The Nexus of Force,
Communication,
and Mental Health
Matthew Wiskow
Historically, when we talk about use of force training, it’s usually pieced into two categories: the legal aspects and the survival aspects. The training on legal justification is important and necessary for our profession and we have all been through some form of training that discusses that justification in detail. Together with legal justification training has been survival skills training, typically we all know it as defensive tactics training. Both subjects are principal in protecting the life and wellbeing of deputies and officers not only physically but legally. These protections incorporate our department leadership as well as the community as a whole. There have been many evolutions in the course of my career when it comes to use of force. Since 2019 those changes have been coming fast in response to highly publicized incidents involving law enforcement. As leaders, we are challenged with ensuring that we offer the tools to our employees to remain physically and legally protected during the performance of their duties.
During the 2020 Oregon Legislative Assembly, House Bill 4301 was introduced. This Bill directly impacted both police and corrections in the application of force. House Bill 4301 set forth requirements directly aimed at the application of force by requiring that officers:
- “Consider alternatives such as verbal de-escalation, waiting, using other available resources and techniques if such alternatives are reasonable.‚
- “Give a verbal warning to the person that physical force may be used and provide the person with a reasonable opportunity to comply...‚
In addition to the state changes, we have continued to work at developing a system that thoroughly reviews our use of force to ensure that we are consistently striving to improve our actions and reactions consistent with current law and expectations. Beyond the additional requirements of the state, we also review incidents in detail to ensure that the force is s reasonable, within policy, and necessary.
Identifying Impacts of Culture on Policy
As leaders we had to find a way to make these changes to ensure that we continued to offer the tools for legal protection. We analyzed our use of force policy and practice to assess what we needed to change and how that change would affect operations through practice. The first realization was that we needed to adjust our force reporting threshold. Historically our reporting threshold had been centered on how we had to physically interact with an individual through what specific tactics that were used to overcome resistance. We have traditionally split our tactics used into two categories: control, and force. “Control‚ translated simply to using tactics that were not overly intrusive such as control holds, escort holds, verbal direction. Through review of incidents this was not an adequate distinction in capturing the use of force. We identified a gap that created potential for force incidents to not be reported due to the policy not requiring a report for the use of “Control‚ as a physical intervention did not fall within the force reporting mechanism. Our policy’s definition of “Force‚ was specifically associated with tactics used, claim of injury, and/or claim of property damage. I made a very clear line in our policy changing the force reporting fulcrum from tactics used to “Overcoming physical resistance.‚ This removed the question of when to document incidents through our force reporting structure. This was a big change for line staff and how we approached potential force incidents.
As most of us have experienced, change is a simple word with a difficult meaning. This change had an impact on all levels of the organization from the newest deputy all the way to the Sheriff. Use of force reporting increased over a hundred and fifty percent after redefining force, not due to more incidents but due to changing the reporting criteria. In addition to the increase in reporting, we required our shift supervisors to review each incident of force. The force incident review obliges the first line supervisor to look not only at what led up to the incident but to gage the reasonable objectivity of the situation and offer coaching to the involved deputies that includes coaching on the pillars of our justification. For a force incident to be justified under our policy it must meet the following requirements:
1. The force used was necessary based on the totality of the circumstances known.
2. The force used was within policy (including state requirements) based on the criteria below:
a. A force warning was given prior to the use of force (if reasonable).
b. The individual was given an opportunity to comply.
c. Attempts to de-escalate or temper the situation were made.
d. Alternative options were explored. To include:
i. Use of Mental Health staff
ii. Waiting
iii. Use of alternative methods
3. The force use was reasonable, based on objective standard.
4. The review was to ensure that not only were we meeting legal requirements but to offer a prospect for the employee to take away any opportunities for enrichment.
How Our Inmate Population Has Changed
Our facility capacity is 411, with the agreed federal capacity decree from 2000, our adjusted facility capacity is 382. Post COVID, our average daily population has been between 280 and 320 and our average length of stay (ALS) is around 17 days. Our reduced population and ALS has been the result of prosecutorial discretion, judicial discretion, alternative program allocation, as well as discretion of arresting officers. Even with a reduced population we had 153 use of force incidents in the facility in 2022.
Each incident offered an opportunity for review, coaching, and an occasion to assess our training and practice. Assessment of each incident indicated that we were lacking in communicating what our expectations for staff are during a use of force incident. We have an expectation that thorough verbal communication and attempts to temper a situation will be exhausted when possible.
This profession has not gotten easier, we are in the people business but the people we interact with have changed. In our facility approximately seventy percent of the inmates are treated for mental health issues and about thirty percent of those individuals suffer from some form of serious persistent mental illness (SPMI). Using an evidence-based risk assessment tool, we have worked closely with the courts and our alternative programs to offer alternatives to incarceration such as community service, day reporting, electronic monitoring, road crew, etc. By opening alternatives for people to navigate the criminal justice system, individuals can maintain their family connections, employment, and other pro-social connections while at the same time upholding a level of accountability. Those inmates who are not able to function in an alternative program setting or present a greater risk are the ones that remain in custody. Hence the high numbers of inmates with mental health issues remaining in custody require more resources, staff time, and are likely to be involved in a force incident. Developing the emotional intelligence to respond to the changing culture of inmates is not just preferred practice but necessary in modern corrections. Oregon in general suffers from a lack of alternative resources that are designed to manage a growing population of the public that suffer from SPMI. The solution for this trend thus far has been to put the burden of care on the county jails.
