Strategies for Youth  

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Training Services for Officers & Youth

“When all you have is a hammer in your pocket, everything is going to look like a nail.”

Chief Harold Hurtt of the Houston Police Department

“The Academy teaches us  how to arrest kids and interrogate them within the bounds of the law. We don’t really have any other tools for dealing with kids besides common sense and arrest.”

Massachusetts Sargeant, 2008

TrainingIf your department’s relationship with youth:

  • is negatively affecting the department’s reputation in the community,
  • resulting in high rates of use of force,
  • causing an increase in juvenile arrests for minor infractions which courts are dismissing,
  • provoking frustration among officers and complaints from parents,
  • causing strife and tension in the department…

Then you may want to consider a training customized for your department, your officers, and your youth from Strategies for Youth, because better understanding leads to insight and use of police tactics to:

  • Stop situations from escalating
  • Increase officer safety and security
  • Reduce adversarial relationships between youth and officers
  • Reduce unnecessary arrests of youth for minor infractions
  • Update departmental regulations to national standards for treatment of youth
  • Increase community support of police department.

TrainingImpacts

  • Reduced juvenile arrests
  • Reduced complaints of unreasonable, excessive use of force
  • Reduced claims of racial animus in police conduct
  • Improved organization of police resources to focus proactively on youth and families
  • Increased standing in community and improved respect for department
  • Officers taking the initiative to develop youth programs

Testimonials

“Our training collaborative played a major role in this agency winning two prestigious awards.  We have seen a drop in the number of confrontations with our officers, a vast increase of support from the community for our work, and a reduction in the number of arrests.”

Major General Joseph C. Carter, Adjutant General
Massachusetts National Guard, former Chief of Police of MBTA Transit Police; President, International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in 2006; IACP Webber-Seavey Award Semi-Finalist 2005; American Public Transportation Association Innovation Award 2005; Commonwealth Citation for Outstanding Performance 2005.

 

TrainingHOW STRATEGIES for YOUTH is different from other trainings:

  • One size does not fit all: SFY believes that an indepth understanding of the dynamics of a department and the youth its polices is necessary to creating a training that best meets the needs of officers and the youth they police;
  • We don’t focus on law alone; we provide officers practical tactics for dealing with youth taken from adolescent development and psychology, education, and discoveries in neuroscience and show how to use that information in interactions with youth;
  • Each training depends on getting to know the officers first —their frustrations, their
    successes, their innovations—and building on that information during the training,
  • Youth are trained too, through the Juvenile Justice Jeopardy game, which instructs youth about how to behave with police, as well as what conduct can lead to their arrest,
  • We provide practical strategies for applying cutting edge research on adolescent development, psychiatry, and neuroscience.

 
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