A Guide to More Effective Community Policing

Understanding and positively interacting with people encountered on calls is the key to safe, successful outcomes for first responders. What you say and how you say it will directly impact citizen responses to questions, commands, and even your authority.

The difference between first responders’ worldviews and those of people in under-resourced service areas poses a great challenge. For people in poverty, hidden rules governing behavior, communication, and more are often vastly different from those of middle class responders.

Tactical Communication provides responders with practical tools to foster safe, effective interactions with citizens from poverty, middle class, and wealth. Police and fire department pilot projects based on Tactical Communication have shown outstanding results.

This third edition of Tactical Communication includes:

  • New contributions and insights from respected career fi rst responders
  • Mental models of people in poverty, middle class, and wealth
  • Effective verbal and nonverbal communication tools and techniques
  • Stigma, impacts, and care for responders and people in poverty with PTSD
  • Tools to increase safety and reduce community complaints

 

Jodi Pfarr, M.Div. is an author, speaker, trainer, and consultant. A former critical debriefer, Pfarr knows emergency response culture and its daily challenges.

Chief Gary D. Rudick (Ret.), a 35-year law enforcement veteran, served as chief of police for Durant, Oklahoma. He consults for the Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security.

Officer Angel A. D. Tucker is a 10-year veteran patrolman, the first African American to serve on Oregon, Ohio’s police force. From an under-resourced neighborhood, he helps recruit diverse officer candidates and mentors young people.