good afternoon everybody and welcome i'm sergeant kevin allen with the portland police bureau and i'm thrilled to be a part of this announcement for the successful completion of the active bystander for law enforcement training here at ppb we'll start with some remarks from assistant chief jamie resh and she will introduce our guests for their remarks and afterward i'll open it up to some questions from all of you a reminder that please make sure your microphones are muted so everyone can get clean audio ac rush uh welcome and would you please give everyone who isn't familiar with abel uh a brief introduction to the program and how it got started here at ppd yeah absolutely so uh good afternoon everybody welcome thank you for uh joining us for this event it's um it's actually a really good positive thing that the bureau has done so my name is jamie rush and i'm the assistant chief of investigations for the portland police bureau and i'm happy to be here today to talk about the able training that we just completed or active bystandership for law enforcement um with me today to talk about the program are my fellow facilitators sergeant todd tackett you wave there todd officer array on a carriage also on the screen and officer jackson oldham in addition to all sworn members who have been trained in able we did provide a training to community members from several of our advisory groups and psep and uh ms leila and mr jim khan who participated in this training are also here to speak today about their experiences and provide their thoughts on the able program also joining us today is mr brett parsons from the national able program who observed one of the trainings that we provided and he's going to provide his thoughts on ppb's implementation of the training so a little bit of history ppv began the process of becoming an able agency back in 2019 you actually have to apply and be accepted after we were approved to be an able agency the four facilitators today attended a train the trainer program that was held by the national able program in mid-october of last year we began teaching every sworn pppv member from the chief all the way down to our newest officer and we pleaded that training in mid-december moving forward all new officers will receive able training as part of their advanced academy so i think when we first announced to the bureau that we would be doing able training a lot of members didn't know what to expect um and but each day we received positive feedback about the training and members appreciated the harm prevention and early intervention concepts that the able program provides so for those of you who are not familiar with abel it is a national program on active bystandership and intervention for law enforcement training specifically on when and how to intervene the philosophy of able is harm prevention by early intervention it's about preventing harm to the community to the officers into our profession it requires a culture that supports and expects active bystandership and it works best when it's developed from the bottom up and also from the top down it works best inside out helping the community understand active bystandership and outside in actively listening to the community as we develop our program and change our culture it requires the integrity to tell someone what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear the courage to say and do things that are sometimes hard or scary the dependability to always do the right thing and have others best interests at heart as well as the ability to have difficult conversations with a colleague when it may be necessary so in addition to the original eight-hour training that all of our members received the bureau will be working with the national program to continue training throughout our upcoming in-services able focuses on three pillars also all of which are highlighted in our able policy the three pillars are to reduce mistakes the need to intervene members should strive to be self-aware and mindful of others in an effort to recognize the need for intervention the second pillar is to prevent misconduct the duty to intervene members have a duty to intervene to prevent or stop another member from conduct that the intervening member knows or reasonably should know is a violation of law or policy unless it is unsafe to do so and also to promote officer wellness the third pillar wellness plays a critical role in our members ability to perform their duties as an optimal at an optimal level so i just wanted to kind of give you a really brief interview or about interview introduction into what the able program is and kind of how we got started but i think it's really important that you hear from two of our community members who went through one of our trainings and they can share with you how they think the bureau is doing in implementing this program and then also let mr parsons explain how he thinks from the national side the bureau is doing and implementing this program and i'll be happy to answer any questions after everybody gets an opportunity to speak so uh leila i believe that you were going to start thank you very much jamie uh yes the importance of able is with the dressing police misconduct immediately when it occurs through real-time mandated intervention this removes the militaristic rank protocol allowing and requiring intervention no matter the rank level of the officer this also changes the accountability of the police officer to not just address oneself but also be accountable for others involved already the community is holding ppb accountable for the misconduct of one officer it just makes sense that having able in place will make a positive difference with getting officers involved when injustice inc occurs and not stand aside due to rank level protocols i am sure there will be updates of this process as this is new and that should be expected with new changes but it is also a good start with the promise of better community awareness ppb has been engaged with community outreach especially with with volunteer community based