the Portland Police Bureau is hiring we need people to join us as community police officers in the city of Portland we have a highly competitive starting wage and great benefits come join the best visit join Portland police comm for more information good morning and thank you for being here I am lieutenant Tina Jones a public information officer with the Portland Police Bureau we're here today to provide an update on our wellness program it is January the month of wellness where many commits to better health at the first of the year and then a good number of them have already fallen off the wellness train by now we're here to share some information about our long term commitment and continuing efforts to embed wellness into our Bureau today we have the honor of having several speakers including mayor wheeler an early supporter of our wellness program chief Jamie Rush a staunch advocate of the program for all of our members acting commander Erica Hurley who brought the program to life during her tenure at the training division and officer Leo Harris our wellness program officer well he will not be talking I think he will likely steal the show today and we are also presenting for the first time Jaakko our Portland Police Bureau comfort canine without further ado I have the privilege of introducing mayor Ted wheeler thank you well good morning and thank you everyone for being here today we're here because we want to talk about something that's very real and something we don't often hear about or talk about in public when most people think about police work they think about examples like chases or arresting suspects shooting drug busts guns taken off the street but we don't often hear about the emotional toll or the impact this repeated exposure to trauma can have to our first responders so today I want to talk about wellness I want to talk about the Wellness of the men and women in our Police Bureau two members of the Portland Police Bureau objected to this repeated trauma I want to say this very clearly we know how difficult your job is we're committed to doing everything we can to ensure that you're supported and that you're taken care of here's some staggering statistics in 2019 there were a hundred and thirty-five police officers killed in the line of duty in this country these deaths are all tragic we all know that police work is dangerous and to mitigate these risks ppb trains and equips officers to do this dangerous job as safely as possible that's taken as a given what's also tragic is the rate of suicide amongst police officers last year more than 200 police officers commit suicide across the United States and it's believed that police officers suicides are significantly underreported police service has very real physical risks but there are very real emotional risks as well our bureau members experience trauma and vicarious trauma serving our community and because our people are hurting I want them to get the help and the support that they need I see firsthand the trauma our officers go through on a daily basis I still hear stories about police work that is often wrenching tragic and can be traumatic as police commissioner this weighs on me heavily so that's why I fought hard to ad and fund the wellness officer position to the Police Bureau to help our police officers and our professional staff members to increase their mental and physical well-being and answer the call to uphold Public Safety every minute of every day I'm proud of the progress made by the Bureau on this and I know chief rash is committed to supporting ppb members to address the stress and the trauma of their jobs I believe ppb's wellness program will lead to healthier officers and profession staff and to help get them the support that they need I'm confident of it we respect appreciate it admire what ppb officers do every day the Wellness Program is a priority to me as mayor I commit my support to this important program it's my priority to show our collective care concern and support for all of the Portland Police Bureau's members and I thank you for that Thank You mayor wheeler now I have the pleasure of introducing introducing chief Jamie Rush [Music] good morning thank you all for being here again our officers and professional staff serve the community in a variety of capacities and they care deeply about our mission this work can have a toll especially over the span of a career they often balance work life as best they can but it is important to have skills needed to refresh and remain focused the Wellness Program is a critical component of our commitment to the 21st century policing and to providing our employees with the support they need to succeed the Police Bureau has expanded on the wellness concept to include our professional staff in addition to our sworn members we acknowledge that the behind the scenes work of policing of the policing profession can have significant impacts on our professional staff whose wellness is just as equally important I want to thank the community members who helped us from the training Advisory Council as well as the Portland Committee on the Portland Committee on community engaged policing and those who participated in our strategic plan our strategic planning sessions we have heard from all of you that wellness is a priority you believe the bureau should be focusing on and investing in PSF intact have recognized and recommended that an important way to improve community and policing interactions is having ppb members who are physically and emotionally whole they have made five recommendations that we are planning on pursuing including researching scheduling practices that impact members sleep as well