Talk A Mile pairs police officers with students to foster connection and community

One of the many training programs the Portland Police Bureau requires before officers go out into communities on their own is a simple exercise called Talk A Mile.

Police officers are paired with high school students of color and sent off to walk around the track together with four different topics on a note card for each of the four laps in a mile.

Justin and Erika Fogarty started the program with a pilot in 2022, which their teenaged son Liam participated in. The Bureau immediately incorporated Talk A Mile as part of the curriculum for officers in the advanced academy as part of their probationary period.

We talk with the couple, along with past participants high school junior Elijah Graham and Portland Police Officer Danielle Wilson, to hear more about the program’s intentions and outcomes.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. One of the many training programs that the Portland Police Bureau requires before officers can go out into communities on their own is an exercise called Talk A Mile. Officers are paired with high school students of color and then sent off together. They’re given four topics to talk about while they walk the four laps that make up a mile.

Justin and Erika Fogarty started the program with a pilot in 2022. Portland Police then incorporated it. Justin and Erika join us now, along with two participants. Elijah Graham is a junior at Portland’s Lincoln High School. Danielle Wilson is a Portland police officer. Welcome to all four of you.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Erika, I gave the one sentence version of how this works. Can you give us a fuller sense for what actually happens?

Erika Fogarty: Yeah, sure. We basically meet at a track, and we literally have the opportunity to walk and talk a mile together. We pair students, community leaders and police to have these one-on-one conversations. Really, the goal is to hopefully have those conversations lead to more connection and trust, in hopes that it will create more conversation and dialogue around a safer and thriving Portland. We also meet with students ahead of time to basically understand, what kind of questions would you want to ask police? What are you hoping to gain out of the experience?

We also meet with the police ahead of time just to shape it, so those are then translated into prompt cards that we pass out at each lap. They do walk the four laps together. And what we’ve seen is people really just make the conversations their own – they go deep, they have follow up questions. We see people in deep conversations, being serious, laughing together and just being side by side. Some even go the extra mile and keep walking a few more laps around ...

Miller: Literally the extra mile?

E. Fogarty: [Laughter] Yes, exactly. It’s honestly just something that we’ve observed as far as that opportunity to be side by side, getting people to open up, build that trust, build bridges. It’s just been a really remarkable experience.

Miller: Justin, where did this idea come from?

Justin Fogarty: Yeah, we as a family, in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, participated in some of the peaceful marches throughout the city. But inevitably we’d end up at home afterwards just kind of asking ourselves, “What’s next? What can we do to try to have a positive impact in the community?”

So we had this idea: what if we paired people up and had them have these one-on-one conversations, walking and talking side by side? When it was just an idea, Liam, our son, who was the treasurer of the Black Students United at Central Catholic, got us a meeting with the rest of the student leadership and their faculty sponsor, Melissa Lowery. And we basically took the idea to them. [We] said, “Here’s what we’re thinking. Is this something you’d be interested in participating in? And if so, what would you want to get from it? What would make it impactful for you? What kinds of things would you wanna share? What would you want to learn?” And the students were amazing right from the beginning, helping us to shape some of the high level goals, but really getting tactical too about those conversation prompts and what this experience would look like for them.

Miller: Did any of them have any skeptical questions? Did anyone say, what good can come from walking with somebody for 18 minutes or 20 minutes?

J. Fogarty: We didn’t get that question, but there were a lot of questions, obviously. This is kind of a novel approach that we came up with around the kitchen table during a pandemic, so a bit a bit creative I guess. But immediately, they did seem to see some value in it. I think a lot of that probably stems from … It felt like, at the time, there were a lot of conversations happening about policing, about public safety and about community, but oftentimes those conversations, people with good intentions weren’t necessarily always inviting some of these young leaders to actually participate in those conversations. So I think they were eager to actually share their own stories, share their own questions, share their own thoughts about the future of this city.

Miller: Erika, do I understand correctly that some of the high schoolers you talked to felt like their voices weren’t being heard?