advisory groups that work with ppv the coalition of advisory groups or otherwise known as cag represents marginalized community groups that meet monthly with ppb to focus on issues that impact community safety and well-being and be a part of the review process of new initiatives our focus is to change ppb's culture to promote community trust through transparency and accountability and it starts with training and programs like able we also have the recent opportunity to participate with community ppb's be trading to give us a much better understanding of the operation of the police officer again more information transparency on what goes on provides community with better understanding and knowing what to address and how to measure its success and also improvements it is easy to point out issues it is another thing when trying to be a part of the solution so with that i will turn it over to my colleague from cad i jim khan jim you're on mute thank you i'm off you uh uh i'm a member of the training advisory council which is how i served with leila on lyndon tag and i was present with five of my colleagues to watch this particular training so while i'm speaking for myself i'm also making reference to the joint statement that all of us that all of us put together which is a public document which is available on the ppb website which was approved by the attack as a whole after we did it and you guys are always familiar with doing doing searches of the pbb website more so than i am so you can find it up there it was uh it came out on november 14th uh i am or was still am a policy walk so the first thing i'm interested in is i saw a very promising course here that was excellently delivered and the objectives were really solid but the question is how old we know whether or not it makes a difference there are a couple of ways about how we won't know if there are more reports of officers reporting other officers did poorly that's not a measure of success that's just a measure of more reports if there are actually fewer reports that might be success because the interventions focus on getting it done as early as possible which means that some things won't happen because somebody intervened before a stage when it had to be reported reported according to recently passed house bill 2929 which says that the orient officers are required to report behavior that's out of policy so how do we measure it uh outcomes won't suffice how we measure it in addition to looking at outcomes is we have to look at whether the processes to make it work are in place and whether the structure to make it work are in place and the both of those are really promising when we saw the dry run i asked uh ac resh whether or not the portland uh police protective police protective association ppa was on board and she blew me away when she said yes that is one of the most positive things i've heard in a long time that the union understands that it's in their interest to behave in a responsible way and that they're for getting training so that they know how to do it better the other thing is the process are the processes in place and the answer is yes some of those processes are in place that we had an assistant chief leading the course is one way of saying leadership is involved that we're bringing it from the bottom up with the union support is another way and that we're getting these renewals and we're constantly refreshing us in another way so all of this is following what policy evaluators would say is the right way to find out whether or not a policy is going to work and pbb is doing is checking all of the boxes and then with this particular course and that's particularly promising to me um a major success for this would be if officers realize that when you're wearing the uniform you're no longer yourself you're a representative of the organization that wearing that uniform tells you you are and you're also a representative of the community that that organization serves and that's a very important point and that came up often in the able statement but they never beat you over the head with it it was sort of implied it was really beautifully done so i am very very pleased about that my own way of putting it is that because i had some experience in english as friends don't let friends scrump apples i don't know if you know what scrumping means it means basically stealing apples and if if that becomes part of what the police culture is about that friends don't let friends grump apples that will be a great big success one of the things that really makes it work is the ability to connect things that are local in the one we saw there's part of the national show that shows mo cheeks you guys know who he is more than i do because i only arrived in portland in 2006. uh helping a woman who was having a difficult time delivering the star-spangled banner and a trailblazer game and that was a beautiful little example of solidarity not putting a person down giving them the support they needed and letting her get on and actually do it so that later in her life she won't be freaked out by what happened stop uh one of the comments that the tac made is it would have been nice to really directly connect that to an earlier scenario there were there was a junior female officer who was directly intervention intervening and there was a senior officer who was not being particularly nice to her and it would have been nice if in that scenario intervention had happened earlier and you can convince you could connect the nature of that intervention to the kind of thing that mo cheeks so beautifully did uh at the basketball game so we think it's in summary we at the tact think this is really promising and we think this could be a great big game changer for pbb and we look forward to seeing it grow thank you i think that leaves it to me right jamie yeah i was gonna say thank you jim and brett i think that uh that is you are next absolutely well first um i am coming to you from washington dc please don't hold that against me um my name is brett parson and i represent the active