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As law enforcement faces significant challenges in recruitment and retention, understanding generational shifts has never been more critical. With Gen Z officers entering the workforce, police leaders are navigating the unique traits and expectations of this new cohort. This generation, shaped by technology, a need for meaningful work, and a different approach to risk and resilience, requires fresh perspectives on training and leadership.
In this episode of the Policing Matters podcast, host Jim Dudley speaks with Dr. Janay Gasparini about how agencies can evolve to meet these demands. Gasparini, a police officer, former field training officer (FTO) and police training expert, is at the forefront of these conversations. She co-authored with Jim Dudley, “Recruitment and Retention of Gen-Z Law Enforcement Officers,” which tackles pressing topics such as the importance of adaptive recruitment methods, the impact of generational traits on training and strategies for fostering resilience among new officers.
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About our guest
Janay Gasparini, Ph.D., is a former full-time police officer who served as a police instructor, FTO and crime scene technician. She currently works part-time for the Town of New Paltz, New York Police Department. Gasparini has taught collegiate criminal justice courses since 2009 and is an assistant professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York - Ulster. She also serves as the Police Basic Training Coordinator between SUNY Ulster and the Ulster County Law Enforcement Training Group, Kingston, New York.
Additional resources
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Understanding risk aversion in Gen Z: Gen Z officers are more risk-averse due to overprotective environments and less exposure to challenges growing up. This trait can manifest as reduced resilience, presenting unique hurdles for training in high-stress professions like policing.
- Reimagining recruitment and onboarding: Agencies should embrace rolling admissions and pre-academy mentoring to simplify the hiring process and improve candidate preparedness. Engaging not just candidates but their immediate circles — friends and families — can bolster recruitment efforts.
- Tailoring training to modern learners: Incorporating technology such as virtual reality (VR) and gamified learning tools caters to Gen Z’s preference for interactive and experiential learning. Contextualized stress training, rather than traditional high-pressure methods, fosters practical skills and adaptability.
- Leadership and agency buy-in: Leadership must focus on creating positive environments that promote retention. The “Fishbowl Strategy” of inviting external assessments can offer fresh perspectives on recruitment and training processes, ensuring alignment with current demands.
- Adapting to evolving standards without compromise: While maintaining high standards, agencies should update policies like physical agility and substance use to reflect societal changes. Strategies such as remediation programs for recruits who falter can reduce attrition and maximize investments in new hires.
LAPSEN Presentation by Lexipol_Media_Group on Scribd
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: Are we doing the best job we can in recruiting today? I’m sure a lot of heads are nodding or shaking as your agency goes. Well, in June, fellow cop, former FTO, professor, colleague, and friend Dr. Janay Gasparini and I were selected to present teaching university-level pedagogy to law enforcement recruits at the Field Training Officers National Conference in Lexington, Kentucky. We also presented at ILEETA, and in December, we’re going to be presenting at the LAPSEN conference in San Antonio, Texas. LAPSEN is the Law and Public Safety Education Network for Public Safety Educators.
In August of this year, Janay and I produced a book called “Recruitment and Retention of Gen Z Law Enforcement Officers.” Here, I’ve got a copy right here on Blue 360 Media. Well, good to see you again. Welcome to Policing Matters, Dr. Janay Gasparini.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Thank you, Jim. It’s always great to be here with you.
Jim Dudley: So welcome back. I know you’ve been busy in New York. You’re doing some state training, and you’ve got your own academy to attend to and school there in New York. What’s, uh, what are you working on right now?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, so New York State — we’ve been very busy and very committed to updating our basic course for police officer training using adult learning principles and current research on brain science and human performance. So, we’re trying to really up the ante and get some of the best research we possibly can to our police officers.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, so we put together the book after our presentation. You were the one who suggested it. You said, “Hey, you know, we’ve got some really good stuff here, stuff that they’re not talking about at PERF, IACP and FOP. They’ve mostly gone back to analyze what we’ve done over the years, and few have talked about the gap in training and Gen Z and how they respond to training.” So tell us a little bit about how Gen Z might be different than classes in the past.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, you know, I think originally at the outset of this project, we took a unique approach in that we took the feedback we were getting from our colleagues and peers, and we went right to Gen Z officers to ask them directly these questions that were plaguing police leaders. They’re trying to not only recruit but also retain and train this new generation of police officers. That started our research, and as we moved into discovering more about Gen Z, I think we found that this generation’s differences from past generations have really been studied far and wide across disciplines.
As we know, corporate giants like Google and Apple have conducted their own research, and we’re all looking to extract from that how to best attract, retain and work with our Gen Z employees. So as you might imagine, from all this research, we’ve come across many distinctions.