as urging City Council to consider wellness factors as they determine appropriate staffing levels for ppb integrating fitness training into ppb members schedules consistent with other fire and policing departments nationwide incorporating training aimed at reducing stress and promoting resiliency in our members resilience is critical as the bulk of their job is spent observing interacting with and enduring physically and emotionally traumatic situations engaging a write a wide range of communities regarding varying wellness practices and finally establishing a baseline metrics both quantitative and qualitative to effectively evaluate the wellness program we are in the pilot phases of several wellness initiatives including incorporating physical activity mindfulness and increased training and resources related to physical emotional and financial wellness our goal is to interweave these practices into the daily work life so that good how so they become good habits our members can use at work and at home we are being very intentional about how we incorporate the program and the elements and we would be assessing what works and what does not this information will allow us to improve the resources and the training available to all of our members as you are aware the Portland Police Bureau is in a critical time where we need to hire and retain officers in a very tough labor market one way to remain competitive is to invest in the well-being of all of our employees who are out there making critical decisions each and every day and we need them to be holistically well to operate to the best of their abilities I have personally already heard from many members who have expressed their gratefulness not only in the bureau but from the city taking steps to focus on employee wellness they are already taking what they have learned and not only incorporating it into their daily work but carrying it forward into their personal lives and lastly I am so very grateful that the community concurs that the well-being of our employees is of critical importance thank you [Music] Thank You chief now I have the pleasure of introducing acting commander Erica Hurley if she can get over the speed bump here who's Jocko he has settled down so we're gonna do this very carefully do you take these because I did not thanks good morning to be at service we must be fit for service I've been a portland police officer for 25 years and during those years myself and i have watched my co-workers answer the calls that are critical incidents and high emotional calls the wellness program has been created to make sure that our members can start their career and end their career in retirement healthy we hire amazing individuals to be members of the Portland Police Bureau who enter our profession healthy and excited to serve the community and this program will help ensure that they remain healthy and fit to serve the community throughout their career and beyond into their retirement we do a very good job of training at the Portland Police Bureau we train our members in firearms control tactics procedural justice and we now recognize the need to train our members to take care of themselves both physically and mentally we're being very thoughtful in our pilot programs establishing baseline metrics both quantitative and qualitative to evaluate the effectiveness of the wellness program and to ensure accountability as we progress one of the things that we incorporated into our into our wellness program is the adoption of JUCO here's our comfort k9 for our internal employees our training program includes the training of Jacko who is still a puppy at just one year old and has a lot of learning yet to do personally he likes to chase balls long walks on the beach and cuddling with the members of the Portland Police Bureau he ultimately will be a certified therapy dog however this takes more than three years of training so he has a lot of work ahead of him some of his job duties include responding to officer-involved shooting and critical incident debrief visiting the records division the property evidence division and personnel division and recently the chief's office as we have brought Jacko to these different events I've watched the professional staff as well as seasoned officers sit on the floor and play with them Puddle rub his belly and this allows them to disconnect from those traumatic calls and the workload of the day and just enjoy some comfort the Portland Police Bureau is one of the leaders at the forefront of the wellness effort for the state of Oregon I am the chair of the state wellness task force and we recently completed a draft policy for the legislation that will help guide all of the departments in the state with their wellness training programs the Portland Police Bureau is one of the few agencies that is looking at this holistically we recently filled the Employee Assistance Program Officer position and assigned it to the training division where he can work hand-in-hand with our wellness officer we want to make sure that we offer training to help our members be resilient on the front end an Employee Assistance Program to help our members experiencing crisis an example of how we've embedded wellness in the bureau is in our 2020 in-service of the four days each one has one hour of wellness embedded in the training these classes are cardiac health nutrition stress and resiliency and mindfulness meditation training this is a very important skill as for mental resiliency as we move forward I have two children who have talked about being police officers for a very long time and I will tell you that before this program I encouraged them to seek other careers and