We all know the priority of every correctional officer is the safety and security of the facility and training is focused on these efforts accordingly. Resources are rarely dedicated to investigations, and when criminal activity occurs, staff can be left with limited skills to conduct proper investigations. Through correctional-specific examples, this training will outline the basic components of criminal investigations and will provide practical guidance, considerations, and strategies for conducting thorough investigation of criminal events occurring in jail settings.
Officer-Perpetrated Domestic Violence is often easiest to recognize when it involves overt acts such as weapons use or visible physical injuries. However, domestic violence more commonly thrives in silence, hidden within the private dynamics of the intimate relationship itself. While the core patterns of abuse are consistent across populations, they are often intensified when one or both parties are members of law enforcement or correctional agencies. This session will provide a comprehensive understanding of intimate partner violence, with a specific focus on coercive control, behavioral red flags, barriers to victim reporting, safety considerations, and investigative challenges. The presenter will also offer practical guidance on policy development, victim protection, offender accountability, and agency responsibilities.
Domestic Violence doesn’t stop when a defendant is arrested. The period after an abuser’s arrest is a critical time for survivors and is an opportunity to break the cycle of violence. Furthermore, correctional staff have a vital obligation to reinforce court mandates to prevent protective order violations from within their facilities. This presentation will use real-life case examples to give a better understanding of court and protective orders, to give insight on the dynamics of post-arrest abuse, and to showcase the power of prevention. The presenter will offer attendees guidance on implementing processes and policies for ensuring compliance and prevention to include proactive monitoring, blocking communications, reporting violations, and administrative disciplinary actions.
Co-presented with a survivor
Officer-Perpetrated Domestic Violence is often easiest to recognize when it involves overt acts such as weapons use or visible physical injuries. However, domestic violence more commonly thrives in silence, hidden within the private dynamics of the intimate relationship itself. While the core patterns of abuse are consistent across populations, they are often intensified when one or both parties are members of law enforcement. This session will chronicle the real-life story of a peace officer’s abusive relationship with a fellow officer and will highlight coercive control, behavioral red flags, barriers to reporting, safety considerations, investigative challenges, offender accountability, and agency responsibilities.
Co-presented with a prosecutor
** Best as a 2-part session**
Abuse doesn’t end when a perpetrator is arrested, and the pressure abusers place on their victims often intensifies. Jail calls provide powerful evidence, frequently exposing admissions, threats, manipulation, and coercive control. Monitoring these calls enables practitioners to detect patterns of intimidation, identify safety risks, and strengthen case outcomes overall.
These sessions offer strategies for leveraging jail calls from both the investigative and prosecutorial perspectives.
Part 1 will discuss best practices for archiving calls, protective order compliance and filing charges for violations, evidentiary admissibility, overcoming recantations, and other trial strategies to include increasing bonds, forfeiture by wrongdoing evidence and impeachment evidence.
Part 2 will dive deeper into specific real-world examples to highlight the concepts discussed in the first part through case study presentations and interactive discussions. Participants will gain insight into the coercive dynamics used by abusers and how to leverage this valuable jail call evidence to enhance victim safety, corroborate testimony, and hold offenders accountable.
Co-presented with a prosecutor
Despite greater awareness of the concepts in determining a predominant aggressor, investigators and prosecutors continue to arrest and charge true victims of domestic violence every day. Presenters will showcase what an “upside-down” case is, what it means to be a true victim, how these cases present differently, and ways to avoid these types of cases entirely.
Law Enforcement will be offered sustainable tools to improve the on-scene and follow-up investigations. Prosecutors will be offered tools to recognize when an upside-down case has been filed, strategies for how to handle these types of cases, and guidance for policy implications and considerations.
