COPS Training Portal

Course Time: Approximately 30 to 45 minutes including the pre and post tests.

Course Description: This course describes how postnatal exposure to an environment where there is substance use and drug activity affects Drug Endangered Children (DEC) throughout their childhood and entire life. You will be able to recognize when a child is impacted and intervene as early as possible to maximize the child’s potential outcomes. This course also explains how to use promising practices and DEC Protocols to sustain ongoing change and improve DEC outcomes.

Target Audience: Law enforcement, child welfare, medical, legal, education and first responders.

For more information on Drug Endangered Children, please contact National DEC

Course Time: Approximately 30 to 45 minutes including the pre and post tests.

Course Description: This course describes the long-term impact and needs of Drug Endangered Children (DEC) throughout their childhood and into their adulthood.  You will learn how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as growing up in households where substance use and drug activity are present impacts children long-term including cognitive deficits, emotional risks, high-risk behavior, and health problems.  The course also addresses the importance of early intervention and building resilience that can change the trajectory of a child’s life and help to break the multigenerational cycle of substance abuse.

Target Audience: Law enforcement, child welfare, medical, legal, education and first responders.

For more information on Drug Endangered Children, please contact National DEC

Changing Perceptions is a video-based simulation in which learners assume the roles of three different law enforcement officers in an interactive movie, make decisions for these officers and experience the consequences of their choices.  The program trains officers on the effect of implicit bias and gives them the information and skills they need to reduce and manage their biases. Additionally, by allowing officers to experience the same encounter from two perspectives (officer and possible suspect) simultaneously, this program provides officers an insight into the biases that some members of the community may harbor toward police and why those biases exist.

The primary aim of this simulation-based program is to define implicit bias, and to dramatize through interactive scenarios that policing based on bias can be unsafe, ineffective, and unjust. The opening video will serve as an introduction to the concept of implicit bias, while the three modules will focus separately on safe, effective, and just policing decisions and behavior.

The learning objectives are:

• Recognize that bias is a normal human attribute—even well-intentioned people have bias
• Articulate the fundamental concepts of the science of human bias
• Describe how unconscious or implicit bias works in the human mind
• Describe the potential impact of bias on officers’ perceptions and behavior
• Articulate the impact biased policing has on community members
• Articulate the impact of biased policing on their law enforcement organizations
• Apply skills for reducing their biases
• Analyze their options with a fair and impartial policing lens

This 3 module course takes an average of 1 hour to complete and the intended audience is law enforcement personnel.

This tuition-free online training was developed by WILL Interactive and was originally supported by cooperative agreement 2016-CK-WX-K015 by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

Related COPS Resources

Fair and Impartial Policing

The Homeless Outreach Service Team (HOST) program was developed to bring Salt Lake City (Utah) police and community outreach workers together to identify homeless individuals and connect them to community resources. 

The objectives were to encourage police to make referrals to services rather than issue citations and to decrease panhandling by encouraging the public to give money to homeless service providers instead.

In 2012, the Salt Lake City Police Department received an award from the COPS Office to expand the HOST program to fund a public awareness campaign, coordinate strategic planning efforts, and train homeless individuals to assist with outreach efforts.

Primary Audience: The intended audience for this interactive publication is anyone interested in homeless outreach efforts and specific strategies that have been implemented to address this issue.

Authors: Erin B. Worwood, MCJ; Jessica Seawright, BSW; Robert P. Butters, PhD

Original Publication: October 5, 2016

This interactive report is optimized for Chrome and Safari web browsers. There are no audio components.

This 5-part video series, Police and Dog Encounters: Tactical Strategies and Effective Tools to Keep Our Communities Safe and Humane, is the product of a collaborative partnership between the National Canine Research Council, Safe Humane Chicago and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office).

These roll call videos, along with the companion publication The Problem of Dog-Related Incidents and Encounters, discuss tools, practices, and procedures that contribute to effective responses to dog-related incidents and encounters where dogs are present. They are designed to help develop skills for law enforcement in effective strategies in assessing a dog’s environment; what dog posture, vocalization, and facial expressions mean; options for distracting and escaping from a dog; defensive options in dealing with a dog; asking the right questions in dog investigations; and effective gathering of dog evidence and report writing. The primary goals include ensuring public and officer safety and considering community needs and demands. 

