This Trainer's Guide provides information and tools useful to the instructor in a police training course designed to develop the knowledge, skills, and basic protocols that facilitate the merger of "victim-oriented" policing services with "community-oriented" policing.
Specifically, the training is intended to provide law enforcement professionals with information and strategies for working with victims at the scene of crimes and their aftermath; help law enforcement professionals improve their skills in interviewing and responding to victims; and help strengthen partnerships between law enforcement agencies and victim assistance and compensation programs so they can work more effectively in the community. This Trainer's Guide has the complete text of the Participant's Guide plus some suggestions on how to present the material in each chapter. Following an overview of community policing and victim assistance concepts, a chapter discusses victimization and its trauma, followed by a chapter on the patrol officer's role in crisis intervention for crime victims. Another chapter addresses victim rights and police agencies' responsibilities in facilitating the exercise of these rights. A series of chapters focus on how law enforcement professionals can work with victim assistance professionals in the community, sexual assault victims, domestic violence victims, survivors of homicide victims, victims of bias crime, elderly crime victims, and child victims of crime. The concluding chapter discusses issues related to the management of stress that police officers experience in working with victims of violence.