The increase in calls involving a mental health or intellectual disability require that law enforcement have the ability to rely on mental health crisis clinicians who in turn understand the limitations and complexities of police work. Training together provides the foundation for a safe and reliable response across several disciplines. The state of Vermont offers a unique one day training that brings first responders together in a scenario based setting that is easily adaptable to other rural jurisdictions. Learn how the training runs, how to foster collaboration among law enforcement, dispatchers, mental health crisis clinicians and medical personnel and leave with the tools and confidence to run a similar training in your jurisdiction. 

Smaller Agency Track session recording.

Recently, there has been increased scrutiny on law enforcement when dealing with suicidal subjects, with agencies considering if they should respond, can they use force, and if and when they should walk away. This class will detail a full range of options, from mental health programs, foundational concepts, the use of less lethal, and an understanding of the law and use of force to build a complete toolbox for addressing these calls. Participants will leave with knowledge to help create policy and training programs to respond in an ethical, legally defensible, and repeatable manner. They will also know when it is appropriate to use force, use a tactical team, or have officers walk away, as well as, the consequences of those actions.

Smaller Agency Track session recording.

This session provides law enforcement officers with the understanding and tools needed to conduct cost-effective sting operations and follow-up investigations using minimal man-power. Attendees will learn how to locate potential victims of human trafficking, how to utilize victim centered investigative techniques, and how to successfully rescue victims. Human Trafficking Detective Joe Scaramucci, Waco, Texas will discuss online sting operations targeting the recovery of victims, and the accountability of traffickers involved in street trafficking, online trafficking, and illicit massage businesses.  All agencies have one thing in common: law enforcement need the eyes and ears of the community because they will come into contact with trafficking victims. It is essential that officers from limited resource agencies understand human trafficking identifiers and undertake a proactive collaborative response - regardless of size and resources, collaboration is the only way for law enforcement to disrupt major crime and rescue victims.

For many smaller agencies, the cost and time commitment of CIT training is difficult to manage. Last year, researchers partnered with a mid-sized law enforcement agency to develop a new, one-day crisis intervention training for officers. The 8-hour protocol, developed through interviews, ride-alongs, and research, focuses on mental illness, de-escalation skills, trauma, officer wellness, and identifies local mental health resources. The training was delivered to 70 officers and staff in-house. After collecting data for one year, including reviewing all of the agency's crisis call records, the program was shown to be effective at improving knowledge of community resources and reducing the number of repeat crisis calls over time. 

As many as 1 in 10 calls for service involve someone in a behavioral health crisis. And, for people who have serious mental illnesses and co-occurring mental health and substance addictions, up to 50 percent have had criminal justice contact. Law enforcement agencies are building PMHC strategies with BJA-developed tools and implementation strategies to plan and implement effective responses. Tools such as a national curriculum, and an online/mobile response toolkit. Participants will learn how to enhance their strategy through BJA's 10-national,LE/MH peer learning sites and implement the BJA-PMHC Framework Document. The panel will discuss moving to 'prevention' v 'intervention' and such advances as crisis stabilization units.

In 2016, the Voorhees Police Department Citizen Police Academy was introduced in response to the enhanced scrutiny of police by the media and the public in response to high-profile officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths in the US.   This presentation will discuss how the topics instructed to the class were identified, use of reality-based training in conjunction with education on policies, concerns officers expressed during the program's development, on-boarding personnel to participate, the application/selection process, and how to maintain relationships with participants after graduation.  The perceptions of police will be explored by reviewing data collected via self-reporting surveys both pre and post-program.

Since 2014 a magnitude of police critical incidents has been publicized in local and national media. Regardless of the impact of these events, police officers are still expected to be resilient, engage the community. As a result, officer activity has been called into question, seeking a desire to understand if police officers are not engaging due to secondary trauma. Secondary trauma is defined as the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about or sees the trauma experienced by another. This session will educate participants on the relationship of secondary secondary trauma and performance in police departments. Speakers will present findings of a police-led mixed methods study on secondary trauma in two police departments.

