Dutch police officers' preparation and performance of their arrest and self-defence skills: A questionnaire study

• Officers are unsatisfied with the training of their arrest and self-defence skills.
• More experienced officers are more critical towards the taught skills.
• More experienced officers reported better performance but less use of taught skills.
• Results plead for more training, reality-based practice, and teaching other skills.

We investigated how Dutch police officers perceive their preparation for arrest and self-defence skills (ASDS) and their ability to manage violence on duty. Furthermore, we assessed whether additional experience (i.e., by having encountered violence on duty or by practicing martial arts) and self-perceived anxiety have an influence on these perceptions. Results of an online questionnaire (n = 922) showed that having additional experience was associated with self-perceived better performance. Officers who experience anxiety more often, on the other hand, reported more problems. Although most officers report sufficiently effective performance on duty, they, especially those with additional experience, feel that training frequency is too low and that the currently taught ASDS are only moderately usable (at least with the current amount of training). Based on the results, we suggest that increasing officers' ASDS experience, teaching officers to perform with high anxiety, or reconsidering the taught skills, may be necessary to further improve performance of police officers on duty.