This Brief describes a reality based approach to use-of-force training in law enforcement, an area of growing importance. It explains what scenario-based training is, how it works to improve police-community relations, and provides a guide for how the training can be implemented. This brief will be of value to researchers working to understand the negative impact of use of force on police-community relations, and interested in alternative approaches that integrate academic research with tactical experience.

The traditional use-of-force training paradigm is based on relatively brief training sessions with high student-to-instructor ratios. In scenario-based training, officers listen to social science-based lectures, develop a set of scenarios to be tested in a training environment, and conclude with a debriefing session that brings together the theoretical with the practical, including the consequences of the shooting from the tactical, emotional, psychological, social, and economic angles. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology, criminal justice, sociology, psychology and related fields, policy-makers, particularly with interest in police legitimacy and police-community relations, as well as practitioners in police organization and training.

M.R. Haberfeld is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. She was born in Poland and immigrated to Israel as a teenager. She served in the Israel Defense Forces in a counter-terrorist unit and left the army at the rank of a sergeant. Prior to coming to John Jay she served in the Israel National Police and left the force at the rank of lieutenant. She also worked as a special consultant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in the New York Field Office. She has conducted research in the areas of public and private law enforcement, integrity, and white-collar crime in the United States, Eastern and Western Europe and Israel. In addition to her research, she has also provided leadership training to a number of police agencies. Since 2001 she has been involved in developing, coordinating and teaching in a special educational program at John Jay for the New York City Police Department. Kenneth Murray is the Director of Training for the Armiger Police Training Institute (www.armiger.net) located in the greater Orlando area of Florida. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, he has spent the past twenty years as a police and military trainer, specializing in the field of Reality Based Training. Topics covered in his instructor classes include both the governing principles for effective training as well as the safe use of the broad spectrum of available and emerging technologies designed to improve realism in training for dangerous encounters. He is a member of the advisory board of the Police Policy Studies Council and the Force Science Research Center.