Police Psychologist

This is a professional psychological position that is comprehensive challenging involving the provision of a wide range of psychological services for the City of Fort Lauderdale Police Department (FLPD).

Responsibilities include primarily providing therapeutic services to police department employees and consulting on a host of organizational and operational matters as well as developing lesson plans and teaching a variety of mental health topics to department personnel in compliance with the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation, Inc., the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (FDLE/CJSTC)standards and department policies.  Other responsibilities include: developing mental health promotional materials on various psychological, social and physiological issues along with providing operational consultation (i.e., case-specific behavioral analysis), developing mental health interventions, conducting research and statistical analysis as well as performing other professional duties as assigned.

• Provides direct psychological care to a large departmental client base by assessing and evaluating problems, diagnosing issues and providing therapeutic interventions utilizing standard of care treatment modalities 
• Advises management in approaches to crime-specific and/or law enforcement-related behavioral health problems.  
• Provides psychotherapy to Department employees and their and their respective family members in order to assess for depression, anxiety and other behavioral health conditions and intervenes accordingly.
• Psychological services under highly stressful and/or sometimes challenging situations. 
• Provides emergency 24-hour on-call critical intervention services and provides immediate professional psychological services under highly stressful and/or dangerous situations 
• Assists department staff in the development of police career development, supervisory-management training, and adjustment of in-service behavior health problems of civilian and police employees, not to include fitness for duty assessment.    
• Independently plans counseling and treatment programs in agreement and conjunction with departmental policies and procedures 
• Independently provides on-site and follow-up counseling sessions in response to a wide variety of client-based behavioral health needs. 
• Researches topics and presents comprehensive training programs, workshops, and lectures on a wide variety of behavioral health topics for department recruits, supervisors, management, training officers and non-sworn employees in the Department.
• Develops behavioral health promotion materials, including web postings for the FLPD website, written and other materials. 
• Conducts psychological research, initiates studies, and provides research data to implement departmental programs and behavioral health trends 
• Collaborates on multi-disciplinary investigations 
• Assists in the design and development of specialized programs such as those for police personnel in the Special Response Teams with emphasis on hostage rescue, stress management and crisis intervention.  
• Accompanies police employees in the field to observe problem areas and assess the need for additional behavioral health base training programs.
• May conduct workplace violence threat assessment.    
• Co-supervises the Co-response (CORE) behavioral health clinician with CORE inclusive of reviewing and analyzing data, co-training, and providing weekly supervision for the behavioral health clinician. 
• Co-supervises doctoral psychology practicum students with a local accredited university providing weekly supervision, training, and specialized police and public safety psychology didactics.
• Performs related work as required.

1. Have a Doctoral degree in Psychology from an approved or provisionally approved APA (American Psychological Association) Program.  Completion of internship (APA accredited or APPIC accredited) with at least 2,000 hours of supervised clinical experience.  The degree may be a PsyD or a PhD.
2. Have at least one (1) year full-time post-doctoral experience (2,000 hours according to the requirements of Rule 64B19-11.005, Florida Administrative Code.) in the practice of counseling and/or clinical psychology, inclusive of experience in the diagnosis and treatment of emotional and mental disorders.
3. Possess a professional license to practice as a psychologist issued by the State of Florida, Florida Board of Psychology, or a license to practice as a Psychologist issued by any other State in the United States that meets the criteria for licensure to practice in Florida, by the State of Florida, Florida Board of Psychology. 
4. Possess or be able to obtain a valid State of Florida driver’s license and have an acceptable driving record within 30 days of hire.

• Adapt to new or changing standards required by the Commission of Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation, Inc. (CFA)
• Possess considerable knowledge of general psychological principles, theories, methods and techniques. 
• Possess considerable knowledge of the special psychological principles, theories, methods and techniques pertaining to police psychological work. 
• Possess considerable knowledge of the operations of a metropolitan police department.
• Possess the ability to interpret psychological information and develop treatment recommendations. 
• Possess the ability to provide effective psychological suggestions to police personnel during critical events in the field.  
• Possess the ability to design and develop training programs for police and non-sworn departmental employees. 
• Possess the ability to establish and maintain effective working relations with Police Officers, supervisory and management officials and non-sworn departmental employees.
• On-call responsibilities during nights and weekends at which time the incumbent may respond to the field as part of the Department’s Crisis Negotiation Team (CNT), Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team (CISD), or other traumatic incidents as required.