"Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand."

As part of each term group project, students learn more about the topic they are addressing, through both library research and through contact and interviews with community members. For instance, students working on mental illness spent time making rounds with staff of a local organization that provides services to homeless mentally ill people in New Haven. They then conducted extensive interviews of homeless people about their lives, their fears, their experience with police, and their needs. Students focusing on domestic violence researched domestic violence homicides over the past five years, interviewed women at a shelter for battered women, and spoke extensively with the court liaison and with advocates who work closely with domestic violence survivors.

Each term project group experiments with role plays, interviews, clinical rotations, and other experiential learning formats designed to build students’ communication skills and broaden their perspective. This work has included simulating the experience of homelessness, brainstorming with kids about the stereotypes each group held of the other, interviewing victims of domestic violence, and using role plays to rethink police/community interactions.

Police students collectively research their topic, work together on defining and implementing their art project, and present their work as a group. Collaboration helps police officers learn to work productively with each other and the community.

An important goal of the term projects is to challenge individuals’ stereotypes and preconceptions about various communities and their problems. Students have the opportunity to interact informally and over time with people throughout the city, both as term project group members and as community liaisons. This sustained interaction enables them to build trust with members of unfamiliar groups. They also work with community activists, service providers, and artists, all of whom have extensive knowledge and a long track record working with local groups.

Students work with artists to develop their capacity to observe without prejudging. Art also provides opportunities for police students and community members to interact in ways that break out of familiar (and sometimes confining) patterns.