Each video in the series is available in English and Spanish, and may be accessed via the COPS Training Portal in two ways: played directly through your logged-in COPS Training Portal user account; and/or downloaded, saved and played offline, directly from your device. 

Audience: The target audience for the training videos is sworn law enforcement officers of all ranks and positions.

This 5-part series, Procedural Justice: Roll Call Training for Law Enforcement, was developed by the Center for Public Safety and Justice (CPSJ) at the University of Illinois - Chicago with support from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) through cooperative agreement 2012CKWXK005.

This video series, along with its accompanying Presenter’s Guide, was developed to reinforce internal and external procedural justice concepts. Each scenario/video in the series may be accessed via the COPS Training Portal in two ways: played directly through your logged-in COPS Training Portal user account, and/or downloaded, saved and played offline, directly from your device. Each scenario is meant to be used in a separate roll call training; each roll call training is designed to be approximately 20 minutes in duration.

This roll call training should not be substituted for in-depth internal or external, front-line, supervisor, executive level, civilian staff or community procedural justice training. The roll call series should – over a period of time – reinforce the broader awareness of procedural justice and its core principles, and affirm the importance of utilizing procedural justice as a means of increasing police legitimacy with the public as well as organizational legitimacy with employees. The roll call trainings reinforce how enhancing the public’s perception of police legitimacy increases voluntary community compliance and community support, which may as a result, improve officer and community safety.

Audience: The target audience for the 5-part Procedural Justice Roll Call Training is sworn law enforcement front-line officers who have participated in procedural justice training; preferably the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services approved Procedural Justice for Law Enforcement: Organizational Change through Decision Making and Policy and Procedural Justice for Law Enforcement Front-line Officers.

However, the material is relevant to sworn law enforcement personnel at all organizational levels and could be creatively used as prompts for community dialogues.

Although the past several decades have seen a steady decrease in violent crime statistics, homicides and violent crimes continue to have a devastating impact on many of our nation's communities. With long-term social implications and staggering economic consequences, even minimal levels of violent crime diminish the quality of life in affected communities. In response, homicide and violent crime reduction (HVR) remains a top priority for police agencies throughout the nation. The challenge is addressing violent crime with effective interventions and countermeasures. Instead of guessing or speculating on which HVR strategies work best, many agencies are turning to evidence-based policing practices (EBPP) to address the unique needs of the communities they serve.

Applied Evidence-Based Policing Practices: Homicide and Violent Crime Reduction is designed as a rapid eLearn course that provides an overview of the concept of evidence-based policing and examples of practices that have been shown to reduce homicides and violent crime. Crafted with all levels of police practitioners in mind, this course bridges the gap between research and practice. 

On-screen text, videos and narration in a user-friendly eLearn environment allows participants to start, stop and resume the training based on their schedules. Participants should expect to spend approximately 2 - 4 hours exploring the resources provided in this dynamic and timely course.

This tuition-free online training was developed by the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation (VCPI) and was originally supported by cooperative agreement 2015-CK-WX-K022 by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

Audience:

This course is ideal for law enforcement managers and decision makers, including but not limited to agency heads, directors, command staff, managers, and supervisors in agencies of all sizes. However, the content is also applicable to all law enforcement and criminal justice professionals, as well as any community-policing stakeholders.

How Tribes can "TAP" into Critical Crime Data: COPS Funding in Action
Intelligence-Led Community Policing, Community Prosecution, and Community Partnerships
Las Vegas After-Action Assessment: Lessons Learned from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Ambush Incident
Managing the Group Violence Intervention: Using Shooting Scorecards to Track Group Violence
The Integration of Crime Analysis into Patrol Work: A Guidebook
U.S. Attorney General's Summit on Violent Crime: Summary of Key Factors, Promising Strategies and Additional Steps

In the past two decades, horrific mass shootings have been thrust into public consciousness. Mitigating the effects of these events is the responsibility of those who serve in our communities' public safety organizations. The public expects an effective and swift response to these threats. Research has shown, however, that many of the mass attacks, or active attack events, are over before law enforcement responders arrive on the scene.