E. Fogarty: Exactly. And that’s 100% what we’re measuring, this idea of how much are they feeling seen and heard in these conversations, to have the opportunity to bring them to the table and have agency in shaping their community.

Miller: Elijah, we have a high schooler here. I don’t need to ask, it’s not theoretical. Before we talk about your participation in this, just broadly, does that ring true to you, that you didn’t feel like your voice and the voices of your peers were being heard or listened to?

Elijah Graham: In a sense, yeah. Before this, I feel like I didn’t know how I could get my voice out there and straight directly to a police officer what I’m thinking, because me, personally, I’m not going to walk into a police station and be like this is what I’m thinking, please listen. I feel like Justin connected me to this as a really good experience. Especially as they’re training, if you tell them before, they don’t need to change anything like in the routine … I feel like I’m talking too much.

Miller: No, no, you’re not. Please keep going. You’re not talking too much.

Graham: But yeah, to answer your question, yeah, this experience definitely does help me to get my voice out there.

Miller: What was your first experience with this like? My understanding is that sort of by chance you met Justin and Erika, and then you took part in a Talk A Mile mile. What was it like?

Graham: Yeah, we met at a firefighting camp. But the first one was really nice. It was in a park … I forgot which park it was.

J. Fogarty: Laurelhurst.

Graham: Yeah, Laurelhurst. It was very shaded. It was a hot day, but the shade definitely did help and it was really nice. I was actually paired with two police officers or trainees, and they were very nice people. I got to talk to them just about life, what their life was like, their journey into getting to where they are right now. And I feel like it really helped me see more into their life and them seeing into my life.

Miller: Before you did that, did you have preconceived notions about policing or what police officers are like?

Graham: No, not really. For me, I just saw them as helpful members of the community. I feel like that kind of sounds like AI-generated in a sense. [Laughter] But yeah, I see them as like, we need them to keep order to a certain extent …

Miller: But you had a relatively positive take on police officers and policing?

Graham: Yes.

Miller: Did you have in any way a different understanding after you talked with those two officers?

Graham: I talked to one of them. I feel like most people don’t know about certain things that some officers go through mentally, and just like stuff that not everybody could show on the outside and be, I guess, respected for. They go through a lot of traumatic events and if they get another call, they just have to go and take care of it. They can’t have time to grieve for themselves. So before I talked to them, I didn’t really know that, but after, I feel enlightened, I guess.

Miller: Danielle Wilson is with us as well, as I noted – a Portland police officer who participated in this as well. What do you most remember about your time on the track?

Danielle Wilson: The conversation with someone like he’s talking about … credit where credits is due. These young minds come in, they have the computer in their hands, they’re sifting through knowledge of the world, and they are looking for a place to build connection and build bridges. The program offers them that. So my experience was talking to someone who was trying to build that bridge, trying to find a place in what’s going on.

Miller: What do you most remember about what you talked about? Wilson: A big part of that was not wanting to be scared. They want to be able to talk to police officers. Alison was my student. She wanted to be able to talk to police officers without being fearful, and how is she able to help change that kind of relationship and stuff.

Miller: What did you want to talk about?

Wilson: What she wanted to talk about.

Miller: You wanted to be student directed?

Wilson: Yeah, they’re the future, right? We’re here to serve them. That’s my job, as community service. And I want to make sure that I’m doing what the community is looking for. I want to hear what her opinion is. I even told her at one point, write a law, use me to enforce it.

Miller: Justin, it’s ambitious to create a program, any program, and try to get any city bureau, let alone something like a police bureau, to include it in their mandatory training. How did you start? How did you find the right people to take this to?

J. Fogarty: Yeah, we were fortunate in that regard. I mentioned how we connected with the students initially. At the same time we were having those conversations with the students. My brother Sean is a firefighter here in the city. They had done some joint training between the fire bureau and PPB, so Sean at least had a name that we could start with. So we connected with that person and that person was able to connect us with the right folks within the training team at PPB. And we essentially took the idea there as well and said, “Here’s what we’re thinking. Is this something you’re willing to try with us?” And fortunately, they were.