** Best as a 2-part session**
Domestic Violence investigations come with their own unique challenges often resulting in officers and prosecutors unfairly triaging cases as he said/she said. The presenter will challenge attendees to develop and apply a lens of “evidence-based” to combat this mentality. This course will use an interactive scenario for a guided domestic violence investigation based on real-life situations and will break down the various stages of a criminal case to include the on-scene patrol response and the follow-up investigation. The presenter’s goals are to expand investigative efforts beyond verbal reports for making better and more informed on-scene decisions as well as producing thorough overall investigations that can evolve into strongly presented beyond reasonable doubt prosecutions.
Co-presented with a prosecutor
Without consequences and offender accountability, it is well-established that domestic abuse repeats and escalates. Successful intervention through prosecution relies on a high-quality investigation. However, when law enforcement officers are unaware of how or what evidence can be used in a courtroom, they may be challenged to provide the effective, quality investigation necessary for charge through prosecution. To enhance these investigations, multi-disciplinary teams, to include collaboration between prosecutors and investigators at the granular level, are crucial and are now recognized as an invaluable tool in the fight to end domestic violence. This workshop will define what investigator and prosecutor collaboration is at a granular level, showcase its benefits through brief case studies, provide examples for how this collaborative system works, provide strategies to create collaborative relationships between law enforcement and prosecutors, and why this collaboration is vital when fighting to end domestic violence.
Co-presented with a fellow retired law enforcement officer
Community Policing is principled upon building bonds between law enforcement and the community through effective law enforcement presences, increased community involvement, and proactive and collaborative approaches to help prevent crime. These presenters, former Community Outreach Officers, will showcase ways they carried these philosophies forward as one returned to the streets as a patrolman and the other promoted to detective. The presenters will give real-life examples of how they used creativity with community involvement and interagency collaboration to increase awareness of the impact of domestic violence, to improve information sharing within the patrol district, to improve the response to domestic violence calls through training, and to spark an overall motivation for raising the bar of what is expected when investigating domestic violence.
Despite significant advancements in law enforcement in recent years, many aspects of domestic violence investigations remain antiquated and overlooked. While crime scene attention is prioritized in homicides and other “major” crimes, domestic violence calls often receive less scrutiny. When these scenes are taken for granted, critical evidence is lost, leaving investigations reliant on verbal accounts alone. This lack of thorough documentation can weaken arrest and prosecution opportunities and leave victims at risk of continued and escalated harm. This session emphasizes how applying the same methodical practices used in major crimes can elevate non-fatal domestic violence cases. Investigators never know which detail may prove pivotal—sometimes it is the smallest piece of evidence that shifts a case from probable cause to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Participants will learn practical strategies for identifying and documenting evidence that speaks when victims cannot or will not. Focus areas include recognizing patterns of coercive control in the environment, capturing photographic and digital evidence, preserving trace and physical details often overlooked, and documenting injuries and property damage with an eye toward corroboration. Through real case examples and investigative strategies, attendees will gain tools to “listen to the crime scene,” strengthen reports, inform decision-making, enhance victim safety, and support stronger prosecutorial outcomes.
Incidents involving intimate partners are among the most complex and high-risk calls officers respond to, yet critical evidence is frequently missed at the scene. When investigations are incomplete, decision-making is limited, survivors can be adversely impacted, and offenders are more likely to avoid accountability. This session offers practical, sustainable tools and on-scene investigative practices designed to broaden an officer’s lens, strengthen case development, and support evidence-based prosecutions.
Co-presented with a prosecutor
**Best as a 2-part session**
Most violent crime investigations begin with a 911 call, yet these calls are often overlooked, causing lost evidence and weakening prosecutions. This session will demonstrate how 911 calls can be used as powerful tools to strengthen evidence-based investigations and hold offenders accountable through evidence-based prosecutions, even without survivor participation.
Part 1 will cover best practices for collecting and reviewing calls, developing investigative leads, and addressing prosecution intake and case filings. It will also explore courtroom considerations, including objections, admissibility, the Confrontation Clause, and Crawford v. Washington.
