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VALOR Officer Safety and Wellness Initiative
Overview
View the booklet to learn more
The Officer Robert Wilson III Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers and Ensuring Officer Resilience and Survivability (VALOR) Initiative is an effort to improve the immediate and long-term safety, wellness, and resilience of our nation’s law enforcement officers. Through a multifaceted approach that includes delivering no-cost training (professional education), conducting research, developing and providing resources, and establishing partnerships that benefit law enforcement officers, the VALOR Initiative seeks to provide our law enforcement with innovative, useful, and valuable resources and skills.
VALOR continuously evolves to confront the many complex issues, concerns, and trends that law enforcement officers face and to integrate the latest research and practices to address all aspects of officer safety, wellness, resilience, and performance. The nature of all of these critical ongoing issues are ever-changing; many times, being driven by local, state, and national events. This can have a direct effect on an officer's ability to prevent or survive the rigorous challenges and threats that she or he may face in the line of duty.
The Department of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Assistance are dedicated to helping our law enforcement officers and the communities they serve stay safe and well. Because officer safety and community safety are intrinsically bound, requiring a strong and positive partnership, the VALOR Initiative provides a comprehensive approach to addressing law enforcement officers' needs and to building those strong and positive partnerships with the communities they serve. The VALOR Initiative supports our law enforcement through its programs that address the following topics:
VALOR Officer Safety & Wellness Program (VALOR Program)
This is BJA's flagship officer safety and wellness program that provides in-person, virtual, and online training and technical assistance that focuses on recognizing indicators of dangerous situations, applying defusing techniques, implementing casualty care and rescue tactics, emphasizing professional policing standards, and improving wellness and resilience. The VALOR Program offers a suite of trainings, including Survive & Thrive®, available as a one- or two-day event for all levels of law enforcement. In addition, VALOR offers a robust catalog of interactive distance learning courses.
Field-Driven Officer Safety and Wellness Program
This training program delivers in-person and online training and resources to address wellness and safety topics not currently addressed through other VALOR Initiative programs. Resources may include addressing topics such as survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress. This program currently offers a compassion fatigue training for officers that focuses on strengthening officer wellness.
Innovative Approaches to Strengthening Officer Wellness Program
This program delivers in-person and online trainings, tools, and resources on officer health, wellness, and safety. This program also offers a comprehensive Officer Safety and Wellness Agency Assessment tool and an Action Planning Roadmap to assist agencies in implementing wellness programming within their department.
Law Enforcement Agency and Officer Resilience Training Program
This training and technical assistance program delivers in-person and virtual resiliency concepts trainings to law enforcement. The goal is to build more resilient officers and agencies by enhancing knowledge and skills in resiliency to assist officers in dealing with the many day-to-day challenges and stressors they face as well as those larger critical incidents.
National Suicide Awareness for Law Enforcement Officers (SAFLEO) Program
This program offers a suite of in-person and online trainings and technical assistance for law enforcement that is focused on education, awareness, recognition, and prevention of law enforcement suicide. SAFLEO also provides eLearning opportunities to regularly reinforce learning concepts and uses the latest research in suicide ideation, root causes of officer suicide, risks, protective factors, and awareness in all of its resources and trainings.
National Consortium on Preventing Law Enforcement Suicide
This Consortium convenes a group of experts including researchers, sworn officers, academia, and mental health professionals to address law enforcement suicide. The Consortium has developed several resources for agencies and officers including awareness and prevention tools and recommendations on how to address and message about mental wellness and suicide.
National Law Enforcement Roadway Safety Program
This training and technical assistance program offers a suite of trainings and resources to law enforcement that focuses on a variety of traffic safety issues identified through research and data with the goal of reducing traffic-related injuries and deaths of officers.
Analytics to Improve Officer Safety Program
This program seeks practical, actionable risk-reduction strategies for officers responding to calls for service. Through analysis of police incident data, this program is developing a risk assessment model to help officers in assessing risk and taking appropriate safety measures when responding to calls for service.
Officer Safety and Wellness Pilot Research and Evaluation
Through research conducted by this program on the impact that VALOR trainings and resources have within an agency, this program is identifying innovations and best practices in training and training needs identification that may be implemented to improve officer safety and wellness programs throughout the nation.
Adaptive Defensive and Protective Tactics (ADAPT) Program
This program is integrating data and research on police decision-making, use of force, officer injuries and fatalities, officer safety, human performance, physiology and kinesiology, etc., to design an updated modular model defensive tactics training that can be integrated into the training program of any sized agency.
Supporting the Blue Public Awareness and Education Campaign
This program is educating the public about law enforcement, opening lines of communication between law enforcement and their communities, and is promoting positive messaging about our nation’s law enforcement, including bringing to light the positive nature and aspects of the profession as well as its challenges.
Reducing Violent Crime Campaign
This campaign is bringing awareness of the ravages of violent crime, underscoring how law enforcement and community members can work together to reduce violent crime and make their communities safer for all.
Violent Crime Reduction (VCRIME) Program
This program is a nationwide messaging, education, and community engagement program focusing on community violence reduction. VCRIME is using a two-pronged approach to maximize the opportunity to promote the VCRIME shared responsibility message by implementing an educational, messaging, and community engagement program; and providing a structured implementation framework for disseminating and "bringing to life" the VCRIME messaging and resources at a local level.
