With thousands of policing agencies scrambling in recent years to change use of force policies and provide

'deescalation' training to their officers and millions if not billions of dollars being spent to provide this training, do we know if it is even making adifference to impact officer performance on the street? Interestingly, despite widespread promotion and proliferation of deescalation training, no researchhas empirically demonstrated that this training is reducing use of force frequency or severity in the field. In addition, it is unknown if these policyreactions and unproven deescalation training programs are having unintended negative consequences that may increase injuries to officers or citizens.

In this fascinating and instructive interview, we speak with Dr. Robin Engel who led a research project with the

Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) to evaluate the impact of their agency's deescalation program. This study,  'Assessing the Impact of Deescalation Trainingon Police Behavior: Reducing Police Use of Force in the Louisville Metro Police Department' (published in Criminology & Public Policy) determined that theLMPD deescalation program significantly reduced the frequency of use of force incidents as well as led to reductions in citizen and officer injury rates andseverity. This interview contains very important policy and training implications for agencies implementing deescalation or seeking to evaluate theeffectiveness of their existing deescalation program.

Dr. Engel serves as Senior Vice President at the National Policing Institute, following over 25 years in

academic positions within higher education institutions. As an award-winningresearcher, she has partnered with dozens of police agencies in the U.S. andinternationally, served as Principal Investigator for over a hundred researchstudies and projects, and ranked among the top academics nationally in criminaljustice/criminology. From 2015 – 2019, she served as Vice President for Safetyand Reform at the University of Cincinnati, where her executive duties includedoversight of daily operations and successful implementation of comprehensivepolice reforms in the aftermath of a fatal police shooting of an unarmedmotorist. As a top scholar and trusted leading authority in police science, Dr.Engel oversees the Institute’s vast scientific investments designed totranslate and integrate research into practice.