Part 2 will feature case studies and interactive discussions, allowing participants to apply these strategies in real-world contexts. Attendees will learn how calls from victims, abusers, family, and witnesses can influence investigations, inform arrest decisions, and guide trial preparation—ultimately leading to stronger prosecutions and safer outcomes for survivors.
Building on the foundation of trauma-informed practices, the Human Centric Interviewing approach reflects the continued evolution of our understanding of human behavior, memory, and the wide-ranging impacts of trauma equipping participants with the knowledge and practical skills needed to conduct effective interviews to explore an interviewee’s experience across victims, witnesses, and suspects. This model integrates concepts of trauma-responsive care, the body’s response to trauma, and the role of authentic human connection. Participants will learn strategies to foster trust, support accurate recall, and create space for individuals to share their experiences in a way that feels safe and respected. Designed for multidisciplinary professionals across the criminal justice system, this session challenges practitioners to move beyond procedure and connect with the person in front of them as a fellow human navigating a complex—and often overwhelming—system. At its core, Human-Centric Interviewing calls on professionals to remain grounded in empathy, curiosity, and authenticity—because above all, the work requires us to be human first.
Crimes involving intimate partners are some of the most complex to investigate and the most difficult to translate into words. Using an organizational template designed to bring calm to chaos, the presenter will showcase its dual purpose. While the goal is to produce reports and affidavits that accurately depict the reported events in a clear, detailed and easily consumable manner, the template also prompts officers to conduct evidence-based investigations. The presenter will use real-life examples to showcase the importance of capturing evidence beyond the elements of a crime by documenting dynamics of control and fear, corroboration of truthful and untruthful statements, high risk factors, and the detection of patterns through the review of historical patterns. This session will give insight on how to be thorough but concise, using effective language, and avoiding damaging and inflammatory language. Attendees will leave with the understanding that what is or is not documented can aid or harm current and future investigations, can impact judges’ decisions on probable cause, bond conditions, and/or whether to release a defendant from custody, and can influence case reviews as prosecutors make charging decisions, prepare for hearings, and develop trial strategies. While these concepts should be universal throughout law enforcement, the presenter will stress how they are even more vital when applied by jurisdictions serving rural, resort, and coastal communities.
Intimate partner violence is often hidden, leaving law enforcement to rely too heavily on victim and suspect statements. This reliance overlooks a vital source of corroborating and independent evidence: witnesses. While officers may focus on eyewitnesses to the event, effective investigations require broadening that lens. Witnesses can include family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, or even strangers who observe patterns of abuse, behavioral changes, or moments of escalation. Others—such as 911 callers, first responders, and those who encounter the parties before or after an incident—offer critical insight into context and aftermath.
This session will equip participants with strategies to identify, interview, and extract relevant information from diverse witnesses to strengthen and support evidence-based prosecutions. Emphasis will be placed on overcoming reluctance, using trauma-centered approaches, and weaving diverse accounts into a cohesive case. By expanding how witnesses are defined and utilized, law enforcement can strengthen evidence-based prosecutions, improve victim safety, and enhance offender accountability.
We ask survivors to tell us what happened—but what happens when we actually listen? If we rush the story, we risk missing the truth.
Domestic violence investigations are often centered on fact-gathering interviews, driven by timelines, elements of the offense, and the pressure to simply “get the report.” In doing so, we may unintentionally limit the very information we seek to uncover.
Participants will explore how trauma, coercive control, and non-linear memory shape disclosure, and how a lack of awareness and sensitivity can negatively impact both the survivor and the investigation. Drawing from real-world investigative experience, this session offers practical strategies to slow down, build trust and psychological safety, and create space for survivors to be fully heard.
Participants will also examine the importance of corroboration and evidence-based investigations, the role of multidisciplinary collaboration, and how to navigate difficult conversations when moving cases forward with survivors who are reluctant or unable to participate—without losing sight of safety, dignity, or investigative integrity.
This session challenges professionals to move beyond gathering facts and toward truly understanding the human experience behind them.
Coming soon...