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The evolving landscape of law enforcement recruitment and training brings both significant challenges and promising opportunities. As police departments strive to attract and retain new talent, some agencies are shifting away from traditional training models toward approaches that resonate better with Gen Z recruits.
In this episode of the Policing Matters podcast, host Jim Dudley speaks with Hank Prim, Supervisory Special Agent and State Law Enforcement Standards and Training Administrator in South Dakota, about South Dakota’s approach to law enforcement training, particularly the shift from high-stress, military-style academies to a more collegial and problem-based learning environment. Prim discusses the unique challenges faced by rural law enforcement agencies in recruitment and retention and underscores the importance of building trust within the community by training officers to interact with empathy and professionalism. Prim also shares his views on integrating technology, such as virtual reality, into training to enhance scenario-based learning and better prepare officers for real-world situations.
About our guest
Hank Prim is a supervisory special agent with a state law enforcement agency, where he oversees the state’s standards and training section and serves as the state peace officers’ standards and training director. In this role, he directs the state’s sole police academy, manages law enforcement officer certifications and training, and supervises officer misconduct investigations. Prior to this position, Hank was assigned as a regional major-crime investigator. Hank grew up in the Chicago suburbs and graduated magna cum laude from Hillsdale College. He is currently pursuing his Master of Science degree in Law Enforcement & Public Safety Leadership from the University of San Diego. Connect with Hank on LinkedIn.
About our sponsor
This episode of the Policing Matters podcast is sponsored by Skydio. Learn more about how Skydio enhances public safety and operational efficiency by visiting Skydio.com.
Key takeaways
- Adaptation to Gen Z: Law enforcement agencies must adapt their recruitment and training strategies to meet the unique characteristics and expectations of Gen Z recruits.
- Community integration: Building trust within the community is essential, and this starts with training officers to interact with empathy and professionalism.
- Realistic training environments: Training programs should balance realism and stress without resorting to outdated high-stress methods, focusing instead on problem-solving and critical thinking.
- Technology in training: Integrating technologies like virtual reality can enhance scenario-based training, providing officers with valuable repetitions and experience in a controlled environment.
- Transparency in recruitment: Honest communication about the realities of the job during the recruitment process can help ensure that new officers are well-prepared and committed to their roles.
Read more from Hank Prim:
- ‘Do as we say, not as we do’: The unintended disconnect in police basic training
- Today’s police leadership paradigm: Toddlers leading babies
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: Hope you’re doing well, and I hope you’re taking a look at our YouTube videos as well. You can see me and my guest, and today we’re talking about recruiting. We seem to be talking a lot about recruitment for law enforcement. PERF recently came out with a publication that said things are looking up, that we’ve seen an improvement since pre-2020 levels. So that’s great; we’re looking forward to that. But we also need to talk about standards and training. Is Gen Z really that much different than previous generations? Should we be changing our tactics in recruiting and training? Well, our guest today has written some really terrific articles about both. Hank Prim is a supervisory special agent with the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, where he oversees the state standards and training section and serves as the state police officer training director, the POST director. In his role, he directs the state’s sole Police Academy, manages law enforcement officer certifications and training, and supervises officer misconduct investigations. Prior to his position, Hank was assigned as a regional major crime investigator. Hey, welcome to Policing Matters, Hank Prim.
Hank Prim: Thanks, Jim. I appreciate you having me.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, like I said, I love reading your stuff—very insightful. How are things going in South Dakota? Are you guys doing well in recruiting compared to the rest of the country? How’s it going there?
