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	While academicians, politicians and police administrators have all acknowledged the shortcomings of traditional police education in this country since the 1800s, little has been done to bring meaningful, affordable and accessible change to municipal police department training. In 1992, however, the New Haven, Connecticut police department attempted to address these shortcomings by redesigning the mission and methods with which its police academy students are identified, selected and developed. We decided, as police theorist George L. Kelling has said, to "dismantle policing's sacred cow," the entry-level police training academy.
1990-1992: FROM BIG AND TOUGH TO LISTENING AND CARING	In the winter of 1992, Nicholas Pastore was beginning the second year of his controversial, unconventional tenure as police chief in New Haven. As a lifetime resident and member of the city's police department from 1962 to 1988, Pastore was familiar with New Haven and had served in virtually all its police functions, from patrol officer to chief of the bureaus of detectives, organized crime and intelligence. When he returned to lead the department in 1990, he stepped into a situation all too familiar in contemporary American cities. There was every imaginable variation on civil and social disorder: aggressive panhandling, street prostitution, graffiti, a well-organized urban gang culture, race and class tension, substance abuse, an alarming number of homicides and infant mortality and the highest per capita rate of HIV infection in New England. From the beginning, Pastore's stand, backed by the mayor who had appointed him, John Daniels (and later by his successor, Mayor John DeStefano, Jr.), was not only that the situation was bad, but that police were part of the problem. He maintained that what the police were doing and how they were doing it were clearly not working, and that the "new" community-based policing philosophy (not yet considered a strategy) was the only viable alternative. He considered the city's police department inefficient, top heavy and disproportionately male and white and he didn't hesitate to say so. His plan for reform consisted of nothing less ambitious than civilianizing, decentralizing, re-educating, humanizing and completely integrating the 417 sworn member New Haven Police Department . The steps Pastore took and what came to pass as a result of his leadership are the stuff of another paper. Suffice it to say here that absolutely central to the many courageous changes made by Pastore early in his term was the dismantling of the department's training academy. This act was crucial, according to Pastore, because the academy stood for the perpetuation of a militaristic tradition which, he believed, could only worsen the "us vs. them" relationship which already existed between the police and the people of the city. To Pastore, the transition to community policing was an acknowledgment of the growing complexity of the role of the officer. It was no longer enough to be big, strong, male and tough. Instead, reading, writing, talking, listening, solving problems, caring about people, being part of the community, being "nice," and acting respectfully to felons as well as to elected leaders were now what the job was to entail and what needed to be taught in school. Soon it would be more important to know the number for the local drug treatment clinic than the statute number of the drug violation. As the department began its transformation to a collaborative, interactive community policing agency, the new chief reasoned that the changing job description would require that a different type of individual be taught new skills in different ways. Pastore initiated a simple but dramatic plan for redefining training in New Haven: Return the eight sworn training instructors in the department's existing paramilitary academy to patrol duty Launch a search for a civilian education director with academic and programming credentials as well as strong ties to community issues and groups; Empower the director with command staff authority, to report only to the chief; Charge the new academy with graduating first-rate officers committed to solving community problems rather than exacerbating them. In March of 1992 I was recruited as the New Haven Police Department's (NHPD) director of training and education and was promptly informed that the New Haven Police Academy's first class was to begin no later than June of that same year.
