The Dallas ISD Police Department has become the first major-city school district police department in Texas to fully embrace an innovative peer-intervention program called Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE), which provides practical strategies and tactics to help officers reduce mistakes.
The active bystandership training’s goal is to prepare police officers to intervene when they see misconduct from other cops and create a culture that supports peer intervention.
The ABLE Project is intended to promote officer health and wellness and to create a police culture in which officers prevent misconduct and avoid mistakes, according to Georgetown University.
The ABLE program is fully underway, and the entire force of approximately 200 officers – from chiefs and campus and patrol officers to new recruits – are expected to be trained by the fall of 2022.
“The ABLE peer-intervention program comes at a critical time in our society,” said Dallas ISD Police Lieutenant Juan Cedillo. “The ABLE builds upon the existing training the Dallas ISD PD is already doing, and it can only make the department better prepared to serve our schools and community.”
To learn more about the ABLE Project, visit www.law.georgetown.edu/cics/able/.