In the policing world, I think the one distinction that stands out the most, that we found in our research, was that Gen Z are a risk-averse bunch. This is a product of the over-involvement of adults in their lives, who didn’t let them, for example, fall and skin their knee or work out a schoolyard argument without intervening.
As we’ve come to find out — both from our colleagues and our own research — this has rendered many of them not only risk-averse but also less resilient and less equipped to deal with failures or mistakes. This is a huge problem for policing, obviously. This has translated poorly to our profession and has been the root of many frustrations expressed to us by instructors, trainers, FTOs, and supervisors alike. There’s a ton we can say on this, but to me, that is the nexus of what we’re starting from.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and for me, I’m probably a little bit older than you. I can recall the technology divide when I first started in policing, where I did have the Mobile Video Terminal (MVT) in my vehicle, and this was — it was fairly new to policing at that time. But over my lifetime, I remember going from a pager to a cell phone, the cell phone in the car, and the first cell phones were these giant shoebox kind of phones. Then we went from our giant calculators to a phone that was also a computer — a handheld computer in a phone.
AI has started to really take over, and I could see that over the lifetime of our Gen Zers, that’s all they’ve known. They’ve only known this technology and technology that will help correct their mistakes. So, as you say, that risk aversion seems to multiply with AI coming in, to where, you know, when I used to write in high school and college and in my first police reports, all my “-ies” or “-ei” words were wrong. Now, I don’t even notice because I’m probably still wrong, but the self-correct features on my computer or phone are filling those gaps.
Multiply this with the horrific 2020 fiasco, right? Where we had shelter-in-place and online teaching. We’ve got a generation and four years of young people that have lost some real socialization experience at the school level. Before high school and college, those years were critical for social skills. There’s a gap in their ability to socialize and communicate with each other, and I think that’s what a lot of chiefs are dealing with now. There’s a gap in their ability to socialize and communicate with each other, and I think that’s what a lot of chiefs are dealing with now. And so rather than just keep trying to jam this circular block into that square cutout, we’ve got to really do some things to maybe work our way to meeting them more than having them climb up and meet us would you say?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yes, and I know that’s met with a lot of resistance. And, you know, certainly we understand, right? The historical tradition has been, “You come to us, knock on our door, prove yourself, and we’ll decide whether to take you or not.” And yeah, it’s a different day. I’m not personally in love with it, but, you know, as we always say, there’s what we wish and then there’s reality. And if we’re not willing to work in that reality, we’re not going to move the ball down the field at all with this issue.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and the real reality is that we all have adapted learning styles, right? Like, some of us can read something once and go out and do it. Others need to watch it. And people like me, I’m visual, and I need to get hands-on and actually do it. So, you know, those old conferences where somebody stands up at a podium or even a police academy where you get somebody to walk in, stand at the front, and blah blah blah for an hour at a time — sometimes it’s really hard to sink in.
Instructor development is a critical area, and we’re seeing some really good things happening there. But I’d say even before that, let’s start at the agency level. It’s human nature for our brains to fill in the gaps and say, “Oh no, we’re doing really well,” when maybe we’re not. If you’re a leader at an agency, take over and maybe give the quick once-over, or get a lieutenant or a captain to come in and tell you how things are going at the recruiting level, at the academy level, and the field training level. Then you look at the bottom line and see 30%, 40%, 50% or more attrition rates. First of all, it’s tough to recruit people. Then, we’ve gone through all the processes, so we think we’ve got some quality people. We put them in the academy, and they start dropping — week one, week two, week 15. At this point, it’s necessary to do an assessment at that level. I don’t think the chiefs and sheriffs are really equipped to take a critical look at their own agencies, so maybe they get an outsider to do an assessment for them.
I’ve talked about that in our book — the “Fishbowl Strategy,” where you get an outside consultant or somebody from your state POST, or somebody like you and me, to come in from outside, look at all the orders, look at the recruiting phases, the testing, the background investigations — all of that — and then the training and giving you a real critical report, not just to the chief or sheriff but to the whole command staff, so that there’s buy-in at every level, even from unrelated sections of the agency, whether it’s investigations or tactical units. Everyone needs to understand the importance of recruitment, retention and training strategies.
We could talk about, you know, agencies and their own people saying whether or not they would refer people to join their agency. And we know that. I think it was in the 2022 survey through Police1 that asked nearly 4,000 cops, “Would you refer someone to your own agency?” and only 7% said they would. And so, we’re doing something at our own agency level where we need more buy-in.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, absolutely. I really love that fishbowl strategy. You know, I think another thing to consider is, you know, I think it’s a way to build community trust and stakeholder engagement for sure. But we’re living in an era now, you know, and as a self-proclaimed sociologist, I like to sit back and kind of watch things unfold. It really appears that people have had it up to here with, kind of, a lack of transparency and maybe deception and, you know, not really knowing where to go for truth. And if you’re a leader at this point in our American history and our policing history who’s willing to be transparent, willing to be open, and willing to get feedback from, you know, your entire complement of your command, from community members, and so forth, I think you stand to make some very positive changes — and realistic ones too — that people can really get behind.
