Jonathan Wender is a unique blend of social scientist, police veteran, and entrepreneur. He spent two decades in policing in the United States and has extensive academic expertise in face-to-face interactions in high-risk environments. As the president and co-founder of Polis Solutions he is leading a team of professionals dedicated to the mission of using ethically-informed science and technology to improve public trust and safety.
Wender is deeply interested in understanding the dynamics of trust and risk in these settings. His work has been instrumental in shaping modern police training methodologies, particularly through his development of T3 – Tact, Trust, and Tactics, an integrated model for policing and training. Wender and his company Polis recently launched the TrustStat BWC AI analytics platform. This is the first multimodal system of its kind to integrate computer vision, speech analysis, and natural language processing to identify key patterns in police-community interactions that are essential to building public trust and safety.
Polis Solutions was founded to address critical issues in policing by integrating research and practical solutions. The organization’s mission is to improve police training, promote effective policing strategies, and foster trust between law enforcement and communities. Polis Solutions has been involved in various projects, including the notable ADAPT report about the Current State of Police Control and Defensive Tactics Training with twenty core recommendations. Polis Solutions places a lot of emphasis on two very important theme’s: Adaptive Decision-Making and De-escalation Training.
Polis focuses on developing and applying data-driven tools and methods to help create positive outcomes to social interactions in low-trust, high-risk environments, with a primary emphasis on policing, military, national security, and related operational domains. Simply put, they analyze social interactions to help make them better.
Prior to co-founding Polis, Jonathan helped develop and launch the Strategic Social Interaction Modules (SSIM) “Good Stranger” Program at DARPA, and served with the program as senior advisor.
TrustStat, T3 – Tact, Tactics, and Trust and ADAPT training programs exemplify how Polis integrates leading-edge technology and sustainable learning to improve the quality and outcomes of policing.
Wender previously served on the faculty at the University of Washington in the Department of Sociology and Law, Societies, and Justice Program. Jonathan have served across the United States and abroad as a subject-matter expert on police-community interactions, police use of force, officer decision-making, police training, and other related topics. He earned his Ph.D. in criminology from Simon Fraser University (2004). He is the author of “Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life,” a multidisciplinary analysis of police-community encounters.
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