bystandership for law enforcement project which is run out of the georgetown university law center um i i want to start with just not part of my prepared remarks but just to tell you how warm my heart is right now because at its core what able is about is about bringing community police officers and police agencies together and and what you've just heard from jamie and from layla and from jim is that there has already been some success in that in portland and i have no doubt that that's going to continue not just because of abel because of a lot of things that that the portland police bureau is doing but we'd like to believe that the active bystandership for law enforcement project is part of that culture change and i just want to highlight a couple things before i share with you some numbers and then i share with you my observations because as jamie mentioned um i actually had the pleasure to observe these outstanding instructors jamie jackson ray and todd as they taught one of the classes in portland so let me just share with you when we talk about culture change within a police department and the culture change that we believe able can be a part of and that quite frankly all of us within the profession and those of you looking from the outside into our profession want and deserve we're talking about changing two main words and the meaning of that to us as police officers i should have mentioned uh i'm i'm a police officer myself i've been in the business for over 30 years here on the east coast and and all of my peers all nearly 800 000 of them we know what people mean when they use the word courage and when they use the word loyalty and we also know what people think we think that word means and what able is about is is is changing and expanding the definitions of those words to include having the courage to confront one's peer one's co-worker a fellow police officer whether that is someone of the same rank and same seniority or someone who has more time on than you or is much higher in rank than you but that if you see harm in in one way or another whether that's through misconduct through its mistakes or through their health and wellness that you have the courage to step up and intervene or to find someone else you can and we teach those tactics and the other word that that we seek to expand the definition of is the word loyalty there are a lot that look a lot of people that look at law enforcement and they think that that there is is this you know camaraderie that we will never ever break um and we know within law enforcement that good cops the cops that you want in your communities um we don't want cops making mistakes we don't want bad cops doing things that amount to misconduct or even criminal acts and we certainly don't want to lose our peers due to health and wellness issues or to have them make mistakes or or something that amounts to misconduct because their health and wellness leads to that so we want them to be loyal to each other and loyal to the profession which leads to being loyal to our communities and our profession i wanted to share that with you because i i've seen that personally in the instruction that i saw in the portland police bureau let me just share a little bit of statistics for you to let you know kind of where portland is in in the entire able movement throughout the united states and actually canada right now we started just over a year ago with the active bystandership for law enforcement project that doesn't mean this concept is new in fact it is not we use research and tactics and and techniques that have been part of research going back over 50 plus years going back to actually world war ii and we use research and tried and true tactics that have been used in industries like the medical field like the university campuses to combat sexual abuse on university campuses and in the airline industry it's been used in the military so we know that active bystandership works and so that's why we were confident that when we created this curriculum that it would work within law enforcement and we're seeing those results now but in that short time of just over a year we are now at 209 agencies we're approaching 216 that uh several are about to sign on to be able agencies themselves so we'll have 216 agencies very shortly we are in 42 states and a couple of provinces up there in canada we have trained in excess of 121 000 police officers around the united states and actually let me restate that we are in like i said about 216 agencies those agencies have about 121 plus thousand officers in them they are in various stages of completing their training so when each of them hit that milestone that we're so proud that portland has hit at this point which is training their entire current active duty members we will exceed well over 120 000 straight um trained officers now let's translate that into the human beings that they touch based upon our research those agencies are serving close to 75 million people around the united states so this concept of able is touching people throughout the united states and it's growing each and every day we have done 52 train the trainers the model that we use here is that the national staff like me we don't come in and teach in portland or miami or new york city we train your officers your officials the people who know your jurisdiction and then we have them deliver that curriculum back there and we've trained over 1300 members of law enforcement to teach this throughout those 216 agencies around the country and then finally we have done 52 train the train trainer sessions do the math that means we've been doing just about one a week for the last year and we continue to run these train the trainers in fact we're running one right now this week for another nearly 30 officers who will go out and train at their agency and then finally i wanted to share with you my observations uh i am enough in the work that i do through able to see instructors all over the country from new york city down to orlando florida as far west as portland oregon and i can tell