Chicago’s Sit-D Program: Transforming Police Behavior with Science-Based Training

In August 2021, Oeindrila Dube, the Philip K. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at the Harris School of Public Policy, started examining data on first-of-its-kind training that she designed and implemented with a behavioral scientist and a retired police chief. The training’s objective: improving Chicago Police officers’ effectiveness in high-stress situations.

It was a crucial, anxious time for Chicago Police and law enforcement agencies across the United States. Public outcry from incidents such as the police shooting death of Laquan MacDonald in Chicago in 2014 was exerting intense pressure on law enforcement to rectify civilian encounters that too often included excessive, sometimes fatal, use of force.

Dube and her team had crafted a unique approach to police instruction, Situational Decision-Making. Its distinctions were behavioral science strategies designed to prevent dangerous cognitive biases, an immersive video experience and real-time, peer analysis of officers’ actions during training.

In her early analysis of Chicago’s implementation, Dube found real reasons for hope.

“In fact, we were astonished,” she said.

Three and a half years later, enthusiasm for the program, nicknamed “Sit-D,” is robust and expanding.

The evaluation of Sit-D, which was implemented through the UChicago Crime Lab, showed that Sit-D-trained officers recorded a 23 percent reduction in uses of non-lethal force and made 23 percent fewer discretionary arrests—on charges such as disorderly conduct—which have little impact on public safety. Those reductions are particularly beneficial for younger officers, who typically record higher levels of the use of force and discretionary arrests.

Despite not including racial bias in the program’s design, trained officers recorded 11 percent fewer arrests of Black civilians and a 28 percent reduction in discretionary arrests of Black subjects. Arrests of subjects of all other races were essentially unchanged.

That dramatic reduction in the racial disparities of arrests was the biggest surprise for Dube, who noted that the training’s design included only general cognitive biases.

The analysis found other encouraging effects of Sit-D: trained officers incurred nearly 50 percent fewer days off taken for injuries on duty, while continuing the same productivity levels.

“If you just look at the narrow benefit of the cost savings to the departments from reduced days off for injury, that more than offsets the cost of the training itself,” Dube said, counting this among the training’s many benefits.

The most powerful takeaway from the analysis was that trained officers had changed how they were thinking through stressful situations, she said.

They were better able to come up with varied explanations for what subjects were doing. In less threatening situations, officers recognized that they should be using lower levels of force. And officers were processing more information quickly.

Overall, the improved outcomes reflected better relations between police and residents, Dube said.

Sit-D may become even more relevant in Chicago, where months ago the judge overseeing a federal court mandate for broad police reform called the city’s effort up to that point “unsatisfying.”

‘Everyone wins’

It already is relevant and popular with officers who underwent training. Course evaluations showed that 93 percent of trained officers said Sit-D was useful for their work; 86 percent said they were enthusiastic about Sit-D.

“We like to think about training the whole officer—physical skills, constitutional and community policing, officer wellness,” said Dan Godsel, who as a Commander, led Chicago Police Department officer training when Sit-D was launched in 2020. “At a very high level, it’s clear that this training hits a lot of critical points.”

Especially compelling for Godsel was that researchers measured the training’s impact—a first for Godsel, a Chicago police officer for nearly 30 years who spent about six of them coordinating training. He retired in 2020, a few months after Sit-D training began.

“Above everything else was the fact that we consistently heard the officers saying this was practical training that they could start to use right away, that it was having a direct, positive impact,” Godsel said.

Chicago Police Sgt. Thomas Gaynor, a trainer during Sit-D, said its “fantastic” design was engaging and collaborative. When officers completed a video training segment of Sit-D, Gaynor noticed that “it was more like the officers were de-briefing themselves” on their actions and decisions.

“They came to conclusions themselves,” he added. “And if someone comes to their own conclusion about what they did well and what they need to do differently, you’re almost all the way home.”

Several months after training, Gaynor recalled, an officer told a trainer that Sit-D likely saved his life during a shooting in which one of his partners was killed and another was severely wounded.

“The lessons learned in this class increase officer safety,” Gaynor said. “It keeps the public safer. I think it reduces the risk of complaints and civil liabilities for our officers. Everyone wins.”

That combination may help CPD in another way. Like many big-city law enforcement agencies, the department struggles to recruit and retain new officers. Understaffing due to retention, retirement, and recruitment challenges results in a younger, less experienced police force. And officers with less experience are more likely to resort to force and to make the kinds of mental processing errors that trainings like Sit-D can help to minimize. 

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Sit-D is generating enthusiasm among law enforcement agencies outside Chicago.

Last year, the state of Ohio's Blue Ribbon Task Force recommended that Sit-D should be incorporated into training for all law enforcement officers across the state, a recommendation that has been unanimously approved by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission. Also, Dube said she is speaking with “a number of departments in the Midwest” interested in starting Sit-T training this year and next.

A unique approach

Designed to challenge police officers’ assumptions in stressful situations, Sit-D’s goal is to prevent adverse outcomes before they occur.

The training centers on placing officers in those stressful situations via life-size immersive video screens—known as force option simulators. In-depth discussions of officers’ thoughts and reactions accompany the video exercises.

Instead of directing officers what to think when a particular, stressful scenario presents itself, Sit-D teaches them to recognize where they might use “mental shortcuts and cognitive biases,” including over-generalizations based on earlier experiences. The training shows officers how the “thinking traps” interfere with accurately interpreting what’s happening, how to avoid the traps and process alternative reasons for a person’s behavior—all in a very short time, Dube said.

Officers practice critical thinking, assessing a scenario and considering multiple interpretations of what’s happening in front of them. Sit-D is delivered in small classes and short sessions over several months to help officers retain material.

“When someone is behaving erratically and stumbling around and shouting, maybe they intend to harm you,” Dube said, “but maybe they’re just drunk, or maybe they need assistance. It’s easy to cycle through different possibilities like that in a calm situation, but it’s difficult to do that under high stress. Sit-D builds that muscle in officers.”

Optimism for the future

Dube and her research co-author, Anuj K. Shah, Associate Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, had for months been pitching their ideas on behavioral science-based police training to law enforcement experts.

A breakthrough occurred in 2017, when they met Sandy Jo MacArthur, a retired Los Angeles Police Department assistant chief who ran the agency’s training for more than a decade. MacArthur was working on her doctorate and came on board as a co-author of the study.

“In many ways, she’s the secret sauce,” Dube said. “She immediately understood why we were trying to bring this idea of managing cognitive demands to police training. She took the abstract ideas we had observed in other parts of psychology literature, and she translated them into scenarios and descriptions.”

Dube is optimistic about the future of Sit-D. Its evidence-based core is rare in police training and compelling to law enforcement agencies, she said. Also, Sit-D technology continues to be more cost effective and adaptable.

“I think the training will be able to reach lots of law enforcement officers in lots of departments of different sizes and scales,” Dube said. “Anytime we have been in a room with a police department for the first time and they’ve heard the results, it’s incredibly exciting for them and they are extremely enthusiastic about Sit-D and what it could do for them.”