Thanks for being here everybody. It's good to be with you and I get to share some some information about recruiting and retention here at the Police Bureau. I know there's been a lot of questions recently about staffing and our efforts to recruit. So this is a great opportunity for us to just sit down and have a conversation with you about it today. I've got Sergeant Trevor Tyler from our personnel division here with us today. Be good for for you to meet him and hear from him a little bit today. But I wanted to just start off by just kind of recapping where we are today as far as staffing at the Police Bureau. So as of today we have 777 sworn members. We have 254 professional staff non-sworn civilian members here at the Police Bureau and we have 21 public safety support specialist. And of that 777 sworn 510 of those are the rank of police officer. 331 of those work patrol out of three precincts and cover the city 24/7. And we have currently 41 members who are in a training status. So they're within their first 18 months with the Police Bureau going through their probationary period. We haven't been able to pace our hiring with separations. That's due to a lot of different reasons but funding's one of those. Also we laid off seven of our background investigators when we took a budget cut in 2020. And then we were also had some problems with COVID restrictions at the academy shutting down some classes in Salem. And then awaiting the new contract to kick in with the Portland Police Association as well. But I think it's important to know that this isn't just the Portland Police Bureau or city of Portland problem. This is a problem throughout the profession. Uh we're competing with a lot of different agencies for the same candidates. And I think um you know, it's important for us to let people know that we want people in the community and even the media to help us recruit, help us bring in that next generation of Portland police officer that we're looking for. And uh you know, we're really looking across a broad spectrum to do that. We want people who have maybe always wanted to be a police officer and and now this is an opportunity for them to apply and start a career. Or maybe someone who's never thought about being a police officer before. And maybe they're in another career and are looking for a change or to to come into the profession uh for the first time. So, uh without further ado, I want to uh pass it over to Sergeant Tyler and let him share some stuff with you. Hey. Uh yeah, just like the chief said, my name's Trevor Tyler. I'm a second generation police officer. Uh my father was a police officer here for 36 years. Uh and just like all small children, we look at our dads and like, "Man, I want to be you when I grow up." And uh so, that was kind of my story. I wanted to be a police officer and I wanted to serve my city. Uh Born and raised here, raising children here. And I think about what our profession is and how it's kind of transitioned through time. But one thing has kind of remained the same from uh from the time that I started until now is that people every day pick up a phone and they call 911 because they need help. And I'm very thankful and honored to be able to serve in a profession that gets to go and respond to that that need. And that has been my job now. As I've transitioned into the personnel sergeant position, I get to go out there and I get to go to talk to people on a daily basis that are also interested in answering that same call, that same uh plea for help. And that's what we're out there recruiting right now. Uh the chief mentioned it uh that we had laid off those seven background investigators. But here uh recently, we were able to bring eight on. Last Thursday, we just hired uh uh eight more background investigators. They're going to be able to help ensure that we're able to keep up with the pace of hiring that we absolutely anticipate on doing going forward. All right, thanks guys. Um, I know a lot of people have had a lot of questions for us. Uh, just on the topic of recruiting and staffing and things like that. So, uh, I think we'll open it up to questions and, uh, see what you guys are curious about. Uh, first one is coming from Elise Haas. Go ahead, Elise. Hi, good morning. I'm with Koin 6 News. I guess it's afternoon. Um, but this question is for, um, Chuck Lovell. So, I'm just curious, what is the strategy, if you could speak to specifics, to make Portland perceived as an attractive employer for whom any capable candidate would want to work for? And then how you, as the police chief, can effectively implement that strategy in the Portland form of government? Yeah, that's a great question, Elise. You know, for me, I look at it like this moment in time is critical for the city and the profession. I think, you know, we're on the the cusp of a lot of change in law enforcement. And I think this is a time where someone can come in and be a part of that change on the front end. Uh, Portland does have its challenges, but I think Portland's a city where people, uh, you know, have had for a long time just, uh, the ability to live, work, and recreate in just a really beautiful environment and a relatively safe city. And we want to get back to that. We want to bring on people who want to serve the community and have a really a heart for service. You know, my long-term vision is to really have police officers connected, uh, to