Emotional Wellness for Law Enforcement Curriculum

I am hoping to be starting the Master Instructor Certification Course (MICC) sponsored by the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST). 

All MICC students are required to design a law enforcement course from 3-5 days in length, which will be submitted to POST for approval. If approved, it will become a POST reimbursable course offered statewide. POST courses tend to have much better attendance because officers get CPT credit for them. 

My course will be on Emotional Wellness for Law Enforcement. 

In addition to having grown up in a law enforcement family, I am an 11 year police veteran, and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. While my professional and personal experience in this area have a place in the design of the course, it is far from enough. 

I would like to correspond with others who feel strongly about the need for our peace officers to be as emotionally healthy as possible  throughout the span of their lives. If you are one of the following and would be willing to share your ideas on the development of this course, please contact me.

• Law Enforcement Officers (LEO)  
• LEO, mental health clinician or others that who teach in this area
• Mental health professionals working with LEO’s
• LEO peer supporters
• Researchers
• LEO family members
• Anyone else with a verse to contribute

For those of us with a vested interest in this topic, this is a fantastic opportunity.  My goal here is to learn as much as possible from as many different people as I can. 

In addition to collaborators, I will be looking for subject matter experts (SME) for various topical areas (e.g., John Violanti for LEO stress). If you are a SME or know someone who may be willing to donate a bit of their time to a good cause, please let me know. I will be interviewing SME’s at some length. 

It is important to note the focus of this project will be on “Lifetime Emotional Wellness.” To use an analogy, at the basic police academy in CA, the class on physical training is called, “Lifetime Fitness.” Recruits begin physical training on the first day of the academy. Their last day of PT is usually the day before graduation.  It is pounded into our heads that fitness is not to stop once we leave the academy; that it is for life. This is the type of framework I intent to use for emotional wellness. 

While the course will include secondary and tertiary prevention (i.e., what to do once problems exist), a focus will be on developing, maintaining, and constantly improving one’s emotional wellness. I see a gap here in the literature and training. My bias is that, as peace officers, we should go beyond “surviving” this career [no jab here toward Gilmartin’s invaluable work]. We should know about and be willing to work toward lives filled with meaning, happiness, and healthy relationships. 

Finally, something about the design of the course. The fundamental question the CA POST IDI program asks is, how do adults learn? Everything in the program is geared toward adult student learning. To explain what is meant by “learning” here, let me contrast it with “going to a training.” 

As most of us know, the typical training involves someone lecturing to the class for long periods of time, with a PPT in the background. In fact, sadly perhaps, this is how I’ve conducted most of my trainings (which is part of the reason I started the IDI program). So, lecture, PPT, the odd video or two and get out a half hour early. Sound familiar? 

In designing this course, my question will be, what learning exercises, delivery methods, learning styles and modes, and learning verification tools will I use to ensure the greatest chance that students will actually use what is taught? In other words, rib sticking stuff. Ultimately, this will not be “Jeff Shannon’s” training. It will contain enough detail and clarity that any law enforcement trainer will be able to use the lesson plan and teach the same stuff. My question to you is, What “stuff” should be in there? 

Thank you in advance for anything you can offer. 

Kind regards,

Ofc. Jeff Shannon, LMFT

        Berkeley Police Department

jshannon@cityofberkeley.info

(510) 981-5779

(510) 595-5580 Office