Program Profile: Tact, Tactics, and Trust (T3) Training Program

This is a police training to develop officers’ decision-making, de-escalation, empathy, rapport-building, and self-control skills to discourage use of force in interactions with citizens. The program is rated No Effects. There was a statistically significant increase in procedural justice priorities posttraining in the treatment group, compared with the control group, but there were no statistically significant effects on maintaining self-control, physical control priorities, or use of force.

A No Effects rating implies that implementing the program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s) and may result in a negative outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

Program Goals/Target Population

Tact, Tactics, and Trust (T3) is a social-interaction training approach for police officers that is designed to strengthen police–community trust, increase the safety of officers and the public, and transform the organizational culture of police training and education. The goal of the program is to build officers’ skills in decision-making, de-escalation, empathy, rapport building, and self-control, to encourage officers to alter the trajectory of their interactions with citizens away from the need to use force.

Program Components

The T3 training program is based on the “Good Stranger” program developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (better known as DARPA) to improve the social interaction skills of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. This training attempts to teach police officers three core tenets of social interactions: 1) tact—procedural fairness, rapport building, self-control, and empathy; 2) tactics—delaying physical contact and limiting the reliance on physical force; and 3) trust—the need to create a lasting positive impact on the citizens they contact. The T3 training is built around seven core principles: 1) Positive Effects, 2) Never Humiliate, 3) Be Balanced, 4) Be Real, 5) Self-Control, 6) Be Smooth, and 7) Be Empathetic.

The training program initially introduces officers to these concepts in a traditional classroom setting through examples and videos, also referred to as “tactical decision exercises.” The central emphasis of the program is to have officers move beyond this classroom instruction to more actively engage in decision exercises around these concepts. To accomplish this active engagement, officers involved in the training are asked to observe videos of actual officer–citizen interactions (often derived from body camera footage) with set decision points built in. The videos show a portion of an interaction and then automatically pause at a predetermined point. Officers are then asked to complete worksheets by writing what their priorities would be during the interaction at that moment. Importantly, officers are given a limited amount of time to write down their answers, simulating the need to make rapid decisions in the field.

The videos are also designed to be completed in a group setting—for example, during roll call. After completing each decision point, officers are given about 5 minutes to discuss their views of the interaction with one another. The video then resumes until it reaches the next decision point (there are usually three per video). Each video exercise is designed to last about 45 minutes to allow for short training sessions during roll calls. This format limits the need for officers to be off the street for an extended period and allows for repeated training sessions over time.

T3 involves low-intensity, high-repetition training. The general framework of T3 can be used to build custom courses and programs to meet a wide range of training and education needs for the specific organization. T3 provides a flexible, scalable training framework that is intended to improve the safety and outcomes of police–community interactions. T3 can be used in academy, field training, in-service, roll call, or any other law enforcement training environment.

Key Personnel

The video scenarios are facilitated by a police department’s own officers who have completed a train-the-trainer program. Trainers are taught to concentrate group discussion during the stoppage points on the Tact, Tactics, and Trust principles that highlight procedurally just communication skills, maintaining self-control during an encounter, and de-escalating an encounter by delaying physical contact with the subject until it is necessary to maintain either officer or citizen safety. The T3 principles are reinforced for participants throughout the program by departmental trainers.

Program Theory

Sykes and Clark’s (1975) theory on deference exchange in police–citizen encounters represents the foundation of the T3 approach. The authors demonstrated that the rules for showing respect and deference during police–citizen encounters are asymmetrical because officers have legal authority to enforce the law and maintain order. This leads officers to expect deference from citizens, yet not to expect that they must reciprocate by showing the same level of respect in return (Wolfe et al. 2020).

Alpert and Dunham (2004) refined the work of Sykes and Clark to explain more thoroughly how police–citizen interactions become use-of-force events, including a greater recognition of the citizen’s role during interactions. Citizens also have expectations that can range from being treated with respect, to actively avoiding an interaction, to avoiding apprehension for an offense, so citizens may increasingly resist officers when their goals are not met. This dynamic creates an action–reaction chain that can escalate tensions and increase the likelihood of violence. The T3 training represents a practical application of Alpert and Dunham’s model. It focuses on teaching officers how their actions can affect the trajectory of police-citizen interactions, and how they can leverage communication skills to alter the nature and outcomes of these interactions (McLean et al. 2020).

Study 1

McLean and colleagues (2020) used a randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of Tact, Tactics, and Trust (T3) on measures of police officers’ procedural justice priorities, maintaining self-control, physical control priorities, and use-of-force incidents in two medium-sized police departments in Fayetteville, N.C., and Tucson, Ariz. At the time of the study, the Fayetteville Police Department had 164 patrol officers, and the Tucson Police Department had 320 patrol officers. The Fayetteville Police Department served a population that was primarily White (46 percent) and African American (42 percent), while the Tucson Police Department served a population that was primarily non-Hispanic White (47 percent) and Hispanic (42 percent). Both departments had previously received the T3 train-the-trainer program by the program developer.

Patrol officers were randomly assigned to either the treatment condition or the control condition. These officers attended roll call meetings at their district headquarters before going on (or after being on) patrol, providing an opportunity for training to be consistently delivered at the start or end of an officer’s shift. Across both agencies, initially 224 officers were assigned to the treatment group and 227 were assigned to the control group. Officers assigned to the treatment group were notified about the training approximately 2 months before the first training session. Officers in the treatment group received a four-component T3 course as described in the Program Description. The first component was a 1-hour introductory session during which officers were taught the core principles by departmental trainers. The second and main component included the videos or “tactical decision exercises,” delivered every other week at roll calls. The third component was a 4-hour refresher course on the core tenets of the program delivered about 3 months into the training program. The final component was an 8-hour capstone session delivered at the conclusion of the training program. The control group did not participate in any component of the T3 training.

