Pigeon Forge, TN is an amazing place. Nestled in the beautiful, Smokey Mountains, the town has managed to create a mecca of bizarre attractions. Not only does King Kong climb a hotel right off the main drag, but during the last week in June 2019, you could find thousands of the nation's school resource officers (SROs) there.

SROs were participating in the National Association of School Resource Officers' (NASRO) annual conference, which invites SROs from around the country to learn and connect around best practices. 

CAICR was honored to be chosen to deliver a 3-hour Insight Policing Basics workshop as part of NASRO's mission to prepare SROs with critical skills.

NASRO defines "the goals of well-founded SRO programs [to] include providing safe learning environments in our nation’s schools, providing valuable resources to school staff members, fostering positive relationships with youth, developing strategies to resolve problems affecting youth and protecting all students, so that they can reach their fullest potentials" (source).

With the ruling that the officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark will not be charged, the question around the adequacy of use-of-force policies and the standard of objective reasonableness emerges again. 

Objective reasonableness was designed to protect officers who face split second decisions around safety and danger.  While officers should be protected in the line of duty, given their social mandate to protect communities, their decisions need to be firmly based in critical thinking and vetted training. With out the assurance that use of force was measured, it appears to communities as death without trial. It wounds and alienates the public and chips away at the legitimacy of law enforcement.

We need to revisit our standard for determining the reasonableness of use of force to ensure that officers use critical thinking, not reactive thinking, when they make life or death decisions. Stephon Clark was unarmed. He committed no crime. In this article, Neil Munro, a former Sargent from the Vancouver, Canada Police Department, with a Master's in Conflict Management, argues that the Insight approach could be well put to use as a tool for analyzing officer decision making in use of force incidents-- ensuring proper and fair accountability for everyone.

Insight Policing: The Traffic Stop

According to Stanford University researchers, traffic stops are among the most common interactions police have with the public. Officers pull over more than 50,000 drivers each day. It can be stressful—on both sides. Often it doesn’t take much for an interaction to escalate. When it does, it’s conflict.

Conflict between law enforcement and the public can be problematic. It leads to less compliance, more force, and a breakdown in perceptions of police legitimacy.

Insight Policing: The Traffic Stop shows what an officer experiences when he encounters a driver who is unwilling to comply. Not only is the anger, frustration and defiance of the driver a challenge to deal with, but the officer has to contend with his own anger and frustration at not being able to do his job efficiently and effectively.

While noncompliance is a violation of the law in most states, it can also come across as a threat to officers. Insight Policing suggests that when people feel threatened, the knee-jerk response is to defend. The goal is to try to stop whatever is threatening.

In Take 1 of The Traffic Stop, Officer Ray uses force — first the force of his voice and ultimately the force of his power to arrest — to stop the threat the driver is posing by arguing with him. His goal is to impose compliance. As the scene fades out we hear the click of the handcuffs. What could have been a simple citation turns into much more.

In Take 2 of The Traffic Stop, Officer Ray uses his Insight Policing skills to recognize that the driver's anger, frustration, and defiance is most likely the result of a percieved threat. Rather than get defensive, Officer Ray gets curious. He takes a few valuable moments to figure out why the driver is not complying. Getting curious gets the driver engaged and cooperative. So much that by the end of the scene, not only does Officer Ray have no problem issuing a ticket, but he has a new ally in his department’s efforts to stop a rash of petty crime.

Insight Policing: The Traffic Stop shows that situations turn out differently depending on the skills an officer chooses to use. When the objective is compliance and cooperation, a little curiosity can go a long way.

CAICR in collaboration with Mason Arts Productions and with the support of the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute and the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution filmed its first Insight Policing training video-- a simulated traffic stop depicting the story of a Memphis officer who keeps his cool and stops escalation in its tracks by using targeted Insight Policing skills. 

Coming to a training near you--November 2018.

Cast and Crew
Officer Ray: Mo Frederick
Mr. Jones: Morris Small
Director: Sander Evans
Cinematography and Sound: Tom Vaughan
Producer: Gabrielle Mitchell
Executive Producer: Megan Price