Civilians who find themselves embroiled in such an event must be prepared to take immediate action to save their own lives before law enforcement arrives. The average response time for police response to an active attack event is three minutes. Without effective, preplanned response options for civilians at the scene of the attack, many victims can be seriously injured or killed during these three minutes. 

This course was designed in conjunction with Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) to provide first responders and other professionals with a model response program they can deliver to civilians within their communities.

Ethical Decision Making: Policing with Principled Insight is a thought-provoking eLearn course that explores the practice of decision making and the ethical principles that support effective policing. In one of its most impactful and rewarding endeavors to date, VCPI partnered with the USDOJ, COPS Office to create the Ethical Decision Making: Policing with Principled Insight program. As part of this larger initiative, this course stresses that police ethics are not just an after-thought or a means of discouraging bad behavior. Instead, ethics are a controlling insight that inform and guide police practitioners from an internal, personal capacity.This innovative eLearn course invites participants to join a 2500 year-old conversation on ethical decision making while exploring realistic, modern day challenges faced by policing professionals.

Recognizing that for policing professionals, public trust, integrity, and liability hinge on each and every decision, this is crafted as a concise and relevant course addressing the realities of policing in the 21st century.  Designed with the practitioner in mind, Ethical Decision Making: Policing with Principled Insight includes on-screen text, videos, and narration in a user-friendly eLearn environment that allows participants to start, stop, and resume the training based on their schedules.  Although it requires a minimum of 2 hours of uninterrupted run-time, participants should expect to spend approximately 4 hours completing this dynamic and timely course.

This tuition-free online training was developed by the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation (VCPI) and was originally supported Cooperative Agreement 2012-Ck-WX-K011 by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

COPS Evaluation Brief No. 3: Creating a Culture of Integrity
Crime Prevention Research Review No. 10: Legitimacy in Policing
Racial Reconciliation, Truth-Telling, and Police Legitimacy
"That's Not Fair!" Policing and Perceptions of Fairness
The Case for Procedural Justice: Fairness as a Crime Prevention Tool
The State of Policing in the United States, Volume 1

Supporting Your Mission: An Introduction to the National Police Foundation’s Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) Near Miss Reporting System is an interactive online course designed to provide participants with a basic awareness and understanding of the National Police Foundation’s LEO Near Miss reporting system funded by the United States Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office).  LEO Near Miss is designed to save lives. It is a web-based system that allows law enforcement officers a means to anonymously share their personal experiences surviving near miss events so that other officers may apply the lessons learned when facing similar situations. 

In this introductory course, participants explore the impact and importance of near miss reporting and discover ways in which both individual law enforcement officers and entire organizations can use the system to help ensure their safety, and the safety of fellow officers. The course features video interviews with law enforcement practitioners currently engaged in near miss reporting, as well as examples of the types of near miss reports published by the National Police Foundation. It provides an overview of the purpose, features and benefits of using the system, which is accessed via the website leonearmiss.org.

This tuition-free online training was developed about the National Police Foundation’s LEO Near Miss reporting system by the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation (VCPI) and was originally supported by cooperative agreement 2018-CK-WXK-001 by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

School Resource Officers (SROs) are essential to achieve safer schools.  SROs and school administrators need training on school climate: school physical and learning environments, relationships, engagement, and safety.  

Preventing Problems by Promoting Positive Practices (P5) is an interactive online course designed to provide participants with an innovative school climate model and school climate enhancement practices.  The course covers hot topics on:

• Environmental design, focused on crime prevention and wellness promotion
• Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) 
• Adolescent brain and behavioral development 
• Implicit bias and microaggressions
• Differentiated responding to discipline for SROs vs. school administrators 

 The course uses interactive quizzes, matching activities, and an action plan process to actualize school climate change.  

Related Resources

Community Oriented Policing Services. "Community Partnerships."

Center for Problem-Oriented Policing