1992: FIREARMS TO FOOTNOTES	In the hectic and exciting weeks before the opening of the first academy class, several important decisions were made: Sergeant (then Officer) Nicholas Proto, a veteran training and firearms instructor, was assigned to assist me in the planning and administration of the new academy. During these important early days Proto was my only staff. We two developed our mission statement and goals with the full participation and support of the chief. In order to demilitarize the academy while working within the confines of state requirements and department time constraints, we decided that the academy structure and atmosphere should be that of a university. For the traditional recruit rules and regulations manual we substituted the more "collegiate" New Haven Police Academy Student Handbook, emphasizing the importance of academics, original research, communication skills, critical thinking, community involvement and officer discretion and dialogue. Because we repeatedly stressed inclusion and respect, the student handbook opened with the department's anti-sexual harassment and discrimination policy which, in an unprecedented move, had been issued jointly by the union and the chief the previous year. The order prohibits harassment and discrimination based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation and promises zero tolerance in dealing with transgressions. We replaced disciplinary calisthenics with assignments in research and writing. We added to state mandates a host of classes and workshops including Non-Violent Alternative Dispute Resolution; Community Mediation and Problem-Solving; Children's Responses to Parental Arrest; Bias and Hate Crimes; Violence Against Women; HIV and AIDS; the New Haven Needle Exchange Program; Diversity Issues; Sex Industry Workers; Elder Abuse; Police and the Hearing, Memory and Sight Impaired; Seizure Disorders and Mental Illness and Homelessness. We made the decision not to confine the "community policing philosophy" to a simple course on community policing; instead, we attempted to infuse collaboration, inclusion and partnership into every lesson plan through every instructor. The philosophy and commitment were to be pervasive. We planned to get students (no longer known as recruits, cadets or trainees) out of the classroom and into the community as much as possible so that, for instance, classes on homelessness would be held in shelters and students would prepare and share meals in area soup kitchens with the people from and about whom they were to learn. We replaced militaristic or sexist language with terms that were more accurately descriptive of the changing agency: police department for police force, officers for men, staffing instead of manning, and so on. Continuing the theme of the importance of language, we weighed written and verbal communication along with firearms and defensive tactics. We planned frequent use of structured role plays, with students and faculty researching and acting the parts of officers and citizens in classes that ranged from Mock Trial to Emergency Medical Skills. We created the academy term project requirement in which students working with a community or department advisor were evaluated on their ability to do original research, write an academic paper and present, defend or debate their project. Issues included images of policing in the media, truancy, firearms and less-than-lethal technology, effects of domestic violence on child witnesses, and race and gender in policing. We initiated Peer Evaluation and faculty Performance Review components and met regularly with students to discuss their academic progress as well as their attitudes and particular styles of interacting with the rest of the class. We scheduled a series of Chief's Seminar Lunches, having Chief Pastore and Yale behavioral psychiatrist Theodore Zanker discuss with students current concerns such as the Rodney King trial as well as current local and world events. * We devised a lively midterm examination in the format of the popular Jeopardy game-show, testing quick recall and comprehension in all academy and outside subject areas. We raised the passing academy grade from the 70% required by the Connecticut Police Officer Standards and Training (POST, formerly MPTC) Council to 80%, and limited the number of make-up exams available in any subject area to one. Because community policing is also about the community doing its part, we recruited faculty and consultants from a rich and diverse pool including Yale University's Schools and Departments of Law, Medicine, Psychiatry, Divinity, Public Health, Social Policy and Child Study; Harvard's JFK School of Government; the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP; the Connecticut Criminal Law Foundation; the Domestic Violence Training Project; the New Haven Needle Exchange Program; the St. Germain Group; AIDS Project New Haven, the New Haven State's Attorney's Office; the Young Adult Board of Police Commissioners, as well as from veteran New Haven police officers. Because of time constraints, we eliminated the physical training requirement and planned to evaluate the effect of this move on performance and morale.
1993: WHAT WE LEARNED	While I was confident that our 1992 class graduated with a better education than they could have received at other police academies, it was clear there was yet more work to do. As we reviewed the successes and failures of that first session, several things were clear: Seventeen consecutive weeks are too few for an academy. Forty consecutive hours per week are too many for students to learn and retain information, theoretical and practical skills. Teaching must be made as experiential, interactive and participatory as possible. Faculty must be masters of their subjects, committed to community policing, able to work with individuals in other disciplines and, above all, good teachers. Students must be able to read, speak and write well. They must be committed to community policing and be able to work with other people. Physical stature, strength and love of adventure are not necessarily reliable predictors of good performance either in the academy or on the street. Maturity, life experience, communication skills and the ability to deal with stress all are. Racial, cultural and ideological diversity among both students and faculty are crucial for the kind of learning experience we want our students to have in the academy. Careful screening for language proficiency is imperative. Despite the fact it is largely ignored by most departments after academy graduation, physical training is, nonetheless, extremely important for promoting fitness, discipline and teamwork. Attitude and demeanor must be considered as carefully as academic achievement in evaluating academy students. Pre-academy psychological profiles must be more in- depth. The role of discipline in creating a balance between creative problem solving and the ability to follow rote orders needs more study. (Again, this is the topic of a forthcoming paper.)
