PPB is increasing rapid response team training ahead of Election Day

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – With just three weeks to go until Election Day and with the 2020 riots still fresh in many people’s minds, the Portland Police Bureau has increased training for its Rapid Response Team (RRT).

In 2024, the RRT received new equipment, including new polycarbonate shields. Since June, the entire RRT has met once a month at the training center and conducted various exercises to demonstrate how they would respond if an uprising broke out in the city.

“We built up the training slowly to get her to this point. After the election, we will continue to train regularly to ensure we have a team that has everything we need,” said PPB Commander Craig Dobson.

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PPB officials said their department has never used polycarbonate shields before and is practicing various skills, such as getting in and out of the vans with the shields in hand. But it’s not just about field work, there are also classroom demonstrations.

“There was a lot of legal and policy-based training, as there have been a lot of legal changes around crowd management since 2020 and our policies have been updated, so a lot of these training days focused on that teaching content. “, said PPB commander Franz Schoening.

While the focus of these training courses is primarily on how to use the new equipment, the new shields are a last resort.

“We will set up dialogue officers who will contact people working at the level of dialogue and communication to help them carry out events and self-monitoring. If that doesn’t work, then the next steps we take are bikes or people on foot to remove the people who are causing the trouble or what we would call tension. The shields will be one of the things that we will be very careful when using them. “They are primarily used as a defensive tool when we see rocks and bottles being thrown and we realize that officers need an extra layer of protection to be used as,” Dobson explained. “You don’t want to move in too early or you’ll become a problem. But if you go too slowly, it can fester and become a problem.”

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The big question this year is: Do the shields have to be used on Election Day?

“The community is concerned, we’ve heard loud and clear from the community, from business groups to elected officials, that in fact there is no intelligence information and no indication of a credible threat of unrest that will occur on Election Day.” It It’s always better to be prepared,” Schoening said.

But the Rapid Response Team’s job includes more than just crowd control. The team was built to be able to mobilize quickly in the event of multiple dangerous events. Dobson cited an earthquake, a train derailment or assisting in rescue operations in the city as examples.

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