We manage inmates in many ways, but in general the model used has been ask, tell, and make (ATM). With the population we had 10 years ago, the inmates who could live in dormitories and function around others, this model was effective. If a deputy asked an inmate to do something and the inmate didn’t respond the deputy would escalate and order them. If an order was ineffective, we would again escalate and make the inmate comply through physical intervention. Because a high percentage of inmates in our custody suffer from mental illness this model poses many problems. Fundamentally, is the process of ordering and escalating the right humane thing to do? Can you morally escalate a
situation where the inmate has no foundation of understanding or ability to comply with your demand? Will treating every interaction with the ATM model result in physically and legally protecting our employees? In my state the answer is no and optically across the country I believe this is similar. We have asked our staff to employ training such as de-escalation and critical incident management as the go-to tool for managing inmates. We have trained staff in verbal de-escalation and what to say in a volatile situation in hopes that the situation can be tempered but we have never looked at how that can translate to their everyday situations or trained our staff on how these tactics can be employed in a realistic environment. Like so many agencies we saw the requirement for de-escalation training and scheduled classroom training.
Expectations
At my agency, over half of the jail’s funding is provided through a levy that must be renewed by the public every five years. As I listen to the citizens and public stakeholders in my community, I have recognized that they expect us to do more than uphold the law; they expect us to do the right thing for the right reasons. This is not only the expectation of the public; it is also the expectation of my department leadership and my expectation. In our profession we often don’t want to take the initiative to break away from the “that’s how we’ve always done it‚ mentality. How often do we see a federal consent decree affect someone in our business? Then when you see that consent decree do you ask yourself could it have been avoided by doing the right thing for the right reason?
Cries to defund police, high profile cases of brutality, some questionable use of force, and tactics have brought to the forefront a need by all agencies to review how and what they train. Many of us have heard the cries to defund the police, but let’s be realistic when you defund something in our profession what’s the first thing to go? The pattern I have seen is a reduction in training or “streamlining‚ training to get that much needed officer on the floor filling a position. When it comes to teaching our folks how and when to use those specifically taught survival skills are we really giving them insight to our profession and how to do business? Are we training failure or laying the groundwork for the next consent decree brought on by continuing to look at a situation through the lens of how we have always done it? Use of force policy and practice should not be dictated by failure, and it is our responsibility, no matter how tough it is to ensure we do the right things for the right reasons in the right manner.
Reimagining Training
I took over responsibility to review all use of force reports and supervisory reports stemming from after action coaching etc. I saw a pattern and asked the question. Why are we not training skills to meet our force response needs? Yes, survival skills are important but, that type of interaction was less than 1% of the 153 reported force incidents I had in 2022. Most of our incidents involved interacting with the mentally ill and having to overcome physical resistance to meet our penological goal. Force in corrections is not always avoidable but we need to ensure that we are taking steps to temper the use of force while giving our staff the tools to do the job safely and in a justified manner. I was able to look at our training and quickly identify some needs:
- Necessity for force
- Is it objectively reasonable?
- State law requirements
- Verbal de-escalation
- Force warning/opportunity to comply
- Alternatives
- Factoring our emotion and ego
- Communication
- Tactical skills
- Intervene/Intercede
Based on these identified areas I went forward with planning an all-encompassing training. Looking at my needs, I had to identify the best way to train all the 131 sworn corrections deputies in a meaningful and impactful way. I needed to develop training that would be beneficial for the new deputy as well as the 25-year vet. I also needed to find a way to fund training 131 deputies. We all know funding training of any magnitude can be a challenge that is difficult to overcome. As an agency we received a grant in 2021 that is intended for training de-escalation. I was able to tap into this grant to assist in funding a training that was intent on training de-escalation together with physical skills. With some funding in place, I decided the best format for training that would meet grant requirements and my needs would take place in the form of scenario-based training.
I didn’t want to present the typical defensive tactics scenarios we have all experienced in the past nor did I want to fully abandon that method. I
decided to move forward with scenario-based training that included instructors from both the corrections and police divisions. The instructors I used specialized individually in verbal de-escalation, crisis negotiation, and defensive tactics. I require that at a minimum a representative from each
discipline be present for every individual block of training. I set specific achievable goals and outcomes for my multidisciplinary instructors to reach. I was able to work with instructors to develop scenarios that encompassed the training needs I identified. There is a clear link between verbal de-escalation and the use of force. Earlier, I discussed how less than one percent of use of force incidents require the use of survival skills. The remaining ninety nine percent of force interactions have a significant element of verbal and non-verbal communication. I put a heavy burden on instructors to teach empathy, de-escalation, and tactics while encouraging humility and command presence.