Jim Dudley: So instead of locking the doors and doing things behind the scenes, we open the doors, we invite the public in, and we build that community trust so that, you know, sometimes we’ll hear that a recruit might quit somewhere through the process. And, you know, we do the exit strategy, and they say they’re leaving for personal reasons, and we don’t go very far beyond saying, “OK, sign here. You know, we’ll send you a check.” Instead, we should be doing a stay interview to ask why they’re leaving. And many times, we’ll hear they’re getting negative feedback from friends and family, and the peer pressure is just too much, and they’ll quit. That’s one of the reasons. But the idea of mentorship and open houses and bringing families in to tour the academy and letting them know that, you know, we’re really hoping that their friend or relative is someone who could join the ranks and help the community that they live in.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, and I do think we hit on that in the book as well. This idea of, you’re not just, for this particular section of this generation, you’re not just recruiting the potential candidate, right? You kind of also have to court their immediate circle, you know, because, again, they are seeing that negative feedback. And I even remember when I, you know, as a kind of forestry major and member of an all-female rock band, I started to tell my friends and family I wanted to be a police officer, and it was like somebody ripped the record off. Like, “What? What? And why would you want to do that?” It was not like, “Wow, that’s great. Good for you,” you know? So I think that’s something, just from a historical perspective, you know, across the board—a great recruitment strategy, right, to get some buy-in from those around them.
Jim Dudley: Yes. OK. So we talked to the chief, the sheriff, those in charge of recruiting and training. What kind of metrics do you think we should start looking at, starting with recruits? Do we look at the places where they’re going, their success rate, how many recruits they’re talking to each week? What does it look like?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, I think—I mean, I think we’ve discussed this many times. I mean, in an ideal world, starting with the recruiters, we want to foster a culture in our police agencies where everyone is a recruiter. But of course, that means you have to have happy campers, right, or at least happier campers. And we know from our Police1 surveys and data that, overwhelmingly, that is not the case in American policing. You know, hopefully, good leadership and things can turn the tide on that as we move forward here. But some of the things that make sense to me about the recruits themselves is, you know, developing recruitment strategies that reflect what the job entails today. So, you know, things like, what do we want? Right? Since 2020 till now, we’ve moved off our mark massively, right? We want emotional intelligence. We want problem-solving ability. We want communication skills, you know.
Things include the idea of bringing in the social sciences, and they do have many tests and instruments that they give to people. And I know I read something on P1 at one point that one agency was giving a test for—I want to say it was EQ. It was emotional intelligence, as part of their, you know, metric. And, you know, as we know, as far as recruiting methods go—and you speak to this very well in the book—we talk about meeting them where they are, making the process shorter and more user-friendly. I mean, it goes on and on. But one thing I do want to bring up here, as far as recruitment goes and who we’re recruiting, is, I think, another idea that we discussed that was great was kind of advocating for raising the age for police officers, right? And filling some of our gaps with older recruits. Even so, you know, who are we recruiting, and why or why not? Right? Kind of going into less traditional means, but I’m going to hit it back to you because, in my mind, I have about 5,000 other things I want to say.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. Well, I want to hear them. So I think what you’re talking about is, number one, it starts with leadership, right? And we’ve got to make the agencies better places so that the people working there already, number one, stay. So we talk about retention strategies in the book a lot. We talk about recruiting, like you say, maybe second-career people, veterans, people in our military leaving. You know, I keep wanting to come up with a term about what they are. So we have induction centers, and I’m wondering, do they call them deduction centers when they’re leaving? I don’t know, but that’s where we need to be.
And so leadership is a good starting point. And, you know, since 2020, I think a lot of agency members have felt somewhat abandoned by their leaders, you know, because of political ideology. So it feels like we’re coming back to center. It feels like a new day. It feels like people have seen what the defunding era looked like, and they didn’t like it. They’ve seen crime climb and seen recent efforts to bring crime back down. So I think we’re getting more buy-in from the public. But one thing I want to stress before we take a break is that everything we talk about in the book—and what we’re talking about today—none of it endorses bringing down the standards. We still want good cops—vetted, verified people coming into the profession who are able to do the job. But we also need to look at some of the strategies we’ve been using over the years. Are they still applicable 40 or 50 years later? We know that some agencies haven’t touched their recruiting, training, or field training methods for 40 or 50 years. And realistically, some of that’s got to change.
