Mindfulness training for San Mateo police

The mindfulness program focuses on skill-building on the topic of mindfulness to support police officers and enhance compassion, wisdom and peak performance during and outside the job. Training will include scenarios and skills to prepare for occupational stressors and traumas of the job. Each week will focus on specific section topics for training, like resilience, recognizing stress, regulating unhelpful thinking, trusting your training, dealing with physical and emotional pain rather than repressing, a compassionate approach to the public and themselves, gratitude and applying a mindfulness approach at home and work.

The program will be facilitated by Pete Kirchmer, the program director and co-creator of the University of California, San Diego Center for Mindfulness mPEAK Program. Around 150 officers and staff members will participate in groups of 25 through multiple rounds via Zoom. The training will begin in April, with two separate classes for 50 people total every eight weeks.

Barberini hopes the program will help officers become more resilient and learn to process stress in a more healthy and meaningful way, which can help create better interactions with the public. He believes addressing the challenges and pressures officers face daily will help them be better prepared. Being better equipped to deal with stressors helps officers at work and home and leads to more compassionate responses. He acknowledged some people might be skeptical of the program, as he was initially skeptical when he first heard about it. However, he found it made a difference when he brought it to San Bruno as police chief.

“There was a noticeable change in individual officers and the department,” Barberini said.

There is no current system set up to measure the program’s effectiveness in data and metrics like other programs. Instead, the John Gardner Center for Youth and their communities at Stanford University will conduct a study assessment of well-being and performance before and after participation for an overall analysis of police performance data and officers’ welfare. Barberini is hoping for different ways to measure success beyond the traditional forms, like ensuring healthier careers for officers and better quality of life.

“They are working with us to establish those metrics,” Barberini said.

Barberini said the job’s difficulties cost him relationships and friendships, and his experiences are unfortunately often the rule rather than the exception as an officer. He now realizes he lacked balance and the prioritization of what’s important earlier in his career. He hopes providing resources to help people in his department will help them be resilient in their lives and lead to more positive interactions for everyone. Many officers must deal with negativity and daily conflict that lead to a lot of stress and anxiety that wears on them, especially if they don’t have the training to deal with it.

“I think I would have been much better off if I had been exposed to this as a young police officer,” Barberini said.

Menlo Park has also made a similar program available to its force. The California Department of Justice’s Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training has approved the training program for reimbursement for the $105,000 tuition cost. The San Mateo City Council approved the program at its March 15 meeting.

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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