The first round of data from an emotional regulation training given to all Baltimore police officers in the past year shows early but limited success.
Leaders from ROCA, a national nonprofit that has been working with young men at risk of gun violence in Baltimore since 2018, presented preliminary data from the Rewire4 police training in a virtual press conference Thursday.
The eight-hour course is meant to teach officers about how trauma impacts their ability to respond to stressful situations — and how trauma affects the actions of those they interact with as well.
“And if you can look through that trauma and understand why someone might be behaving the way they're behaving, you as an officer, don't take it personally,” said Dave Batchelor, director of Rewire4. “And when you don't take it personally, you don't get emotional, and it gives you more control.”
Officers then learn skills derived from cognitive behavioral therapy to help self-regulate their emotions, Batchelor said, like recognizing their triggers and practicing empathy.
From January 2023 to January 2024, every Baltimore police officer received the ROCA training. Commissioner Richard Worley said at first, officers didn’t want to engage with the course.
“But this was something that after they went through it, we've got some of the best comments from our officers, like several of them said it's the best training that they've ever had,” he said in the press conference Thursday. “The good thing is we have placed a lot of emphasis on officer health and wellness, and this actually helps them not only in their work life, but in their personal life, to make better decisions.”
According to self-reported surveys conducted before the training, 81% of participants said they experience high levels of stress on the job.
“And you can see here that close to 60% of officers reported that, yes, you know, when I'm in a stressful situation, or if I feel like my emotions are running away from me, I have a difficulty controlling my actions,” said John Skinner, former Baltimore police commissioner and current Towson University professor who is in charge of evaluating the Rewire4 training.
But three months after taking the course, nearly three-fourths of participants reported using skills they learned to stay calm in those situations — up from 40% on the pre-survey.
Across seven different locations, over 5,300 officers participated in Rewire4. Less than 300 completed the follow-up surveys. And Skinner warned that results may be skewed because they’re self-reported.
The data also shows there’s still room for improvement, he said.
“There's a lot of barriers and stereotypes about officers that try to get help to manage their stress or trauma that they're experiencing,” Skinner said. “It's really sad to think that when an officer is experiencing stress, you know, only 22% of the time are they actually seeking out that help.”
Anecdotally, Worley said he’s seen less police-involved shootings this year, and a decrease in the use of force — which he credits in part to the Rewire4 program.
“When I joined [the Baltimore department], we had 3,200 police,” he said. “Right now, we have 1,983. So our cops are doing more with less. And the way they're able to do that is by delivering tools like this to them.”
Skinner said the next batch of data will put those observations to the test, with a randomized trial that measures the difference in number of department accidents and the use of force between officers who received the Rewire4 training and those who didn’t. He’s hoping to have that data by the end of 2025.
