NYPD Leadership Courses

This course is an introductory exploration of the impact of racial and ethnic diversity, social structure, and oppression in the United States with particular emphasis on policing and police supervision in New York City. Students examine the impact of racial and cultural myths and realities on police perceptions and responses to crime, and on community perceptions and responses to law enforcement. Each weekly class will combine a variety of teaching and learning modalities designed to maximize experiential learning and build on students' professional experience.

The goal of this course is to enhance the student’s understanding of effective supervision and the importance of leadership at all levels of policing. The course is for police supervisors, and those preparing to be supervisors. Each class will be divided between keynote activities and faculty instructions. Class faculty, all of whom regularly teach management and supervision will lead class discussions, monitor attendance, review student work and assign grades.

An identification and analysis of the diverse ethical issues encountered in the police service. Traditional ethical theories will be examined and will be applied to such topics as discretion, deadly physical force, misconduct, authority and responsibility, affirmative action, civil disobedience, undercover operations and privacy.

Analysis of the politics of race and racism in the United States through the examination of major court decisions and of legislation affecting minority groups. Treatment of racial minority groups in the criminal and civil justice systems, by courts, police, and prisons will be included.

This course will explore and develop a conceptual framework of modern police leadership. The emphasized focus is on the complexity of the leadership process in the law enforcement organization, from the perspective of the individual members (in their roles as leaders, peers, followers), through social and work groups to which organizational members belong and in which they work and perform. Concepts such as: organizational and individual developments, dimensions and dynamics of police groups and subsystems, communication and counseling skills, ethical considerations, and adaptation processes to the changing society, will be discussed and analyzed.

In the new Millennium, facing the new global realities, managers and supervisors will need to change their leadership styles to meet the challenges and requirements of a culturally diverse society and workforce. On the other end of the spectrum, safety and security concerns intersect with the more traditional mission of police force. The goal of this course is to analyze the concepts of leadership, as they represent a step beyond management, and the heart of any unit or law enforcement organization of the future. The more diverse the workforce of law enforcement organization becomes, the more complex the mission, the more leadership is needed. Suggestions for new attitudes and approaches based on the assumption that people want to be led and not managed are the desired outcomes of the course.

This course examines the controversies between race and crime in America, now and in the past. It also discusses the competing definitions of race, crime and violence. Investigates the legacy of slavery and the impact of restrictive immigration laws.

The purpose of the course is to familiarize the student with strategies for ethically acceptable decision- making, and their application to a broad range of problems (“hard cases”) that are encountered in police work. The course is intended to sensitize police practitioners to the ethical complexities of police work and to assist them in addressing these complexities constructively. What is unique about this course is its comparative approach to the dilemmas of police ethics and integrity. The goal of such an approach is to flash out the police profession as one that transcends cultures and countries by emphasizing its common struggles and dimensions on one hand and its status as one of the fundamental pillars of any democratic society on the other.

This course gives present and future law enforcement managers an overview of counter-terrorism policy in the context of current events and policies. The topics will include emergency response disaster scenes, the identification of terrorists and terrorist groups, and the assessment of vulnerability and risk of population and infrastructure. The course will cover preventive law enforcement strategies and tactics, as well as methods to improve information sharing and coordination between agencies. Evolving federal and state policy will be considered in light of recent anti-terrorism legislation. New and existing approaches to immigration monitoring and control, as well as how these responses impact on civil liberties and issues related to privacy and profiling. Faculty members will provide more than one point of view to foster and integrated look at the criminal justice system. A major theme is the changing definition of and the uses of discretion by criminal justice personnel, influenced by the culture and various subcultures developed and maintained by the law enforcement agencies, by outside forces, and by legal developments. The desired outcome of this course is to provide the students with some analytical and critical skills in the field of counter-terrorism policies.

This course familiarizes students with the fundamentals of policing in a free society. Focused not just on professional competency of the police, the course looks at the importance of police legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the idea of achieving a social contract with communities to encourage law abiding behavior.  Particular attention will be given to the complexity of achieving this in a diverse community with histories of racial and ethnic conflict.