community in a real meaningful way. Where you know your local police officer and they know you. Uh, they are familiar with the businesses and the people in the neighborhoods, and we work together to solve problems. And in order to do that, we're going to have to have um enough staff to build that model out. And you know, as far as the form of government, I think there is support um in Portland for uh the police to actually have that connection to the community. Um you know, we do our budget yearly, so the budget's always kind of um in flux from year to year, but I think overall people in the city want to feel safe, they want to have good policing. And I think there's support to make that happen. All right, thanks uh for the question. And then uh obviously uh Sergeant Tyler, if you have anything to add, feel free to hop in as well. Yeah, just really touch base on uh Portlandia knocked it out of the park for us, right? Uh if you'll remember the opening monologue of the TV show Portlandia, said a place where young people go to retire. We have it all here, right? And uh with the schedule that we can offer here in the Portland Police Bureau, you can truly have a lifestyle that's balanced with work and life uh working a 4 10-hour schedule. I don't I don't think anything there's better than anything better than that. All right, before we go on, we have to plug the website because uh we do have uh a new revamped uh website. Uh so uh Sergeant Tyler, if you just talk a little bit about what people can find on the website. Yeah, joinportlandpolice.com uh is where we'd love to send you. And uh it's going to be able to be able to highlight a lot of the opportunities that you have here. Obviously, uh one of the most important jobs that we have is the the 911 responder. But the truth is is that once you find your way into the Portland Police Bureau, there are a variety of ways to serve. And the more that you get integrated into the bureau, you're going to find that uh that you've got a skill set that you're going to be able to thrive in. Uh whether it is responding to 911 calls or helping people that are in crisis and becoming a part of our CNT uh team, realizing that you really have a heart for being on a motorcycle, great, we're going to get you in our motor unit. Maybe realizing that hey, I really love uh kind of getting into the um the psychology of what's going on with people. Join our behavioral health unit. We have so many variety of ways to be able to serve in the bureau that it's not limited to just this one thing that you'll do for the next 25 years. You can do a variety of things within your entire career here, which is unique to this this profession. All right, thanks. Thanks for letting me plug that. We'll go on to the next question. Emily Higgins is up next. Emily, you can unmute and go ahead with your question. Hi there, this is Spencer Thomas with Fox 12. I just wanted to ask, you guys said that um searching for police officers right now is a problem throughout the entire country and you guys are competing with other cities, other agencies and you're looking at a broad spectrum. Are you looking outside of the state? Are you guys pretty much welcoming anyone in to recruit? Um or are you largely looking for people with in our community that know its roots, that know its community members and where we need to improve. Excellent question. I'll just jump right on it. Absolutely, both. We want to go and attract people that have never maybe thought about a life here in the city of Portland, but we also absolutely want to reflect our community and that is one of the benefits to being able to be in the bureau. We have a program our our police cadet program which it basically is for young people that are living currently in our city where they get to serve right alongside the men and women that are doing this job on a daily basis and see firsthand at a young age, is this something that I actually want to be able to do? So, both are efforts recruiting there with our cadet program and then throughout the city you're going to see us, we're going to be at the city fair. So, we'll be there for fleet week and and down in the the corridor trying to recruit right here, but we are absolutely also recruiting outside of the city and the state. So, we're we're basically casting a wide net because we want anybody that wants to come and serve in the city to be able to have that opportunity. Yeah, I think it's important to have a mix of both. I think we do have a pretty good mix. I'm a you know, Trevor's dad worked here. I worked with his dad in North Portland and Northeast Portland and I'm a transplant. I moved here from Ohio 20 years ago and I think it's important to have kind of that mix of both. People that have roots in the community, grew up here and want to serve but also bringing in good talented people from other places that have different perspectives and want to come serve Portland as well. And I do want to piggyback on that a little bit too because it's a cause a little bit close to my heart. Trevor and I and our team have been working on kind of the what what people are going to start to see from our social media and and you know, there'll be some advertising on recruiting and coming to work here. So, Trevor, if you would kind of talk about that a little bit, some of the initiatives that people are going to see coming down the pike. Yeah, virtually