Transparency Statements Restore Trust & Resiliency

Officers should communicate an honest reason for the interaction that is ideally motivated by helping the community and specific individuals. 

The Illusion of Trust

If you’re an officer reading this, you might think about how you’re actually quite good at building trust with the community. If that’s true, you’re like the community-oriented police I learned from. However, science calls for accuracy. Do you or others ask the community how much they trust you to help their community stay resilient to threats after your interactions?

I followed up with police and community members after their interactions, independently, to get a sense of how they felt towards each other. Research unveiled an illusion of trust: police thought they earned more trust with community members than they actually had. Officers feel they’re being respectful, while community members interpret their interactions as threats. This makes sense. If your boss stops in briefly to check in on you, you probably smile, nod, maintain eye contact, and speak in a friendly tone that sounds like someone who trusts their superior.

Transparency Statements Rebuild Trust

Our lab’s new research shows that a simple intervention to transparently connect with the community can quickly put people at ease: a short statement from the officer about why they stopped the person and what they intend to do. Police can use the first moments to mitigate threat, prevent escalation, and build trust.

Police start with a trust deficit that can feel demoralising for officers who want to build rapport. Strategies that create comfort in anxious situations – like asking permission – can backfire with power imbalance. “You mind if I talk to you for a minute?” sounds scary with unclear intentions.

The Solution

Give a transparency statement. It’s a sentence an officer gives to start interactions with community members – from traffic stops to noise complaints. The statement quickly explains intent. It seems simple, but our work shows a transparency statement can change an interaction.

A transparency statement is not an exact script. Officers can and should word their transparency statements in a way that captures their true goal for the interaction.

For example, “Hi, I’m Officer [Name], how’s it going? I’m out here walking around just trying to get to know my beat and my community. Is it OK if I talk to you for a minute?” In this opening statement, the officer states that their intent is to get to know the community, not to hurt them.

Four Elements of Successful Transparency Statements

There are four key elements that we’ve pinpointed for effective transparency statements.

1. The first is timing. The statement should be made as soon as possible, to set the tone for the interaction from the outset.
2. Second is benevolence. Officers should communicate an honest reason for the interaction that is ideally motivated by helping the community and specific individuals.
3. This only works if it is sincere. Reputation can be ruined if you are inauthentic.
4. Last, the statement needs to be personal. Officers should speak in the first-person (e.g., “I’m worried about your safety”) and refer to the current situation. Generic statements about department-wide efforts might work less well (e.g., “Our department has a new initiative to get to know community residents”).

Data

In our field studies, transparency statements have a simple but powerful effect. In one experiment, we measured electrical signals given off by participants’ skin, which indicate stress, during interactions with police officers. We also analysed the language spoken during the exchanges and surveyed participants after the interactions.

When officers implemented transparency statements, community members were more likely to respond using language associated with positive rapport and trust-building.

They were more engaged and spoke more during the conversation. Without a transparency statement, skin results showed stress levels rose across the conversation.

In surveys after, community members were less threatened: 40 percent with transparency statements felt low-threat versus 29 percent without. They reported higher trust after transparency statements, too, expecting the police were more invested in their well-being (55 percent versus 46 percent).

Many adults in the United States encounter the police each year. For 20 million Americans, the interaction is initiated by a police officer, typically through a traffic stop or street contact. If officers just across the USA consistently used transparency statements, 1.8 million more people could have trusting interactions with police and 2.2 million more people could have an interaction where they don’t feel threatened. One more finding that surprised even us: above most other emotions, transparency statements even made community members feel more inspired after their interactions.

Teaching the method takes minutes, training it takes a few hours, and practice makes it habitual.

Transparency statements are a simple concept, and that’s part of their beauty. Law enforcement deals with a high cognitive load in the field among uncertainty. Protecting communities requires collaboration to stay resilient. Having a simple template for transparency can help create the trust required to facilitate police-community collaboration towards a resilient community.

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Kyle S. H. Dobson is an assistant professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.