Rosa Brooks was on sabbatical from her job as a professor at Georgetown University Law Center in 2016 when she decided to become a reserve officer with Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department—a decision she attributes to both an interest in police reform and a love of detective novels.

Her police training centered on tactical instructions and memorizing violations, but a key element was missing from the curriculum.

“One of the many things that struck me as extremely strange was that the entire country was talking about race and policing and use of force,” Brooks said. “The one place that conversation was not happening was at the police academy, where it was not acknowledged in any way.”

So Brooks collaborated with fellow Georgetown Law faculty to create the Police for Tomorrow Fellowship—an 18-month program in which a select group of early-career police officers attend workshops on topics ranging from use of force and over-criminalization to implicit bias, homelessness, mental illness, and race and policing.

The fellowship culminates in a capstone project in which officers put their new knowledge to use in community outreach or research. The program's first cohort of 19 officers graduates Tuesday. A second group of 26 fellows has just begun the program and the Metropolitan Police Department plans to incorporate aspects of the program into its standard police academy training.

Law schools have produced much research on police reform in recent years, but Georgetown's program takes that work further by actually training officers in the societal problems like homelessness they encounter daily on patrol. Brooks said the early results have been promising and she hopes to export the fellowship program to schools, organizations and police departments across the country. She is currently applying for grants to fund the program, which operates on a shoestring budget from the law school and the police department.

“We, our fellows, and the department's leadership have been blown away by how much it meant to the participants and how much it changed their perspectives and made them better officers,” Brooks said. “And it really didn't take all that much work, all things considered.”

Fellow Salah Czapary said he and his partner left each session feeling refreshed and better able to address the myriad situations patrol offices encounter. The program also helped place the daily stream of service calls into a larger context, he said.

“Any officer who has been on the street for a while knows that our most important tool is how we speak to people and de-escalate situations,” Czapary said. “Having more knowledge about different aspects of society and groups of people only increases the effectiveness of that tool.”

Czapary said he recalibrated the way he communicates with children after hearing from an expert on juvenile brain development. That session underscored that juveniles don't necessarily understand or interpret things the way an adult would, he said.

Police recruits and officers in their first year on the job apply to the fellowship program—85 applied for the 26 slots in the second iteration. Part of the appeal is that officers with an interest in reform can find like-minded colleagues, Brooks said.

“One of the things they said to us is that it made them feel like they're not alone,” she said. “It made them feel like, 'Oh, I'm not the only person thinking about these things,' because the culture very much tells you, 'We don't talk about this stuff. And if you want to talk about this stuff, you're a weirdo.'”

Georgetown Law was a logical campus to pursue a police training program. It's home to the Program on Innovative Policing, which includes five professors with expertise on the subject. Brooks developed the fellowship program with professors Paul Butler, whose 2017 book “Chokehold” explores the policing of black men; Kris Henning, who heads the school's juvenile justice clinic; Christy Lopez, a former attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice who authored its report on the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown; and Shon Hopwood, a former bank robber turned law professor and criminal justice reform advocate.

“We sat around and said, 'What do we think cops need to be thinking about that they may not be thinking about?'” said Brooks, adding that the topics will be adjusted over time.

For fellows, the capstone project offers an opportunity to pursue their individual interests. Czapary elected to survey fellow officers about retention issues in a bid to help cut down on turnover. Officer turnover reduces the effectiveness of community policing, which relies on beat cops to develop relationships with the local community.

Brooks said the first fellowship opened her eyes to the difficulty of the job police perform. “I learned how hard it is to be an ethical, thoughtful police officer,” she said.