To assess whether training dosage affected officer outcomes, the treatment sample was split into a high-dose group that received 6 months of the training (13 tactical-decision exercises plus the refresher and capstone sessions) and a low-dose group that received 3 months of the training (7 tactical-decision exercises plus the refresher session). Districts within each agency were ranked by use-of-force rate, then the study authors alternated assigning high- and low-dosage training to each district. Thus, the dosage level was not randomly assigned to districts, but the assignment to treatment and control conditions was random. The focus of this CrimeSolutions review was the outcomes for the full study sample (i.e., the outcomes that combined data from officers in both the low- and high-dose treatment groups, across both police departments). A pretest/posttest control group design was employed in administering surveys to all patrol officers at both the Fayetteville and Tucson Police Departments 1 week before the start of the program and after training was completed in their jurisdictions. Low-dose officers (and corresponding control group officers within the low-dose districts) were surveyed at the beginning and end of the 3-month training assignment. High-dose officers (and corresponding control group officers within the high-dose districts) were surveyed at the beginning and end of the 6-month training assignment. Both departments experienced turnover during the 6-month study period; at posttest, 114 officers were in the treatment group and 195 were in the control group. A comparison of officers in the treatment and control groups at the pretest revealed no statistically significant differences in terms of gender, age, years of service, or race.

At posttest, the full sample of officers was mostly male (about 85 percent of the treatment group and 84 percent of the control group), and White (about 59 percent of the treatment group and 59.5 percent of the control group). The only statistically significant difference between the treatment group and control group officers at the posttest was in the age and education categories, with the treatment group indicating that they were slightly older and more educated than the control group.

Survey data were collected from treatment and control group officers at both departments before and after the implementation of the training program. The survey data were used to examine changes in officers’ attitudes and priorities during hypothetical officer–citizen encounters to determine whether the training program affected the importance officers placed on specific social interaction concerns. The survey employed a vignette involving a hypothetical encounter with a citizen, during which the officer responds to a call about a “vague suspicious person.” The respondent was then asked, “How important is each of the following during the above interaction? (1 = not important to 5 = very important).” Procedural justice priorities were measured using a scale containing eight items relating to communicating and building rapport with the subject. These items focused on treating the subject respectfully, establishing rapport with the subject, and explaining why the officer made contact with the subject. Maintaining self-control was measured using a scale containing seven items that related to the officer remaining calm and thinking through his or her options. Items focused on maintaining self-restraint, thinking about the impact of one’s action, and getting the subject to cooperate without using force. Finally, physical control priorities were measured using two items that related to the physical restraint of the suspect: “making the subject stop walking away,” and “establishing physical control over the subject.”

Additionally, official use-of-force reports from both agencies were collected from approximately 1 year before the implementation of the training program to 1 year after the completion of the program. The use-of-force reports were used to determine whether the T3 training program successfully reduced the number of incidents among officers involved in the training. The Fayetteville Police Department provided 34 months of use-of-force data from March 2016 to December 2018. Officers who were randomly assigned to either the treatment group or control group in February 2016 accounted for 119 reportable use-of-force incidents. The Tucson Police Department provided 36 months of data from January 2016 to December 2018. Officers involved in the study accounted for 1,024 use of force incidents during this time period. Both departments generated unique identifiers so that officers involved in the use of force could be attributed to the treatment group, the control group, or as a nonpatrol officer who was not affiliated with the study (e.g., a detective or supervisor), allowing for comparisons between groups and time periods in the number of use-of-force reports. The two police departments were analyzed separately on this outcome, because of substantial differences in their definitions of reportable uses of force.

To evaluate the effect of the program on officers’ procedural justice priorities and maintaining self-control and physical control priorities using the survey data, various difference-in-difference tests were conducted. Interrupted time-series models were used to analyze data from the official use-of-force reports, to determine whether the training program successfully reduced the number of use-of-force incidents for participating officers in each of the two departments. Subgroup analyses were conducted by level of training dosage and by police department.

Polis Solutions trained the selected officers on how to conduct Tact, Tactics, and Trust training in house (McLean et al. 2020). Thus, the agencies participating in this program did not have to devote resources toward developing their own training programs. This approach is likely to be particularly appealing to smaller agencies that do not have the time or money to dedicate toward the development of their own innovative training programs (McLean et al. 2020). Further, the Tact, Tactics, and Trust training is tailored to address specific legal, procedural, and policy requirements and can be scaled and customized to meet the needs of any size law enforcement agency (Tact, Tactics, and Trust Police Training System – 2018).

Subgroup Analysis

McLean and colleagues (2020) conducted subgroup analyses by level of training dosage. Across both departments, officers who participated in the low-dose training placed higher priorities on procedurally fair communication and maintaining self-control at the 3-month posttest, compared with officers in the control group. The differences were statistically significant. Officers in the high-dose treatment group placed less priority on physical control compared with those in the control group at the 6-month posttest; the difference was statistically significant. However, there were no statistically significant differences in the low- or high-dose treatment groups compared with officers in the control group from either department on use-of-force incidents.

McLean and colleagues (2020) also conducted subgroup analyses by police department. Officers in the Fayetteville Police Department treatment group who participated in the Tact, Tactics, and Trust training placed higher priorities on procedurally fair communication, compared with control group officers, with a statistically significant difference. There were no statistically significant differences in procedural justice priorities between the treatment or control groups in the Tucson Police Department, nor were there any statistically significant differences in either department sample on maintaining self-control or physical control priorities.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: