It was announced publicly yesterday that the NYPD is training officers to “Close Their Eyes” and breath during tense situations. Not to be outdone by their east coast brothers, the LAPD have also created a new officer calming technique. Turn around and count out loud.

In a time when police actions are under intense public scrutiny departments are scrambling to make sure officers have tools to keep the people safe. The LAPD looked at the NYPD program and realized it had many flaws, so they created a better one.

“Closing eyes and taking breaths is a good stress reduction technique. But how long do officers keep their eyes closed and how many breaths do they take? This is silly you know some NYPD cop is just going to blink and take a puff of air, then say the training did not work.”

The LA plan calls for officers to turn their back towards the stress and count out loud to ten. That counting should be slow and deliberate as in ‘one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, etc…’ The theory being a solid ten seconds away from tension will bring the office’s stress level under control.

“The psychologists say about five to eight seconds are needed to regain emotional control. So we created a system to exceed that minimum time. A full ten seconds will get our cops back under control to make good decisions that will save civilian lives.”

Union officials are crying foul. The police administration is unphased by the negative comments.

“Let the union guys complain. Do they have degrees in human psychology? Do they have training in stress reduction? No they don’t. We hired consultants who are experts in the field to develop this program and we will expect officers to use it. This will not be just one more multi million dollar waste of time.”

It is rumored the NYPD did look at the “Turn around and Count Out Loud” plan but had to scrap the plans due to controversy with officers turning their backs to the mayor.