De-Escalation Policing in Eugene

Sergeant Ryan Molony is looking towards a day when Eugene police officers no longer use force when making an arrest. It’s an idealistic goal, but one that Molony, who oversees the EPD’s defensive tactics trainings, believes is worth pursuing.  

Now more than ever policing tactics are at the forefront of public conversation. The emphasis is shifting from officers’ actions on the ground to the prior training that they receive. New training is being implemented across the country: De-Escalation. The central objective of de-escalation is to reduce the use of force by creating space, remaining calm, and resolving conflicts using verbal techniques. The number of states mandating de-escalation training is growing and Eugene has been at the forefront of shifting their department towards achieving this new ideal of what ‘21st Century Policing’ looks like.

Currently, only 21 states mandate these types of de-escalation training, and Oregon has recently become one of them. “It’s just a way to define what we’ve always been doing.” Sergeant Molony explains, “out of the ten years I’ve been doing this, this is probably the most effective way we’ve ever accomplished this [training]. I see it trending in the right direction.”

Eugene local Ben Brubaker has been following police brutality for years, “The cellphone and the availability of citizens being able to document as well as officers now wearing body cameras have been really helpful to shed some light on where the situations aren’t good.” Brubaker has worked in the mental health field for over 15 years and has been with Eugene’s White Bird Clinic for the last ten. “Since my time of coming to Eugene, I would say that things aren’t perfect here, but it’s a lot better than it seems everywhere else.”

The City of Eugene employs an extra set of hands to assist police in intervening with civilians with a humanistic perspective in mind, “Eugene is very unique in that way,” says Brubaker. White Bird is a human services organization that provides a variety of programs and services to the city’s more vulnerable population. Amongst these are a mobile crisis response service known as CAHOOTS and crisis intervention trainings that they conduct for other local agencies, including the Eugene Police.

“Our training is really heavily about communication and humanistic intervention techniques,” Brubaker says noting that White Bird’s trainings are just a piece of the crisis intervention training that the EPD already had in place, “We’ve always been really careful when training law enforcement because we don’t want to come in and tell officers how to do their job.”

Brubaker believes that lending law enforcement support rather than criticism is what will give way to change, “There’s the approach of coming in and criticizing and critiquing the police and then there's the approach of how you better intervene by supporting what the officers are having to deal with and trying to help handle things.”

When it comes to dealing with mental health crises law enforcement is oftentimes put in a tough position, “The state and the nation has not always adequately funded mental health support and a lot of that falls on the shoulders of the police… they’re not necessarily trained to do those kinds of responses and are sometimes frustrated by being utilized in that way.” This is what makes Eugene’s CAHOOTS services beneficial, it provides a fourth line of emergency response that specializes in de-escalating situations using communicative techniques, and is especially well-versed in intervening when mental health or drug abuse are at play.

Brubaker and Sergeant Molony both take notice of the nonverbal barriers that come into play when trying to use these tactics. “Especially when it comes to our demeanor,” Sergeant Molony explains, “as officers show up on scene they’re actually giving off cues they’re not really aware of. Because we all have different life experiences…  We handle situations differently so we have to be able to be fluid when we train that.”

Whereas CAHOOTS responders are at an immediate advantage simply because they’re not in uniform. Rather than a badge, their staff emerges from vans unarmed and wearing hoodies. Yet the radios that hang from their pockets still create an immediate division between themselves and the civilian, “How do you overcome that?” Brubaker asks, “You try to treat them like a human being. You try to make sure you’re making that connection at a human-to-human level. And I think a lot of times officers are really open to hearing that piece.”

Although Eugene law enforcement has been seemingly receptive to this shift towards 21st century policing, that is not to say that this training has been implemented with perfect results. Statistically measuring the successfulness, or lack thereof, of these trainings is where things get complicated.

The Police Auditor’s Office releases annual reports on the allegations of police misconduct. Although a 2017 report has yet to be released, Mark Gissiner, the Eugene Independent Police Auditor, wrote in an article for the Register Guard, “In 2017, we reviewed 230 documented uses of force, reviewing body-camera footage, police reports, in-car video, and dispatch records.” Comparatively, the Auditor’s 2016 Annual Report states that they reviewed only 196 reports of use-of-force incidents.

“We’ve heard several cases about crime victims and how they’ve been treated, Gissiner says, “It’s small enough where we don’t have statistically relevant numbers but there have been several situations, I think that sometimes the compassion factor and the humanization factor could improve.”

Although the numbers may not be statistically significant, community watchdogs have taken notice of EPD actions that have raised concerns. Heather Marek, a law student and member of Eugene’s Human Rights Commission, suggests that there remain to be gaps in police training. In addition to de-escalation, she advocates for cultural competency training and legal training on what constitutes resistance. “These are important things to be mindful about when our police are interacting with people on the street… and for the community to look at police as a resource and not as a threat.”

Rather than looking at statistics of police misconduct allegations, Brubaker suggests a different approach to gauge the success of these trainings at a local level. For him, the desire for statistical evidence in order to prove the success of this training reflects a key part of what he trains, he calls it ‘Attachment to Outcome’. The notion that no one is truly in control in these situations and more often than not you won’t get the exact results you’re hoping for. According to Brubaker oftentimes, “that attachment to outcome is what makes situations go south.”

Instead, Brubaker suggests that law enforcement looks inward to quantify the impact that this shift in training has really had. “You could say that use of force is one indicator but is officers feeling good about their interaction with the public also an indicator?” The training that he teaches emphasizes the importance of opening up a space to talk about where things went right and where they went wrong. “We bring up debriefing at almost all of the trainings that we do. Of all of the agencies and departments and businesses and groups that we’ve trained, maybe 5-10% tops have any kind of regular debrief space to address these issues even after a critical incident. And for me it’s the most important part of keeping someone grounded, not feeling burnt out, and being able to do better.”

“It’s kinda like an iceberg,” says Steve McIntire, the Civilian Review Board liaison, “it’s big and it’s hard to turn and it moves slowly. We’re trying to change the culture a little bit and that takes practice. We have to find some way to measure whether we’re turning that iceberg.”