ACJ Review: Cop Talk

Volume 4, Issue 1, Fall 2000

Cop talk: Essential Communication Skills for Community Policing

Virginia Kidd and Rick Braziel
Acada Books: San Francisco (1999)
224 pages
Paperback: $22.95

Reviewed by: Kevin Brown, Montana State University-Northern

Traditionally, police officers, like emergency medical and fire personnel, rarely get to talk to anyone having a good day. Almost by definition any day in which you are compelled to talk to a police officer is a bad day. The three events that bring most people into contact with a police officer are getting arrested/cited for, being a victim of, or witnessing a crime. All of these things are events most people strive to avoid. So it seems at the outset police officers rarely talk to anyone who is at their communicative best. Further, police officers, again like other emergency personnel, cannot refuse to talk to the people they encounter. The ubiquitous message that graces the front window or lurks behind the counter of most retail establishments “We reserve the right to refuse service” does not apply to them. Police officers are routinely confronted by communicators who are focused on their own problems and are largely unaware or unconcerned about how their communication may be affecting the officer.

Police officials and communities have begun to recognize that communication between police officers and their various publics that is solely based on this type of interaction are unsatisfying and problematic for both parties. In order to address this dynamic, communities and police officials have responded by instituting, with varying levels of commitment, Community Oriented Policing (COP). Kidd and Braziel have written their book COP Talk (COP stands for Community Oriented Policing) with the realization that a community oriented police officer is in reality a communication professional. The authors present communication as the foundation for effective community oriented policing and correctly point out that training in the communication skills necessary for officers to be effective in the COP metaphor “has not kept pace” (p. 4) with the implementation of community oriented policing programs.

In this text for police officers the authors lay out the basics of the communication process with helpful vignettes derived from actual police experience to illustrate the principles. The authors lead the reader through a tour of contemporary communication contexts. The authors start with interpersonal communication and cover work groups, public speaking, community meetings, problem solving, network building and finally, public relations. The book is written for a beginning communication student and reflects an understanding that many police officers have had no formal communication training.

What this book offers is a simple, and at times maybe simplistic, overview of communication principles. It seems that the authors were aiming for a simple and clear book that can be used in on-the-job training of police officers in the skills they need to be COP officers. I think they succeed admirably in this goal. With the numerous vignettes sprinkled throughout the book it is easy to translate the advice and principles in the book into police reality, though at times it reads like a self-help book. As someone who has trained police officers, and encountered blank stares and sometimes hostility, this book represents an important step in providing much-needed context specific communication skills to police officers. This book is a very specialized primer for police officers and as such provides the specific skills needed for police officers to transform themselves from law enforcers to the communication professionals demanded by contemporary communities.