We could talk about, you know, agencies and their own people saying whether or not they would refer people to join their agency. And we know that. I think it was in the 2022 survey through Police1 that asked nearly 4000 cops. Would you refer someone to your own agency and only 7% said they would, and so we’re doing something at our own agency level where we need more buy in.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, absolutely. I really love that fishbowl strategy. You know, I think another thing to consider is, you know, I think. Way to build Community Trust and stakeholder engagement for sure. But we’re living in an era now you know, and as a self-proclaimed sociologist, I like to sit back and kind of watch things unfold. It really appears that people have had it up to here with with kind of. Lack of transparency and maybe deception and you know, not really knowing where to go for truth. And if you’re a leader at this point in our American history and our policing history. Who’s willing to be transparent and willing to be open and willing to get feedback from, you know, your entire complements of your command from community members and so forth. I think you stand to make some very positive changes and realistic ones too, that people can really get behind.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. So we’ve got a, you know, instead of walking the doors and doing things behind the scenes, we open the doors, we invite the public in, we build that Community Trust so that. You know, sometimes we’ll hear that a a recruit might quit somewhere through the process. And you know, we do the exit strategy and they say they’re they’re leaving for personal reasons and we don’t go very far beyond saying, OK, sign here. You know, we’ll, we’ll send you a check. Instead, we should be doing a stay. Interview to ask why, why they’re leaving, and many times we’ll hear. They’re they’re getting negative feedback from friends and family. And the peer pressure is just too much and and they’ll quit. That’s one one of the reasons. But the idea of of mentorship and open houses and bringing families in to tour the Academy and and let them know that, you know, we’re really hoping that their friend or relative is someone who could join the ranks. And help the community that they live. Then.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, and I do think we we hit on that in the book as well. This idea of you’re not just for this particular section of this generation, you’re not just recruiting the potential candidate, right, you kind of also have to court their immediate circle, you know, because because again. They are seeing that negative feedback and I even remember when I, you know as a. As a kind of forestry major and member of an all female rock band, I told started to tell my friends and family I wanted to be a police officer and it was like somebody like ripped the record off. Like what? What and why would you want to do that? It was not like, wow, that’s great. Good for you, you know. So I think that’s something just from a historical perspective, you know, across the board. A great recruitment strategy, right to get some buy in from those around them.
Jim Dudley: Yes. OK. So we talked to the chief, the sheriff, those in charge of recruiting and training. What kind of metrics do you think we should start looking at starting with recruit? There’s. Do we look at the places where they’re going, their success rate, how many recruits they’re talking to each week? What does it look like?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think we, we we have discussed this many times, I mean an ideal world starting with the recruiters, we want to foster a a culture in our police agencies where everyone is a recruiter. But of course that means you have to have happy campers, right, or at least happier campers. And we know from our Police1 surveys and. Data that overwhelmingly, that is not the case in American policing, you know, hopefully good leadership and things we turn turn the tide on that as we move forward here. But some of the things that make sense to me about. The recruits themselves is, you know, developing recruitment strategies that reflect what the job entails today. So, you know, things like what, what do we want right since 2020 till now we’ve had, we’ve moved off our mark massively, right. We want the emotional intelligence. We want the problem solving ability. We want the communication skills. UM, you know. Things including the idea of bringing in the social sciences and they do have many tests and instruments that that they give to people and I know I read something on P1 at one point that that they were one agency was giving. A test for. I want to, I want to say it was EQ. It was emotional intelligence. As part of their, you know metric if you. And you know, as we know, as far as recruiting methods go and you speak to this very well in the book, right, we talk about meeting them where they are making the process shorter and more user friendly mean it. It goes on and on. But one thing I do want to bring up here as far as recruitment goes and who we’re recruiting. Is, I think, another idea that we discussed that was great was kind of advocating for a raise, the age for police officers, right and and filling. Filling some of our gaps with older recruits. Even so, you know, who are we recruiting and why or why not, right? Kind of going into less traditional meats, but I’m going to. I’m going to hit it back to you because I in my mind, I have about 5000 other things I want to say.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. Well, I want to hear him so. I think what you’re talking about is number one. It starts with leadership, right? And we’ve got to make the agencies better places so that the people that are working there already #1 stay. So we we talk about retention strategies in the book a lot. We talk about recruiting like you say, maybe second career people, veterans, people in our military leaving, you know, I keep wanting to come up with a term about what they are. So we have induction centers. And I’m wondering, do they call them deduction centers when they’re leaving? I don’t know, but that’s where we need to be.