Law Enforcement agencies across the nation are under immense pressure to keep crime rates low despite dwindling budgets and reductions in staffing. At the same time, businesses need to keep operations afloat without the worry of being targeted by criminal activity and combating it on their own. While law enforcement agencies have the technology to quickly respond to incidents when they occur, businesses can do more in equipping law enforcement with valuable knowledge that would enable them to prevent crime before it even happens.   By extending knowledge beyond each of their respective silos, officers can more effectively allocate resources, reduce investigation cycles and build trust and transparency in the community. Simultaneously, business owners can focus on successfully running their businesses, rest assured that local law enforcement will be able to more quickly and intelligently respond to any potential incidents, mitigating risk and losses due to crime. Hear from agencies and industry practitioners on how they are building partnerships with their communities by leveraging video technology and community policing tactics. Your agency will gain best practices, considerations, and insights to implementing your own public-private video-sharing program. By sharing technology and resources, business owners and law enforcement can maximize public safety.

Acquiring community assent and support is often a critical component of violent crime initiatives, especially those that target specific individuals (e.g., prolific offenders) and areas (e.g., hot spot policing). Without engaging the community, these types of violent crime reduction efforts may strain relationships between a police department and the community they serve. In this panel, participants will discuss the ways local police departments are engaging their communities in the fight against violent crime; and the impact of those efforts. Additionally, the BJS developed Local- Area Crime Victimization Survey, which measures crime and attitudes about police and public safety will be discussed.

The First 12 Minutes is an innovative community active shooter preparedness program focused on educating those in harms way.  The focus is on empowering the community and having their first responders collaborate and train on best practices during an event.  This includes situational awareness, notification systems, barricading, confronting and using Stop the Bleed. The basis of the program is from research and after-actions of previous events.  Understanding the relationship between the speed of violence and police response times that result in the need for action prior to police arrival.  Identify your communities target audience; such as schools, houses of worship and places of assembly, highlighting the response gaps that may exist.

A holistic and constructively critical review of an active shooter incident at YouTube Headquarters in San Bruno, CA will demonstrate the value or public / private partnerships in responding to active violent threats. While conventional wisdom might may make this a difficult concept to comprehend, welcoming  private partner decision makers into the response, incident management, and decision making process has proved to be critical in enhancing an overall response to a critical incident and saves lives.  This presentation will illustrate how a large scale critical incident was successfully managed due to training and preparation among both public and private responders.  Similar efforts have resulted with additional private partners.

As mass shootings become increasingly common in America's public spaces, researchers are discovering that many incidents have roots which are far closer to home. Emerging studies indicate that nearly 60% of mass murders are domestic violence related, presenting the opportunity to help prevent one type of targeted violence by addressing another. In this 90 minute training, threat assessment and management expert Lynn Fairweather uses real-life cases and data to demonstrate the significant connection between domestic violence (DV) and mass shootings. Participants will explore the mentality and motives of DV related mass murderers, and learn risk factors along the way that can help them to identify high-lethality subjects before they strike.

When a line of duty death occurs in an agency, all eyes are on the chief to lead the agency and the family through the tragedy.  This is easily the most challenging thing any chief could face.  There are many moving pieces of the response.  This training will provide a high level overview of what every chief and command officer needs to know from an administrator's perspective about supporting the family, planning a law enforcement funeral, supporting the co-workers, social media, fundraising, benefits, trial support, follow-up, and memorials.  The session will also talk about the self-care needed for the commanders following this challenging event.

Drawn from his many years of experience with officer-involved shootings, line-of-duty deaths, and 'everyday traumas', Dr. McDougall engages the audience in discussions and debates regarding incidents that can cause cumulative trauma and complex PTSD.  Videos of clinical interviews with officers will take the audience inside the clinician's office to experience the numerous ways in which officer's lives are impacted by cumulative trauma.  Unlike PTSD, cumulative trauma can be more covert but can often be the primary factor behind officer burnout, substance abuse, depression, and even suicide.  Suggested guidelines and procedures for smaller agencies will be a primary area of focus for this presentation.