all social media you're going to start seeing an influence from us and it's designed in two ways. Number one, to obviously influence the person that's viewing it but also to influence the person that can think about who would be good for this profession. I want to make sure moving forward that our community is reflected by the people that it's comprised of, right? So, if there's a person that's viewing something they're thinking I don't necessarily want to serve but I know the perfect person that would be exactly what I would want to show up. That's who we want to inspire also. Start making those phone calls. We want to equip our community to be a recruiter for us. We want our community to be reflected by the people that are like, "Absolutely, this is who I want to come and respond to calls for me." So, we want to we want to basically advocate to virtually everybody. Find help us find the perfect people to come and serve. All right, Jonathan Levinson has our next question. Go ahead and unmute and go ahead when you're ready, Jonathan. Thanks, Sara and Alan. This is Jonathan Levinson from OPB. I'm curious, Chief, you said that you are it's a competitive hiring environment, you're competing against a lot of other departments. Do you have a sense of sort of who your competition is? Are they local departments? Are you competing for candidates now this sort of going off of a earlier question. Are you competing with other departments nationally and has that changed in the past years? past couple years? Yeah, you know, I worked in the personnel division when I was a sergeant and I would say it is I would say it's regional for the most part, but I think, you know, to some degree you're looking at people in Washington and in California who might want to come here and work and I think the profession has you know, a finite amount of officers working in it right now. So, part of the challenge is attracting new people into the profession, but I would say right now there's a really a premium on people who are experienced and trained who maybe can start working sooner, who might not have to go to an academy. So, folks within the state of Oregon, I think there's a really high premium on attracting them to different agencies and I think that's been pretty consistent throughout my time here. I think right now though in in our country a lot of businesses, private sector and public sector are really really working hard and to to some degree struggling to bring in just good high quality candidates. So, you're really competing in a competitive environment where everyone's looking for really good employees. All right, I'm next Alex Zielinski. Go ahead, Alex, with your question. Yeah, thank you. This is Alex Zielinski with the Portland Mercury. Um when it comes to kind of other agencies that might be recruiting officers right now, I'm curious kind of what are some common questions that you might get from prospective applicants who are comparing PPB to maybe other law enforcement agencies and trying to figure out you know where they fit. Like what what what do you see drawing people to choose Portland and what are they asking to to figure out if it's the right right place for them? Great question. So right now what we're having them ask is kind of opportunity, right? Am I is this a dead-end job for me? Am I going to go and do this and this is all that I'm going to do for my entire career? Some of the smaller agencies they might offer kind of like more limited exposure versus a larger agency like us is going to have a variety of different ways in which you can serve. So that's one of the clear distinct things that I'm seeing as drawing a difference between us and other agencies. Also the work schedule, some have a 12-hour schedule, some have an 8-hour schedule. We're fortunate enough to have a 4-10 schedule so it gives people basically a mini vacation at the end of every one of their work weeks. Something they're looking for and then obviously the pay. This generation they're very interested in being able to earn a livable wage at a very early time in their career and that's one of the things that we're able to offer is that you're going to get a very competitive salary, an excellent benefit package and a retirement which is something that is unique to us in city government. Yeah, I'm going to prompt you Chief because we were talking a little bit earlier too about the about the potential for bringing in folks from other agencies and you know there are reasons that people late in their law enforcement careers might consider switching over. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Sure. Yeah, you know right now we're in the public employee retirement system and most of the law enforcement folks in the state are and it gives them some portability as to where they can work within the state and bring their retirement with them. So it becomes a question of are there people who are maybe later in their careers who make the calculation that if I come work in Portland, you know, the last few years of my career, what impact does that have on boosting my my retirement? And I think that's a question that we're hoping people ask themselves and do do some calculations on. And I do think opportunity is really important. I mean, being in Portland, there's a lot of opportunity to do different types of policing. We've had throughout the history that I've been here some