And so leadership is A is a good starting point and you know since 2020, I think a lot of agency members have felt somewhat abandoned by their leaders, you know, because of political ideology. So it feels like we’re coming back to center feels like a new day. Feels like people have seen with the defunding era look like and they didn’t like it. They’ve seen criming climb, climbing crime and seeing recent efforts that to bring crime back down. So I think we’re getting more buy in from the public. But one thing I want to stress before we take a break and that is that. Everything that we talk about in the book and what we’re talking about today, none of it. Endorses bringing down the standards that we still we still want good cops, vetted, verified people come into the profession that are able to do the job, but we also need to look at some of the strategies that we’ve been using over the years. And are they still applicable 4050 years later? We know that some agencies haven’t. Touched their recruiting methods, their training methods, their field training methods for 40 or 50 years, and realistically some of that’s got to change.
All right. Well, I want to talk a little bit about some of the other parts of the recruiting process that we’ve touched on. But first, I’d like to take a moment and thank our sponsor. And we’re back. And I’m speaking with Doctor Janay Gasparini Police1 writer, current police officer, former FTO, and on faculty at CUNY. We’re talking about those other reports, FOP, PERF, ICP and others. They all say the same thing that we need to speed up the recruiting process. How do we approach that without compromising standards?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah. So I think one way is to steal an idea from academia. This idea of rolling admissions. I think that. So we want to increase our pool, right? So in New York and it starts there, really we have to increase our pool and you know attract. Candidates and make make it easy for them. So in New York we are still roughly every two years we’ll give a civil service test. Yes. And you know, maybe to start you just to annually give that test right, something as simple as that. So making ongoing and and rolling recruiting, one of the things we talk about in the book is recruitment like we said before, being everyone’s job at all times but to avoid compromising standards even if we get these people. Starting to come through the door looking again. We kind of mentioned it before, but testing that gets to the heart of the skills and abilities agencies want recruits to have. You know all those things we already sent communication resilience. These these are a great idea. As far as standards, you know we we look at that and you know we already see I know what agency locally they’ve gotten. They’ve read the requirement that they had about marijuana usage, right? We’re we’re now living in a time where it’s it’s perfectly legal. I mean, last time I was in New York City. I couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t take a breath anywhere without smelling it and. Like that, you know, we have to look at that, you know, and it obviously goes against the grain a little bit. But as you’re saying, you know, trying to update update our times and methods with with what’s going on in society, do we love it? Maybe not. But is it reality? Yes.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and the physical standards as well, we’ve seen some agencies pull back a little bit, at least at the entry level, maybe not to post standards, but that there’s an expectation that the Academy people get people up and train. So that once they’re done with the Academy, they’re able to do that. Now, I’ve talked to a A deputy chief at an agency recently who told me that their agency went from 50 in their first class down to 15 about at the midway point and I was stunned and I asked, well, what are what are they feeling from her? Why are they leaving? Well, some are just leaving personal reasons. Others are failing some of the physical agility standards. Emergency vehicle operation and things like that, the range and you know, I’m just wondering at that point you know we’ve spent and invested so much money in people that we’re at this point where we wash them out and I know that, you know, learning domains for most post standards say. You get two shots at a test, and if you fail the second one, you’re out. And so. Without compromise, without, you know, keeping someone who shouldn’t be kept. Is there a way to unplug these individuals? Take them into some remediation, get them back up, up and running. Put them back in the game. You know, you talk about this rotation of, you know. Of you know, from academia, that’s constant hiring. Couldn’t we do that, couldn’t we? Unplug people, put them in some other job skill until they’re ready to join the next recruit class.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, I mean it’s I think all things are on the table at this point. One, one of the greatest things I’ve seen and read about is kind of falls under the umbrella of managing expectations even before they step foot in the Academy, right. But you know, physical fitness training. Then some rudimentary skills like note taking and academics. You know that, that sort of thing. I think that’s a really great way to try to mitigate these issues. But again, talking reality again, right, we also have this problem where. You know, a lot of young people are. Not as active, right? They’re they’re they’re not. You know, we’ve got the video games, things like that. You know, we’ve even just. We’ve been discussed going to sports teams because sports teams kind of embody a lot of what we’re looking for. And you’re that great example with the coach out there in San Francisco, but it is. Listen, it is tough. It’s. I mean, if if we wanted to really restructure. Or. How we on board as far as like the? The recruitment process into the Academy process, you know, are we prepared to give people different chances or other alternatives, I mean that would be a major, major shake up in our industry.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I know some of the. Some of the recruits and you know, we talked about students and their fear of the unknown and the washout rate. But I mean, there’s even that ghosting rate that we talk about where you know you might get 500 people sign up for the test and you might get 200 to show on the day of testing crazy. And to mitigate some of that about losing people along every step in the process, more and more agencies are doing multiphasic testing where you do your written and your physical agility test in the same day, and then you might come back and do your oral boards in some other part of the process.That seems to be helping, but what you talked about is that pre tutoring or mentoring to get people up to that ability to take the test. I mean for testing phases were so complicated that you were spending a lot of your time trying to figure out the test to see what they really. Wanted and so. So these programs that say come on in, we’re going to give you a couple of free shots at the pellet B test or or whatever test you’re using for intake. We’re going to show you and I tell students all the time when you take these tests, they don’t expect you to be a police officer. So try not to think like whether you should arrest somebody. Right out the gate or do some other part of the process. Just be analytical. Use your problem solving skills and answer these questions as as you would and we’ll train you to be a cop once you get in, but I think that fear of the unknown is a real blockade to those people who ghost the tests. So with these agencies doing these prep tests for physical agility where you get to run through the course. Maybe do you know six or eight weeks of training where you’re doing push-ups and sit-ups and running and dragging a, you know, simulated body and and things like that, that those go a long way towards getting successful people through the door?