Effective Communication in Policing

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EFFECTIVE POLICING BUILT ON GOOD COMMUNICATION Communication skills are an absolutely essential for effective policing. In terms of police officers and the jobs they are expected to do on the street, communication skills are so critical that they can spell life or death for the officer or others involved. This reinforces the need of officers to have good communication skills to maintain peace, order and safety in society. Police officers have to not only respond to stressful situations, they have to take control of them and get everyone to work together to resolve the situation. Officers are expected to put their own emotions to the side so that the situation at hand can be dealt with effectively. Police officers need to know how to negotiate a situation before the matter gets out of hand and they need to do so in a way that everyone involved in a particular situation is dealt with in a professional and proper manner. Police officers are required to talk to all different types of people and those people are in sometimes the worse situation they have ever been in. They deal with people of all races, cultures, ages, ethnicities and background. This can often prove difficult and often become barriers for communication however using the right communication techniques can help immensely in these situations. An officer’s ability to listen and the manner in which they do so is important. By asking relevant questions in response to what they are being told is helpful in the sense that it shows that they have the officer’s full attention and that the information given is being processed by the officer, this is called active listening. Other ways active listening should be used by officers are nodding occasionally, have inviting body posture and to encourage the speaker to continue and by using small comments like “yes and uh huh”. The
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