New research from UVA Batten assistant professor Kyle S. H. Dobson has identified a simple and cost-effective method for improving police interactions with community members that requires only ten small words. In a paper published last month in Nature Communications, Dobson and his co-researchers found that an officer stating a benevolent intention up front —  something as simple as, “I’m walking around trying to get to know the community,” — made a substantial difference in how community members responded.