Section Three: Preventing Escalation

But what about situations where a youth may feel more upset or threatened than Jacob did?

Trauma-informed principles help you build relationships with youth and help de-escalate encounters with youth who are displaying a trauma reaction of fight, flight, or freeze. Here’s a list of helpful and unhelpful ways to respond to problematic youth behaviors.

Helpful Ways to Respond

• Offer the choice to help the teen take several deep breaths.
• Provide space for them to take a quiet moment to calm down.
• Acknowledge that their situation is difficult.
• Ask what happened to lead to this situation.
• Get support from outside sources. Identify an elder who can speak with the youth, ask if there is someone the teen wants to call, or involve a relative who has a good relationship with the youth.

Unhelpful Ways to Respond

• Handcuffing youth to a pole or fence
• Asking a series of rapid questions
• Placing hand on weapon or raising weapon
• Demanding youth to raise their arms
• Arresting youth
• Using physical force to demand compliance
• Negatively labelling the youth, calling them names, or disparaging them

Vicarious or Secondary Trauma

To communicate thoughtfully with youth, we need a calm and collected state of mind, ourselves. However, our jobs put us under all kinds of stress that interferes with calm communication. We experience vicarious or secondary trauma from working in communities that deal with high rates of violence. That’s why it’s so important to take care of your own stress to prevent burn-out. For example, the simple act of deep breathing can calm one down.

This concludes the simulation Trauma-Informed Policing with Tribal Youth. Thank you for your interest in learning more about trauma-informed practices and about supporting and building stronger relationships with youth in your community.

Resources and Links

The Effects of Adolescent Development on Policing A guide developed by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention containing strategies for interacting with youth and examples of programs from police departments across the US

Childhood Trauma and Its Effects: Implications for Police A paper from the National Institute of Justice summarizing the effects of ongoing trauma and the implications for policing

Childhood Trauma in Indian Country A webinar presented by the Indian Country Childhood Trauma Center, discussing the types of trauma and the reactions that may evolve

The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study and American Indian/Alaska Native Children A webinar discussing the ACE study findings with American Indian and Alaska Native children

Self-Care Resources for Stress Management A collection of online resources and strategies for self-care, stress management, and burnout

Police Officer Plays Hopscotch with Homeless Girl An article about an officer who used a game of hopscotch to build rapport and gather information about a young girl's welfare