Baltimore police officers reported feeling better equipped to handle stressful situations after undergoing brain science training facilitated by the nonprofit Roca, according to an 18-month evaluation of the program.
The Roca Impact Institute, the nonprofit’s coaching arm, developed the Rewire4 training program and implemented it with several police departments and correctional agencies, including the Baltimore Police Department.
Law enforcement professionals of all levels, ranging from cadets to commanders to civilian staff members, underwent the training, which uses cognitive behavioral theory (CBT) to teach how trauma can affect behavior – both of officers themselves and the community members with whom they interact. Participants also learn skills and techniques to regulate their emotions.
Program leaders, evaluators, and representatives of some of the participating law enforcement agencies shared their findings and experiences during a webinar Thursday.
“We’re trying to help police officers and corrections officers stay in control, have emotional regulation, and increase those positive interactions with our community,” said Dave Batchelor, director of Rewire4 and a retired police captain from Chelsea Police Department in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
By understanding trauma, officers can learn to not take certain behavior personally, Batchelor said.
“I think sometimes police officers, corrections, often they take something personal. They get emotional. And when you get emotional, sometimes you make poor decisions. So that trauma section is just to really teach police officers, corrections officers, that you really never know what someone’s going through in life.”
The entire Baltimore Police Department was trained during one-day sessions from December 2023 to January 2024. Starting in February 2024, the department offered an online refresher course and also began training the first new recruit class.
“Our department was in a really bad area a few years ago, and we had to reform the police department,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley, who pointed to the federal consent decree that the department has been under since 2017.
According to Worley, police-involved shootings and use-of-force incidents in Baltimore have decreased since officers have undergone the Rewire4 training.
Worley added that the training has improved his officers’ interactions with youth.
“We have a very big problem with juveniles, and this helps our officers deal with this on a daily basis,” he said. “So it’s a skill set that they’re putting to use. It’s going to make them a better officer, which means we’re going to have more success.”
John Skinner, a Towson University lecturer and former Baltimore deputy police commissioner, led an evaluation of the Rewire4 training program for officers who participated from January 2023 through June 2024.
During that 18-month period, instructors trained 5,630 law enforcement officers – including 4,792 police officers and 838 correctional officers – across 21 agencies. Of those, 1,882 were from the Baltimore Police Department.
Before training, about 81% of officers reported feeling stressed about their job very often, often, or sometimes. To that same degree, nearly 59% said they had difficulty controlling their emotions; approximately 23% said they had used force; and 20% said they had lost their temper.
Three months after participating in the training, those numbers dropped (73% reported being stressed about their jobs, nearly 48% having difficulty controlling their emotions, 11% losing their temper, and 7% using force). At the six-month mark, those numbers ticked up a bit for all categories except for “difficulty controlling emotions” (which continued to dip down), but they remained below the pre-survey levels.
“I just want to say that this class was very useful,” said one Baltimore police officer in a comment shared during the Thursday webinar. “As someone who has also noticed I was not always okay, hearing another colleague, especially a Major, say the same was … comforting. Knowing I’m not alone.”
In another comment, a Baltimore police lieutenant wrote, “Having the course just gives you a reminder that there are ways to deal with situations differently. Other officers need to work on non emotionally driven behavior. As a supervisor, the training helps [them] recognize what other officers are dealing with or where their mind might be.”
Batchelor said the emotional regulation that Rewire4 teaches is a necessary precursor to deescalation.
“It’s difficult to deescalate a situation if you can’t control yourself …. Whether it’s policing or corrections, we have to have control because we’re all held to a higher standard because of that power and authority no one else has,” he said.
It’s a disservice to law enforcement officials to not give them the resources they need to manage their stress, said Maureen McGough, co-founder of the 30×30 Initiative which works to increase the representation of women in policing.
“My dad was a law enforcement officer for 30 years in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I can tell you he has been retired for 20 years now and he still screams in his sleep,” she said.
McGough is also the executive director of the Excellence in Policing and Public Safety Program at the University of South Carolina. She said her center, and the agencies it works with, have struggled to identify training programs that are “empirically shown to make a difference in behavioral outcomes.”
“There’s a really sort of clogged field of options for officers out there, and it’s really hard for departments to be able to discern what is worth their time, what is worth their money,” she said.
But Rewire4 has proven effective, McGough said.
“We’re really trying to make it our mission to do what we can to raise funds through grants, to leverage our network across the street, across the state, and across the country to get Rewire4 in front of as many officers as quickly as we possibly can while also holding some fidelity to the model,” she said.
