Emotional Intelligence for Law Enforcement Officers

Law enforcement is a dynamic profession and critical service provided to communities. Expectations of officers change frequently requiring skills beyond the traditional fighting, driving, and shooting. Although those skills are high lethality and low occurrence, there are other skills such as communication, empathy, and decision making which occur every day for officers which can often have a significant impact on a community. Decision making, and professional relationships are foundational skills for officers, so having emotional and social awareness, and self-control has a direct impact on the outcomes of decisions. Officers are frequently tasked with making significant life and death decisions, and often those decisions can prevent critical situations from ever occurring, potentially avoiding some applications of force. Having quality relationships with understanding, empathy and support with the community is valuable for police legitimacy and procedural justice. Law enforcement agencies should mandate emotional intelligence training for all officers.