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, sure. And and you know, we always talk about demystifying the whole process and you know, to this day, I I have students or just people who get in touch with me for various reasons, who who do still think that that written test is, I mean, what do I need to know? Like do I need to know the law? I mean, no, not at all. You know, it’s the way it’s in New York anyway. A lot of it is. Reading comprehension and and just trying, you know, to understand, you know, a paragraph and ordering information and things like that, so that there just shows me that, you know, that’s an area we can work on for sure. We shouldn’t have people wondering what the heck is on the police. Test before they get in the door.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. And so, you know, I talked about my, you know, caveman days of, you know, looking at a pager and then looking at a phone trying to figure out what they mean. And so now we have access to all this. Just phenomenal AI and and technology, I’m starting to see some agencies use VR technology to get the interest of students to take a look and maybe feel like what it might be to to do part of the job. Should we start to bring VR and other experiential learning into the Academy setting?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it’s, I think it’s great we we know you know for people who are really invested in adult learning theory and human performance studies and and we know all of these things to to be very helpful contextualized learning realistic training environment. You know, I have to give a shout. I’ll give an example by by direct supervisor my colleague, he along with another. Complement of experts, they have taken on a giant task of rewriting the firearms curriculum for New York State. And you know, they’ve done exactly what I just said. Reality based, right, we we know what gunfights take place. close range around vehicles around doorways. We know the human performance indicators that happen in a in a body when they’re we’re faced with a critical threat. Guess what’s reflected in the curriculum, right? So I think anytime we can get virtual reality, anything experiential, it’s a, it’s a home run.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, for sure. And I know that a lot of agencies are using VR. We’ve, you know, we’ve grown up with the FAFSA machine, the firearms training simulators. You know, they’re 2D. We’re getting into 3D now and and surrounding VR, helping to build compassion and empathy. We’re talking about dealing with people you know in suicidal situations and. I could hear people saying VR is never going to take the place of actual one-on-one training I totally understand and get that, but as a supplement and at least to help some of maybe the some of those struggling students to get them to better understand, maybe because they have a a different learning process. That I think especially about those suicidal situations. So you find yourself standing on a roof and you’re looking at somebody sitting on the ledge. And chances are you’re going to have to talk to him for more than 3 minutes. But what do you say beyond 3 minutes and at the very least, VR at least gives you a sense of wow, this is a lot longer than I thought. What can I possibly say to this individual? And, you know, I’ve I’ve seen something like this used. When we had psychologists come to our Academy, put this helmet on so that you could experience with somebody you know, in a a state of crisis might feel when you’re asking them simple questions or giving them simple commands. And and and from their perspective, how you come off to them is very threatening and very scary. So in that regard, I think VR training is, you know, a game changer.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: I agree, and it’s it’s also just a much better measurement of a trainee or recruits abilities. You know that that’s that’s nothing you can show us on paper. So even there you know that’s that’s huge possibility even in the onboarding process maybe.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, for sure. And we’re talking about, we talked about gamification that so many of the young people taking the test have grown up with. Gaming and studying and using not just VR, but computer based programs. Different learning tools. You know, we we were forced into it using. Canvas and Moodle and these other online courses where we’ve had to build content to try to reach students that are learning remotely well. Now we’ve got them in the classroom or in the Academy and yet still there’s good, good ways to reach them inside the classroom and outside.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yes, absolutely. It’s, you know, I think at this point it’s a non negotiable. You know we always say right, they’re they’re in their phones even our students. But that’s how they’re getting their emails, their announcements. So some of them complete their homework on their phone, all those, all those learning management systems have a cell phone friendly version, right. So, you know, even going back to our conversation about recruiting, what about your recruitment process and what of that can you make in a cell phone format, you know and you know it’s. And and with the gamification, the immediacy factor, right, and you’d probably we talked about speeding up the process. Well, the whole world has been speed up, their world has speed up. So you I think we’d have a much better return if we’re able to kind of we give our recruiter, you know, a cell phone and this how we’re going to communicate with these recruits. Going forward and just trying to get the information we need from them, keeping them on track and seeing them through the entire process in a way that in a format that they’re comfortable with.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I’ve had people on the show tell me. Well, you know what? We really don’t need to hold their hand through the process. But I mean, if if we think about our own phones and our calendar reminders and you know, if we got it, if we we have an appointment to go to the doctor or to get our car fixed, we’ll get those texts that say, hey, don’t forget, you know, bring your car into. Jiffy Lube today at 2:00, right. Or what have you? So it it’s really not overreach in or or or reaching down to, you know, younger people to give them those constant reminders. If anything, you know, coupled with mentorship with a recruiter. Who makes that personal contact with the recruit? Who explains the process? Who tells them? Don’t forget to show up for these, you know, tutoring sessions or this practice physical and then reminders on the phone. That’s not out of the realm of what we’re seeing today in, in life in general.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: No, I totally agree. Three. And another thing we touch on in the book is is leveraging things that we know about Gen. Z to our advantage. And we know thaDr. Janay Gasparini: high touch. They are high communicators. They are used to asking why they’ve been involved in adult conversations and decision making from a young. From a much younger age than than we ever were, right? I like playing with rocks and sticks out there and. They’re, you know. You know you have a 7 year old manipulating a technological device that like I even have trouble with as a 43 year old. It’s it’s just a different time and you. Know we know that this. Kind of. They’re used to this back and forth from their parents, from teachers. So, you know, to your point, do we mimic that and get what we want from it, you know?
