Back, back, back, back, back, back, back. If you want to drive robots and you want to fly drones around and you like electronics, fantastic. Those are really good skills and we really want you. But we also need you to be the person that is going to be by themselves in the suit, downrange, next to the dangerous thing, and solve the problem. Hi, welcome to this episode of Talking B. I'm Officer Ser Badger with the Portland Police Bureau. Guest, would you like to introduce yourself? >> Yeah, I'm uh Nathan Kirby Gladowski, uh Sergeant with Portland Police Bureau, and I think I still have the longest name in the bureau. >> Probably. >> Yeah, >> but there's a reason for that. >> My parents loved me. >> Yeah. Um Yeah. Sergeant, why don't we like kind of just get into the topic of hand like uh I wanted to talk about EDU? It's the explosive unit that's here at the bureau. Just kind of give me brief or not brief like what is EDU for people that don't know? >> Yeah. Portland's EDU or explosive disposal unit. Their responsibility ultimately is to investigate uh devices that we believe are um explosive or incendiary. um to render those things safe um and to do investigation and evidence collection necessary for police cases around those devices or if one of them were to detonate to do the investigation and the evidence collection around that post blast scene, right? Um we also um deal with a lot of dangerous materials that >> aren't um a part of a suspicious device but are just a part of a a recovery or something like that. >> What would be an example of that? >> Yeah, fair. Um somebody's uncle uh died and someone's cleaning out uncle's closet and they find a souvenir he brought home from Vietnam. It's a grenade, right? >> Okay. um or you know a a World War II shell um that like may or may not be converted into a paper weight on a desk or maybe it's actually live ordinance. Like no one's really sure because the person who it belonged to isn't around anymore or got turned into goodwill or the the the dump is is separating the garbage that comes in and just finds a grenade there and they don't know if it's real or not. Um, you know, people are turning in hazardous chemicals that are combustible um that also fits into our space. Um, maybe somebody's relative um in one of our adjacent counties uh passed on and there's a bunch of uh decaying dynamite in a case in this shed. >> Uh and someone needs to figure out how to deal with that volatile and sensitive material, right? Yeah. >> So, there's nothing nefarious about any of these, right? >> Just dangerous things. >> It's someone's job to deal with them. And that's that's the bomb squad space. >> Sure. It's a lot of work and there's a lot of testing, >> but it's like one of the coolest things you could possibly ever do. >> There's no place I'd rather be. You know, I think there there's fantastic opportunities all over this bureau. Um, but the, you know, this team, the bomb squad, is is exactly the right spot for me. >> Let's talk just, you know, briefly, how did you kind of get to the bureau? like what was your kind of you know origin story before and then getting here >> kind of like telling people >> uh it was a circuitous path to the police bureau that's for sure. Um I grew up mostly over in Virginia area born in Arlington but grew up in Winchester Virginia little small town in uh Shannidoa Valley. I had a year out in Oregon uh as a high schooler my sophomore year I was down in Eugene with an aunt and uncle. Kind of fell in love with this state. Um, beautiful, beautiful country out here, right? Um, went back to Virginia, finished school, went and joined the Navy, spent four years there. I was mostly a legal clerk for the Navy on board of destroyer, but after September 11th, I wound up doing um maritime interdiction work as a part of a visit board search and seizure team. >> Okay. >> Um did several hundred boardings um over in the Mediterranean um east coast of Africa and off of Iraq. Was it just searching for things like going on boats? >> Yeah, I was going on boats and looking for smugglers and um catching lots of them. Usually smuggled oil and that sort of thing. >> Um it was a pretty fantastic job for a 20-year-old to be over in the >> super cool. Yeah. >> Yeah, I had a good time with it for sure. >> Especially from clerk. >> Yeah, from doing legal work. Yeah, for sure. It was kind of like a parallegal job for the the military. So, this was a a radical change of pace. work with a small team um in an area that had a significant amount of risk um and to just have to rely on each other to get the job done safely and successfully. >> Um got out of that uh came back to Oregon uh as a student for University of Oregon, did international studies there, political science um wrapped that up uh briefly did a year of forestry work in Hawaii and then wound up in Washington DC. >> Wow. doing nuclear weapons policy work. Uh so I worked there for a while. There's a lot of suits and meetings and emails and travel and um I gradually over time felt like something was really missing from my life professionally. Um like I wasn't uh I was doing the job that I'd gone to school for, but it wasn't >> uh checking all the boxes for me. I didn't feel satisfied. Um, so I actually uh in my early 30s went to a professional and uh talked to somebody about what I should do when I grow up. >> Okay. Yeah. Like quite >> literally. Yep. And I did. And I was like, "Look, I'm unhappy. This isn't the job I I I thought I wanted to do, but it's