Orange County District Attorney David M. Hoovler sponsored training for police officers on de-escalation strategies, designed to teach police officers how to defuse situations before those situations can become violent.
Four two-hour sessions of the training were offered to local law enforcement agencies during the week of May 17, and space will be available for as many as 120 police officers.
The training was presented by Ares Tactical and Emergency Management Solutions, LLC, of East Norwich on Long Island.
Subjects discussed at the training included:
When and how to use de-escalation techniques;
Effective verbal and non-verbal communication;
Recognizing cues that might alert an officer to the need to de-escalate a situation;
Police professionalism.
“Rarely, encounters between police and civilians can turn violent,” Hoovler said in the press release announcing the training, “almost never through the fault of the police officer. Of course, any violent confrontation between police and civilians is something to be avoided, regardless of the cause. We are offering this de-escalation training to local police officers, to teach them some strategies to keep situations from becoming violent, to recognize situations that are likely to become violent, and to resolve potentially violent situations before they result in tragedy. Hopefully, through this training we can eliminate even those rare violent police-citizen encounters.”