Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office working on accountability

ABLE training helps build a culture of peer intervention that prevents harm

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN)-The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office is one of only three law enforcement agencies in the state to participate in ABLE training.  It stands for Active Bistandership for Law Enforcement.  One of the main focuses is accountability.

“There is a big push right now for accountability in law enforcement. This is something that has been incumbent on law enforcement for a long time to step up and intervene when things are going wrong. A lot of times we think about examples in the media, the George Floyd incident for example, why didn’t someone do something?” said Captain John Vik with the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office.

The goal of ABLE training is to promote accountability.

“We’ve known for a long time that we are required to intervene and stop bad things from happening both from a criminal standpoint, but also with ourselves. If we see mistakes happening, if we see misconduct happening, we know that’s important for us to do, but what we haven’t done a great job of is teaching officers how to do that. How can we be effective in stepping up and saying something,” said Captain Vik.

Every person from the sheriff to deputies to civilian staff will participate in the ABLE training.  Moving forward, this will also be included during new hire training.

“There have been times when I probably said or did something that I shouldn’t have and somebody is reluctant to come to me and say gosh I wish you hadn’t done that. I want people to have that freedom to come to me and respectfully say I wish you wouldn’t have done that or we don’t think you should have said that. It helps us just re-evaluate our mission and goals,” said Sheriff Terry Wagner, Lancaster County.

Holding each other accountable should not only strengthen the department but could benefit the community as well.

“Our communities deserve the best law enforcement that we can provide them and this is just part of our ongoing commitment to do that,” said Captain Vik.