Hillsboro police officers are learning to meditate

A Hillsboro police officer believes mindfulness meditation can improve the mental wellbeing of his fellow officers, and is teaching meditation classes across the country.

Here’s Melanie Sevcenko, reporting for Marketplace, talking to Lt. Richard Goerling about his Mindful Badge Initiative:

“I think in many ways, mindfulness is a foundation for the evolution of policing in America,” Goerling said. “It’s a foundation for us as an institution to take a really fair and deep introspective look at systems that frankly the data shows are oppressive to certain populations, in many cases to people of color.”

Lee Dobrowolski, chief of the Hillsboro Police, says such meditation helps officers perform better while also improving their home lives. Here’s Sevcenko again:

His department has already introduced rounds of mindfulness training to its officers for under $6,000. That’s just a sliver of the almost $3 million Hillsboro spends on medical and mental health care per year. The department is also working on a pilot program to introduce yoga training.

The entire story is worth a listen, so here it is: