Role of the First-Line Supervisor in Facilitating Change in Law Enforcement Organizations
First-line supervisors play a critical, but often under-recognized role in effecting change in law enforcement organizations. These supervisors, who have the most direct daily contact with officers and act as role models and culture influencers for the officers they supervise, are often the ones charged with explaining and translating polices and practices to officers on the ground. Line supervisors can therefore have significant influence, positive and negative, over how department policies and practices are implemented in the field. This webinar focuses on the role that first-line supervisors play in police organizations and the importance of engaging this critical level for culture and policy reform.
Join us for this webinar on Wednesday, June 9, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. ET, featuring Dr. Robin S. Engel, Ph.D., Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police / UC Center for Police Research and Policy. Dr. Engel engages in police research and evaluations designed to reduce harm in communities and make police-citizen encounters safer, promoting best practices through academic-practitioner partnerships. She currently serves as a governor-appointed member of the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board, and as the co-chair of IACP’s Research Advisory Committee. She is a consultant on police training for the Ohio Attorney General and serves as a member of the National Police Foundation’s Council on Policing Reforms and Race. She has also served as an expert on policing and violence reduction for panels convened at the White House and 10 Downing Street. From 2016-2019, Dr. Engel served as UC’s Vice President for Safety and Reform where her duties included oversight of the daily operations and implementation of comprehensive reform efforts of the University of Cincinnati Police Division (UCPD) in the aftermath of a critical incident involving the fatal police shooting of an unarmed motorist.
Dr. Engel will share her insights from her past and current research including on the role that police supervisors play in influencing the attitudes and behaviors of the patrol officers they supervise and, more recently, the effectiveness of Department-led de-scalation training in affecting officers’ approach to use of force encounters. She will also describe how she applied principles and insights gleaned from her research in her approach to reform efforts in oversight of the UCPD.
