On this page
De-escalation training for law enforcement comes in a few distinct forms, and they do different jobs. CodeBlu is not another one of them. It is the practice and measurement layer that sits between them: frequent, individual, scored reps that keep the skills from a CIT program, a CRIT curriculum, or an ICAT course from fading between sessions. This page explains what each of those frameworks is, where CodeBlu aligns with it, and what CodeBlu deliberately does not replace.
CodeBlu is not partnered with, endorsed by, or certified by any organization named here. Each is described to compare, not to borrow its authority.
The landscape: programs, curricula, and courses
It helps to separate de-escalation training by what kind of thing it actually is.
A program is a whole community model. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) approach is the clearest example: it organizes law enforcement, mental health services, and advocacy into a standing partnership, with specially trained officers, trained dispatchers, and dedicated receiving facilities. The well-known 40-hour officer course is only one element of it.
A curriculum is a defined course of instruction. Crisis Response and Intervention Training (CRIT) is a national 40-hour, 18-module curriculum an agency can adopt off the shelf.
A course is a focused training built around a model. PERF's ICAT and the human-performance research associated with the Force Science Institute teach a particular way of thinking and acting, delivered in a classroom or a workshop.
All three share a structural limit: they happen on a schedule. An officer attends, learns, and then returns to the field, where the skills decay without use. None of them claims to provide what comes next, frequent individual practice with per-officer feedback between the formal trainings. That gap is where CodeBlu sits.
Framework by framework
CIT, the Memphis Model: a program, not a course
CIT is a system, not a skills curriculum. Its core elements, first articulated by Dupont, Cochran, and Pillsbury in 2007, describe partnerships between law enforcement and mental health services, voluntary specialist officers, dispatcher training, and emergency receiving facilities, with the officer training as one component among many.
CodeBlu is not a CIT program and never claims to be. It is practice infrastructure that an agency's CIT or in-service training can use. Where CIT's own training element calls for intensive interaction practice and periodic refreshers, that is precisely the slot CodeBlu fills, without standing in for the program around it.
CRIT: a national curriculum, with a Colorado adaptation
CRIT is the national curriculum funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance: 40 hours, 18 modules, IADLEST-certified, available at no cost, and built on the CIT Memphis Model. It is worth getting the name right, because it is easy to get wrong. CRIT is the national curriculum, and Colorado runs a Division of Criminal Justice adaptation of it (BJA-funded, with IACP technical assistance) that adds emphasis on intellectual and developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injury, Colorado-specific resources, joint law-enforcement and dispatch training, and a train-the-trainer model reaching rural and suburban agencies. CRIT is not "Colorado's initiative"; Colorado adapts a national one.
CodeBlu's content touches the parts of that syllabus that are about the encounter itself: communication, de-escalation, and crisis contact. It does not cover the rest, the program-building, community-resource, and disability-specific modules that make CRIT a full curriculum. Naming that gap honestly is the point. CodeBlu is the practice layer for the conversational skills CRIT teaches, not a substitute for the 40 hours.
ICAT: a decision model, and the strongest evidence that this works
PERF's ICAT (Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics) is an instructor-led course for encounters with people in crisis who are unarmed or armed with something other than a firearm. It is anchored by the Critical Decision-Making Model: collect information, assess the situation and the risks, identify options, then act, review, and reassess, all through a sanctity-of-life core.
That loop maps closely onto how CodeBlu scores an encounter. The collect-and-assess steps line up with CodeBlu's scene-assessment and behavioral-read competencies; the identify-options-and-act steps line up with its communication and decision competencies. What CodeBlu adds is the part a classroom format cannot deliver: continuous practice and per-competency measurement across many reps, not a single workshop.
ICAT also carries the most rigorous positive evidence that scenario-anchored de-escalation training can change outcomes. A stepped-wedge randomized controlled trial of the Louisville Metro Police Department (Engel et al., 2022, Criminology & Public Policy) found that after ICAT training, use-of-force incidents fell by 28.1 percent, citizen injuries by 26.3 percent, and officer injuries by 36.0 percent, and the National Institute of Justice's CrimeSolutions rates the ICAT program, on the strength of that evaluation, "Effective." It is worth being precise about the state of that evidence. The broader research base is still developing, and not every replication has found the same effect; an evaluation in Camden County, New Jersey, for example, found no significant change in use of force. That mixed picture is itself an argument for CodeBlu's approach: if a single classroom exposure does not reliably carry to the street, then repeated, measured practice is the sensible response, not a reason to give up on the training. CodeBlu's premise is reps on exactly the kind of skills that evaluation is about. For a Colorado reference point, Boulder Police Department wrote ICAT into its use-of-force policy in 2020.