Our profession has taken great steps forward in coming to terms with the fact that self-destructive behaviors, including suicide, are a real issue facing our personnel that cannot be ignored.  When we know there is such a condition, working towards early interventions becomes the goal.  Early Warning Systems (EWS) are becoming more common in police organizations, and in some areas they are mandated.  This program identifies ways to expand upon the concept of an EWS to include considerations that address the whole officer, in addition to the standard process of identifying behaviors & numbers of occurrences.  A more holistic approach provides opportunities to reduce, mitigate, or eliminate underlying conditions that could lead to EWS flags.

Police work takes its toll on the mind, body, and spirit, causing overuse of sick time, injuries, and mistakes.  Just as we maintain our equipment or vehicle fleet, diligence mast be applied in leading and maintaining our force.  Join the efforts to shift stigma on self-care and wellness to culture where resiliency building is a part of everyday work. Hear from a Deputy Chief, a Commanding Officer, and Police Psychologists in how they have partnered together to implement intentional excitement around wellness in a high crime, impoverished area. Don't reinvent the wheel; learn from our successes and mistakes! Take away hard-earned tools and strategies you can implement as a leader in your agency to promote the resiliency of your personnel.

Leaders often struggle to achieve minimal employee compliance, sometimes hurting morale in the process. Programs focused only on improving morale typically fail in the long run. This presentation provides attendees with a series of practical trust-building strategies to help improve employee commitment while at the same time improving morale and performance. Building a culture of trust and respect by using engagement, empathy, good communication skills, continual feedback, and even accountability, this practical trust-building strategy will yield results. Attendees will be given the tools they need to make deposits in their 'trust account' to help them get the results from employees that they desire and the public demands.

Appreciation is said to be the #1 employee performance accelerator. Unfortunately, too many leaders miss daily opportunities to improve performance and morale by ignoring small employee successes as they wait for major award-worthy events. This presentation provides attendees with a strategy that will improve performance and morale by regularly utilizing employee recognition. The overriding theme of this presentation is 'What gets recognized gets repeated.' Sincere and deserved recognition, regularly applied improves employee performance and morale. This presentation provides attendees with a variety of reasons why recognition might be given, and the different types of recognition available to them to achieve the best results.

One of the most difficult endeavors a police executive can encounter during the course of their career are the challenges, pitfalls and successes of building and/or rebuilding a police organization. This presentation is geared towards small and mid-size police agency leaders that are starting a police organization from inception, or are rebuilding a law enforcement organization left in disrepair. This training is presented by an instructor who has actually experienced the challenges of both, and will share the positive and negative lessons learned of undertaking such a task.

Are you a female leader looking for your next level of excellence? Do you currently supervise women and want to find ways to better support their success? Come learn from an exceptional group of public safety executives about how they broke down barriers, rose above challenges, navigated the twists and turns of a male dominated profession and have lit a path for others to follow.  You are guaranteed to leave with new tools, perspectives and insights about how you can achieve excellence, help others achieve excellence and inspire women in your agency to step into the greatness they are destined for.

A leadership position provides a person with power, authority and the ability to make decisions; however, the rank in of itself does not instill a desire in others to follow them. The only thing that does that is influence! Influence is obtained when someone trusts, respects and is willing to be guided by you. Not all people in leadership positions possess this ability and fewer understand its power or how to develop it. This workshop will explore the foundational mindset and behaviors that are linked to the ability to influence others. You will learn skills that will enable you to become more effective at work and in your personal life and leave with a new appreciation of how your daily choices affect your leadership.

The sole purpose of training is to improve employee performance.  However, studies indicate that 95% of training dollars are allocated to learning methodologies that don't improve performance.  This session examines traditional learning and contrasts it with evidence-based methods that are founded upon the neuroscience of how people learn.  Together we will answer the questions: Is training always the answer? What methods are proven to enhance performance? How can we make everyday a training day? We'll also present a training model that has been successfully rolled out in one state adhering to brain-based learning methodologies.  It's time to think differently about how we are conducting training and spending our training dollars.

