaluate circumstances to apply the use of force standards and de-escalation/ intervention techniques. The Use of Force Considerations course includes sections on Decision-Making, Search and Seizure, Policy and Prevention, and Principled Policing.