Verbal Judo Law Enforcement Course Objective.

Every year local governments spend millions of dollars on defensive tactics and weapons training for law enforcement officers.  In some cities the bill for ammunition alone reaches six or seven figures.  Every year millions more are spent by local governments defending itself in lawsuits brought against officers for unnecessary use of force.  Officers are often injured or killed in confrontations that escalated beyond the power of control holds, sticks, or guns to control the situation.

Of the six  “force options” available to police officers: Presence, Words, Empty-Hand Control, Chemicals, Batons or PR-24, and Firearms, only Presence and Words can promise a non-violent resolution to street encounters.  In addition, only these two have the power to reduce vicarious liability suits, improve citizen relations, and increase officer safety.

Officers to date have received little or no specific training in the use of Appropriate Presence and Words as force options.  Daily, officers must attempt to Generate Voluntary Compliance from difficult people, and we should train our officers in this most difficult and important art.  Our officers must be as competent with words as they are with firearms.  The cost of neglecting such training will be measured in blood, money and public opinion.

WHAT VERBAL JUDO TEACHES

Verbal Judo teaches a philosophy of how to look creatively at conflict and use specific tactics and strategies to find peaceful resolutions.  These skills are beneficial to officers in their duties because dealing with the public is often difficult and trying emotionally.  Maintaining a “professional face” is crucial if officers are to remain under emotional control and able to effectively find solutions to potentially violent encounters without escalating to physical force options.  Further, where there are times that such physical force options are indeed necessary to protect both citizens and officers, such force must always be part of the professional process so officers are protected within the four arenas: with our peers, on the streets, in the courtroom, and with the media.

VERBAL JUDO HAS VERY SPECIFIC TRAINING GOALS:

                1. INCREASE OFFICER SAFETY

                2. ENHANCE PROFESSIONALISM

                3. REDUCE COMPLAINTS

                4. REDUCE VICARIOUS LIABILITY

                5. REDUCE PERSONAL STRESS

In many departments the number of complaints has been reduced by 40-80% and countless dollars in lawsuits saved.  That relates to less time defending our actions in the four arenas of our work: with our Peers, the Public, the Courts, and to the Media.   The less time we spend thinking who is watching the more time we have for staying safe.

Make no mistake; safety is critical in a profession that had 598,500 injuries and 855 deaths in just over a decade.

What will participants learn to do?   BENEFITS OF VERBAL JUDO TRAINING.

Departments can expect that once its officers are trained in Verbal Judo, they will know the following things:

•   The Goal of Law Enforcement Work: To generate voluntary compliance using one or more of the six force options.
•   How to use Words to achieve professional purposes and how to resist expressing personal feelings.
•   How to control themselves inside so they can exert control on the outside.
•   How to employ the art of “Representation” to become Contact Professionals, maintaining self-control, and staying in contact with the needs of the department and their audience--the public.
•   How to effectively deliver words that are on target by first understanding the receiver’s point of view.  This includes two distinct tactical approaches for dealing with difficult people: the Eight Step Traffic Stop, and the Five Step “Hard Style."
•   The arts of “Translation,” to ensure that what we say is actually what we intend, and “Mediation,” for delivering words in the form of a personal appeal, to achieve voluntary compliance from people who are under temporary emotional influences, ranging from despair and fear to anger and prejudice.
•   How to read others and diagnose a verbal encounter.
•   How to use the Four Appeals of Persuasion and the Twenty-Four Principles of Street Work.
•   The five conditions where words demonstratively fail and officers must move beyond words to physical force options.