It’s a scenario heard too often:Just doing his or her job, a parking enforcement officer is screamed at, threatened, berated, chased down, or, in a worst case, attacked by an irate driver with a weapon. Nobody likes getting a parking citation, but sometimes people get so angry that the situation blows up out of control. And few PEOs are trained to effectively defuse a bad situation, much less defend themselves without making things worse.

Richard Dollhoph, manager of parking enforcement for the City of Milwaukee, Wisc., is a former police lieutenant and knows full well the dangers faced by PEOs–and the limitations of what they knew to do to react. Rather than wait for another bad situation, he reached out to Vistelar, which has partnered with IPMI to offer unique staff training that teaches deescalation and, for that worst-case scenario, physical self defense and escape techniques. Since then, his reports of violence toward parking officers have plummeted and his people are much more confident about doing their jobs and staying safe.

The IPMI partnership and Vistelar training are explained in the November issue of Parking & Mobility magazine, including what’s taught, how it’s taught, and how parking officers can be trained no matter where they are to calm a bad situation before it spirals out of control, and get out should that happen. Read the whole story and get the details here.