Hank Prim: I think we’re having the same struggles that everyone across the country is having here. Something unique about South Dakota is just how rural of a state we are. When you think that we’re one of the few states still under a million people, that means a lot of our agencies are smaller, maybe only one to five-man departments. I think the recruiting and retention crisis really hits those folks hard at home because, unlike some of our larger near peers or major cities, we don’t have the specialty units to lure candidates. We don’t have the resources or the funding, or many of our smaller agencies don’t, to attract with those hiring bonuses or pay incentives. All those things, in tandem with being a smaller rural environment that doesn’t always have the same services that a larger city has, feed into the challenges we have in South Dakota with recruitment and retention. I think the harder part is retention, which is how do we keep those officers in those smaller agencies knowing that they have more limited outlooks or resources, which just amplifies the front end of the pipeline, which is how do we recruit to fill those spots?
Jim Dudley: Yeah, on the flip side, though, you have people living in the community who might want to serve and work in the community. We’ve seen that on a lot of surveys lately, that there’s that underlying theme of wanting to give back, wanting to serve our community. So you’ve got that there, to be sure.
Hank Prim: I think that’s part of the reason why we’re a pretty supportive state of law enforcement in South Dakota. I think the big reason behind it is because many of our local police officers and sheriffs live in the communities that they serve in. They go to the grocery store with them, they go to church with them, their kids go to school with them. Having that direct connection to smaller communities lends to why we have the public trust and confidence that we have in South Dakota, as opposed to other places. That is a front-side recruiting pitch, but it also has its drawbacks. If you’re the lone police chief or your guys are two or three up, and you’re the only guy at Walmart shopping, you’re probably called in to deal with whatever’s going on at Walmart when you’re shopping with your family.
Jim Dudley: Oh yeah, yeah, been there. So you write about high-stress style policing and you discuss the pros and cons. What kind of feedback are you getting on those?
Hank Prim: It’s interesting; it’s kind of split across the board. In South Dakota, we are more of a low-stress academy, and I think it’s important to clarify when we talk high-stress, we’re talking very strong military underlying culture, a lot of yelling orders, a very rigid environment. That’s what we’re talking about with high-stress. We have stress in the academy; I don’t want you to think that we’re just skipping daisies in the field all day long. But that’s what we’re talking about with high-stress. About 10 or 15 years ago, we adopted that low-stress model, and I think it’s been successful here. A lot of it is just having conversations about what we’re doing differently than across the country. A lot of other training centers across the country are looking at this model as something new and different for them to look at or to at least improve what they’re doing already.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and when we talk about high-stress, we talk about policing as a paramilitary organization, right? We have a clear command structure: the chief at the top, the command staff, the middle management, and sergeants sometimes shouting orders at you. I recall my first day in my police academy. I bought a new suit for the occasion, got sworn in, and about half an hour later, I was doing push-ups in the parking lot and scuffed up my brand-new shoes, sweated through my suit that I probably never wore again after that. Are we transitioning away from that kind of induction, or are you still seeing those? Are you still seeing those really military-style, face-forward, don’t-look-sideways responses?
Hank Prim: I think a lot depends on where you’re at. Here in South Dakota, we’re pretty lucky that we have the sole Police Academy. So regardless of whether a trooper, a detective with the state police, a deputy, a police officer from the biggest agency, or the smallest agency, everyone’s coming here. So we have that continuity across the state, which I think is really valuable. It depends, again, where you’re at across the country, but I think where we’re seeing the tide turn is what is the educational or instructional value to what we’re doing. Officers are going to interact with the community how they’re instructed. It’s that modeling behavior that we see in the academy. If the way that we get people to comply all the time is by shouting orders at them, not having the ethos, pathos, logos to try to talk them down, if all they know is I get screamed and yelled at and told what to do, that’s going to translate into the field and on the road. That’s why we see officers who maybe come from more rigid training backgrounds very locked into the estel make, and I’m going to start screaming and yelling at you to get you what I need you to do, as opposed to doing what is obviously the best practice now, which is we want to talk to people. We want to gain voluntary compliance, which mitigates our use of force, mitigates excessive force complaints, and inevitably, I think, lowers our complaints against officers as well. Again, cops are going to police how they were taught. It’s just like a kid modeling the behavior of their parents. If they see that that’s how they’re guided and mentored in the academy, it’s going to directly translate back out to the street.