not." Um, so we talked through like what I had done um and what I wanted. And um they're like, "You should be a police officer." And I was like, "Ah, I got to think about that a little bit." with all the things you've done like police officer was still kind of on the maybe list. >> Uh I mean they got there because of um >> the desire to give back to your community. >> Ah yeah >> they got there because of the job that has higher stakes um a little bit of stress uh the need to rely on a team. um they got there because um I wanted to be able to measure success in my job and satisfaction in my job uh each day and that's really hard to do in the policy world. In fact, in the policy world I was things were kind of going the opposite direction. >> Yeah. >> Uh so I applied to Portland, Oregon to be a police officer. It's the only place I applied to. I had some friends from college that were still up here in Portland. >> Okay. Um, and crossed the country again from DC to Oregon for a third time. >> Wow. >> And, uh, I haven't left. Uh, I've been with City of Portland for 10 years now as a police officer and I'm going to be here until I retire. >> You really had quite the adventure. >> You really went like all over. >> Yeah, there's a few things in there for sure. >> Did you pick Portland specifically because it was like the large metro area for the state that you kind of fell in love with when you were hanging out with your >> uncle, aunt? I did want to get back out to Oregon. Um I've done a lot of mountain biking and rock climbing in my life and uh Oregon's a fantastic place for those things. I love the beach out here compared to East Coast beaches. Um >> the the geography we have out here is just really special and I spent a lot of time in it >> and so Oregon was where I wanted to go. Uh Portland was a large agency with a lot of dynamicism. you know, we have uh a lot of opportunities within this police bureau to uh learn, grow, do fantastic and really stuff. And >> um it was a no-brainer that this was the spot I wanted to come to. >> Awesome. Well, I'm glad we got you cuz, you know, invaluable asset to say the least. Uh, so when you joined the Portland Police Bureau, like did you kind of have any like aspirations of areas that you wanted to get into or were you just wanting like, hey, I'm going to be a street cop and then go from, you know, just do that for 25 years? >> I think Portland is pretty special in that you can come and be an officer and be a street crop cop for 25 years and have a fantastic career still. Um there's a ton of respect and still job growth and um opportunity as an officer to work the street for for 25 years or longer >> um and have like a fantastic career, right? You be a coach. Um you can run your district. Uh you can plan missions. You can um >> uh wind up on specialty teams such as a neighborhood response team or when we had street crimes teams. Um there's so much space for an officer to have a rewarding and successful career here on the street. Oh yeah. Um and I don't know if that exists everywhere at the same level. We put a lot of trust in our officers, a lot of discretion, and they have a ton of opportunity to chase down cases as far as they're willing to to do, right? Warrants, plan operations, like it's a special place to be an officer. Um I feel like it's a very horizontal uh organization at that officer level. And that's I think also pretty unique and not shared with a lot of other uh agencies. Um so yeah, at least initially I was for sure just diving head first into being a patrol officer. I wanted to work downtown at Central Precinct. That kind of fit my idea at least initially of what policing was like. I wanted to work around the big buildings and be in the middle of the city. Uh and I got it and it sure was busy and fun to work Oldtown in the Pearl uh on a Saturday, Sunday every week. >> Oh yeah. >> Um so yeah. Yeah, that was uh my initial plan and desire and um but from the very beginning um I definitely had an eye on investigation work. Um I also liked the idea of supervision work here at the police bureau. Um, and lastly, I had my eye on on Bomb Squad as well. >> Nice. So, you get on, you start seeing that there's like these all these opportunities. Kind of lead me through what what what you got on to and then how you got on to edu. >> Yeah. >> It's not an easy process by any means. >> No. Uh, it's a competitive spot for sure. Um, it should be. I did patrol at Central for several years. Um and about 3 years in towards the end of 2020 um I was asked to come on and fill a spot on a TDY basis on a NERT team here at Central. >> Um and then wound up in that spot for five years. >> You know, I always think of NERT as like the Swiss Army knife of each precinct, right? It's it's the it's the team that um does the special projects that that figures out how to >> solve all that hard stuff or that problematic space. >> Um so it's a really fun place to be. It's it's very dynamic. It's a every day is different. Um and you got to stay really flexible and on your game. >> Oh yeah. Uh along the way, uh edu opened up a posting and uh I was too new of an officer the last time a posting came around. So when this one came around, I wasn't quite done with NERT yet, but I knew that .edu is where I wanted to go more long term. >> Um so I threw my hat in the ring for that. >> Yeah. Then you got the spot. