Fighting Crime

How to Train a Cop

Every year, about one million people experience force during interactions with police. What if better decision-making training could help improve outcomes?

Fighting Crime

It’s not true crime. It’s the truth about crime.

There are a bunch of ways to improve public safety that no one is talking about. Until now. Fighting Crime is the podcast that’s dedicated to discovering the evidence behind reducing crime.

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Join journalist Cristina Quinn as she travels across the country from prisons to universities, police chiefs to inmates, to look at the evidence and question everything we think we know about how to make America safer.

Published

Jul 09, 2026

Focus Area

Criminal Justice

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We all need the right training to do our jobs properly. So what do cops need so they can make better decisions in high-stakes and time-sensitive situations? In this episode, we speak to economists about simple and effective training methods, which help cops arrest the right people and keep us safer, and which also cost next to nothing.

Sources:

Emily Owens, David Weisburd, Karen L. Amendola, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Can You Build a Better Cop? Experimental Evidence on Supervision, Training and Policing in the Community; Criminology and Public Policy, Volume 17, Issue 1 (2018)
Oeindrila Dube, Sandy Jo MacArthur, Anuj K. Shah, A Cognitive View of Policing; The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 140, Issue 1, February 2025

Who's Who

Host Cristina Quinn

Cristina Quinn is a Boston-based journalist and was the producer and host of The Washington Post's podcast, Try This. Prior to joining the Post, she was a producer at Gimlet Media/Spotify. She previously reported for WGBH Boston. Her stories have also aired on PBS NewsHour, NPR, PRI’s The World and BBC World Service.