The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) welcomed four plenary discussions at the National Research Conference in 2025, each covering the priorities and key investments of NIJ. The third plenary session focused on the training, assessment and tactics (ICAT) training program for the application of the law.
The plenary has brought together the entire life cycle of a program based on evidence, design and initial implementation for evaluation and, possibly, improvements in the research program.
Directed by Karhlton Moore, director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the plenary was a discussion among
- Robin Engel, Ph.D., Senior Vice-President, National Policing Institute
- Maris Herold, head of the Boulder police department, Colorado
- Chuck Wexler, Executive Director, Police Executive Research Forum (Perf)
- Justin Witt, Sergeant, Police Department of the Louisville Metro, Kentucky
Using time and distance to defuse
The ICAT trains law enforcement agents to defuse and defuse “situations involving people who are unarmed or armed with weapons other than firearms, and who can undergo mental health or another crisis.”(1)
Presenting the discussion, the vine underlined the unique place of the ICAT in the police tool box based on evidence:
We often seek to train when we think, “What should we do with the police reform?” And yet, we have very little information on the types of training can really change behavior in the field. This panel is different (because ICAT) has indeed led to a change in behavior in the field.
DESCRIBING Icat's Beginnings, Perf Director Chuck Wexler Rouveted His Experience Sanding A Police Recruit Graduation In Scotland in 2015. He was Struck by a Contrast: While Law Enforcement Agencies in the United States WERE Still In Turmoil Over the Fatal 2014 Shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Protests it ignited over police use of deadly strength, these new scottish office were embaking on their careers with no firearms on their belt.
Wexler wondered how this lack of firearms affects police tactics in the United Kingdom, especially when the officers face a potential threat or an unstable situation. After all, he reasoned: “A Glasgow knife and a Strait knife is always a knife.” What could we teach the police of the way in which these Scottish officers have trained to defuse conflicts without the option of deadly force?
The answer, in short, “slows down things using time and distance,” said Wexler. For decades, the American Swat teams have applied this philosophy to some of the high pressure situations faced by the police. Now, the ICAT would make a similar reflection on the patrol officers.
“No one is going to die tonight”
At this stage, ICAT had the commitment of Perf, but its approach to de -escalation training was faced with enormous skepticism in the wider field of the American police.
Chef Maris Herold simply said: “(Icat East) radically different from the patrol model in which I grew up.”
In traditional training, agents learn to take care of a volatile meeting. They taught that the responsibility for their own security and the security of their officers is essential, which often means entering an unstable situation with weapons drawn. The message, said Herold, is “make sure you and your partner go home safely tonight”.
Icat has a different accent. Rather than taking care of, agents learn to crop their roles as an active auditors who collect information to resolve situations by creating relationships without resorting to force. For Herold, the words “no one will die tonight” embodies the approach of ICAT. Person, which means no one in the application of laws –And No civilians.
Agents according to ICAT training were, however, concerned about the involuntary consequences that this change could have. Dr. Robin Engel, a criminology researcher who directed efforts to assess the ICAT, described the fears of officers like: “You will teach us to hesitate, and you will make us kill.”
What could help overcome the resistance of these officers to an approach so different from that they had learned and practiced for their entire career?
Responses live in research and evidence.
Assessment is not a one -way street
In 2015, after a white officer from the University of Cincinnati. Ohio, the police killed an unarmed black motorist, the university put Dr Engel in charge of supervising and reforming its police agency. She quickly realized that she was facing a major obstacle:
As an agademic, I thought: “I will find the best training based on evidence, and I will bring this to my cops and my community to make sure that we are going well.” And when I looked around, I did not find any training of systematic evidence that tests a de -escalation training or other police reform strategies. It was this moment when I said: “We have to be better. “”
When looking for the most promising de -escalation training to adopt, Dr Engel attended an ICAT session organized by director Wexler in Camden, New Jersey. With Dr. Engel, the new police chief of the University of Cincinnati, Maris Herold. In 2018, the two brought the ICAT to the University of Cincinnati and collaborated in the first assessment of the program with Dr. Engel's Graduate Research Associate, Gabrielle Isaza.(2)
Dr Engel’s research has moved next to Louisville, Kentucky, where Sergeant Justin Witt in 2019 trained all the Police Department patrol agents at ICAT as part of the program's first controlled trial of the program.