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a competitive process. There's there's there was testing and um some interviewing and then some more testing and um I got the spot and came on board the explosive disposal unit as an apprentice technician. >> Yeah. >> And then you know from there if I'm if I'm correct you go through all this like training basically and some pretty cool training to be honest that like most people would probably never get or see in their lifetime. >> Yeah. I mean, one of the core truths of being on the edu team is that you're always going to be training. >> Yeah. >> Um, this is not a job that you just learn and are done. We have such a wide array of equipment and mission sets um that we are always going to be training on all of those things. >> Yeah. >> Um, and yeah, it's it's lifelong training for sure. What uh so I guess the good question here and what is the training process? What's the like keeping up with the certification process of the job? Yeah. And you know a lot of people I think >> think it's a cool idea and then maybe don't know the full scale of what they're going to get into at this job. So I spent two years as an apprentice technician uh and then I've become a full technician after I finally went through my um uh full certification process. And that's about the average timeline for someone to be on a bomb squad before they go to the final certification school. And during those first two years, you know, you're attending every Wednesday training uh that Portland Police Bureau and our Metro partners on our Metro Explosive Disposal Unit, the wider team that we're a part of. Um I you you attend every one of those trainings. You participate fully in the trainings, but you don't actually go to any bomb calls in the way a technician goes. You might go to a large bomb call to help like drive a trailer and support the team. Um, but you're not going hands-on and any explosives calls, real explosives calls >> until you're a full technician. Um, so you do those trainings for every Wednesday for a couple of years. You go to a week school for hazardous materials handling. You go to a school for explosive breaching. you go to a school for X and Y and then after this two-year weight, you go to a big six-week school that the FBI runs and um at the end of that six week school allowing that you pass. Not everybody does. >> Oh, seriously? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There there are like boy, seven or eight testable points along this six week school and um if you uh uh you fail two, you're gone. So, so that's the stakes are pretty high at that school. Um, and that's fair. We're handling very dangerous materials >> and they want to make sure that you're you're serious and taking it um with the appropriate attention that it deserves. Right. >> Yeah. >> Uh so at the end of that, you become a certified technician. Um and uh it's the FBI that gives you that certification. So that certification is um I think there's like 3,000 bomb techs in the entire country uh bomb technicians and that's the only place you get certified. You have to go back every few years to get reertified. Um and then from there you actually start going to bomb calls as a technician that gets involved. Um, and then you horizontally start taking all of these other schools and specializations on investigations and demolition work and electronics. Um, and you just get deeper and deeper into this vast knowledge area that's we like to call bomb teching. >> Yeah. Bomb teching. I like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, our team, at least here at Portland, is uh seven people, right? It's our uh bomb squad commander and two other full-time techs. And so the three of them are full-time. Um and that keeps the lights on, that keeps our trainings planned, that keeps our equipment up and running. Um that keeps the the team's knowledge base alive and and moving forward. >> Um and then there are four more Portland techs on the team that are detached, and I'm one of those positions. Um and then we also have an apprentice tech right now as well. Um then we are the part of the larger team which is the metro explosive disposal unit. Um and not all municipalities in the in the country have these metro teams. A lot of them just are like, "Oh, cool. We got a bomb squad and you over there, you got a bomb squad and you got a bomb squad and you got a bomb squad." Um and often that means this bomb squad is two people and that one is four people and that one is one person. Um, and we are really fortunate in that, um, we don't have that and we just put everybody in the same room training together, working together. It's a massive force multiplier. It lets us do a lot deeper trainings. Oh, yeah. Lets us have a lot more specialized equipment. We don't have to, you know, be partitioned off. So, we're teamed up in the Metro team, uh, with Gresham has a couple of officers on the team. Port of Portland has an officer on the team. Clackamus County has a deputy on the team. City of Vancouver has somebody on the team. And then we also partner up with the federal bomb techs in the area as well. There's an ATF and there are some FBI that's on the technician side of it. But on the Miju team, we also have explosive detection K9, right? >> Uh and there are several of those. Most of them are a part of the Portland uh Port of Portland bureau and uh some of them are with Mult County Sheriff's Office. >> Um so we cross trainin with them. We they come to our trainings. We support each other um and collaborate a lot especially on on sweeps and um preventative sort of things around large events. