This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

DENVER — As tensions run high on both sides of the issue, communities across the U.S. are searching for answers on how to bridge the gap between law enforcement officers and the community.

A local police veteran said it begins with equipping them with the right tools.

Phil Saraff is a Marine veteran who spent 20 years as a police detective. He’s now a behavioral analysis expert, conducting training across the U.S.

He said officers often don’t recognize the difference between someone who’s fearful and someone who’s threatening and empathy training could be a solution to some of the situations we’ve recently seen.

Every day police officers are faced with split-second decisions.  Sometimes it can be a matter of life and death. At law enforcement academies across the state, recruits spend 21 weeks in training, preparing for those situations.

“We give these officers all this training on how to go out and make a good arrest, and write a good report, show up to court and testify,” said Saraff, who spent more than 15 years with the Parker and Glendale police departments.

But missing from training, he said, is one very important component.

“The officer has no training whatsoever on emotional awareness, empathy and compassion and how to manage own emotions,” Saraff said.

Saraff says in the 1970’s, the culture of law enforcement switched from guardians to warriors.

“When you shut yourself off to the community and shut yourself off to other people’s feeling and what they’re experiencing you have no way to connect and when you can’t connect there’s no trust,” he said.

Now an expert in behavioral analysis, Saraff said more needs to be done to train officers to identify emotions.

“We have that ability but we have the tendency to turn it off, identifying emotions on people’s face, hearing stress in people’s voice, people’s body language,” Saraff said.

Saraff believes with training officers can learn to resolve threatening situations in a different way but he’s careful to say he doesn’t condemn officers for what they do, he was one of them.

He does, however, believe more empathy training could be a solution to some of the situations we’ve recently seen.