Since then, we’ve got a lot of other police departments that we’ve been connecting with. This is frankly a fairly easy sell for police.

Miller: Why do you think that is?

J. Fogarty: Well, I’m sure Officer Wilson could speak to this more, but I suspect that a lot of their training is done in classrooms, right? But having that ability to actually get out into the community, meet people in the community, understand what their expectations are of you in the community, that’s a big thing.

We’ve recently had our first one out in Gresham at the end of January. That one brought in the chief of police, Chief Gullberg, and several officers from their team, as well as County Commissioner Vince Jones-Dixon and a few other folks. But they really embraced this opportunity, too. They don’t often get a chance to connect with young people and hear what they think.

Miller: Erika, you’re not a high schooler right now, but did you do a version of this yourself to see what it’s like? What was your experience like?

E. Fogarty: Yes. The officer that I walked with, I just remember again going back to this idea of one of the questions: why did you get into law enforcement? And they said that they wanted to be a caregiver. To me, that was mind blowing. I just immediately made the assumption of, oh, it’s about fighting crime or enforcing the law. And it really just came from a place of caring and giving back to the community. So that really stayed with me.

Again, just having that more human-to-human opportunity, I think is really why it does work. We do actually take surveys after the Talk A Mile events just to get input, and continue shaping and crafting the program. And the few that stood out – and this actually was from our very first event – one of the officers said that they thought it should be mandatory for every police officer in the nation. So that certainly caught our eye and then made us realize, like maybe we’re on to something.

That was back in 2022. Since then, we have trained every single trainee in the Portland Police Bureau in the last three years. So it’s been an exciting growth.

Miller: Justin, Erika mentioned earlier that you actually meet with the high school students first to get a sense for what they want to talk about. What are examples of the questions or prompts that they come up with?

J. Fogarty: They’ve been really good, I think, about helping to try to push us deeper. So having conversations about the weather would be fine and good and all, but really kind of digging into, what your training looks like? How do you plan to stay connected with the community as you advance in your career? What got you to want to become a police officer and, of all places, why Portland? So they’ve really helped us to try to push those conversations a little layered deeper than maybe we would have initially felt comfortable doing.

Miller: How explicit are questions or prompts about race? I noted that you are explicitly inviting students of color, young Black and Brown kids in Portland to talk with police officers – and you’re doing that for a reason. How much do you do when the students invite conversations about race?

J. Fogarty: Well, I think if you look a little bit back at the history of the organization, we started with the Black Students United at Liam’s school. But quickly after that we were actually approached by some students that were part of a Latino Student Union that also wanted to be part of these conversations. We’ve since also had interest from and participation from the Multnomah Youth Commission. And Word is Bond is a program that’s participated as well. It’s kind of grown organically by other students simply saying, “I’d like to be a part of this conversation, too.” So we’ve seen the growth kind of happen organically that way.

As far as how explicitly they bring race into those conversations, that’s really at the individual level. We try to provide these prompts, these questions that let them get into those kinds of things if they choose to take it that way, but there’s no hard and fast requirement to do so. And in a good example I think is probably one of the first questions that we start with, and that’s on lap one: what is the story of your name? It lets you take any direction you want to go, right? You don’t necessarily have to take it one way or the other, but that opens the door for people to get into something that is deeply personal to them.

Miller: Danielle, you just pointed like “yes” when he said that.

Wilson: Yes.

Miller: What was going through your mind?

Wilson: One of the conversations I had was, I guess I don’t want to say we agreed, but we spoke about how the lineage should follow the mother’s name because the mother’s the creator, and that would be the most amazing way to keep track. And I was like, how did we even get on that topic? I don’t remember. And that’s it, because, where did your name come from? [Laughter]

Miller: Elijah, did you talk at all about race with the officer that you were walking around with?

Graham: Not as much as the second one. But I do remember with the first one, the two officers asked me what my experience of being Black in Portland was like and if there was anything they could do to, not make it easier, but what they should know about it so that they could better understand our experiences.

Miller: And they were the ones who brought that up?