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> that makes sense. You know, you you're talking about dynamite in the shed and grenade in the house. It makes me feel like that might have been some calls you went on at some point in your life. >> Uh I certainly pbs I so meu as we like to call it the metric explosive dispose unit has definitely had the dynamite in the shed call. Uh and we actually get a significant amount of um grenade calls again which might be completely inert. Uh they might be an actual grenade military spec. Um or they might be an improvised device. What better if you're trying to make a bomb than to grab a fake grenade and fill it with explosive materials, right? People do that. >> Um and these are almost on a weekly basis. >> Wow. >> Uh almost. It depends. So certainly, yeah, these are things that >> go into grandpa's attic, find a grenade. >> Yeah. Yeah. My very first bomb call I got as a technician um was a person whose aunt had passed away and uh their uncle had passed away seven years earlier. So when the aunt passed away, it fell to this uh niece and nephew to clear out the house and get it ready for sale. Um and one of their last steps was bringing in a home inspector to like look through the house to make sure everything was good prior to listing it for sale. and he crawls all the way in the back of this crawl space attic, you know, over all of the the the joists up there and all the attic insulation fill. And in the very back finds like a couple of wooden crates that are stencled with US military nomenclature for explosive like I don't know, rockets or mortars or something like that. I can't remember exactly. >> Um and so that that guy's like, "Oh heck, I'm out of here." and immediately retreats and is like, "Hey, here's some photos of what might be a box full of explosives in your attic." >> Um, and now this person is like, "Well, my aunt's been dead for a little bit. My uncle's been dead for a very long time. I have no information what those are. What do I do?" They call us, right? They call the police and then the police page out um bomb squad and I go out and I follow that that that guy's, you know, steps and I crawl my way through the attic across the joist and through all the insulation and they wind up being completely empty and it's fine. >> Probably a better situation, but it is a little disappointing. >> But it was my very first bomb call. So, I was excited nevertheless. >> Oh, yeah. Uh, I had a good time crawling through the installation, but in some cases there are things in those boxes that are tucked away in corners that people forget about. >> Any other cool stories? I guess a good transition there to like kind of cool or interesting stories of maybe difficult calls, interesting calls, high-profile calls that like you've either been a part of or that the edu unit has been like worked with or worked done. >> Yeah. Um, first I'll uh let me break down our calls, right? Because we are a metro team. We also will cover all of those area agencies as well. So we cover all of Molten County, Clackamus County, Washington County, Colombia County, Clark County across the river, and we'll even push into Hood River and Scammania County. way. Okay. >> Other places as well if Oregon State Police, you know, aren't covering it or they need our help with something or >> other way around. >> Um so we cover a pretty large area. >> Yeah. >> Um we average over the last 10 years about 400 calls a year. Um >> more than a call a day. >> Yeah. But you can take a big chunk of that, a significant chunk of that and it is um SWAT or in our case support. >> Oh, okay. Um, and this is, um, our Bontex using our tools such as robots or drones, interior drones primarily, um, to assist tactical teams with looking inside of that opaque box that often happens at a tactical call, right? Okay. Um, one of our most important things on a tactical call is to be able to know what's happening inside so that we have more time to make appropriate decisions to resolve this thing as safely as possible. Right. And um, EDU has several of u these tools that we use for our bomb tech world uh, available to us that are also very useful in the tactical world. If we can take a drone and fly it inside of a apartment with a person with a gun who is violent and we need to take into custody and there's a tactical team on the outside. If we can put that drone inside, well then we can see what's happening and we can help our tactical teams make better decisions. Uh and that's a huge force multiplier, right? Um similarly or even more so if we take one of our smaller robots and put our robots inside then we can open doors, we can uh look around, we can listen and we can talk. we can team up with our crisis negotiation team um and they can directly negotiate through one of our robots inside of this house that it may not be safe or appropriate yet to put a operator into or a negotiator into. >> Yeah. >> Um so a big chunk of our 400 calls a year wind up being support for tactical teams. >> Okay. >> Um you know those those robots and drones wind up being life safety equipment, right? They help to deescalate very dangerous situations. And so, um, I'm pretty proud of the work that Bomb Squad gets to do on those calls. As much as we can help our tactical operators be successful at their job, as much as we can help our crisis negotiation team be successful at their job, like, let's do it all day. Um, very happy with that. >> Uh, another big chunk of