1993-1994: WHY WE POSTPONED USING WHAT WE LEARNED, OR, BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS	Valuable as all this information was, major academy revisions based on it were put on hold in 1993-94. This period was, instead, spent on several other training projects: developing and running The demands on the Division of Training and Education during this period were great. I had lobbied and now received approval for another full-time sworn member and one administrative assistant. We began to recertify approximately 500 New Haven and other area officers in the required topics of penal code, firearms, juvenile and domestic and sexual violence. In addition, Sergeant Proto and I added to the state's "human relations" inservice training requirements a course in the Yale Child Study Community Policing Program, which teaches our officers to identify and refer young witnesses of violence to a specially trained interdisciplinary crisis intervention team. With faculty from the Yale School of Medicine, we developed an inservice program on "special populations," exploring police interactions and referrals for citizens with memory and seizure disorders. We added inservice classes on problem solving and decision making, diversity, HIV/AIDS and the Americans with Disabilities Act. We replaced mace, the nightstick and blackjack with the less aggressive OC pepper spray and PR-24 defense baton, and instruction in the non-violent management of aggressive behavior (MOAB). Courses on American Sign Language, Emergency Spanish for Police and Introduction to Computers were offered to sworn and civilian department members alike, and tuition reduction and full scholarship educational incentive agreements were made available in local graduate and undergraduate university programs. Among the Training Division's most successful ventures during this time were the presentation of several national and regional conferences such as Police and the Black Family; Domestic Violence: Rethinking Police and Community Roles and Cops and Kids: the Talk Show. We also initiated an annual police and community awards recognition ceremony at the prestigious Shubert Performing Arts Center, complete with a promotional video and our own New Haven Police Department Top 10 presentations, which immediately became a department tradition. Each of these efforts was produced in collaboration with a wide variety of grassroots groups and educational institutions, thereby helping expand the department's community base as well as identify faculty and topics for upcoming academy classes. When it came time to recruit for future academy classes, the Division of Training and Education was ready.
1994: OUTREACH AND EDUCATION	In the Spring of 1994 Nicholas Pastore entrusted the department's recruitment outreach to my division. This was serendipitous. With the help of Yale University doctoral candidate Andrew Rich, we had just begun a campaign to reach several New Haven populations who were disproportionately victimized by hate crimes. Rich, representing Yale's Institute of Social and Policy Studies, was continuing the work begun by a committee I had chaired for the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners before my appointment as training director, the Special Subcommittee on Bias Incidents and Hate Crime. One of our strategies was to identify formal and informal leaders in communities of various races, religions, ethnicities and sexual orientations. This information became highly valuable in organizing focus groups to also attract an officer candidate pool of the populations the department was especially interested in hiring: mature women, African Americans, Hispanics, single parents, lesbians and gay men from New Haven. Our intent was to have the department more accurately represent the people we protect and serve, as well as to remedy traditional The promotional methods we used were classic community outreach strategies, but, nonetheless unusual for a municipal police department. Flyers and brochures were posted in locations such as colleges, banks, laundromats, daycare centers, hairdressers, gyms and supermarkets. The recruitment slogan was Police Others as You Would Have Others Police You. We put announcements in church and synagogue bulletins and had female, African American, Hispanic and other department members speak at social and religious group events. At theaters we inserted recruitment flyers into programs. We postered bus stops and train stations and had every special interest group we could find spread the word. Our budget permitted very little paid advertising but we managed to get community announcements and feature articles in English and Spanish in local newspapers including Hispanic, African-American and gay and lesbian publications, as well as public service announcements on cable television and many local and regional radio stations. We sent messages on the Internet. New Haven has a population of approximately 125,000 people, with a large concentration of African-Americans and Hispanics and a small but growing number of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. Despite the modest size of the Training Division and budget limitations, our outreach to New Haven women, people of color and those of all sexual orientations was rewarding. Over a ten day period, approximately 1800 people came to the department to receive applications for 40 available police officer positions. We were especially pleased with the unprecedented increase in the number of forms completed by African-American, Hispanic and women applicants. At the NHPD between the years 1990 and 1995, the number of women alone increased from a mere 2% to 14%, impressive and encouraging but still too low to reach Pastore's goal of critical mass.
