Mandatory training on the first day off in two weeks. New guidance from administration with no context. Staffing shortages the night before. When officers walk into a training session already frustrated by these conditions and more, their emotions can unintentionally land on the wrong target.

The instructor caused none of it, yet they’re the ones standing at the front of the room when those emotions surface. They’re expected to maintain composure, deliver the material and keep the session productive regardless of the energy walking through the door. For many instructors, this “coming in hot” dynamic is a defining feature of a job they may not even have signed up for.

 

A Role Without a Safety Net

In smaller agencies, training is frequently an additional duty. The instructor carries a full patrol or investigative workload alongside curriculum development, compliance documentation, and delivery. There is rarely a formal transition period, a reduced caseload, or any acknowledgment that preparing and running training on top of operational responsibilities is a substantively different job than doing either one alone.

Burnout in law enforcement has been linked to a range of job-related and organizational factors, including tension with supervisors and the cumulative weight of competing organizational demands.[1] Instructors sit at a particular pressure point within that already pressurized system, absorbing frustration from the officers they are expected to develop and accountability from the administration above them, often without any formal support structure in between.

Even in larger agencies where training is a dedicated full-time role, expectations tend to be high while support remains thin. Instructors are generally held to a standard of professional composure that the officers in their training rooms are not. Displaying frustration, fatigue, or disengagement is often perceived as a loss of professional bearing rather than a response to conditions, which means the people most responsible for maintaining a productive training environment are often the least likely to speak up when they’re struggling.

Instructors absorb the frustrations around them, and it’s often a significant load to carry without acknowledgment, resources, or relief.

 

What Leaders Can Do

Administrators who want to ensure the training room stays productive have concrete options, and none of them require a large budget. Most simply require acknowledgment first.

Instructors carrying dual roles need genuine workload consideration. That means an honest accounting of how many hours curriculum preparation, delivery, debriefing, and documentation actually require, along with a corresponding reduction elsewhere, not a verbal nod and an expectation that their full operational workload remains unchanged alongside those responsibilities.

Peer support programs and employee assistance resources that agencies make available to line officers should be explicitly communicated to dedicated training personnel. If instructors don’t know whether those resources apply to them, they may assume they do not because they operate outside the daily grind.

Debriefing opportunities after particularly difficult training environments should be normalized. An instructor who has led a session where participants were openly dismissive, combative or disrespectful has experienced something that may have left them feeling less valued or like an outsider on the team. Treating that experience as unremarkable can compound issues down the road.

Administrators should also examine how performance expectations for instructors are communicated. If the implicit standard is that instructors absorb whatever the room brings without ever showing the effects, that standard is producing a specific outcome in the form of burnout, degraded training quality, and turnover.

 

What Officers Can Do

Walking into a training session already frustrated is not the problem. The frustration is often legitimate. Mandatory training scheduled poorly and administrative decisions that make no sense are real grievances, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make them easier to deal with.

The problem is what happens to that frustration before it finds a target, or after the emotional shot has been fired.

A useful move is to acknowledge it early, whether by telling the instructor before the training starts that it’s been a rough week or simply acknowledging that what you are carrying came in with you and is not about the person running the course or simulator. Neither requires vulnerability or a long conversation. It simply creates enough space to get through the session without misdirecting the frustration that is already there.

 

What Instructors Can Do

Instructors who want to protect their own wellness have a few practical places to start, and it’s important to take a proactive role in managing the emotional temperature of the room.

Before training: Consider putting a fun sign on the door as a reminder that the instructor is not the target. Or maybe an emotional trash can by the entrance. It ensures anyone walking into the room sees what they’re bringing to the human on the other side of the door.

During training: Establish a shared reset signal at the start of a simulator session, something low-stakes and judgment-free that anyone in the room can invoke when tension begins to build. For example, anyone in the room should be allowed to say “pink elephant” when tensions arise, and the instructor automatically pulls up that cool zombie skill builder so everyone gets a little release. It doesn’t require explanation or blame. It just creates a pause without anyone having to articulate why.

After training: Give yourself permission to close out the session before moving on to the next thing. Maybe that means a quick debrief with a peer or simply acknowledging to yourself that a difficult session was a difficult session. Peer support programs and employee assistance resources exist for when the emotional toll of the job feels heavy, and everyone on the team is entitled to use them without justification.

A shared training objective

The law enforcement profession has made meaningful progress in acknowledging that officers carry the weight of the field home with them. The same conversation needs to extend to the people running the training rooms. Instructors absorb the frustrations around them, and it’s often a significant load to carry without acknowledgment, resources, or relief.

Protecting instructor wellness is directly connected to the quality of training, officers’ readiness, and the long-term sustainability of the people responsible for both. When the instructor is well, the room tends to go better. When the room goes better, everyone walks out more prepared than when they walked in.

 

A version of this article was published in American Police Beat. 

VerPlanck, J. (2026, September 22). Coming in hot: The instructor is not the target. American Police Beat. https://apbweb.com/2026/09/coming-in-hot/

References

Clem, C., & Henson, J. (2025). Chapter 12: Law Enforcement Burnout: Causes and Solutions to Improve Officer Wellness, Job Performance, and Resiliency. In R. Elkington, C.D. O’Connor, T. Castell, & L. Sylven (Eds.), Effective Police Leadership in the 21st Century: New Paradigms for a Novel Context. Emerald Publishing.