our calls are those turn-in calls I kind of talked about, right? nothing nefarious is going on, but some company realizes they have a dangerous chemical that's 40 years past its expiration date and uh there's all these warnings on it that it might be incendiary if that happens. Right. So, that's the domain of us to go take and and and deal with appropriately, right? >> Um and the other ones we talked about like dynamite in a shed or Yep. >> Um >> some grandpa's grenade, right? Uh so that's another significant chunk. Um and we're usually sending a couple texts to just you know handle those things safely. Um but then we we do have our calls that are um you know dangerous and deliberately. So >> the cool calls >> uh the more complex problems. Sure. Yeah. Uh, you know, just yesterday I I had a call and it was a suspicious device at a bus stop and um some transit police were were making arrest and as a part of that arrest they found what they believed to be an explosive device on this person's belongings. >> Um so yeah, they did the right thing. They they just set that down. They backed up. They cleared some space and they got in touch with Bomb Squad and uh myself and another tech went out there and had the responsibility of evaluating if that thing actually was dangerous and then if it is um getting it um making it safe, rendering it safe or at least removing it from there. Yeah. >> Um and so we we worked through those steps and u resolved that that safely. >> Um uh some of the calls are much bigger than than that one. Um, we can talk about the Portland Mac Club, the Mult County. >> Very recent. Yeah, very recent. >> Yeah. But my recollection uh is that that was like an 18-hour day of our entire team being on scene and working through this problem, right? We had a an an individual who for for various reasons decided to create a large and complicated explosive device. >> Yeah. and um with a bunch of extra stuff thrown in there and put it into a vehicle and created what we call a vehicle born IED, a V-bid, VB IED. And these are really dangerous things. >> Oh yeah. >> Because you can pack way more explosives into one than you can carry around with you. Way more um inflammatory things. Uh um and they drove it into the Mat Club. They drove it deep into the Mat Club to a particular area. Um and then they they tried to initiate it all. Um they weren't successful with initiating all of it. They initiated some of it. Uh it was, you know, peace meal. And um so we had a problem on our hands where we had a postb blast scene. Um we had uh they they were deceased in the in the process. They killed themselves in the process. And so we had um a significant scene to process and deal with. Um, we had some devices that were exploded. We had some devices that weren't exploded. And we had a whole bunch of other associated hazards that have been added as enhancements to this device. So, we had to work through this problem with all of our people and all of our tools. Um, and this is like a top tier bomb call. >> I was say this is like the bomb call that people would be like, "This is the one I get in my career." >> It It's a big one for sure. And um I want to pay attention to the fact that like someone died and there was a significant amount of property damage as a part of this as well. Um and so you know acknowledging that and paying the gravity to that that it deserves is really important. >> But it was also an opportunity for us to um practice what we've trained extensively for. >> Um and we were ready for that. Um, we were able to deploy uh a lot of our specialized tools. Um, several of our large robots. Um, Spot robot, which I think you have a picture of here as well. >> Oh, yeah. Spot. Everyone loves Spot. >> Everybody loves Spot. And also some of our smaller robots. Um, you know, we had technicians in bombsuits working through things. Um, we had a whole evidence collection team uh that that came up from the FBI to assist with that. Our ATF agent was there on scene as well assisting. It was a very complex and involved scene that we had to work through while simultaneously we had to consider if there were there was more to the problem at other locations. Yeah. Such as the suspect's residence or their vehicle. And um then we had to carve off parts of our team to go address that. So we have a really fortunate thing on the current bomb squad which is that we have a um uh a detective that's a part of the team, Detective Meredith Hopper. >> Yeah. Oh yeah. um as the arson investigator, she also is responsible for all of the explosives calls. Um and she's really good at her job. I don't know I don't know if you need to know this. She's kind of a big deal. >> Uh she's really good at her job. And so that capacity inhouse is is fantastic on her knowledge of explosives through being a bomb technician. Um augments her ability to be a successful investigator as a detective. um and vice versa as well. Um so, you know, she's in play that entire day working the investigation side of things and um we're also having to carve some people off to go do the tactical support for the tactical teams that are investigating these other locations. And so, we are doing our full spectrum of skills on that day. uh that very long day we are collecting dangerous um explosive devices that someone made to destroy things. Um we are collecting uh evidence of a you know a post blast. We are um processing this massive scene scene. We are driving all of our robots, flying our drones. We are supporting