1995-1996: POLICE ACADEMIES I - V	Nineteen ninety-five for us was The Year of the Academy and we took what at times became the overwhelming step of beginning four new academy classes in one calendar year. My still small but truly dedicated full-time staff now consisted of Administrative Assistant Terrance McKiver, Training Officer Roger Young and Academy Executive Officer Sergeant Nicholas Proto, a gifted as well as racially and culturally diverse team. Our faculty included distinguished members such as Yale Law and Psychiatry professor Madelon Baranoski, former police officer and attorney Elliot Spector, former Connecticut Chief State's Attorney John Kelly, forensics expert Henry Lee urban policing scholar George Kelling, New Haven State's and Assistant State's Attorney Michael Dearington and Cecilia Wiederhold and retired New Haven Police Sergeant Carol Marci, now a member of the Domestic Violence Training Project. To this stellar group we were fortunate to be able to add Ana-Maria Garcia from the state capital, who helped us explore issues of race and culture in a meaningful way, and Susan Stanley, who brought an invaluable psychodrama teaching background to the curriculum. We decided that beginning in 1995 academy education would include physical training classes, but the biggest change made was the expansion of the use of interactive teaching methods and the emphasis on communication skills. With Stanley's help and expertise, we determined to deal with what Chief Pastore often refers to as the "us against them mentality" inherent in traditional American paramilitary policing. We found ways to develop language and communication skills that would help officers defuse difficult street situations without violence. The plan was to permeate the academy curriculum with our own carefully structured and presented improvisations, using academy faculty and staff as actors and having students be either unwitting observers or intentional participants. So, for example, a class discussion on search and seizure was suddenly interrupted by Stanley and Young casually entering, having a brief (pre-scripted) conversation with the instructor, and surreptitiously removing his or her watch from the instructor's desk before leaving the room. The class was then informed that the instructor had just called the police and that the students were the responding officers. They were permitted to question the instructor/complainant as a group and then individually complete department Case Incident Report forms. The forms were graded and subsequently reviewed by instructors and students together. Similarly, carefully constructed and occasionally rather boisterous domestic violence and bias crime arguments "erupted" among faculty and staff during Motor Vehicle Law, Stress Management and PR-24 classes, again requiring that students develop their powers of observation as well as conversational and report writing skills. These teaching methods also encourage students to use their imagination and knowledge to connect the lessons they've learned, explore how theory and practice meld and experience how important social and ethical issues arise in even the most seemingly innocuous situations. A variation on this scripted role play was using students and veteran department members to participate themselves in the improvisations. Obviously, role plays and improvisations are not new adult learning techniques, but in police training, too often, they are relegated to one or two hastily conceived practical skills sessions which are poorly performed, monitored and evaluated. We believe that, if properly prepared and presented, this technique takes advantage of our wide variety of community faculty and presenters and involves the class profoundly in the learning process. Students are many times more likely to understand and remember legal concepts and responsibilities, as well as to empathize with subjects and citizens in these class situations more than they would in a traditional lecture, or even lecture/discussion.
1996: WHAT THIS COSTS	It will come as no surprise that interactive learning techniques, expert faculty members and community field placements are substantially more expensive, initially, than traditional academy training. They are time and labor intensive and require well trained and educated instructors, consultants and facilitators from a wide variety of racial, ethnic and educational backgrounds. Faculty must be adventurous and willing to work with us in adapting their materials and styles. Qualified people take time to find and train; they cost money and require substantial time to prepare, present and follow-up on their work. We have recently submitted a grant proposal to the federal government to fund this kind of interactive education in the area of domestic violence. Funding would allow for the development of written curriculum modules, community focus groups, videotape equipment to critique academy student and dispatcher improvisations as well as an ongoing evaluation component.
1996 AND BEYOND: WHERE WE WANT TO BE IN FIVE YEARS	As community policing evolves in our department and throughout the country, so too does the New Haven Police Academy. Five years from now we hope our promotional materials will include descriptions similar to these: The Police College of New Haven (PCNH) is a small, competitive institution of higher learning offering two- and four-year degree programs to qualified individuals interested in basing their policing careers on a solid liberal arts, communications-oriented course of study. Because the New Haven Police Department and the City of New Haven believe that better educated officers police better, the College has been created with the following goals: To raise the educational level of NHPD members; To increase the number of women and people of color in the department; To take advantage of community resources and make the department's educational resources available to the community; To encourage and facilitate continuing education through graduate school arrangements with Yale's School of Management, Child Study Center, School of Law, School of Public Health, Department of Psychiatry and Institute for Social and Policy Studies.