Jim Dudley: Right. You spoke Latin on me, and you got your ethos in there. Empathy is a trait that we often don’t signal to each other, and we really should, to the general public, maybe not to somebody we’re trying to wrestle and put handcuffs on, but empathy works both ways. It may give the community an idea of the difficult job of policing.
Hank Prim: Exactly. I think if we teach and model those skills in the academy when they’re new, fresh, and learning what these skills are, we’re modeling that for them here. It makes it far easier and less foreign for them when they get back out into the field. If we are treating each other with empathy, respect, and professionalism internal to our profession or vocation, I would argue that we’re far more likely to do the same when we’re back out in the field interacting with bad guys, good guys, victims, witnesses, because that’s just become an ingrained part of how we do business, because that’s what we were taught to do. I think where we get off on a tangent is people think it’s touchy-feely policing. That’s certainly not the case. When we talk in our academy, we are probably far more on the collegial, university-esque side of training, but we’re still putting our officers in stressful situations. It’s not like we’re saying that everything’s going to work out. We do an immense amount of time on scenario-based training and force-on-force and defensive tactics, emergency driving, where they’re having to translate and interconnect the communication, the professionalism skills that we want them to employ in the field. They’re having to interconnect that and juxtapose that with good tactics and knowing when it’s time to fight and knowing when it’s time to wrestle that guy and having to do it right. We’re making them go put hands on some guy, get him to the ground, but then do the dust-off and come back out on the back end and treat him just like we want them to treat each other at the end.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, there’s that sort of natural stress already built into the candidate who’s trying to come up with the best decision. No need to just keep piling it on. How should we be doing things differently? Is there a process that you’re teaching in South Dakota? Are you modeling it first for them? Are you walking through the policies and procedures behind it and then giving them an opportunity to give it a go?
Hank Prim: We break our academy down into three phases, and it’s very much a crawl-walk-run approach. That first phase is what we call our non-emergency patrol response. That’s where our officers are learning the day-to-day business of taking statements, writing reports, and working through the basics. Phase two is emergency, and phase three is investigative. We’re giving them those skills across the board, but we’re not just standing in front of the classroom and lecturing and telling them how to do it. It’s the concept of problem-based learning and really making them work together to get to the answer. Again, heavy communication, heavy discussion, heavy problem-solving, and case studies. Here’s the deal: cops learn best by talking through stuff and arguing and debating it. If you come into our classroom and you see our constitutional law class, that’s what they’re doing. They’re arguing whether something’s an effective use of Graham v. Connor or if something was objectively reasonable. They’re arguing about it, debating, and discussing it. At the end of the day, cops, like people, need to be good communicators, good problem solvers, and good critical thinkers. When I talk to chiefs and sheriffs, at least in our state and across the country, that’s what they say they need from their candidates: those three things. How do we make the classroom time just as beneficial where they’re learning those skills and honing those skills so when they get back into the field, they can do them? That’s what we’re modeling in the classroom, but on the flip side, we’re doing regular scenarios where they’re actually having to go do it. At the end of each phase, they’re evaluated on their scenario practicals. They actually pass or fail, and they can get kicked out of the academy for not passing a scenario and not doing it effectively how they’re supposed to. We’re putting them in those scenarios to not just problem-solve, discuss, and argue and get to the right answer, but we’re making them do it in a live field environment with simunition rounds and live force altercations where they have to do it right and then be able to explain the logic and, on the flip side, write a report on it to make sure they documented accurately, legitimately, and professionally. So we’re really looking at that full spectrum and that full pipeline of an officer’s call for service and things that they need to be able to do.
Jim Dudley: I love it—crawl, walk, run. We get to that run stage. I’ve been to training in Nevada, you know, RAD training where you’re in this environment, you’re in level A or B PPE, and they’ve got loud music and it’s dark and strobe lights and everything else. You’re trying to make your way through this thing. Are we getting to that level still, where we’re throwing so many distractions and raising the stress level? There’s got to be some way that we measure performance in stressful situations.
