UGA Police Department

1 out of 5 college women will experience sexual assault during their college career, but less than 10% will report. Sexual assault is vastly underreported on campus, and police play a vital role in increasing the report. Their initial response to a sexual assault investigation is crucial to the victim’s decision to continue in the reporting process.

The UGA PD team has worked in conjunction with the School of Social Work to create an online interactive learning seminar using an HTML 5 e-learning authoring tool that integrates into the University of Georgia Police Department‘s existing learning management system. The Sexual Assault Response Training aims to train the university police department’s patrol officers in a trauma-informed way to ensure that survivors of sexual assault are supported and treated with empathy throughout an investigation.

The School of Social Work and the Chief of UGA Police Department’s goal is to provide officers with a trauma-informed training module that avoids victim blaming and builds trust within a sexual assault investigation. The training module incorporates animations, quizzes, and videos to keep the viewer engaged throughout the module while building crisis intervention skills. Police officers will be able to revisit the information they learn and administrators will be able to monitor the progress of their officers. With the help of the School of Social Work, they created a new training module that provides law enforcement officers with the necessary skills for crisis intervention so that they can assist individuals affected by sexual assault; thus, advancing public safety in our Athens community. In addition to the course, the UGA PD team has created an instructional video for the School of Social Work so that they can build and update the program for years to come.