with the addition of the program and the change in the culture that prioritizes holistic wellness and the and the wellness of them from the beginning to the end I feel confident and allowing them to be the third generation of police officer in my family thank you next we have officer Leo Harris our wellness officer good morning my name is Leo Harris I've been a police officer here in the city of Portland for 18 years I'm on the special emergency reaction team and I'm also a lead patrol tactics instructor in our training division since 2012 in 2019 I was selected to be the first wellness program coordinator before we talk about wellness in the Police Bureau we want to recognize that many community members including some of you in this room may have submit may have significant family and job stresses we know that focusing on individual wellness is important for everyone the duties of our police officers frequently placed them in situations than endanger their personal health safety and occasionally their lives even when not a personal risk members regularly witness and investigate tragic events these stressful and traumatic experiences can accumulate over the course of a career and can take a toll on their well-being negatively impacting their physical and their mental health I know for my personal experience that it is not always the high-risk events that impact officers one such incident I've spoken about before was a traffic crash where a community member accidentally crashed into a spouse who was walking their dog this person's injuries were very serious and they went to the hospital in an ambulance I then drove the spouse to the hospital and during the ride I was faced with questions and comments from the spouse that I was unprepared for I remember the spouse saying things like well I guess we're not going hiking tomorrow and they went on to tell me that they were considering having children soon I was driving along thinking that that person may never walk again and that having children may not be an option I really felt the stress of watching the spouse slowly process this traumatic event and the different ways that it would impact their life I desperately wanted to tell them that everything was going to be okay and that all their dreams would still come true and yet I knew that was not the right way to be supportive our police officers are in such like this often as they respond to crisis situations to help other folks they do this regularly oh they do not regularly get closure on interactions like this as I did not on this crash we were often forced to compromise these interactions as we must frequently rush to the next interaction or someone needs help and we usually never have the opportunity to connect with these people again there are other stressors as well such as overtime from being over staffed and many members frequently I wish we had that problem can we work on that there are other stressors as well such as overtime from being understaffed as many members frequently have work responsibilities like court meetings and training that are not an option during the regular schedule this requires members to work on their weekends and after hours in order to accomplish these work responsibilities members frequently sacrifice sleep which can impact decision making including food and fitness choices which can obviously impact their physical and their mental health nationally law enforcement culture has been slow to recognize the danger of repeated and pervasive trauma and stress on its members seeking help and support has in the past been looked at as a sign of weakness or lack of suitability to do the job one national example is a rising number of suicides which the mayor and other folks have referenced earlier Blue help work is a nonprofit that keeps this data and has a mission of reducing the mental health stigma advocating for officers who are suffering from post-traumatic stress and raise an awareness for suicide and mental health issues their staffs unfortunately show that police officers dying by suicide has reasoned reson each year from 143 in 2016 to 228 in 2019 that is almost a 60% increase there's often cited there is also often cited research that points to police officers being much more at risk for cardiovascular disease the life expectancy of a police officer is 20 years less than their civilian counterpart also the average age of a law enforcement officer who has suffered a heart attack is 49 years old compared with 67 years of age for the general population while these numbers may sound disheartening we believe that the ppb wellness program will help members increase their individual wellness which will lead to better customer service reduced complaints reduced member injuries and increase overall morale which will help with retention rates and new member recruitment I want to personally thank mayor wheeler and chief fresh and commander Hurley and the Portland Committee on engaged policing and the training Advisory Council for their commitment to the members of the Portland Police Bureau and to the community that we serve this investment in each member's wellness will change the culture of the Portland Police Bureau forever and help strengthen our relationship with the community thank you thank you and thank you all for coming we hope to put out more information in the future as our program develops I want to take just a moment to remind anyone in our community who may need support that help is available around the clock at lines for life at one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five or the Multnomah County mental health call center at five oh three nine eight eight four eight