you that it was obvious to me how much preparation that the four individuals that i saw teach the four people that are on your screen today how much preparation they put into this and they as a team did exactly what we expected abel they engaged the officers sometimes in very difficult discussions sometimes waiting for that pause that silence to let them think and then come up with with what their thoughts were but most importantly they walk them through not only the this is what you need to do but why it works how it works and the tactics and strategies that they can employ to make it work so i'll finish with that and just tell you that we at abel are so proud uh to be partnered with the portland police bureau we expect even more training to occur obviously because this is not a one-time shot and the folks in portland know that um they will be doing continued in-service training as jamie mentioned for their um their members and obviously their new officers that come in will be trained in this as well and we at abel will be partnering with them hand in hand to help them as they continue to roll this out so thank you and i look forward to seeing more success in portland all right uh thank you brett and thank you everybody for your comments um uh very much they were uh very well received and we really appreciate it um now we do have some time for some questions um and the part of this uh i think everybody has done this before with regards to raising hands uh so we'll be asking you to raise your hand uh in zoom uh depending on which type of uh interface you're using it may be in a different place so if you have any trouble uh let me know but uh we'll be able to call on you in order and uh make sure you specify which speaker your question is for uh and ask your question and then please again music mute your microphone so everyone can hear your responses uh again if anybody has issues raising hands i am monitoring the chat so you can also let me know in there that you have a question so we'll get started now and uh jonathan levinson is a first up so jonathan go ahead and unmute and ask your question thanks arnold for watching and this question is for i guess any of the officers on the call who uh participated in protest response in 2020 a federal judge and the doj have said that officers violated bureau directives during those protests after having this training looking back can any of you identify points where you think that you should have spoken up or intervened in any of the uses of force that violated bureau directives so jonathan i think the the point of today's um example of able program is to tell you what um we've done uh i don't feel that it is appropriate to ask the officers at this point um that question if that is if that is the case and they felt that they needed to do that that would be directed um immediately to either ipr or to internal affairs what i can tell you is that this training is designed so that moving forward we hope that we were able to intervene much earlier in situations where things don't have to be reported that's kind of one of the pillars of able is early intervention so what we're hoping is that as the bureau moves forward officers feel more comfortable in doing those interventions but unless one of the officers would like to give a specific example of when you did intervene because there were a lot of examples given during our training specifically related to events of 2020 where officers did do interventions something as simple as watching an officer get frustrated and stepping in front and taking over um their role or something like that there were lots of good examples that were given hey jb if i could also add just from a more general able perspective for you jonathan and for the rest of you on the call we hear from officers all the time after they've gone through this training where has this training been my entire career man i wish i had this um they also as part of the instruction that we do they go through a block of instruction where they're asked to recall moments in their career and their lives where they did intervene and where they failed to intervene and so there is that that reflection that occurs within the training and there's a lot of great discussion that we've heard occur throughout agencies around the country one of my other questions was going to be if any officers can share examples of when they have spoken up or intervened so she fresh if anyone feels comfortable sharing that that would be great this is a todd tackett i'm a sergeant out of the training division um and i think um to your question there was an uh incident about halfway through our training um of all the members of the police bureau where a sergeant had called me and said hey i wanted to kind of tell you about an able moment that happened and we hadn't titled it like call it an able moment that's just what they you know named it during this and their you know example was uh an officer was interacting uh with the community member and the sergeant was there they could see you know the topic that was being discussed was upsetting to the officer and the sergeant discreetly uh call the the officer back over um kind of got an explanation of what was going on for this investigation and the officer is like okay i'm going to go back and continue and the sergeant i think discreetly or you know so the officer wasn't obviously aware was like actually why don't you go and give him another assignment instead of going back to that individual because there was another officer there that could step in and continue that discussion with the the person that was the target of the investigation and after everything had concluded the officers and that sergeant came together and said you know they were kind of debriefing what had happened not just that incident but the overall and the officer that ended up being reassigned during that spoke up and said hey without even being prompted said that was kind of an able moment like i didn't recognize it until kind of looking back in the discussion with that group and