Dr. Engel said about the project challenges,
It is really difficult to implement a randomized controlled test design in an operational police agency. I can't put you all in a test tube! Working with partners like Sergeant Witt who were ready to make sure that these experimental conditions were met is really unique and important.
Initially, Sergeant Witt shared both skepticism in the domain towards ICAT and the broader reluctance of the application of laws to leave researchers in their agencies. He was convinced, he said, that research meant “Some external groups will enter, they will say” that's why you are horrible, and that's how you have to do better “, and we are going to be treated like test mannequins.”
Instead, Sergeant Witt and Louisville police met in dialogue with Dr. Engel and his team. Before the publication of the study results, Dr. Engel discussed Sergeant Witt what was going well with the ICAT and where the failures were. Together, they designed changes to the training program to deal with these shortcomings.
ICAT gets results
According to Dr Engel's conclusions, the ICAT has produced significant changes not only in the attitudes and knowledge of officers on de -escalation, but also in their real patrol behavior. The uses of strength of the agents and civil injuries were each dropped by more than 25% after the ICAT training. Unexpectedly, injuries to the police have dropped, 36%.(3) The law enforcement organizations that had objected that ICAT would have their officers killed could now see empirical evidence pointing to the opposite result.
Dr Engel's team has also found weaknesses in the ICAT model. The supervisors did not strengthen the paradigm of de -escalation that the patrol officers learned in the training, which led to the decrease in the training -, weakening the impact of the ICAT over time. The masterpiece of the ICAT, its critical decision -making model, was the fastest piece to decompose – a major concern not only for the Louisville police, but also for the perf team that defended the ICAT in the United States.
In Louisville, the agency of Sergeant Witt has developed an additional program specifically to help align supervisors with ICAT. In addition, at Perf's Icat Facility in Decaturit, Illinois, the standard program program now includes a “instantaneous supervisor” component designed to respond to the shortcomings that Dr Engel's search has identified.
By reflecting on the research experience, Sergeant Witt underlined the transforming nature of his back and forth, collaborates a relationship with Dr Engel. Their communication was the key to confidence between the Louisville police and the research team. “You will not have a behavioral change compared to an agency for applying the law until you develop relationships to make us understand what you are really trying to do,” said Sergeant Witt.
Chef Herold concluded, adding that officers are much more receptive to assessing and improving programs when researchers work next to them. “We need researchers ready to go out and go up in the trenches with us. The cops do not care about bad news as long as you are with them.”
The next step in the evolution of the ICAT is already underway. On May 17, Perf announced the opening of an ICAT training center dedicated to its Decatur campus, funded by $ 120 million in local philanthropic and former county of Macon, Illinois, Sheriff Howard Buffet. Until the end of 2025, the installation offers two -day train sessions free of charge. ICAT training documents are also available free of charge on the Perf website, as part of Director Wexler's commitment to make the CIAT available to the greatest possible number of law enforcement organizations.
Meanwhile, with the financing of NIJ, Dr Engel's team works with the departments in Indianapolis, Indiana; Cincinnati, Ohio; Oklahoma city, oklahoma; And Phoenix, Arizona, to reproduce the evaluation of the ICAT and test the impact of modifications, such as reducing the number of training hours or the division of training in numerous sessions over a longer period. However, as their conversation on stage showed during the National NIJ Research Conference, these different teams – carriers, researchers and officers on the ground – continue to share a common goal: to make a significant difference in public security by linking evidence to action.