Hank Prim: Most definitely, and I think we would do a disservice if we didn’t. At the end of the day, it’s still a stressful job. We still have to go put hands on people. We still need to fight. We still need to be able to go into an active shooter situation and do it confidently. It’s building up to that because a lot of the folks we have come through the academy are either fresh out of college and maybe have limited life experience to stress or altercation or adversity, or are professionals using this as a second career. We have to find the happy medium. At the same time, we’re introducing them to things they probably never experienced in their life. In that crawl-walk-run phase with those scenarios, we’re building up to scenarios where they’re having to respond emergently and work through it, dealing with an active aggression situation. One of the things we added, or maybe reformed is a better way to put it, is in the final week of the academy, we call it the dynamic exercise. What we require the officers to do is exert themselves physically, demonstrate defensive tactics maneuvers under stress, successfully put someone in handcuffs, run around the building again, and then go have to do force altercations with simunitions and live fire. They’re being put into those situations, and a lot of the officers really benefit from that training and talk about how beneficial it is. We’re taking all the things that they’ve learned and all things that they have to do tactically and putting them into a real situation. In the grand scheme of things, it’s four minutes, but it feels like 40 minutes, and the students talk about how valuable that experience is. We’re still getting that stress inducement that they need to be able to experience before they get out into the field as well.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I mean, we did boxing in the academy, and like you said, a lot of individuals who maybe have seen a fight or saw it on TV, and then they experience it, and three minutes, like you said, you said four, I say three in a boxing ring is a super long time when somebody else is trying to throw a punch at you.
Hank Prim: Exactly. For a lot of those students that come through, like you said, this is their first time experiencing something to that level, and they’re gassed. I talk to them at the end of it, so I normally float back and forth between the beginning and the end. At the end, I ask them, “So, knowing what you know now, what are you going to do differently?” They always talk about physical fitness being important and continuing to update their skills and tactics because, for a lot of our deputies and our police officers, especially in our rural places, they’re lucky if backup’s 10 or 15 minutes away. They’re keeping that fight on for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes or longer while the nearest trooper or DCI agent or deputy or conservation officer is screaming towards them to help. Giving them that reality check of this is what you’re going to have to be capable of doing brings it home for them and unites all the different things that we’ve been teaching them over the previous weeks.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, it gives them a perspective, an introspective that they probably have never seen before, where they get themselves to those limits. We used to have the stylus test that said exactly what you said: run around a building, do all these things, and then try to write a simple sentence freehand with a pen, and you’re scribbling like you’re 95 years old. Sometimes it’s a wake-up call to these younger kids who say, “Holy smokes, I didn’t know I’d get like this.”
Hank Prim: I think it’s so much taking it that next step as well. Our crew spent a lot of time putting together and updating this to make it real-world and applicable. I see a lot of training evolutions where it’s, “Hey, we’re just going to gas you,” and you’re going to experience what it’s like to be gassed. But the reality is, after you fight that guy for 10 or 15 minutes or however long on the side of the road, you still got to put him in handcuffs. You still got to get him up. You still need to be able to defeat a gun grab. We’re gassing them, so to speak. We’re making them exert themselves physically to that point where they’ve probably never exerted themselves before. But then we’re saying, “Hey, you still got to put that guy in handcuffs. You still need to handcuff him legally and professionally, tactically sound in a way that’s not going to hurt him or hurt you.” That’s a significant wake-up call. The students do really well on it because they’re having to follow that through all the way to the conclusion of the disposition that they’re going to have to do in the street.
Jim Dudley: And what about virtual reality? I’m fresh back from Miami, the Axon conference, and I witnessed firsthand that virtual reality really feels real. I like it, and I know trainers will counter that there’s nothing like hands-on, real-life training. But the virtual reality is so good, and because you can use it for repetition, it could get the students to think about situations. How long do you talk to somebody who’s threatening to jump off a bridge? Try keeping up a conversation for three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes.
