11.2 Verbal Communication, Tactical Communication & Radio Procedure

Verbal Communication, Tactical Communication & Radio Procedure

Unit VIII.B — Verbal Communication Techniques (8 required hours) sits between Report Writing and Leadership in Colorado's 34-hour Communications unit. It is the highest-frequency skill in policing: an officer will talk their way through thousands of encounters for every one they resolve physically.

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1. The Persuasion Sequence

When an officer needs someone to do something, there is a sequence that produces voluntary compliance far more often than a bare order:

  1. ASK        "Sir, would you step over to the sidewalk for me?"
  2. EXPLAIN    "There's glass all over this lane and traffic is moving."
  3. OPTIONS    "You can step over there and we'll sort this out in two minutes,
                 or we can do this the hard way, which nobody wants."
  4. CONFIRM    "Is there anything I can say to get you to work with me?"
  5. ACT        Only when steps 1–4 have failed, and act decisively.

Step 2 is the one officers skip and the one that matters most. People comply at dramatically higher rates when they are told the reason. Step 4 — the confirmation question — serves two purposes: it offers a last off-ramp, and it creates a clean, recorded record that the officer exhausted voluntary means before using force. That record maps directly onto C.R.S. 18-1-707(1), which requires officers to apply nonviolent means when possible before resorting to physical force.

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2. Active Listening Tools

Drawn from crisis negotiation practice and taught in Colorado academies:

The technique recruits find hardest is the pause. Officers are trained to control situations, and silence feels like loss of control. It is not; it is the single most productive interviewing tool available.

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3. Professional Language

Every word is recorded. Under C.R.S. 24-31-902 the encounter is on body-worn camera, and the footage may be publicly released on statutory timelines following a misconduct complaint. Words that made sense in a moment of frustration read very differently on a news broadcast, in a deposition, and in a POST proceeding.

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4. Verbal De-escalation

1. Slow down. Reduce your rate of speech and lower your pitch; the other person's cadence tends to follow yours.
2. Create space. Distance reduces perceived threat for both parties and buys time.
3. One voice. Multiple officers giving commands guarantees non-compliance because there is nothing coherent to comply with.
4. Validate the emotion, not the behavior. "I get why you're angry" is not agreement that the behavior was acceptable.
5. Give the person an exit with dignity. Compliance that requires public humiliation will be resisted.
6. Watch your own arousal. Tactical breathing works on officers too, and an officer who is escalated cannot de-escalate anyone.

Recognize when talking is over. Verbal techniques are tools, not obligations. When a weapon appears, when an assault is imminent, or when a person is actively harming someone, the transition to action must be immediate and complete. The failure mode is not talking too long — it is talking while transitioning, half-committed to both.

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5. Radio Procedure

Plain language. Under the National Incident Management System, Colorado agencies use plain English rather than ten-codes for interoperable and mutual aid communications. Codes vary between agencies; "suspect is armed with a handgun" does not.

Transmission structure:

  1. LISTEN before keying — do not step on traffic
  2. KEY, pause one beat, then speak (avoid clipping the first word)
  3. IDENTIFY yourself, then the unit you are calling
  4. MESSAGE: short, specific, in order of importance
  5. ACKNOWLEDGE and confirm critical information back

Priority traffic. Emergency traffic clears the channel. The information dispatch and responding units need first, in order: location, nature of the emergency, what you need, and suspect or hazard information. "Shots fired, 12th and Elm, need medical and additional units, suspect running east on Elm wearing a red jacket" gives every responder everything in one transmission.

Broadcasting a suspect description in a fixed order prevents omissions: direction of travel, sex, race or apparent ethnicity, approximate age, height and build, hair, clothing from the head down, weapons, and vehicle with plate. Give the most identifiable feature first if there is one.

Discipline items: avoid long transmissions that block emergency traffic, avoid unnecessary chatter, remember that everything is recorded and subject to open records requests, and use the phonetic alphabet for letters and numbers that sound alike.

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6. Cross-Cultural and Language Access Communication

Eye contact norms, personal space expectations, gestures, and comfort with authority all vary across cultures, and misreading them produces false suspicion. Officers should interpret behavior in context rather than against a single default. For people with limited English proficiency, use a qualified interpreter — a language line, a certified bilingual officer, or an in-person interpreter — and never a child or a family member for a substantive interview, particularly in domestic violence and sexual assault cases where the available interpreter may be the suspect.