Graham: Yes.

Miller: Do you remember what you said?

Graham: I probably said that we’re just like other kids, they shouldn’t really treat us differently. Yeah, I think that’s pretty much what I said, that we’re all humans on the inside and that our skin color is really just our skin color.

Miller: Danielle Wilson, we heard earlier that one of the questions is, “why did you want to become a police officer?” Your story, I don’t know if it’s unique, but it may be unusual. For a while, for something like five years, until pretty recently, you worked for TriMet. You drove a bus, you operated a MAX train, and now you’re switching.

Wilson: Yeah.

Miller: Why?

Wilson: To a deeper connection. In that job, you see a lot of the city, you build a lot of relationships. And especially during the COVID era, it was kind of hard for the city, so those connections get deeper in tragedies and things like that. And I just wanted to be in it more. I wanted to be able to support more and do more.

Miller: Is this too strong a way to put it … but when you’re saying that, what I imagined you were saying – and based on conversations we’ve had with with bus drivers in the past or or folks higher up at TriMet – bus drivers in recent years have encountered a ton of scary situations, sometimes violence, not always Portlanders at their best. And I’m just wondering if you experienced that and you wanted to work more upstream to address public safety, instead of being the recipient of public safety problems. Is that a fair way to put it?

Wilson: Yeah, there’s a more hands on approach. I get connected with resources and I get an authority to put people in a place that can help them, so that we can find services or something like that [to] help them through the struggles that they’re dealing with. And I saw a lot of people struggling while I was a driver. It’s nice to be able to say, “hey, here’s some resources.”

Miller: Erika, we heard from your husband that this started in Portland. Recently, you had a training in Gresham. What are your hopes for what comes next for Talk A Mile?

E. Fogarty: We actually don’t see this as just a one-time event. We actually are starting programming that we call Our Next Steps, really just to keep those conversations going and continue to engage alumni participants. So one example is that we were invited by the PPB to participate in their Equity Summit, which really was an open call to the community for them to share their equity goals and get feedback. And they actually reached out to us and said, we’d love to have youth at these conversations. So we invited, I believe it was four students, who were able to sit down literally with Chief Day, who was also there, and look at their equity goals, give feedback directly. There is this through line that starts with a conversation, but then next thing you know, they’re actually sitting down and helping to inform some of the practices.

So again, just continuing those touch points. We do a Blazers night at the end of the year for alumni, and again, just really going deeper in Portland. And then, yes, we would love to expand to other cities. We actually have done a pilot in Denver. We see our model as very scalable. Just because, again, it’s a walk and talk, pretty easy to stand up anywhere. But it is those conversations with the different bureaus, schools, students and community organizations to get things off the ground. So that’s what we’ve definitely been investing our time in, to expand.

Yeah, we are right now we’re looking potentially into conversations with Seattle and then also even New York. So exciting to see those opportunities hopefully come together.

Miller: Justin, we have just about a minute left, but how do you hope that people – police officers in particular, but maybe high schoolers – will incorporate the ethos of this into their daily lives? This is 20 minutes. What are your hopes for how it can impact them going forward, since it’s only 20 minutes? And you have a minute to answer that question.

J. Fogarty: What we’ve heard directly from folks through the surveys, through the debriefs and everything, we hear things … like an officer in Denver actually said that the one young 14-year-old that he walked and talked with had profound insights into how they should interact with the community and young people like this young man. So our hope is that obviously they take this forward with a little less reluctance to engage in conversation, which is certainly something we’ve heard from some police trainees. And then on the young participant side, the student side, those young leaders, just again, that idea of being a little less anxious, a little less afraid, just being a little bit more comfortable in their own skin in their own city, of being able to take that out there.

So that’s really what we’re hoping for, that people take this and continue to build on it, engaging with other people in the conversation.

Miller: Justin, Erika, Elijah and Danielle, thanks very much.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Talk A Mile was started by Justin and Erika Fogarty. Elijah Graham is a Lincoln High School junior. Danielle Wilson is a Portland police officer.

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