Hank Prim: To be sure, and I think where we can see that being implemented is if we’re looking at this as crawl-walk-run, and we’re looking at it as how do we get officers more repetitions to be successful. I think we use those or implant those along the pathway before you get to your force-on-force and your live scenarios. We’re setting them up for better success. It’s building those neural pathways where, “Hey, I’ve worked through a similar problem as this. I know I can do this or apply and go down these different branches.” Utilizing it that way is probably the most beneficial, at least through my eyes. The secondary, from the administrator perspective with virtual reality, you’re limiting the number of role players and staff that you need to get increased scenario reality-based repetitions that are so important. We’re a pretty heavily adjunct instructor-supported academy. We have over 100 adjuncts that come to support the basic academy every time we run it, which is three times a year, and that’s a lot. We’re asking agencies who are already short and already have burnt-out guys and girls to send their folks here to peer in the state capital for two or three days and spend eight or ten hours on their feet evaluating and teaching. That’s a heavy lift for them, and that’s where the best teaching comes from. But we can do that same thing more smartly, if we want to call it that, with virtual reality to give those more repetitions. When we get them to those hands-on scenarios, I can see that being a far more effective application and a better learning experience too.
Jim Dudley: Hank, what happens when Gen Z moves into leadership roles? Now, we talk about their training, and first, let me go back for a second because I don’t want to give the listeners the impression that we’re saying, “Hey, we’re going to change our uniforms to golf shirts and khaki shorts and lounge chairs and things like that.” I mean, you just gave a synopsis and a snapshot of still stressful situations, repetitive training, things like that. So, we’re not abandoning traditional methods altogether; we’re maybe modifying them so there’s a learning environment. Correct?
Hank Prim: Yeah, I think the best way to encapsulate it is let’s teach cops how they’re expected to treat others when they get into the field. Again, we want them to model good behavior. We want them to model the right thing to do, and it starts in the academy. Like I said, just like a kid models the behavior of their parents, a new officer is going to model the behavior and how they’re treated by senior officers. We’ve all heard the stories of the grizzled FTO who treats their trainee not the best, and we see how those types of experiences translate into that officer’s success, either through subsequent field training phases or once they get out on their own. The same thing applies in the academy. It’s about modeling the behavior correctly, so we treat them the right way but at the same time give them that dose of reality and teach them the skills they need to be successful. Juxtaposing that with communication skills, problem-solving, critical thinking that we’re making them do maybe in the untraditional way of discussion and problem-based learning and case studies to get them to that point through kind of that crawl-walk-run approach.
Jim Dudley: For sure. Okay, so now we have a candidate this year, and they get through the academy, they do a great job, we get them into field training, they become a certified police officer. In year three, maybe the first time they get to take a sergeant’s test, or maybe they’re going to be a corporal at their agency, how do we prepare them for the next leadership role?