Jim Dudley: Yeah, you make a good point about in training, at least when I came through. Gosh, you hardly ever raised your hand or asked a question for feeling that. You might be insulting to the instructor, or you might feel like a complete dope to your your your peers if you ask a question. But today’s Gen. Z we’ve noticed in our research that they’re more than willing to ask a question or even question methods, and not so much to counter or argue with the instructor but really, from that place of curiosity to know more rather than to object to to what they’re learning so. I think you know in that way you know we need to train our Academy people as well to say, hey, you’re going to get questioned. And as long as it’s a reasonable question, you know, some people need to to run through the process or or get a different example or scenario so that they can better understand. I mean, if you think about. You know, learning in 2D, they are trying to learn in 3D46D and we’ve got to meet their curiosity.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, agreed. And like you’re saying, it’s it’s not a disrespect thing. It’s it really is. And and ironically, I think for me as an instructor, it’s almost provided a almost like a self check too. Because they might ask a question I was like, you know, I never thought of that or, you know, that is a good question. Why do we do that? You know? So it’s kind of. Beneficial I think across the board, that’s one thing from from Gen. Z for sure that I think. We can benefit from.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. And it’s it’s one thing that I picked up from teaching college students that. Quarterly through a 16 week course. Now I will ask. OK, how’s the speed of the class going? One being too slow, 3 being just right. Five being too fast. And then I’ll ask, what’s the muddiest issue so far and sometimes I’ll get a response from. At least a few students saying, hey, could you go over, you know, problem solving methods again or something that maybe that I thought I was spending sufficient amount of time on when when clearly. I left a few behind so those those kinds of checkpoints are good to get that feedback back from students to say, OK, shoot, maybe you missed it or you ran through it so fast that you know, again it’s that self correcting human nature that fills in gaps that says, oh, shoot, I I thought I covered all that in use of force. But clearly you know I I left some people behind.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, and. And they’re in this conversation is yet another. Opportunity for us to be willing to shift the culture in Academy and in field training and in training in general about, you know, we talked about this too, like kind of making it an OK environment to engage and ask questions and. Yeah, hopefully I think we are turning the page on that. I I have the fortune to see a lot of police instructors do their do it at their at their craft, if you will. And you know you do see it more and more. And I think it is a good thing.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. And I’ve been so impressed with Dan Green. He’s the president of the National Association of Field Training Officers. And and you know such professional learning environments, all the FTL’s that I’ve come across are really up to and they want, you know, they’re they’re yearning for updated training and instructor development. And it’s really good seeing seeing him and and what he’s doing on the national. Level.
So what about the training process and stress? So the feedback that I’m getting after a show is that, hey, man, you’re missing the point. Critical situations, life or death. People need to be able to operate in stressful situations. We need that artificial stress in training to make them realize that they’re going to have to stay on focus with all these external things happening. But is there a way to introduce stress, not day one? I mean, I remember day one, I’m in the police Academy. I’m wearing a nice suit that I just bought shine shoes and they got. Doing push-ups in the parking lot and they’re screaming and yelling at me and and you know, I’m. I’m thinking, OK, so it’s going to be like this and you know, of course it got better. And then you realize over time that it’s this stress that they want to throw at you to get you used to, you know, whatever comes. But is there a better way to introduce stress?
