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Chicago police will receive specialized "state-of-the-art" training on how to handle domestic abuse calls under a new inter-governmental task force plan aimed at curbing domestic violence.

The switch was thrown quietly in May 2012, hidden inside a 16-page directive, "Gang Violence Reduction Strategy," and largely ignored amid a 60 percent rise in murders in the first quarter alone. With less than a year on the job, McCarthy had already disbanded two special task forces, roving teams that muscled neighborhoods into submission. Now he was betting on what he calls "the next phase of community policing in this world": an emphasis not on the traditional "hot spots" for crime, but on the "hot people" who commit most criminal acts.

In addition to learning to deal with emergencies, police officers undergo training to improve daily interactions with diverse people from their communities. To accomplish this, many departments are adopting new strategies for communicating with marginalized individuals, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.