The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) employs 1,700 sworn officers serving more than 970,000 residents of Marion County, Indiana.
Like law enforcement everywhere, the IMPD faces the inherently dangerous responsibility to ensure community safety while navigating a complex and ever-changing landscape of social challenges. Even before the increased tension and public scrutiny sparked by viral videos depicting use-of-force events in other departments around the country, IMPD’s leadership knew that its officers needed ongoing training and support to effectively and ethically fulfill their duty.
One persistent problem faced by law enforcement officers are guarding against a negative bias toward suspects and offenders. The dynamic between social challenges and police work is a hot topic yet not much is ever done to fix the issue. IMPD knew they needed to tackle this challenge because, if left unchecked, this bias can taint an officer’s view of the larger community they serve and raise major law enforcement mental health issues. As one officer described it,
“You start to get that warped perspective of ‘I’m policing a community of crime and social disorder down every avenue that I turn.’” Another officer acknowledged, “Part of the culture historically in Indianapolis was an ‘us vs them’ mentality.” Of course, reducing crime is an important part of police activity. However, maximizing the impact and the positive influence of police officers requires much more than punishing infractions. Chad Knecht, The Deputy Chief of Operations succinctly described the limitations of approaching situations with traditional preconceptions: “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail… and law enforcement was the tool we had.” The leadership of IMPD was committed to empowering police officers with an expanded tool kit to respond in more adaptive and helpful ways.
Department Chief Bryan Roach, after hearing about Arbinger’s work with other law-enforcement entities, enlisted Arbinger’s help to support that goal and implement the best leadership strategies for police departments.
An Arbinger facilitator with a background in law enforcement initially led a 2-day workshop for department leadership including law enforcement mental health training. This workshop focused on increasing self-awareness regarding the inherent inaccuracies in the default ways people tend to see others, including peers, subordinates, and citizens.
The Arbinger course was specifically designed to highlight the hazard of viewing other people as objects—even in circumstances where the people in question have violated laws—and provide actionable tools to replace this ingrained, problematic tendency with an outward mindset.
After this initial training session, a cohort of strategically positioned officers from various units within the IMPD were selected to participate in Arbinger’s Train-the-Trainer course to become certified facilitators of Arbinger’s workshops within the organization. This allowed Arbinger’s frameworks and language to become more operational throughout the department, initially via the leadership academy. Because Arbinger’s work focuses on foundational shifts in mindset, it acts as a lens to complement and enhance other training regimens. Rather than suggesting changes in techniques or policing protocol, Arbinger’s solutions help to uncover and overcome the often overlooked assumptions that impact how officers approach their duties. As many officers would soon be able to attest an increased capacity to see others’ humanity while patrolling would open cooperative possibilities that had previously been inaccessible.
Training participants were able to take a deeper responsibility for the impact of their actions and attitudes on fellow officers and the community members. As Chief Roach explained, “What we’re trying to do is help officers, including myself, think about this issue or the problems surrounding that crime. Understanding the person involved and their environment allows us to impact the problem rather than being a part of it.” By drawing upon the outward mindset and law enforcement mental health training, officers reported feeling prepared to handle such issues.
Working with Arbinger helped the IMPD make unprecedented progress towards its goal of fostering an organizational culture that respects each person’s innate human dignity and produces highly effective policing. Suddenly, the often difficult dynamic between social challenges and police work seemed small and manageable to the officers. After seeing the changes that this work began to produce organization-wide, one officer said, “We started having real, genuine conversations about law enforcement and policing, how we make our society safer and how we actually care.” Officers worked to consider the perspectives of those with whom they interacted with on a daily basis. For example, as a major metropolitan area reckoning with gun violence and homicides, the IMPD knew that the impacted families and neighborhoods needed more than efficient investigations and professionalism; they needed a shoulder to lean on. In homicide cases, the IMPD Chaplain’s Office would contact the victim’s family and, if it was desired, organize a local prayer vigil in a show of support.
Applying the best leadership strategies for police departments, Chiefs worked to help members of the IMPD practice an outward mindset as they enforced local laws. Deputy Chief Knecht described the new approach this way: “Rather than only looking for someone to arrest, with an outward mindset, the question became, ‘How can we make that neighborhood safe?’” He went on to describe a broadened sphere of interest, “Now we consider many factors, such as school attendance and after-school activities, as well as economic and employment factors. For example, help a person get their license straightened out so they can get to and from work, instead of writing more tickets, they can’t afford.” Ultimately empowering police officers, this perspective directed more time and energy toward helping things go right within the community. And, in the face of more difficult policing situations, it helped officers not take vitriolic responses personally as the common mental health issues in law enforcement had been addressed and trained on. Instead, they could better deescalate as they recalled their role as public servants with a goal of making the city safer. The positive improvements in public interactions led one officer to say, “The police-community partnership is now absolutely active here in the city of Indianapolis.
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