PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
March 21, 2017
Contact:
Paul Rolleri, Chief of Police
(510) 337-8300
Alameda Police Department Completes Procedural Justice, Police Legitimacy, and Implicit Bias Training
To build trust and improve public and officer safety, 70 out of 78 sworn officers (90 percent of the police force) completed an 8-hour course last week on procedural justice, police legitimacy, and implicit bias.
This training is in addition to the Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) that Alameda Police Officers have been receiving through Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services. CIT provides law enforcement training for assisting those individuals with a mental illness, and improves the safety of patrol officers, consumers, family members, and citizens within the community. While spaces are limited, 68 percent of our officers have been able to complete this 38-hour course.
Procedural justice is when police officers emphasize respect, listening, neutrality, and trust. This leads to people feeling like they are being treated fairly, and their sense of identification with the police is enhanced. As a result, there is an increase in safety, cooperation, and compliance, and a decrease in stress, complaints, and crime.
Police legitimacy is the public’s view that the police are entitled to exercise authority in order to protect the community.
The two go hand-in-hand, as procedural justice leads to increased police legitimacy.
The third part of the training looked at implicit bias, which is when attitudes or stereotypes affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.
“I’m pleased that we were able to schedule the training for so many officers within a short window,” stated Alameda Police Chief Paul Rolleri. “The training reinforced many of the tenets we use in our everyday contacts.”
Last week’s procedural justice and implicit bias training presented current research findings, stated the benefits of procedural justice for officers and the community, and used interactive exercises and videos to demonstrate the impacts bias can have. The training evolved from a State effort designed to help law enforcement officers overcome barriers to neutral policing and rebuild the relationship of trust between law enforcement and the community.
One area of research the course highlighted was Harvard University’s Project Implicit, which has a series of online implicit bias association tests, spanning bias from age, gender, race, disability, weight, and sexuality, among other areas. These tests help people better understand their unconscious biases. Click here to discover more: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.