so i i go back to you know not without sharing the specifics of the incidents but knowing that this training is having an impact and like i said about a month in to our training uh someone coming back and saying hey we had an able moment and not only that but the officer that was intervened upon recognizing that that happened and wasn't upset was actually like oh that's great i'm glad that that happened and so i'm not answering your question directly but uh i do know that you know it was impactful and we had some members share uh their experiences thanks thanks sergeant uh anybody else want to jump in on that uh question before we move on okay up next is uh maxine bernstein go ahead max thank you uh kevin i um i had hoped to sit in on the training to really experience uh how it is presented to officers but was not allowed and so if you can explain whether how the training is presented to give us a real picture of whether it's through scenarios or lectures and also how eight hours of training uh is expected to like change the culture of of a department jamie you want you want to take that first you want me to go from the able perspective yeah i'll take it and brett you can add to anything if you if you recall it if i miss a if i miss a piece and you know todd ray or jackson feel free to jump in as well if i miss something so it is an eight-hour training program and max the the point isn't that eight hours is going to completely change a culture it's one step towards that and that is why um they're gonna there's gonna be additional training um in our upcoming in-services that's part of the agreement with abel um is that it's not a one-and-done thing because we realize that it's gonna take practice and we did get some feedback from um officers on additional things they wish to see in future trainings but the day is broken up um it was uh into different sections so it starts kind of with the philosophy behind abel it works into kind of the social science behind abel um we do we illustrate some examples of able like videos and those kinds of things it goes into discussing actual human behavior because this is based on human behavior not just something that police officers do but all humans so we we highlight that as well and then in the afternoon it transitions to scenarios where the officers are given different roles that they play they either play the person who receives the intervention or the person who gives the intervention and all of the officers all of the members went through multiple role plays where they practice this in addition to this our training division is looking for ways to include the able principles into our future trainings and into our future role plays and scenarios so it's interwoven into all of our training but again this is just the first step towards that culture change but what i'm happy about is how well it was received and how appreciative of uh the training that the officers were we got a lot of positive feedback and jim i see that your is up so i think it would be great um you and layla both saw it if you would like to kind of provide some perspective to max's question yeah the the short answer to your uh really coaching question question maxine is all of the above it all really happened and it was all very very well presented i think what is even more important than that is that the thinking that i've observed since then is in the direction of uh able moments if you wish you may know that over the weekend there was an incident in sunrise florida in which a junior officer pulled away a sergeant who was behaving inappropriately and i don't know uh i don't know brett whether or not that particular force has had able yet but she certainly behaved in an able way and got the full support of the leadership of that organization and then when i talked with uh assistant chief fresh about this i said how would that have gone down with you over here her immediate reaction was we're going to add to our future training how we can be more proactive how we can act more quickly because this one officer did something and when the sergeant went for her throat everybody else was probably in a state of shock so that they didn't intervene but if they're better trained they're not going to let that uh officer who's acting out of policy go for the throat of the person who is actively intervening so this means it's becoming part of the way they think about how they train as a part of the way they think about how they can make it even better than what they're doing now yeah i just wanted to add uh what what's really attractive about this is the empowerment you know you are empowering officers of all levels to take an action for the benefit of righting or wrong um and like i said i think you know the protocol has been more of a militaristic that if you're not at a certain rank and you're addressing somebody who's above your rank you're not entitled to step in and intervene and this takes care of that this eliminates that and becomes more of accountability for everybody to have each other's back as officers to make sure that the reputation of the portland police bureau is being uh uh upheld so um it's gonna be the proof in the pudding this is new but this is so promising in so many different levels so i just want to add that little bit can i ask um brett is this training provided at all to basic academy like recruits who are just starting out as officers anywhere um so that is a requirement uh when an agency is accepted into the able project that the agency agrees that they will train from top to bottom current officers and every officer that comes on the department thereafter so recruit recruits are in fact trained in the exact same curriculum obviously because they don't have as much experience as veteran officers um you're you're going to perhaps use different scenarios and case studies but absolutely new officers are trained that way and and i believe jamie you're you're doing that there in portland right yeah so it's uh max to answer your question you know in portland or in oregon it's set up a little