Chicago (AP) – Three dozen police captains are paired in a Chicago meeting room to play the game.
Many exchanges are pointless and full of one upmanship using difficult words and laughter. But improvisation games ultimately make sense.
“What we’re trying to do is listen to the end of the sentence,” says Kelly Leonard. “If my arm was a sentence, when would most people stop listening? Always elbow! But you lack everything to chase after it… and that’s sometimes important information.”
The police captain, who jumped out of departments across the country, nods. “I will definitely do that,” some call out.
Officials at the Academy of Policing Leadership at the University of Chicago Crime Lab have brought members of Chicago’s second-largest city, Chicago’s prestigious improvisation theatre.
The Academy is a workshop taught for over five months, addressing several serious topics for making data-driven decisions and how to help executives handle field trauma.
Improve your social skills
“We call it social skills yoga,” said Leonard, vice president of creative strategies, innovation and business development for the second city.
According to Tree Branch, a strategic client partner at Second City Works, skills may not apply to all policing situations on the field, but learning to breathe can be a better leader.
Improvisation and second-city creation are rooted in social work. Both trace the beginnings with Viola Sporin. Viola Sporin was a resettled worker in the 1920s, creating some of the exercises still in use on improvisation while helping immigrant children and local Chicago children connect. Sporin was also the mother of Paul Sills, co-founder of City II.
Creators at the Academy of Policing Leadership believe these skills will help them achieve their goals.
“We’ve seen a lot of people who are interested in the work of our research,” said Kim Smith, Program Director at the Crime Institute.
The Academy is working with leaders in the community’s department dealing with high levels of gun violence and is focused on paying for them to fly a week a month to participate in five months training.
Researchers at the Crime Institute found that the captains in the district and precincts had the greatest potential impact on their colleagues despite having little leadership training for the job. The precincts could have a big mark of depression in morale, community relations, or crime numbers, but if the captain changes, those benefits could plummet, says researchers, even if the community, officers and everything else remain the same.
Professors, researchers and police leaders teach courses on topics such as developing a transparent policing culture, using and collecting data, managing stress, and building community partnerships. So far, around 130 police leaders from around 70 departments, including tribal police stations and Toronto police inspectors, have participated.
Communication is important
Colonel Louis Higginson of the Philadelphia Police Department said the academy provided much broader training than the two weeks of police vocational training he had obtained before being promoted to captain over a year ago.
“The big thing for me was that they were like that before us and we were thinking about forgiveness,” he said. “And how we change the culture of our district by changing our way of thinking about why we do things.”
He said he did some improvisation exercises with his wife and daughters when he returned home, and that opened up communication in ways he didn’t expect.
“I think it opened their eyes, like it was for me,” Higginson said.
Albuquerque Police Station Commander Ray Del Greco said he is still thinking more about how he will communicate in a few weeks after improvisation classes.
“When people talk to you and help you solve their problems, when you push your ego out and let them worry and listen to your own agenda, it’s a leadership understanding,” Del Greco said. “For me, it was the most valuable class we had.”
Students become teachers
The academy leader emphasized that learning never stops upon graduation. Communication channels are created so that classmates can continue to support each other, encouraging captains to train with the department, and participants must implement a capstone project that addresses actual issues in the district or department past the final day of class.
Many of the projects have programs to address specific crimes, including involvement of the community in programs to prevent car theft and piloted drones as first responders. One of the previous alumni created partnerships with community groups to increase community pride, reduce gun violence, reduce quality of life issues such as scattered lots and graffiti.
San Jose Police Station captain and recent academy alumnus Stephen Donohue is creating an early intervention system focused on executive wellness. While a typical system may flag civil complaints or driving accidents, Donohue’s programs gather input from supervisors and peers when officers are taking on too many unfair trauma, such as multiple murders or short-term investigative filming.
“This is a Venn diagram between training, wellness and interior affairs,” he said. “And we can help them. We can reduce property complaints and complaints, provide better training and improve the services our department has issued.”
The trainer hopes that the captain and officers will say “yes” during improvisation classes a few years later. They maintain the tab through randomized controlled studies of how well the overall training works. And with that evidence, they hope that funders, police departments, or other universities will help expand training to more departments.
“We hope there is rigorously tested scientific evidence behind this,” said Meredith Stricker, executive director of the academy. “We’re working to design our curriculum and ultimately create better leaders and better policing. Participants will definitely talk about improvisation classes as one of their favorites. We hope everything works in tandem.”
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