Hank Prim: It’s such an interesting side effect of where we’re at today. My dad just retired; he did about 40 years in law enforcement. Hearing how law enforcement was in 1985 in the Chicago suburbs versus 2024 in South Dakota, it’s funny to have those conversations. My dad got his sergeant stripes in 1997 and had been on the road for 12 years working the street before he got his stripes. Now we’re in an environment, and I’m a product of that, where that four or five-year officer or agent or investigator or trooper is becoming an FTO, being a supervisor, running programs. It’s something that we really haven’t seen before. I think it gets rooted in the lack of repetition. Take my dad, for instance. He had 12 years of handcuffing and fighting and investigations and interviews and every problem under the sun. Well, now we’re truncating that experience from 12 years to three. I would offer that the best way for us to equip those Gen Z officers for those positions is by starting early. It seems like the traditional trend has been we’re going to wait to send you to a supervisor school or a leadership school until you get the promotion, you get the stripes, you get the position. Every officer is a leader, so if we want them to start with that, Jim, I think you’ve talked about that soul leadership beginning in the squad car, and that translates to the trainee, which translates to your shift or your squad or your division. Those skills are going to be incredibly applicable and helpful to them whether they’re by themselves or leading. Starting that formalized training early, but secondly, is giving them the challenge so they can train themselves. I was really fortunate to have some really great mentors when I started as an investigator, and they challenged me by trusting me, giving increasingly complex investigations to work, managing critical incidents or helping manage scenes. Getting that experience early on builds those pathways, builds that experience, and builds that book of knowledge or that book of experiences so they have something to fall back on and begin that early so we don’t wait till they’re already sitting in the seat making the decisions. Begin that earlier on will only serve them better down the road.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, every promotional test I took, I felt like I prepared myself for the role before I took the test. I’ll hear from other peers who say, “I never studied.” What do you think’s going to happen once you, if you, per chance get that role? I think today’s generation, talking to my colleague Janay Gasparini from SUNY and her academy there in New York, this is a generation that asks a lot of questions, and maybe traditional FTOs or sergeants might see that as confronting, but really, they’re curious, and they want to know how things work. How’s that work in leadership? Should sergeants be taking these guys for ride-alongs and explaining how they do and what they do and why they do it?
Hank Prim: I think you hit the point spot on. I wrote about that in my article on Police1, where it’s bringing them to the table early, giving them that experience and exposure to what happens behind that supervisory or administrative curtain within reason, obviously. If we’re talking about new cops modeling the behavior of senior officers or folks with experience, then what better way for them to be injected with that knowledge and experience than by letting them see it firsthand? Giving them that exposure takes them out of just that single squad car mindset and really broadens their view. They’re seeing things more strategically. They see their decisions not just within the small silo of handling this call for service but within the scope of how does this impact my shift when I’m answering a call or handling something this way? How does it impact professional standards if they get a complaint on me from how I handle this? How does this impact our community relations folks who have to come clean up the mess that maybe we make because of a decision that we make on the street? By bringing them to the table, they’re seeing things more than just the scope of the department or the agency as a whole versus just what’s in my windshield when I answer a call and go from call to call.
Jim Dudley: So we’ve got them on the street; they’re autonomous now, they’re acting on their own. Are we shifting to their desire? We talked a little bit about homegrown cops serving their community. Are we having them more integrated with the community, being more empathetic? Are we working on their desire to have a work-life balance? Are we ever going to go to job sharing? Are we going to be Google policing from here on out?
Hank Prim: I think we’re on the path to obviously doing better when it comes to that. What I think we need to remember, though, is when we’re amidst this recruitment and retention crisis, which means shifts are short, units are short, we still have to give officers the time to do their job and to do it well. At the end of the day, community relations are built on time, and community credibility and trust are rooted in time. If we have our officers going from call to call to call to call and we’re not giving them the time or the space to interact and do that call well, then we’re thwarting all those community relations efforts because that’s the tip of the spear. Those are the folks that the community is interacting with. I think we’re getting more creative with how we give officers that time, whether it be civilianized functions that are typically not enforcement-based and don’t require a sworn officer to do, being more creative with how we take reports, how we handle calls for service. At the end of the day, that officer in the patrol car or those two officers in that patrol car, when they go to a call, they have the time to work through it and work through it well to really build those relational trusts and credibility