Bend Police report : Use of force decreased in 2019

Says Crisis Intervention Training is a key way to avoid force

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The Bend Police Department has completed and released its 2019 force response report.  Force response by law enforcement personnel is a matter of high importance, both to the public and to the law enforcement community. 

On a daily basis, Officers of the Police Department are involved in numerous and varied interactions with citizens, including response to 911 calls for help and to calls involving individuals in the midst of a mental health crisis. 

In 2019, 74  of those contacts resulted in officers being required to use  justified and reasonable force in response to the actual or threatened use of force against them, or the actual or threatened use of force against a third person, or resistance by suspects to being lawfully arrested.

Bend Officers responded to approximately 98,000 calls for service in 2019, and on each call officers contact between 1 and 3 individuals, which could account for approximately 300,000 citizen contacts a year. This equates to officers only responding to force in .07% or 1 in 1,342 calls for service. 

Bend Police saw a significant increase in the number of emergency 911 calls it received in 2019. These calls increased by 5.6% over the prior year. Citizens call 911 when they are in urgent situations and they do not have any other feasible options in solving the problem.

While we saw an increase in emergency calls for service, our force response incidents decreased from 93 in 2018, with a similar number of calls for service, to 76 in 2019, resulting in a 28.3 % decrease.  

In addition to the increased number of emergency calls for service, there was a significant increase for calls involving individuals in mental health crisis. These calls for service often involve people threatening to commit suicide, or have demonstrated the desire to hurt themselves or others, or are physically resistant to assistance needed to gain required treatment for their conditions. These are dangerous and often unpredictable type of calls and they increased by 12.6% in 2019.

One of the most dangerous tasks law enforcement officers are lawfully required to complete is the physical arrest of an individual. In the latest reports from 2017, the FBI determined 58,866 officers were assaulted and 55 officers were killed while carrying out their duties.

Officers of the Bend Police arrested 4,250 individuals in 2019 and in making those arrests officers only were required to responded with force in 76 of those arrests. This equates to officers having to use force during the arrest to approximately 1.7% of the time.

While our population continues to increase yearly, emergency 911 calls are increasing, as well as mental health related calls increasing by double digit numbers, the Bend Police Department has been able to decrease the amount of times officers had to use the necessary force in order to keep our community safe.

The Bend Police Department focuses on providing the best training available to our officers, using innovative safety devices like “wrap safety restraints” to safely subdue and transport combative suspects,  which we believe these tools and training have helped in reducing our force responses. 

The majority of patrol officers have received Crisis Intervention Training, which focuses on skills and techniques with people who are in crisis, who may have a behavioral health issue or a co-occurring drug/alcohol addiction.

The Bend Police Department is focused on training our officers on crisis intervention, de-escalation techniques, using scenario-based training and by creating time and distance to gain greater compliance, rather than having an event rise to the level of a need for force.  Our goal on every police contact is to educate, reach compliance and only respond with force as a last resort. The Bend Police Department continues to hire and retain quality individuals who are compassionate, professional and make sound decisions.

The Bend Police Department finds that these minimal force responses are a result of our commitment to Crisis Intervention Training and our progressive training efforts, which are all in alignment with the departments’ vision, mission, and values.

Submitted by: Lt. Juli McConkey