Police officers no matter how well screened, tested, evaluated, and trained are humans just like the rest of the community members they have volunteered to serve. As such they are subject to all the human emotions, happiness, sadness, anger, embarrassment, joy, empathy, and FEAR.

Yes, your police officers are afraid! Afraid of the unique physical dangers and now more than ever before they are afraid of the political ramifications of the job.

The good news is that through professional training and problem identification we can identify and address fear as a performance issue sooner than later.

Three indicators that a fear issue may be occurring:

1.       Reluctance to Engage – Officers demonstrate all of the book knowledge, pass the written tests, perform well in controlled training programs, but once out on the street they blend into the background and are reluctant to take on the lead role in calls.

2.      Over Reliance on Tools – This officer is most likely known to their peers by the type of “tool” they tend to use on call after call, much more frequently than their peers.  Fear and lack of confidence in their physical fitness, training, skill level and overall confidence is masked by the reliance on a tool that if it does not work, they will not be to blame for it nor accountable.

3.      Quick Escalation – Similar to the over reliant officer, this officer is quicker than peer officers on the same type of calls to escalate to the use of force or threatened use of force. Many times, this officer is playing a dangerous game of bluffing to gain compliance knowing they are not legally justified to use such force.

While it is great to identify fear impacting street performance it is even better to do it in the training environment. In each of my classes one of the first things we will openly discuss is the fears we are bringing with us.