Force Science: the behavioral-science roots
The CodeBlu Method's behavioral read draws on public research into human performance under stress, including Force Science work associated with the Force Science Institute, on how perception, attention, and reaction time behave under threat. Those concepts inform how CodeBlu teaches officers to read a subject's state and choose a response, and why time and distance matter in a crisis. CodeBlu names and applies the concepts; it does not reproduce any organization's training materials.
What the CodeBlu Method adds
The CodeBlu Method is CodeBlu's own framework: an eight-competency rubric (C1 to C8), a behavioral-read model, voice scenarios, and a per-competency after-action review. It is not a fifth curriculum competing with the four above. It is the layer they all assume but none provide.
Continuous voice reps, so an officer practices the conversation many times, not once a year.
Per-competency measurement, so each rep produces an individual, comparable score rather than an attendance record.
The after-action review, so every rep returns concrete feedback and alternative phrasings, the way a good instructor would, between the formal trainings.
Recurrence under state law, since a de-escalation training requirement like Colorado's C.R.S. 24-31-315 makes this an ongoing obligation rather than a one-time class, and ongoing obligations are met with practice, not with another single workshop.
How this fits your state's in-service requirements
CodeBlu addresses non-perishable in-service topics: de-escalation, crisis intervention, mental-health awareness, and verbal communication. Every state's POST-equivalent sets its own annual in-service requirement, and the chief executive owns the credit decision. Colorado is the worked example: the training counts toward the discretionary portion of the Rule 28 annual in-service requirement and addresses the separate de-escalation training requirement in C.R.S. 24-31-315, and web-based courses approved by the chief executive qualify for in-service credit under Rule 28.
Two points that should not be overstated. Eligibility rests with the agency's chief executive; CodeBlu does not and cannot grant POST credit. CodeBlu generates completion records that an agency retains and submits through its own POST reporting; CodeBlu does not submit to POST.
Complement, not replacement
CodeBlu supports training delivered within CIT programs, CRIT curricula, and ICAT or Force Science courses. It is not a CIT program, a 40-hour curriculum, or a course certification, and it does not represent itself as the equivalent of any of them. The frameworks on this page are named to describe and compare, never to imply endorsement, partnership, or certification.
If you want to see how CodeBlu lines up against your current training in detail, our comparative analysis for agencies walks through it side by side.
Acknowledgments and disclaimers
CodeBlu's method is informed by publicly available research and the established public frameworks named here, each credited for its public contribution to the field. CodeBlu does not claim any partnership, certification, accreditation, or endorsement from any of them; references are citations, not affiliations.
De-escalation research evolves, and so does this method. CodeBlu treats its curriculum and rubrics as living documents.
AI-generated after-action feedback is a training aid. It supports, and does not replace, evaluation by a qualified human instructor.
CodeBlu is authored and operated by CodeBlu LLC. This page is educational content prepared for law enforcement training purposes. It is not legal advice.
Sources
- PERF, ICAT Training Guide and ICAT program page (policeforum.org)
- Engel et al. (2022), "Assessing the impact of de-escalation training on police behavior," Criminology & Public Policy 21(2):199-233 (Louisville Metro Police Department ICAT evaluation); National Institute of Justice CrimeSolutions program profile for ICAT (rated Effective); Goh (2021), Camden County ICAT evaluation (no significant use-of-force effect), for the mixed-evidence note
- Dupont, Cochran, and Pillsbury (2007), Crisis Intervention Team Core Elements (University of Memphis); CIT International and NAMI Best Practice Guide
- Bureau of Justice Assistance, Crisis Response and Intervention Training (CRIT) program overview; IACP CRIT curriculum and trainers' toolkit; Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, Colorado Collaborative CRIT
- Force Science Institute, published research on human performance under stress
- Colorado POST Rule 28; C.R.S. 24-31-315