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Police officer stress reduction training aims to prevent unnecessary use of force

A police safety training held this week aims to help officers react better to high-stress situations.

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the public has placed a heavy focus on stopping unnecessary police use of force.

A safety training held this week aims to help officers prevent incidents of unnecessary force by teaching them to react better to the high-stress situations they often face.

More than two dozen police departments from three different states were represented at the seminar, which was held at Holiday Inn Harrisburg East and run by police safety training company Calibre Press.

The training is intended to prepare officers to make “sound, legal and reasonable decisions under stress in order to preserve the lives of citizens as well as their own,” according to the online course description.

“In a perfect world we would never want to use force, but that's unfortunately not the reality of policing," said course instructor Scott Hughes, who is also chief of the Hamilton Township Police Department in Ohio. "If we can teach our officers, if you have to use force, follow these steps or think about these items. Then when they do use it, it'll be justified."

When officers aren’t trained how to handle stressful situations—like a car chase, foot chase or physical confrontation—they’re more likely to overreact, behave unprofessionally or use unnecessary force, according to Hughes.

“We talk a lot about stress and really how stress affects officers' decision-making, how it affects their performance, how to control that stress,” he said.

Strategies to mitigate the effects of a high-stress situation include communicating clearly, keeping a safe distance from potential danger and even using breath control to lower the body’s stress response.

“Any of those situations where your heart rate increases and your body goes through those changes, controlling your breathing is a tactic that we explain to officers and really just recognizing those moments,” Hughes said.

The seminar is just as important to officer safety as physical training, Hughes said, as it teaches officers how to deal with the stress of the job both on-duty and off.

“It's not all about guns and knives and fighting. It's also the emotional survival concept,” he said.

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