University Police Complete Impartial Policing Training

SUNY Plattsburgh University Police have completed training to help them neutralize natural biases and objectively fulfill their duties.

“The fair and impartial policing training helps our officers understand that everyone has implicit biases,” said University Police Chief Jerry Lottie.

“With this knowledge, our officers will be better able to recognize their implicit biases and how they could impact their decisions and actions. Recognizing and addressing these biases makes our officers more effective and better able to serve all members of the community we are sworn to protect.”

All nine University Police officers, as well as the department’s three supervisors and three administrators, have completed the training, which was done by University Police Inspector Pat Rascoe.

“When police officers recognize that all people, even well-intentioned people, have biases and that policing on biases or stereotypes is unsafe, ineffective and unjust, they are more likely to police in a manner that promotes cooperation and legitimacy with the community they serve,” Rascoe said.

The training involved instruction on how to overcome possible biases on the basis of gender, body type, sexual orientation, religion, race, socio-economic status, disability, profession and others.

“People tend to prejudge what they don't know about individuals based upon stereotypes they have of a group,” Rascoe said. “There is no application for this in policing.”

Policing must be based solely on facts, he said.

The training used science to explain how all humans have biases and teach police ways to recognize their biases and override them so they don’t influence decision making on the job, Rascoe said.