meanings with the community member that they’re interacting with. That’s just amplified by officers living in their community. Where I think we need to pump the brakes a little bit is sometimes I fear we are overselling the profession without always giving the same doses of reality. We’ve been on such a recruitment push for the last five or six years trying to get officers into this career path. We’re saying, “Hey, we’re going to give you a $5,000 hiring bonus, we’re going to give you a take-home car, you’re going to drive fast, you’re going to shoot guns, you’re going to go train, we’re going to do all these things for you.” It sounds really cool and awesome, and it is the best job in the world, but on the flip side, we’re not educating them about the realities, which is at the end of the day, it’s just part of the job. You’re going to get called out, you’re going to work midnights, you’re going to deal with dead bodies and really tragic violent crime scenes. If we’re not giving them the full dose of reality, I wonder sometimes if by overselling it and not giving that transparent view simultaneously of what this job actually is, we’re only amplifying the recruitment and retention issue because we’re seeing officers, even in our academy, get lured in with the strong promises and awesome opportunities and good pay. I think pay is getting better, especially here in South Dakota. They get brought in with that; they love the idea of it. They get halfway through the academy, and we’ve had the conversation even in our recent academy classes where a new student comes in and goes, “I’m not sure this job’s right for me.” Inevitably, it’s that force-on-force situation that we have them go through where they have a gun shoved in their face, or they have to pull their gun and shoot someone else or fight the guy into compliance or handcuffs. That’s the moment for them where they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t like this.” We’re taking that spot then where we’ve spent three or four or maybe even a year of training time to get that person where they need to be, only for them to realize, “This isn’t what I want to do,” and then we’re back at square one all over again to hire, place, train, and hopefully get them on the street. We have to make sure that we’re not overcompensating one way or the other.
Jim Dudley: I totally agree with you, and I think it goes back to building empathy and showing them what the job’s really about from the onset, from the recruitment standpoint.
Hank Prim: One agency had a really clever part of their application process that I saw, and it’s called the “Realities Document.” They sell you, they talk to you about everything, they sell the agency to you, talk about how awesome it is. But before you can get hired, they give you this two-page sheet, and it’s the “Realities Document.” By each point, it says, “I understand that I’m going to be called out, and that I’m going to be working nights and weekends and holidays sometimes,” and you have to initial it. The other one is, “I understand I’m going to be exposed to kids who are exposed to really traumatic and violent events.” “I recognize this is part of my job.” Initial. I thought that was really clever because, again, we’re being very transparent about what this job is. It’s the best job in the world. I love being a police officer. My family are cops. This is the greatest job in the world, but we still have to be honest about it to make sure that we’re bringing in the right people who want to do the job for the same reasons with the same understandings that we do.
Jim Dudley: Yep, I agree with you. Best job I ever had. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The last thing I want to talk about is the community effect. In my classes, I talk about Sir Robert Peel, 1829, coming up on an important anniversary. The three things I stress most are building trust with the community and prevention of crime, as opposed to proving our worth by making arrests. Those two things really go hand in hand, building trust with the community and using our efforts for prevention methods. Are we going to achieve that with building empathy and being more transparent with our communities?
Hank Prim: I do. Again, it goes back to we need to make sure that we give our officers the time to do those things. We can say it, we can put it on a sheet of paper, we can talk about it in the media, but if we’re not actually going to do it and give our officers the time and autonomy to do it, then it’s hollow words. We need to make sure that we’re actually living by what we say and equipping the officers with the time and resources to be able to do it because they’ll do it. They do it happily. They do a great job doing it. They always impress all of us, but we have to equip them with the time and space to do it.
Jim Dudley: Hey, great things you’re doing there in sunny South Dakota. Hank Prim, Supervisory Special Agent with the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation and POST Academy Director. I look forward to seeing your articles, and yeah, I’m learning a lot from them as well. Thanks for taking time to talk with us today.
Hank Prim: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Jim Dudley: We’re going to link a couple of your articles down below in the show notes so our listeners and our viewers can check you out, find out more about what you’re talking about, and maybe how to contact you to replicate what you’re doing in South Dakota at other spots across the country. Hey, to our listeners, drop me a line. Let me know what you’re thinking. What do you think about our training? Should we be making this paradigm shift from the military-style high-stress environment to a more learning environment, not so much casual, but the crawl-walk-run phases of training that Hank just talked about? Let me know. Drop me a line at policingmatters@police1.com. Stay safe.
