KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Knoxville Police Department is preparing to train its officers on how to intervene and prevent harm, as well as create a law enforcement culture that supports such intervention.
The ABLE Project is meant to train officers on how they can hold peers accountable, helping departments avoid police misconduct and prevent mistakes. It is a national effort to create cultures where officers intervene to prevent misconduct as well as promote health and wellness.
It stands for "Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement," and KPD was chosen to join the project as a partner agency in June 2022. Chief of Police Paul Noel announced, on the same day he was sworn in, that the police department would be applying. KPD is also the first agency in Tennesee to be accepted into the ABLE Project.
The project aims to change police culture to create an environment where they routinely intervene, and accept interventions, as necessary to prevent misconduct, avoid police mistakes and promote officer health and wellness.
Everyone who works for KPD will now go through this training program. KPD said that's roughly about 500 people. Right now, nine officers have completed the class. The training is completely free.
As part of the project, command staff took part in an eight-hour initial training course on Friday. KPD said it marked the start of a department-wide rollout. It said it is one of over 300 agencies in North America to join the project.
The ABLE project is an eight-hour training course. It teaches officers how to intervene to prevent misconduct in times of high tensions between the public and an officer.
"It's about harm reduction. To reducing opportunities for harm to the community, reducing opportunities for harm to the employees of the Department. So this is really big," said Scott Erland, KPD Public Information Officer and one of the teachers of the program.
The class works in two parts. The first half centers on the science behind an active and passive bystander and the second requires officers to roleplay real-life scenarios
"The point of this is for us to train, just like we would in real life," Noel said.
Noel is one of the founders of this training program. He said it was designed by police officers, police supervisors, attorneys, professors and even civil rights leaders who protested law enforcement.
"This is so special," he said. "I was a part of the group in the Wallace Police Department that designed this and implemented this from the first time."
Right now, 41 states use the ABLE project, Tennessee now being one. The standards of the program fall into two of Noel's goals, that's trust and improving the agency's culture.
"Our job in its essence is harm reduction and that's what this is all about," Erland said.
Chief Noel said the goal is to have the entire department complete the ABLE training by the end of 2023. New recruits hired will also receive the training in the police academy.