tactical teams. We are doing deep investigative work. We are taking all of these really dangerous devices that we're recovering and we're loading them into trans specialized transport vehicles. We are moving those to an off-site location and then we're going to that off-site location and we're rendering each of them safe. Um, so that was a that was a big day and we got to do all the things we trained for and um I'm really proud to be a part of of that team just generally these last two and a half years have been fantastic but like watching our team work closely together on that day when the stakes were very high when it really mattered uh was something really special. Uh I work with I work with I can't imagine >> fantastic humans for sure. >> Oh I can't imagine. I mean, you know, and you're putting it in really good words here, but it's like a lot of specialty units in this in this bureau, like we'll train for specialty things or like, you know, for that moment that something goes wrong or whatnot. And you guys training every week for this, you know, like you said, the bulk of your calls are either support or maybe not as big calls, but you still train for if the big one happens. And right there in your lap, the big one shows up and it's like, yeah, it's a long probably grueling day, you know, but you guys put in all that work beforehand and it and you're able to show up and do it and it was I mean probably at the end of it both you were like, "Oh gosh, I can finally go to bed." But the other thing is also like we did it. >> Yeah. >> And no one else got hurt. Like we were able to do it safely. >> I actually couldn't go to bed right afterwards. I stayed up >> still high on the adrenaline. >> Yep. I went home after midnight, maybe midnight, and uh talked my wife's ear off for a couple hours. I just like, you'll never believe what I just saw. >> Yeah, it was a it was a big day, and I was really lucky to be a part of that. One of my favorite things about being on um the edu, but also meu is that I get to work with really special cops. They're really motivated. You have to want this job and not just like I want to to do something else at the bureau and I'm gonna take the first thing that comes along. You have to want this job. >> Yeah. >> Um this job is is special and unique. We have a lot of unique jobs in this bureau. I don't want to diminish any of those other areas where like um we have some some highly trained specialists that are doing uh really important stuff, right? Um but Miju is certainly one of those as well. >> Oh yeah. >> Um you have to be willing to make a lot of sacrifices. We we go to a lot of trainings that are out of the state. Um there are we are a 247 on call team. Um we are working in that tactical world with our search team and other area SWAT teams. We are um dealing with explosives and incredibly dangerous materials on our bomb tech side of things. Um we also, you know, teach and train um in this explosives world at DPSST and at the bureau. Um there's a huge amount of responsibilities to being on this team >> that you have to really want to do this work and be capable of. um stepping up in all of these different ways. >> Yeah, you want to do this job and you got to have that drive to do it. for somebody that's coming into this, you know, into the Portland Police and new, never thinking that this was going to be something they wanted to get into or similar to you, maybe something that they wanted to get into, you know, what are some skills or what are some things that would look good or be like good for them to start learning on their own right now to kind of get them set up to potentially be part of edu in the future? >> Yeah, fair. I uh yeah, maybe for starters, uh think about that suit. Make sure it uh Oh, yeah. Make sure it's something you're you're willing to put on. >> Uh at Basic Police Academy down in Salem, um you know, I think like a month in or something. Do you remember when um a bomb squad came through and gave a presentation? >> Maybe very very like >> PPB rotates it with uh OSP. So bomb squad does one and then we'll do the next one and then do the one and we'll do one. >> I think I remember if there's one thing I remember from the bomb squad thing is turn your radio off. >> That's like the number one thing everyone remembers like if you think there's an improvised device, >> turn your radio off and just start yelling. >> It's it's possible that >> yes, >> electronic interference, radio interference could could cause things to happen that we don't want to happen. That's possible. >> Um but uh they showed up in Salem. It was OSP, Oregon State Police actually. And they gave their little half-day presentation on explosives and um what being a bomb technician looks like from the police world in the public safety sector. Um and uh we got to like put the suit on if we wanted to. And I was just like, "Me, please, I'll put that on." >> And uh I remember putting it on and just being like, >> "Oh, this is this feels good. I like this." Um and it's heavy, right? It's like 100 pounds of gear, right? All that stuff. >> Yeah. >> And uh um but I kind of think of it like a warm hug. It makes me pretty happy. >> Good for you, man. >> Uh but sincerely, if if you know, if you're claustrophobic, this isn't going to work, right? Like we do put that bombsuit on. We wear that bombsuit on calls as much as possible. Our job is about like staying remote and dealing with the situation from a distance. We have robots, we have