different units, different opportunities, and as we rebuild our staffing, we'll have the opportunity to bring some of those back and expand on some of those, and there's a lot of opportunity for promotion and just varied variety of work, which I think is appealing to a lot of people, especially over a 25- 30-year career. All right, Elise Haas has another question. Elise, when you're ready, go ahead and unmute. So, you talked about how right now you have about 777 sworn officers. Can you walk me through the goals that you have through these initiatives and where you want to be number of officers and when? Who do you want to I mean, I I would love to go to the moon, right? Like we're absolutely we're in in the hiring business right now. So, we're going to go out there and we're going to absolutely target all viable options because I think the absolute hope is that we're going to be able to grow our agency to the point where we're not having any kind of waiting times for calls, right? I would love for instantaneously anybody that's calling because they need help, they're going to have a viable officer that's coming to them as soon as possible. And so, that's one of the things I think that I don't know that I necessarily have a actual number in mind, but I know that we hope to continue to grow it and outpace both the retirements and the separations that we've historically had now. So, we're just going to continue to grow. Yeah, and I would say, you know, now that we've brought on these additional background investigators, uh have more capacity to get people through the system in the hiring process. And uh you know, a lot of it depends on other things. You know, we have to have the the coaches, the field training officers. We have to be able to get people into the classes at DPSST in Salem. So, I think we'll hit a um we'll hit kind of a flow whether that's 10 people a month, 12, or some number that we can uh sustain and be be happy at trying to meet that goal every month. And then line that up with the training down in Salem and getting people through our training here with our coaches and FTOs. And I think we'll we'll try to grow kind of in that systemic uh steady pace. All right, next up is Genevieve Brion. Go ahead, Genevieve. Hey there. Thanks for taking our questions today. I really appreciate it. I have one question um for both of you, particularly for Chief Lovell. Two years ago, there was a massive and successful effort to defund police. How can you guarantee the new people you are bringing on will be different and meet the community's changing vision of policing? Yeah, I think for us, it's looking for that right candidate. I don't think anyone could have really predicted uh what we went through in the summer of 2020. I think you have to approach the work in a in a really level-headed systemic way and uh bring on the right people, create an environment where they're um supported and where they're well-trained and they're empowered to go out and give good service to the community. And I think when you have that as part of your culture, where you uh have people who are you know, focused on service. We're doing a lot now around wellness and things of that nature to support uh the workforce here. And I think you put yourself in a good position to to grow and have people want to come uh to your agency. Also, to piggyback onto that, uh I I feel like everybody that we're having that's applying right now was aware of what we went through in 2020. So, they have the perspective that was kind of brought by the community of the hopes and goals of that community for their police. So, that's something that they're equipped with now that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise been. So, I think that that is incredibly beneficial to us because they have the perspective of hindsight of what we've already been through. Yeah, and and kind of like what I said before, too, about this being an opportune time, um there we are on the cusp of change um as a city, um as a country, as a profession. And I think coming in now um is just really a good time to come into the profession. You can be a part of that change. Um you can be kind of on the front end of what um this profession's going to be for the next generation. And I think that's just a really important kind of jumping off point for people starting their career. And a quick follow-up if I can. How many of these officers and and staff that you're looking to hire will be traditional police officers, will be sworn members of PPB versus maybe members of PS3 or something that is that non-traditional model? Yeah, you know, right now we need more police officers to go out and uh take calls for service. Um the the PS3 or public safety support specialist position is one we're looking to grow. We have 21 uh currently and we're looking to add more and they're they have the ability to go out and be kind of that first line of contact with the public on a lot of calls, uh ones that maybe um or property related or don't have a an active suspect kind of component to them. Um but we want to grow that program to see um how that can assist our other officers and free them up to do um other calls for service, but also where we could take that program, what other roles they can fill, how they can interact with community in a way that just helps to be a force multiplier force. Thank you. All right, uh we just have a