PCNH College Degree Granting and NHPD Application Procedures	The role of police officer has expanded beyond the concept of mere "law enforcement," and today's community policing officers must be capable of subtle and broad degrees of discretion and decision-making/problem solving skills. The experience and maturity gained in successfully completing two years of the New Haven Police College are necessary prerequisites for applying for an internship at the New Haven Police Department (NHPD). Graduates of the two-year program who have maintained a minimum 3.0 grade point average may be considered for the two-year NHPD internship position. After successful completion (also 3.0 minimum) of the internship, PCNH graduates may apply for the position of probationary police officer at the NHPD (or at any other police department). Applicants will then undergo state mandated psychological, medical, agility, polygraph and other qualifying examinations.
PCNH Entrance Requirements	Entrance into the college is highly competitive and the curriculum rigorous. Applicants are urged to carefully review the course schedule including reading and viewing lists, community service field placements, independent study, research and term project requirements. Applicants must be at least 18 years-of-age at time of PCNH application, hold a high school diploma or GED and pass qualifying reading comprehension and writing proficiency screening.
Campus	The main campus of PCNH is located on approximately 35 wooded acres on the New Haven/Hamden town line. It includes several renovated carriage houses for classes and seminars, three fully-equipped computer laboratories with simulated learning capabilities for discretion and decision making as well as motor skills education, the extensive Arnold Markle Police College Library and Media Center, the college's outdoor shooting range and Computer Aided Firearms (CAF) studios, the Ruth Bader Ginsberg Mock Trial and Practical Skills Performance Center and an all-weather defensive driving practice area. Also in the main campus area are our administrative offices, student and fitness centers, faculty house and horse stables.
Tuition and Fees	Students are responsible for paying all administrative tuition, book, laboratory, equipment and graduation fees.
Financial Aid, Scholarships and Public Service Fellowships	A wide variety of financial aid options are available to applicants, ranging from partial tuition reimbursement and work study programs to the City of New Haven Public Service Fellowships, where the City pays the student's tuition and fees in exchange for years of police service in New Haven (AB degree = 5 years work; BA degree = 10 years of work). A student failing to complete the requisite number of work years will be responsible for repaying the City of New Haven for his or her education.
Remedial Classes	Occasionally, an applicant will show great potential for becoming an excellent police officer but will lack adequate reading and writing skills to participate in the program. In such areas, appropriate remedial instruction will be offered and the student will be admitted on a strictly probationary basis. Credit from this instruction will not be applicable to any PCNH degree.
Flexible (Swing) Schedules	All courses of study are full-time. Classes will be offered on a swing schedule with the same classes taught by the same instructors, meeting at day and evening hours. Students may attend either class according to their
Core Curriculum	Our core curriculum includes Constitutional Law, Principles of Order Maintenance, Non-Violent Management of Aggressive Behavior (MOAB) Evolving Strategies of Policing, Computer Aided Dispatch, Use and Misuse of Police Force, Race and Gender in Policing, Community Organizing, Public Speaking, Motor Vehicle Law, Patrol Procedures in Community Policing, Conversational Spanish, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Problem Solving and Analytical Thinking, Firearms, Defensive Tactics, Less-Than-Lethal Technology, The Judicial System, Note Taking and Report Writing, Strategic Planning and Department Policy, Physical Fitness and Sports Preparation, Images of Policing in Film, Planning and Facilitating Meetings, Theories of Violence Prevention, The Politics of Policing, Children in Urban Society, New Haven Government, Truancy Prevention, Penal Code, the Gay Officers Action League, Accessing Community Resources, Drug Referral 101, The Dynamics of Domestic Violence, Communities Affected by Bias and Hate, Street Sex Workers, Rap and Other Important Musical Phenomena, Motor Vehicle Law, and Working with the Prosecution.
Focus	The development of student language, research, discretionary and organizing skills will be stressed. Community involvement will be key.
Applicants Sought	While all qualified students are encouraged to apply, to best reflect our community the Police College is especially interested in attracting women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and those of all sexual orientations who live or plan to reside in New Haven. Bilingualism is an especially desirable trait.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND STAFF
K.D. Codish is director of training and education at the New Haven, Connecticut Police Department; since 1992 she has also been director of its New Haven Police Academy. Previously, she served for six years as director of Yale University's Office for Women in Medicine and subsequently as education director for AIDS Project New Haven.

(c) 1996 K.D. Codish, New Haven Police Academy, One Union Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut 06519 USA.

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