POST APPROVED 7 Credits (10668-00046)

Six Scenarios. Three Perspectives. One Standard.

A force decision is made in seconds and reviewed for years. This course puts officers inside six scenarios, then walks each one through the three rooms where it will actually be judged — the street, the charging office, the civil courtroom. You won’t just review the law. You’ll write the narrative and defend it out loud.

Inside the Seven Hours

1- DE-ESCALATION & OBJECTIVE REASONABLENESS

Start where the law starts: the four instances in which force is authorized at all – and the rule that if the facts don’t fit one of them, the force is unlawful. Officers build a totality of circumstances from scratch against body-worn camera from a 2024 Arizona officer-involved shooting, then test every de-escalation technique against it: barriers, containment, distance, limiting exposure. Volume, pitch and pace. Distance + cover = time.

2- PERSON IN CRISIS

A disturbance alongside a community parade and a subject who will not – or cannot – comply. Where medical conditions, mental impairment, developmental and intellectual disability, physical limitations, language barriers and intoxication fit into the reasonableness analysis. Why lack of compliance is not automatically resistance, and when disengaging is the right answer.

3- TASER & INTERMEDIATE WEAPONS

An arrest warrant, a doorway, and a decision. Notice of the warrant and production on request, the authority to force entry if admittance is refused, and the moment normally less-lethal force becomes deadly force – additional cycles, strikes to the head, and the articulation each one demands.

4- USE OF DEADLY FORCE

The three-prong test, applied to facts. Officers write a narrative in language of the statute and their own agency’s deadly force policy – then debrief what the stress did to their breathing and pulse, their hearing and vision, their fine motor skills, and what they train to do when they’re the one the who is injured.

5 – DEADLY FORCE DECISION-MAKING

The hardest scenario of the day: a person in crisis fires a round into the floor inside a school. Officers say out loud whether deadly force would be objectively reasonable – and prove it in the words of law and policy: a threat articulable with specificity, reasonably likely to occur absent action, addressed without unreasonable delay. Then the follow-up nobody enjoys: what if he runs?

6 -DUTY TO INTERCEDE

An officer is about to spray chemical aerosol on a handcuffed arrestee who won’t put his feet in the squad. Officers teach this block to each other: when the duty attaches, what inhibits it – rank, seniority, fatigue, agency culture – and the social science behind standing there. Then everyone names the exact second it became unreasonable.

WHAT OFFICERS TAKE BACK

• The Minnesota Use of Force Workbook, included with tuition
• Narratives they wrote themselves, critiqued by a prosecutor and a trial lawyer
• A working crosswalk between state law and their own agency policy
• Language that holds up in a report, a deposition and a licensing file

HOW IT’S TAUGHT

Live and video scenarios, structured debriefs, table exercises drawn from officers’ own careers, and peer taught blocks. Officers work with their own agency’s policy manual throughout- bring it. Expect to talk, to write, and to be questioned on what you wrote.

Session Type:

In-person conference

Duration:

1 Day

Cancellation Policy:

• Full refund available up until 14 days prior to date.
• 50% refund available up until 7 days prior to date.
• No refunds will be made within 7 days of the date.

Minnesota POST: 10668-00046