few more minutes, um but I wanted to give uh everybody a chance. Maxine Bernstein has a question. When you're ready, Max, go ahead. Thank you. Clearly, Sergeant Tyler has a lot of enthusiasm and energy, which comes through, but I wondered if there are other officers who are working with you in recruitment and whether you have trips planned at all to colleges or job fairs and if there's if there's currently a pool of applicants in the system. Yeah, absolutely. We do have around 300 people that have applied for the Portland Police Bureau that we are currently working through. Getting our background investigators trained up is kind of one of our paramount objectives just because we don't want to compromise on the quality of the background. That is something that we absolutely are um going to control because we want to ensure that every single person that we allow to enter into a uniform is vetted heavily. We do absolutely have a variety of things that are going to be upcoming both here and abroad. WSU, ASU, UO, OSU, Western Oregon, UP, Portland State. We want again, we want to target our universities that we have here locally and then as well up and down the whole West Coast and and even the nation as we move forward. We have two officers that are in the recruiting team right now that are very effective at building relationships with our athlete the athletic divisions of all those universities for life after sports, the alumni associations where maybe people have kind of gotten to that middling point in their career where it's not necessarily something that they're passionate about doing anymore and they kind of reconnect their their university. So, we're reaching out to all of those alumni associations. The veterans of Bears, we've got a variety of upcoming events up at military bases up and down the West Coast where we want to again have these people that have already dedicated in service, already know what it's like to be a part of the team, uh and then seeing if they want to come and be a part of our team. So, absolutely we're working on all of those efforts. Awesome. Uh all right, Alex Zielinski, you've got the last question. Go ahead, Alex. Thanks. Yeah, this is Alex Zielinski again. Um uh you mentioned the training academy and and the time that it takes to get someone trained up and um and on the ground in Portland. I know in a previous budget cycle um there was funding for to open a training academy in town and I'm curious if that has begun operations yet and what that looks like. Yeah, a part of the previous budget cycle, there was uh some money set aside for DPSST activities uh that we could do potentially here in Portland or um to fund at DPSST. Uh that conversation is still ongoing with DPSST. Um there's a lot of logistics that go into that um and the other piece of it is too is getting a pool of applicants uh large enough that would be ready to kind of fill uh that class. So, right now that is still an ongoing conversation. Um I think as we get a sense of how many people we could get together to fill that class as DPSST kind of sets their schedule um and a lot of it's dependent on the instructor pool. Uh we have instructors that train at DPSST and they train for everyone in the state. So, you have to have availability there in order to host an additional class. So, uh we're still working through the logistics of that, but that's something we wanted to be uh prepared for if we had the opportunity to actually push a large number of uh of trainees through uh that the police bureau was hiring. All right. Uh we're just about to wrap up. Uh feel free to jump in either one of you if you have any uh final thoughts for the group and maybe talk about just like um what the you know the fact that we are getting people interested in coming to work here and we we know if there's anybody that's considering this you know we want to hear from them and now is the time. Uh yeah that was perfect segue. Everybody knows somebody that they think would be a perfect representation of their city and their police. We want our police to be reflected to the community. If you know somebody if you maybe it's not you maybe you know somebody please direct them to joinportlandpolice.com. We want everybody that is a viable option to apply because we would love for you to come and serve alongside us. Yeah and I would just close out by saying one thank you for being here and helping us tell this story. There are a lot of dedicated men and women that are here working serving the city and have done so for decades and they want the next generation to come along and and help them do that and eventually take their place and I think as we work through the hiring process and recruiting and all this we want to be able to tell this story to the public and to to the community because I think it's important to know that even in this time of challenges in the profession and and in the city there are people here working hard to to rebuild the police bureau and to get to get the next generation ready to come out and give them the service that they're looking for. So thank you for helping us tell the story. All right thanks Chief thanks Sergeant Tyler and thanks to everyone who joined today to have this discussion. As always if you have any follow up questions that we didn't have a chance to get to you can email us at ppb_pio@portlandoregon.gov. Thanks again and have a great afternoon.