BACKGROUND
The MindMarks team has providing bias mitigation training to over 60,000 police officers, including but not limited to the: Los Angeles PD, Philadelphia PD, Seattle PD, Phoenix PD, Atlanta PD, King County (WA) Sheriff's Dept, and many others. We have also provided training to federal agencies, school resource officers, public transportation officers, corrections officers, and non-sworn law enforcement personnel.

As a result of a series of trainings with a national set of law enforcement leaders at the White House in partnership with the Dept of Justice's 21st Century Policing Program, Dr. Marks created a custom bias awareness and mitigation training for police officers. This innovative and engaging training has received very positive reviews from rank and file and senior officers across the country. The training includes key elements of our Implicit Bias Awareness and Implicit Bias Mitigation trainings. Although the description below reflects our training with police officers, we can adjust the content for many other law enforcement entities 

LEARNING GOALS

This training addresses the following questions: 

1. What is implicit bias?

2. What does implicit bias look like in the real world?

3. Why does implicit bias exist?

4. How is implicit bias identified?

5. How does implicit bias affect the target of bias?

6. How does implicit bias affect community-police interactions and outcomes?

7. How can implicit bias be reduced at the individual and organizational levels?

8. How can we reduce the impact of implicit bias on the interactions between ethnic minorities and police ?

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TRAINING INCLUDES:

• Overview of implicit bias research and key findings 


• Innovative, engaging, and motivational delivery of content 


• Highly interactive and introspective exercises 


• Small group dialogue of sensitive topics related to community policing 


• The use of compelling videos, images, and other media 


• Overview of national data related to community policing 


• Discussion of biases toward police held some segments of the community 


• Description of specific recommendations from the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing report that are likely to reduce biased policing 


• Anonymous audience polling and display of results in real-time. Responses are used as a basis for discussing sensitive topics and to allow participants to see how their attitudes or experiences compare to others. These results are saved as graphs and provided to the client.

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FORMAT

• In-person 1 - 4 hours

• Live Webinar: 1 - 4 hours

• Online Learning Management System (coming soon)

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WHY SHOULD WE RECEIVE IMPLICIT BIAS TRAINING FROM MINDMARKS INSTEAD OF OUR INTERNAL TRAINING DIVISION? 

While we believe that IB trainers and officers should work together on the application of recommended policing practices toward reducing bias in specific policing situations, we also believe that the introduction and framing of IB should be provided by IB professionals. It is a very sensitive topic, that if not handled appropriately, can worsen situations or cause officers to shut down.

 

• Expertise. It will be very difficult for internal training officers to master the vast body of IB research and the many related social psychology concepts related to it in a short period of time. Dr. Marks has been studying IB and related concepts for over twenty years, is personally acquainted with the leaders in the field, and has designed and refined MindMarks' IB trainings during the course of the hundreds of trainings he and MindMarks has provided. Because IB is a sensitive topic, and some officers may feel they are being accused of being racist simply by being asked to attend the training, participants will sometimes challenge the science behind implicit bias. The training officer is unlikely to have read and understood all of the key peer-reviewed articles, and the research methodology and statistical analysis within them, that will allow them to adequately answer certain questions.

 

• Focus. Officers in the training division typically provide training in multiple areas, which decreases the likelihood of them being able to focus on IB. IB is MindMarks' primary training topic. We provide IB training five to six days a week, totaling over 400 trainings per year. In our experience, the typical training division will offer department-wide IB training every 2-3 years.

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• Turnover. Officers may leave the training division via transfer, promotion, or resignation. Because officers can transition in and out of the training division, there will be a consistent need to retrain new officers to provide the IB training, which can turn out to be more expensive than bringing in MindMarks. It will likely take three cycles of department-wide training on IB before a training officer can provide high-level IB training based upon content mastery. This could take six to nine years for departments that are on a 2 to 3-year cycle. In other words, many officers will not be in the training division long enough to put in the hundreds of hours necessary to have a modest level of mastery on the research, best practices, and delivery of the IB content.

 

• Follow-up. A thorough understanding of IB and implementation of the recommended best practices take time, structure, and accountability. While some police departments view IB as a one-time “check the box” experience for their officers, the goal of other departments is to actually change the attitudes and behavior of their officers. In our experience, very few police departments have the human or financial resources necessary to manage and monitor the implementation of practices shown to reduce bias. In the near future, MindMarks will provide clients with several months of free access to our online learning management system that will facilitate the implementation of recommended best practices and monitor officer’s progress.​

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