drones, we have tools that let us keep ourselves away from a potential blast, right? Um like how do we get distance? That's our number one way to be safe. Um and it's always more distance than than most people think. It's it's pretty darn far. >> Yeah. >> Um a very small device can send shrapnel fragmentation a very considerable distance. So that that that suit is something that um you know I've had to put on on real bomb calls half a dozen times. Um and I've only been a um full technician for eight months, nine months. Uh as an apprentice, you you wear it a lot at training. Um but it is something that we actually will wear. We wore it at the Mac Club. Several people had to go down range in that in that bombsuit. Um, so if that's not something that you think you'd be comfortable wearing, >> both literally putting on that heavy suit and functioning, but also figuratively being the person that is going to be by themselves >> in the suit >> downrange next to the dangerous thing and then still performing at the top of their game, then this is not for you. Yeah. Right. If if if you want to drive robots and you want to fly drones around and you like electronics, fantastic. Those are really good skills and we really want you. But we also need you to be the person that can wear the suit and go down range and solve the problem. >> Yeah. Um, so the person, the people that we're looking for on this team, um, they have to be self-motivated. They have to be driven, they have to want this job, they have to be willing to, uh, sign up for a significant amount of training and they have to be willing to do a lot of that work on their own. Like, we certainly want to help you to be successful. Um, but everybody's very busy and, um, you've got to be able to, you know, sign up for things, plan things, and make things happen yourself. Um, you got to be an adult to to to make this work. >> Um, we we need our folks to be off probation, of course. Um, we need our uh, ideally our people have hands-on skills. um be it those it was mechanical or electronic or um just confident working with their hands. Um you know, if your robot doesn't work on a call, you need to fix your robot. >> Yeah. >> And you're you're going through manuals and schematics and getting the wrenches out and and you're repairing stuff. >> Problem solved. >> Um that that's something that we take a lot of pride in in our team. We're the team that needs to figure out how to make things work when they're broken. Um, and we do that for a lot of other parts of the bureau. Oh, yeah. And >> so you you have to have that capacity in you, that ability, if you don't already have some of those skills, you have to have the ability to learn and the interest in learning those things. Um, you can't like see a book on electrical theory and be like, "Nope, don't need to know any of this." >> No, you actually do need to understand Ohm's law and and figure out how electricity works. That's that's that's a necessary job skill. And you got you have to want to learn that. You don't have to start with any of that. You just have to be teachable and want to be taught, >> right? You have to be able to learn >> a big skill >> from classes, uh, from trainings and you have to want to learn those things. You have to be curious, right? >> Yeah. >> I think of bomb problems a lot like puzzle solving, right? And this is one of the reasons it really hits well for me because I love puzzles. Um uh you you you have a device that's potentially very dangerous and you need to figure out um if it is an explosive device, uh how does it function? How is it powered? Like what's the switch that activates it, right? And then what's the power source that once you hit that switch um that power source is now going to go to what sort of an initiator which is going to go to what sort of a explosive load? Now, how do we render that safe? Like, how do we interrupt that process to remotely as possible or um quickly and decisively um if we have to go do it ourselves? But like here's the problem. How does it work? How do we make it safe? That is a puzzle. And I get the opportunity to go with um several people that I feel lucky to call my friends who are similarly motivated and interested in these things to solve that problem and then do it and then um you know move on and do it again another day. It's it's awesome. It's problem solving. You need that curiosity and you have to have that drive and that desire. This is not a job for um somebody that that doesn't see describe themselves as that kind of a person. >> Yeah. And it seems like too a lot of people that get into this unit, you know, they're they're in it for the long haul a lot of the time, you know, cuz it's in some ways it's addicting, right? Like you know, like you said, it's a puzzle solving. It's like a skill that you constantly, especially the people that are on the team, they kind of always want to get better and better and better at. