I mean, with how important it is to be curious, how or in what ways do you feel most people aren't embracing curiosity to the fullest extent? And what are some of the negative consequences of that?

Yeah, I mean, it is really a bedrock fundamental value of mine is curiosity.

In his book, A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger says that, you know, the average toddler between the ages of two and five will ask 40,000 questions.

And having raised a toddler or two, I think that's on the low end.

But, you know, that's why oftentimes, you know, exasperated parents are like, I don't care why the sky is blue and just be quiet and whatever.

But know as we age because we become more knowledgeable and more aware we stop being curious and curiosity is a muscle that we need to work and uh you know nowadays we just ask ai or or don't you know express the interest but curiosity first and foremost starts right here it starts in here that's one of the changes that i've developed as i've grown as a leader is I was always thinking of my leadership externally as to what's out there, you know, how I'm impacting the troops, how I'm impacting the community, how I'm showing up.

And I realized that it starts right here with me.

I mean, how do you kind of navigate that seesaw?

I'm also curious what other wins the Bureau has had since we last spoke.

Well, I mean, overall, really encouraged, you know, by the three goals that I established when I came back in 2023.

The first goal was to transform the dynamic between the police and the people we serve.

And this is centered around the police bureau really embedding itself and seeing itself as a part of the community.

I try to refrain from the term, you know, police and community.

We are the community.

We're part of this.

So I know I have like this anecdotal email to share where it's just like some dude's opinion, but I'm curious what you think of all this.

Why and where is the city as far as receiving this on where do we go from here?

Yeah, I mean, as an old horse cop in the 90s, I did that for a number of years.

I mean, I believe at the core of policing is its relationship with its community.

And the best time and place to establish that is not in crisis.

Unfortunately, we're in a crisis response mode at this time, given the limited number of resources we have.

So we aren't able to be as present as we need to be to really maybe interrupt those problems sooner so that when we do arrive, it's usually a greater issue, takes more time.

We have certainly also developed tactics and responses that have changed over the years.

How's morale?

But that day in Waterfront Park, was there any reason that the Bureau couldn't free up an officer or two officers so a family didn't have to literally fight for the life and the safety of a seven-year-old girl with their own hands and fists? Yeah, a couple of

things.

Um, first, you know, we have, we have 808 sworn positions fill, but that doesn't, it's not the officers in my position to the person we hired last week from an officer standpoint, we have around 500 or so.

And about 100 of those are in training, et cetera.

Um, but to answer your question, We did take this from a citywide approach.

In other words, the officers who came to that aid were coming from North Precinct, which is a little bit farther away, but I was appreciative of the supervisors on scene working with dispatch and saying, hey, this is a priority.

It doesn't matter where the cops come from.

Is that the kind of position that a police bureau like Portland should be maintaining when it's this critically short that response time to 911 urgent calls is 20 minutes? Does it make sense to leave people in those other positions?