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yes, absolutely. And you know, and we know that stress serves a purpose anecdotally and Academy nearby, they took this last section of of recruits. Their first day was basically. They a leveling day they it was almost like orientation. And I mean you know, you can imagine, you know, the the local agencies. Please don’t be like what the what are you doing, you know. So the point that the Academy director made which which I think is. Realistic. It’s fantastic. You. Why are we aren’t even. We’re setting them up to fail. You’re not giving them a chance to understand what the expectations are before you start screaming and yelling in their face. Now flip side of that coin. Of course. I think I I don’t foresee a time. And where we ever get away from. The military stuff entirely, and I only say that or the stress based Academy is that the proper term? I believe I only say that. Because of the feedback that I receive, it’s almost like no matter how progressive somebody might be in this train of thought but They always kind of say, but I get it, but I get like the yelling and screaming and it just it does serve a purpose, right? So, you know, two things can be true, right? So, but this has been a great topic. I think the keystone question that we’ve come away with though, is not whether or not to stress them. It’s what kind of stress and. How? Much and you know I have to defer to our good friend and colleague Hank Prim out in South Dakota, who’s written a lot on this topic. Very wonderful, insightful pieces. And something that I liked that he suggested in terms of stress is making it contextualized like actual on the job stressors like hey, recruit Smith. You are now the Sergeant on duty, the highest ranking person on the scene. We’re going to do his tabletop exercise. This is the situation and as soon as they come up with. With a solution or an answer, now we take a resource away or now this officer has done this, or the suspect has done that and you kind of throw things at them and you know on the fly they have to come up with things like that’s a very effective kind of stress that. Relates and transfers very smoothly into the. Job. So you know the military stuff or the stress based Academy stuff we we know the purpose of that serves, but being more creative I think is is the way of the future.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don’t ever foresee anybody, you know, going to the police range and you know, shooting from a a lazy boy chair or anything like that. I think there there’s definitely a. Always for stress in training, but if we’re giving shout outs, I want to give a shout out to Sergeant Justin Collins at Rochester, NY and what he’s doing up there is phenomenal and he’s bringing young people into the city system. The city government system and across the board. Training with other agencies, whether it’s, you know, office, work or working in Sanitation, Street Cleaning, Park and Rec, those kinds of things and then bringing them into the public safety sector. It’s a great transition from student life to government life to public safety, and he’s had so much success and what I really love is that, you know, if you, you get somebody who who may not be, you know, cutting it for public safety, that there’s the ability to plug them into some other. Part of a city agency where they they need help as well. So it’s a great place to to bring on board people, bring them into the environment and, you know, paid internships positions. You know, doing evidence work or property work or public safety building screening things like that. Those all just sort of bring in people, get them to understand the law enforcement culture and take it from there. I think that’s way better than that cold bath immersion of. Yeah, you’re going to get that suit dirty because you’re going to be doing push-ups in the parking lot. Welcome to the freaking blank blank PD.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Right. And and you know what else is so great about what he is doing in Rochester is we know about, you know, for if we kind of look at Gen. Z in, in terms of this discussion, we know at the top of their life goal list and career list is service they want to help. They want to make a change. They they want meaningful work, and if you’re exposing them from, like a bird’s eye view of have all these systems interplay together and hey, you know, and you and I always talk with our students and recruits. It’s, it’s this idea of, you know, what? You’re not gonna make $1,000,000, but look at all this. Look what we can offer you, you know, and this is public service and this is there all the different branches of it. You know, you be able to provide for yourself, your family, get a little pension, whatever the case might be. But I think that is a great way to leverage what we know about our youngest coming into the field.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you about mentoring and and some other things. But you know what? We want people to buy this book, don’t we? To buy the book.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yes. OK. Then we want some feedback too. I mean you can tell us this total crap, we’ll take whatever feedback you have, but we’re we’re really invested in moving the. Needle here so.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, for sure. Well, I want to thank you for your time. And gosh, the work that you did and you know, I know you put your heart and soul into the book and I’m just proud to be associated with you in it. And thanks for thanks for spending time today, jenay.
Dr. Janay Gasparini: Yeah, absolutely. Anytime. And as Jim and I always say, if there’s anything we can help you with or if you have ideas for us, please let us know.
Jim Dudley: Yeah. And we’ve had a lot of great guests on the show that talk about the, the programs that they’ve had from, you know, personal trainers and talking about looking at the systems to see if they’re still relevant. If we’re testing for the right things, we’ve we’ve had HR people, we’ve had field trainers mock and 80 from the school Resource Officer national programs. And on the show and water, great experience so. Tap into us. Shoot me an e-mail. I’ll make sure that Janae gets it as well. Drop me a line at policingmatters@policeone.com and we’ll answer your question or look it up and get back to you. Alright. Well, stay safe. And thanks for listening and hope to talk to you again real soon. Take good care.