eight eight we thank the public for supporting the overall health and well-being in the media for helping us to get the message out have a great day I'm sorry I guess we can take questions while she was getting notes like how you've seen heart rates go down if you can just kind of expand on that like how this has helped though that touch to talk like this they did a study where they had right they did a study where they had therapy dogs with people that were writing about critical instances so trauma traumatic incidents people that have had been victims of crimes and things like that of trauma and they're trying they're writing it and one group had therapy dogs and the other group had to write it without they found that the detail was just as good on either but the stress level of the people that had the dogs their heart rate didn't go up their blood pressure didn't go up their traumatic you said after having written about what happened was less so so incidentally just in sense of watching the police bureau in fact a lot of you when you came early to do some of the filming on the front end you notice that people rushed in the door and we had to say wait I'll bring him to your office later I'll bring him in right because people love to just come and cuddle with him and get on the floor with them and really just disconnect from the stress that is their everyday work in life one of the reasons that I decided to do a wellness dog or a comfort dog throughout the agencies nationwide this has become a new wellness program that a lot of people are doing but one of the things that came out of it is some of the studies that have been done so they've done some studies about how people react during and after critical incidences with animals and the heart rate and the blood pressure rate actually reduced significantly when they just get down and cuddle the dog for a little while pet an animal have that interaction time so it was one of the reasons that I really wanted to move forward with the comfort k9 can you say where he got choco and are you yes so Jaco was donated to the bureau and he was donated with an understanding that if the program didn't work out or if he failed training he would go back to the person that adopted him all right excuse me that donated him but he's doing actually pretty well so far as you guys saw earlier and they we have two handlers in the bureau so he's very much like a canine right with a handler people that have done the training with him that have been with him since he was eight weeks old and so I and there's another handler at the training division that take him to different events and are able to take him within the Bureau has asked how do you break down that wall you said you know can you look at it as a sign of weakness how do you break down that wall and say hey it's okay well that's one of the cool things about the dog everybody well not everybody most people like dogs they like animals right and so one of the reasons that we brought him in is sometimes people need help with EAP or they need help refer mental health issues and in crisis that's happening in their lives they'll come and pet the dog really to just have the conversation right so sometimes he hangs out at the EAP office and they'll go out and they'll pet the dog and that's an excuse it's not I came out to talk to the Employee Assistance Program I came out to see the dog oh and by the way while I'm here can we talk about what other things maybe can be helped so he break he actually helps break down that barrier because it's a reason for people to come talk so I'm also a peer support member in the bureau and so if people come to me and the other handlers also a peer support member so if they come to us just to pet the dog we still have the ability to help with resources the things that they need are just a chat if that's what they need so he actually breaks down that wall all by himself with his big eyebrows and we'll the dog also be used with victims of crimes no this is internal only we actually have a program through bhu that they're working for victims of crime there's lots of other programs that are out there they have them that come to the courthouse that they come to the child abuse center those kinds of things so he is specifically for internal and with what 700 and well a thousand members with non-sworn as well he's got a big ready based on your experience so far where is his favorite place for scratches his favorite place he actually loves his chest and behind his ear scratch but belly rubs were it right I mean he loves that and I think you saw that earlier as well you said this is a program mayor is this apologize if I misunderstood something you said I came along this is going back for and then where the money came from just kind of beautiful else so the funds have already been budgeted so that we already have the funds that are allocated in the last budget process I see this as a pilot to make sure that we have all the pieces in place and then my expectation is we will have an ongoing wellness program that this is not a one-and-done it's a permanent eat and I think maybe where the confusion can be cleared up is we're piloting different aspects of the program and that's where the analysis comes in to see what's effective or not so whether it's yoga mindfulness you know physical activity all these other things we're trying to be very smart about incorporating different components to measure so that down the road we have that to be able to be very intentional and smart with our resources well thank you for coming today I'm sure we can maybe hang out with Chaco for a few minutes after nice yes all right take care thank you