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if we went to the edu office right now, we wouldn't find some of those like 3D puzzles just hanging around somewhere because like you're saying, it's very similar to the job you have at hand. >> I mean, we're we're always working on that stuff and and developing for sure. Uh the the office is full of um soldering irons, electronic circuit boards. Oh, yeah. 3D printers. We're just always working our way and in learning as much as we can. >> You've been on for two years as an apprentice tech and now you said what was it? eight months as a fulltech. >> So in the grand scheme of uh the team relatively new, but with that you can kind of maybe get a good glance of what the future might be because you're going to be with this team probably for the next eight, you know, hopefully 8 10 15 years or however long. >> Yeah. We we ask for a 10-year commitment out of people and people do it. >> Yeah. >> And they do more. >> Where would you like to see this edu kind of grow from? like what kind of new tech seems interesting to you? What like would you like the team expanded? Like all that kind of stuff. And one of the things in my mind is like you know we were just talking about spot and kind of these other robots that you have you know Honda and you know Tesla they're building these little mini people robots you know that can go and run in there for you. Like is that something potentially in the future that could happen could be used? I mean, again, as much as you can, you try to solve these problems remotely, right? You try to learn what the thing is. Um, you learn try to look inside of all of the opaque areas of the thing and figure out how it works remotely. >> Um, if we do that with several different robot platforms as a, you know, and drones as well. Um, and robots are becoming more sophisticated and developing pretty rapidly. So 10 years from now, like the tools we have might look very different. Um but at least currently like our workh horses out there have been largely unchanged for for a while. >> Um they've gotten better radios, better batteries. Um but our explosives robots are robots that do exactly what we want them to do. Um and and nothing more, right? Yeah. we have to be precise and patient with what we do. Um, and so a lot of these modern robots are all about automation and AI is baked in. Um, and they interpret their environment on their own and make decisions and do things. Um, they're more about, hey, I want you to accomplish this goal and then they figure out how they're going to accomplish that goal. Um, and it may be we get to the point where robotic platforms doing that are effective at bomb teching. Yeah. Um, but right now that's a recipe for mistakes to happen. Um, I would far prefer my robots to be a little dumber. >> Yeah, fair enough. I want them to do what I want them to do and nothing more. So that as we get a little more information, we can then make a a specific choice that applies to that information. And then when we get a little more information, I want to make a specific choice for that information. I don't want a robot trying to make those decisions for me at this point based on some algorithm that um can't possibly keep up with human ingenuity for making an improvised explosive device. >> Oh yeah. >> I mean an improvised explosive device is only bound by somebody's like imagination and creativity. It's frightening what has been created in this country and uh or around the world. Um people are inventive and >> Oh, they're motivated. I I want my robots to have a human in the loop. Yeah. For a long time >> making the decisions. >> Um but I don't know 10 15 20 years from now um things could be could be different. Um we definitely try to stay on top of modern tech because this this job is very dangerous and tech helps us to do it very safely. Uh and then apply those same tools over into that tactical world like we talked about earlier. It helps keep our tactical operators safe and the public safe and everybody involved in that call more safe. So, we've got our thumb on that. We're paying attention to it. We are constantly evaluating and using new tools as they come up. Um, and maybe a Honda humanoid robot might be great. Maybe, maybe not. >> Yeah. >> Right now, we have good tools and they're effective. Yeah. Nice. Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me today and kind of talking about this. Like, you know, I' I've said this a bunch in previous podcast, but the reason I bring people on like you is because there are very interesting parts of this bureau of the police agency in general that I don't think a lot of people get to see. And the people that are applying want to know about these things because they probably don't know when they apply. And now people are going to see this and go, "Oh my gosh, I might be able to be a bomb tech. I may have skills that applied from a previous job that I had that could work effectively or someone that never thought that they were to do this and now this is like an avenue that they're hopefully wanting to move into later in their career. >> Well, I'm certainly happy to help with that. Like if if if you're watching this video and uh you are thinking about being a Portland cop and bomb tech is your cup of tea, fantastic. I can't wait to meet you. If it's not and you just want to be a um a cop here at Portland and you're going to apply here, then I couldn't encourage you more. Like I am so intensely proud of this job. I've done a lot of different things with my life and this is the best thing I've ever done with my life. Where else do you get this incredibly unique opportunity to go to people's worst moments and creatively problem solve how to make those things less bad? This is a privilege. This is like this is so special and I'm grateful that I get to do this work. Um yeah, come work with us. >> Thank you. If you have any questions, don't forget to hit up our website www.joinporland police.com. Thank you for joining us on this episode of TalkBeat and I'll see you guys on the next one.