Nonverbal Communication In Law Enforcement

Law enforcement officers have interactions with people every day. They’re unavoidable because their job is to protect the community. Traffic stops receive the most complaints against the police, since they mostly lead to conflict. Officers should attempt to approach the situation in a positive way. They have a huge impact on the outcome. But even those approaching it in a positive way, at times a negative outcome will occur. People’s behaviors are unpredictable especially cases where a traffic stop does not take place. For example in a case where physical violence occurred. They have such strong emotions that they don’t think about what they’re doing. Verbal and nonverbal communication takes a huge part in these cases.
To start off with officers need to excel in verbal and nonverbal communication. The most important ones being eye contact, body posture, tone, facial expressions, gestures, distance, and physical contact. “Police also should use open invitations to talk, such as …show more content…
The first one is focusing. This helps them reconstruct the issue or problem that occurred. Secondly, paraphrasing what a person has said. The officer needs to do this to be able to fully understand what happened. They also need to do this in a nonjudgmental way. Then officers will reflect the feelings involved. Here they will observe verbal and nonverbal emotions. A nonverbal action could be an individual's hands are shaking. This could mean the person is nervous or scared for some reason. Lastly confirmation takes place. “If officers cannot communicate with the public, poor community relations will hinder even the most technically proficient departments.” (McDermott). Confirmation happens when the officer and the individual are on the same page. They both understand exactly what happened and there are no misunderstandings. Summarizing is a good idea because it assures you the information is