To keep trust, police taught to ‘keep cool’

Thomas Kern/swissinfo.ch

Swiss police enjoy a high level of trust compared to other countries. To ensure that this remains the case, recruits train how to react proportionally when a situation threatens to escalate. It doesn’t always work. SWI swissinfo.ch visits recruits at The Police School Eastern Switzerland.

There are different ways for police to conduct traffic controls.  “I can walk up, cross my arms, and say: ‘Well then, what have we done wrong here?’” says police communications expert Fabia Freienmuth mockingly while demonstrating that approach at a police training centre in canton Thurgau.

Then she smiles and says, “You can also do it differently, by de-escalating the situation instead of inflaming it.” The point is to make traffic control less confrontational so that positive interaction establishes a basis of trust for future encounters.

In Switzerland the public places more trust on police officers than on the economy, courts, politics, and the media. Since 2007 the police have always ranked first in a trust index that is part of a broader, annual security study compiled by the federal technology institute ETH Zurich. In 2023, the police achieved 7.9 points out of 10, according to the ETH-Sicherheitsstudie.External link

Where police lacks trust

Germany conducts regular surveysExternal link on the topic of trust in the police ad how media perceives security forces. Unlike Switzerland, however, the results in Germany are also broken down by factors such as migration backgroundExternal link or related to individual events, for example in the aftermath of racially motivated attacks. German police scored 7 out of 10External link in a trust index comparing different institutions in 2020.

Studies carried out in the United Kingdom show how strongly individual events can influence the population’s trust in the police. For example, trust in the British police dropped by half in 2021 after a police officer was found guilty of raping and murdering a young woman in London, according to international data analytics group YouGovExternal link. Cases of domestic or intimate partner violence by police officers are documented and grab headlines in the UK, painting a bleak pictureExternal link. The fact that hardly any of the hundreds who are accused receive disciplinary measures has a negative impact on trust in the police, especially among the female population.

In Switzerland, too, the police are regularly criticised, among other things for their use of rubber bullets at demonstrations. Last year, a United Nations working group accused the Swiss police of racial profiling.

Swiss police are highly trusted in part because of the work of specialists like Freienmuth. She is a communications expert training recruits at the Police School of Eastern Switzerland.

“Most of the difficulties police officers face are not caused by the why of the intervention, but the how,” says Freienmuth. Keeping a high level of trust requires police to focus on the latter.

For the past two years the Police School of Eastern Switzerland has worked intensively on interpersonal communication. Based in Amriswil, canton Thurgau, the establishment trains future police officers for several Swiss cantons and cities, as well as  Liechtenstein.

Trainees are schooled in both verbal de-escalation and tactical resilience training. In full body gear, they are thrown into unpredictable, high-stress situations. The scenarios start where dialogue has failed. “Situations,” says Freienmuth, “where talking no longer works”.

Tactical resilience training

In the “refitting zone”, the first participants, two young men, exchange their service weapons for dummies. They each receive a pepper spray filled with water and a softer baton than those used in real deployment.

“Does anything hurt? Did you sleep well?” asks the trainer. He is wearing a helmet. His arms and legs are padded, and his stomach and back are protected. He’s ready to play a criminal.

The training weapons make a loud bang and recoil like real weapons, but the cartridges just fall to the ground. But the exercise can still get rough because the trainees are supposed to behave as if it were an emergency. Most of the time, the scenario is not over until “abort” is heard through the loudspeakers.

Both trainees are led with their eyes closed into the training room. There they are forced to do rotating squats. This increases their physical stress level.

Freienmuth observes what’s happening through a mirrored window, similar to those portrayed in American films.

“For us it’s not about whether the trainees carry out the scenario perfectly, but how they gain experience and reflect on their behaviour,” she says. “Most of our trainees have grown up quite sheltered. Some may have been involved in minor scuffles or disagreements with other youths.”

But knowing what to do in extreme situations is something else. The communications trainer is sure of one thing: you must actually experience how you react to escalating circumstances. You cannot learn that in a classroom.

Extreme scenarios

“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” says a voice through the loudspeaker. This scenario involves a robbery among other offences. Both young men can now open their eyes.

“Robbery implies that there is a weapon involved,” Freienmuth tells SWI. “They should be aware of the potential for danger.”

The trainees spot one of the suspects. They give orders, yell, briefly take cover. For a moment they panic before they try to put handcuffs on the suspect.

Suddenly a second man appears. There is a scuffle and shots are fired. One assailant falls to the ground. After some back and forth, the trainees manage to bring the second assailant under control. “Scenario over”, announces a voice over the loudspeaker. The light is switched on. The trainees remove the handcuffs from the trainer and help him to his feet. But there will be no break.

New situation. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, it is light,” says the loudspeaker. “We find ourselves on a public street. There has been a car accident. Some damage, with two separate people involved.”

The situation appears tense but manageable. That is until the two people involved start to attack each other. The trainees are unable to separate them quickly enough. A tussle, a knife. One stabs the other. If this situation were real, it could result in the death of a person.

A question of proportionality

The female team then goes through the same two scenarios. They also end up firing their weapons. Afterwards they are pleased with themselves and with the training. “As long as we do something, everything is ok,” said one. “I wouldn’t be happy had I frozen.”

The reactions during the training situations can be roughly divided into three categories: fight, flight and freeze. “Very few can say in theory how they will react if they are shot at,” says Freienmuth.

Thomas Kern/swissinfo.ch

The exercises seek to help the trainees to learn something about themselves. “When, for example, someone realises that he or she becomes disproportionately angry or even resorts to threats because someone does not follow orders, we have to reflect on that and work out a way of dealing with it,” she explains.

The tactical resilience training receives mostly positive feedback from the police force. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to define misconduct and to put into practice the self-knowledge one gains during training.

And what happens when a trainee reacts wrongly in a real situation? “After every mission there is a debriefing,” says Freienmuth. That provides the framework for discussion.

In the past, police trainees only gained such insights and experience in an emergency. “If I only realise in an emergency that I am incapable of taking action when it’s dark, that is not good,” says Freienmuth.

Police training in Switzerland

Since 2021, police training in Switzerland has lasted two years. Students complete the first year of training at one of the six Swiss police schools. The second year of training takes place as a kind of internship at their local police force. Action training and (shooting) exercises, as well as the use of coercive means, are practised at all police schools and later repeated.

While in 2011 there were still 25 registered firearm deployments by the police in Switzerland, in 2021 there were only six.  This is the lowest figure in the last ten years. However, there are no exact figures on how many people have been killed by police officers in the last ten years. Since the Black Lives Matter movement, the issue of racism in relation to police violence has received increased attention. The magazine RepublikExternal link reported that in the canton of Vaud alone, four black people have died in police operations or in police custody in the past five years.

Edited by Mark Livingston. Translated from German by Sue Brönnimann and adapted by Dominique Soguel