To increase trust and improve communication, police departments must reflect the communities they serve. To do this, they need to attract and recruit great candidates from diverse backgrounds. This session will provide practical tips on how behavioral science can be used to improve recruitment, informed by findings from randomized controlled trials conducted with police forces across the US and UK. In these trials, we used behavioral interventions - often simple tweaks to existing communications - to successfully attract diverse candidates and reduce their dropout rate from the recruitment process. At the end of this session, we will invite attendees to apply what they learned by brainstorming new approaches to their recruitment processes.

Guidelines and recommendations have been made as it relates to challenges in hiring, such as advancing diversity and inclusiveness, as well as changing standards on tattoos. Yet, little has been published on how to pay for qualified candidates who share the values and vision of the community and the department. The opening of the COPS Hiring Program (CHP) grant solicitation is on hold due to the issuance of a nationwide injunction by a U.S. District Court . CHP remains on hold until further notice. To offer competitive wages while addressing the rising costs of employee benefits, departments can seek out non-traditional grant programs. This session will focus on Grants 101 and alternative grant funding opportunities to address this crisis.

To release or not to release, it's really not a question anymore.  Why body-worn camera footage must be released to build trust and legitimacy with the public during a deadly officer involved shooting and how police culture must adapt to a world where some question our tactics and training.

As Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) become more prevalent in the world and in law enforcement, police leaders are faced with a myriad of considerations about how to start and grow an effective UAS program.  UAS equipment and laws change quickly and frequently.  The Arlington Texas Police Department Aviation Unit was one of the first municipal police departments to work through the federal approval process and has since grown a successful UAS program in a congested airspace.  This presentation will introduce law enforcement leaders to the field of UAS and discuss lessons learned from a tenured program as they consider starting and growing a program of their own.

Please join Nick Nilan, Verizon Director of Product Development for Public Sector, for an in-depth discussion of the emerging technologies and capabilities that will enable Public Safety agencies to more effectively complete their missions of protecting and serving the public.  Both near term and long term trends and visions will be presented as well as a frank discussion of what is really of key concern to Public Safety and what is little more than hype.

When and why do we kill today? Police officers do not shoot to kill; they shoot to stop the threat. And because there is no other option that is as reliable as lethal force, oftentimes their only option is to take one life as the means of protecting another. So what if killing wasn't a moral or psychological problem-but a tech problem? What if the right tech could make killing a thing of the past, and could give officers more choices than guns or bullets to stop a threat?   That's the provocative thesis at the heart of Axon CEO & Founder Rick Smith's new book, The End of Killing. In this session, he'll dive into the technological developments that will make killing outdated. He'll show that this isn't just a bold claim, but that this change is happening all around us, without many of us knowing. Just as the iPhone changed communications and the TV changed media, the latest tech is changing how cops, soldiers, courts, and many others do their work. Drawing on the latest creations in advanced weaponry, biotechnology, and AI, he'll demonstrate how premeditated violence might soon be something we look at the way we look at the horse-and-buggy. Attendees will leave will leaving knowing what they can do in their own agencies and communities to help bring about the end of killing. 

Does your work day follow a strategic flow that is aligned with your team and mission? Or does it typically fluctuate between chaos and crisis mode? How are you using technology to help prioritize your time and areas of focus? Does your technology alleviate or add to the cognitive load for your overworked and often overwhelmed team? Are your systems interconnected so that your responders are better protected?   

This presentation is designed to give officers and investigators additional information to properly investigate, document and aid victims of strangulation.  Information on the structures of the neck, force needed to cause loss of consciousness or death, physical symptoms of strangulation and tools to document strangulation injuries will be provided.  Investigative methods and documentation of strangulation for the evidence based case will be the focus of the presentation.

This session will feature a panel discussion identifying the drivers of hate and extremism and where intervention can be most effective.  It will include firsthand accounts from former extremists who will describe the factors which influenced them to become radicalized and then to subsequently denounce those beliefs.  We will hear from former extremists who previously identified with right-wing extremist and homegrown Islamist extremist ideologies. The conversation will be moderated by ADL, the country's preeminent private authority on extremism and domestic terrorism.