bit different than than other places where all of our new hires go to the state basic academy they get their training there and then they come to portland we do an advanced academy so during our advanced academy is when they are getting the able training uh breth correct me if i'm wrong though the state of washington is requiring this for all of their law enforcement officers so it may be taught at their state basic but i i do not know that for sure that is correct the state of washington has mandated it statewide the state of new jersey has also done so and we have other states considering that as well you know and to add you know my support of it i would be fully supportive of the officers getting this at the base academy and then we could build upon it at advanced academy but right now since not all agencies around our uh able agencies we teach it at the advanced academy all right very good thanks for all your answers on that and uh max thank you for the question i don't see any other questions holding but we have time for one more if anybody else has anything before we wrap up um yeah my name is nate i'm with k2 i'm wondering uh if you can go into more detail about the kind of scenarios that were covered in training about when interventions would be required um and kind of what they went over so any of the trainers or participants in the training to talk about that yeah jackson or ray do you want to give some examples of a couple of the the role plays that we did yep can you hear me yeah all right um so a couple of the role plays that we go through um there's four of them in total that we use uh the first is a health and wellness scenario uh so we're two officers working together uh one has noticed that the other is starting to kind of show those signs that maybe they're under a lot of stress or um you know maybe there's something in their personal life that's starting to go wrong and so it's having that other officer intervene and start trying to ask those questions and then offer offer resources like our employee assistance program or just somewhere that that officer can go and try to get uh address those health and wellness issues the second scenario is based in a protest where officers are at the edge of a uh like a public park or public square and one of the officers is getting berated and named uh name called and the other officer sees the frustration and sees that it's starting to get under that officer's skin and so they have to step in and diffuse uh that frustration and again come up with some kind of solution to that whether that means asking a sergeant to be rotated you know off that position for a moment going to get a drink of water or something like that another scenario is an officer a training officer with their recruit officer that training officer parks their police vehicle blocking a street while they're on a non-emergency call where parking down the block in a parking space would be appropriate and that recruit officer has to bring this up that hey we're blocking the street you know there's people that need to get by this isn't a high priority call maybe we can you know do that community policing aspect and park where we're not blocking the street and then the finally the fourth scenario uh has an officer intervening on a sergeant's behavior where that sergeant is uh interacting with a houseless member of our community and is frustrated and is uh starting to throw some things around and and berate this person and that officer has to again step in and uh remove that sergeant from the situation maybe find something else for them to do um kind of de-escalate uh in that situation so those are the four scenarios that we have the the officers go through uh quick follow-up bringing the scenarios do they involve any sort of physical intervention like the the florida example that was referenced earlier is that something that's part of the training uh yeah so we do talk about that um that in some situations that may be what has to happen um and in a couple of the videos that we show have examples of interventions that have occurred it is a physical intervention um you know where if you can't step in verbally that's great but maybe if the harm is imminently happening what needs to happen is a hand on the shoulder and you step somebody back so that is an option that we discussed a lot of the scenarios and stuff are meant to illustrate um a lot of times what we think are barriers to interventions whether or not it's time on the bureau um like based on seniority or rank and so that's why those are set up that way where you have you know a trainee who has to intervene on a coach um you know an officer that has to intervene on a sergeant or something like that one of the things that we stress um throughout the training is that interventions should not be affected by your time on the bureau or your rank uh that everybody should feel comfortable and confident in stepping in and those who have those interventions done on them should appreciate when it happens so one of the things that we ask for at the end of this is if you are a supervisor go back to your shift and tell the members that you supervised it is okay if you see me doing something that is going to lead to any type of harm that you intervene on me i will appreciate it to try to limit that um hesitancy that anybody may have same thing if you are an fto and you have a trainee we want those conversations to start happening all right great questions and great answers is there anybody else that wants to say anything before we wrap up all right scene none i want to thank all of our uh speakers uh our trainers uh and all of you members of the media who joined us today uh a reminder that uh we will be putting this up later on our youtube page as well uh so people can see the entire presentation and also if you are developing any other questions over the course of your reporting don't forget to email us at ppbio at portlandoregon.gov and we'll be happy to get you an answer to your question with that we'll thank you again and enjoy your afternoon