From my training plan the team created over 60 individual scenarios that fit my intent. These scenarios ranged from verbal interactions to physical interactions. Scenarios were developed in a style of the old Choose Your Own Adventurebooks. Depending on what a student said or how they acted or reacted the scenario would follow the storyline they chose. Training was done in four-hour blocks over four days with an average of 10 students per session allowing each student a chance to experience multiple scenarios. Another change for us over the old defensive tactics scenarios was to allow all the students to watch each scenario. This enabled the viewers to also take something away from each scenario even if they were not a participant. I instructed my trainers not to be critical but to offer considerations and alternatives. Not only were the scenarios conducted in front of the class but so was the scenario debrief. Scenarios were developed with the Choose Your Own Adventure style in mind to allow individual thought, recognition, and an ability to successfully complete a scenario. Role playing is an effective learning strategy as it increases retention, provides hands-on training, and encourages communication. More importantly, a scenario-based training style allows us to put our people in everyday situations. This is not something that can be accomplished in a classroom reading a presentation projected on a screen.
Preceding the training I received a significant amount of resistance from some staff. The chief complaint was that there was little interest in more verbal de-escalation training. I intentionally did not sell the training to staff. I wanted our people to come in with their preformed ideas of what they thought it would be. It was beneficial once the student was in the training for them to come to the realization that this was something different, something that was conducive to learning and growing professionally.
The realization for the student was quick that this was not the training of old. It was something new that offered things for “consideration‚ rather than you should have done x, y, and z. Having instructors from each represented discipline to help coach a student through the most awkward scenarios helped eliminate the initial pre-conceived notions held by staff. During each training block we were also able to offer and seek input from students about how to approach situations. Here is a specific example related to verbal de-escalation:
Over the years a few others and I developed a tactic for searching inmates and new bookings. When we bring a new custody into our facility, they are restrained, and we direct them toward a wall designated for searching new custodies. The standard practice I have seen the past few years is to solely focus on getting through the initial assessment questions and directing the custody in an almost robotic fashion as they are searched. I was able to present an alternative. I would bring in the custody and ask them “Hey, do you mind if I search you?‚ Obviously, I was going to search the custody regardless of the answer, but it offered a sense of control to that person and showed that I recognized them as a person.
I was surprised at the reaction from students when I told them that I ask an inmate if I could search them. Much of our staff have less than five years on the job, and it was clear to me that this type of communication was alien to them. It was well received, and many have seen the benefits to making small changes like this in communication. Another example of non-scenario-based training we included in each training block were considerations for bringing in combative inmates. On average we book in five to eight combative arrestees in any given week. Over the years this has turned into a process of gathering several deputies to remove the custody from the vehicle under the assumption that they are going to physically resist. Over the past few years this has evolved even further
into our deputies asking all the booking initial assessment questions from the front seat of the patrol vehicle. I saw a trend developing in that many of these uncooperative bookings became a force incident. The common threads were the length of time the custody had to stay in the vehicle and the number of questions that were being posed prior to getting them out of the vehicle, and the number of deputies present to facilitate the extraction. During training I was able to offer an alternative:
Respond to the patrol officer and get the needed information, charges, behavior, and any significant statements. Contact the custody in the vehicle and ask them one simple question. “If I get you out of this vehicle, are you going to cooperate with me?‚ Based on the deputy’s assessment of the situation they would use their own judgement if the situation was safe and if they needed additional staff.
This was a simple change that not only empowers the deputy to individually assess a situation but offers an out for the arrestee when they are surrounded by uniforms. I was surprised that I had so many deputies that had not considered an alternative approach. My belief is that it has come down to training and that old saying “This is how we have always done it.
Conclusion
My team and I made a significant investment into this training through time and effort. I have been involved in many training courses through the years, both good and bad but I have found the ones that require mandatory overtime by a student to complete, tend towards overcoming a negative in the compulsory nature of the schedule. As I approached our training room one evening to assess how things were progressing, I could hear laughter coming out of the training room. As the boss I didn’t want to interrupt, and I made a mental note that this was the first time I had experienced that type of reaction from training that required overtime.
The fact was deputies were having a great time and learning; that alone was a win. My hope is that as I review use of force incidents at the end of this year that we will have fewer in number due in a small part by this training. I am now looking at applying this multidisciplinary model towards other trainings in hopes that I can present a more universal and complete product. For the foreseeable future finding and developing the skills to combine use of force, communication, and managing the mentally ill has become an integral part of the corrections profession.
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Sergeant Matthew Wiskow has been with Lane County for 20 years and with the Lane County Sheriff’s Office since 2005. He is currently assigned in an administrative role that supervises use of force, the defensive tactics, and peer support teams. During his tenure with LCSO, he has focused in corrections, working in both security and alternative programs to include work with their mental health team, veterans court, and community partner. Wiskow holds a basic, intermediate, and advanced corrections certification as well as supervisory corrections certification in the state of Oregon. For more information, he can be contacted at matthew.wiskow@lanecountyor.gov.