When TriMet launched its Safety Response Team in 2021, sending unarmed workers trained in de-escalation onto Portland’s public transit system, the agency emphasized the program as part of a wider movement to rethink public safety beyond armed police and security guards. The program was developed in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the national racial justice protests that followed, and aimed to explore alternatives to police on TriMet.
The program’s debut also lined up with increasing community concern about safety on Portland’s buses and MAX trains, often associated with the perceived danger of someone experiencing a public mental health crisis or using drugs in public. Ideally, members of the Safety Response Team (SRT) could help “discourage inappropriate and illegal behavior,” as TriMet put it, while also conducting outreach to those in need. The employees are easily recognizable by their yellow and blue vests, intended to distinguish them as a safe resource.
But more than three years in, some people who have worked for the SRT program are questioning its ethics and effectiveness. Current and former staffers who talked to the Mercury say they recognize the program’s ability to be a source of good in the community, but they have deep concerns about the way it’s managed.
“I think the program overall does a lot of good for a lot of people,” Adam Neve, a former Safety Response Team field supervisor, told the Mercury. “It’s just mismanaged. The employees need more support, and the program needs better management that’s more in touch with what we’re doing.”
(Editor's note: Due to personal circumstances and fear of retaliation, some of the people the Mercury spoke with for this story declined to comment on the record. Sources are quoted anonymously where the Mercury deemed it appropriate.)
Many people who worked as SRT members described a tumultuous and often exploitative work environment, with deep repercussions not just for employees, but for Portland at large.
The SRT program is run through a partnership between TriMet and Portland Patrol Inc. (PPI), a private security company that is responsible for staffing the team and training employees. TriMet contracts with PPI for its SRT staff, as well as its customer safety officer positions. In 2023, TriMet renewed its contract with PPI for Safety Response Team and customer safety officer services. The new contract includes up to $64.8 million in total compensation for the security company over three years, with a two-year renewal option. The contract maxes out at $108 million in compensation over five years.
Some employees say PPI’s model for the program is inherently flawed as a police alternative, as several leaders at the security company are former Portland Police Bureau officers. And they say a lack of training for SRT staff has reduced its potential to be an effective public safety solution.
Despite the addition of safety officers, TriMet has seen recent, high-profile violent incidents on its vehicles and train platforms, and many riders report feeling unsafe on the bus and MAX trains. The transit agency has called for stricter laws against drug use on public transit in Oregon, and worked to hire more cops and security officers, but a certain perception of danger has remained.
This problem isn’t specific to TriMet. Transit agencies across the country have found it difficult in recent years to attract riders, in part due to safety concerns. But recent events—including a fatal stabbing on the MAX last spring and a recent bus hijacking—haven’t helped TriMet recover ridership.
Current and former SRT staffers also told the Mercury that the program, which relies on contracted labor at a fraction of what TriMet employees are paid, uses an exploitative model and lacks a trauma-informed approach.
Those who have worked with the Safety Response Team also expressed concern about the high employee turnover rate. According to PPI’s owner, the organization’s turnover rate is a little more than 50 percent per year, meaning the Safety Response Team loses half of its employees annually. While the private security and social work industries both grapple with high employee turnover, people who have experienced the culture at PPI say it’s unsustainable.
Current and former SRT workers note the program’s focus on hiring field staff with “lived experience” with homelessness, mental health issues, and drug addiction. SRT leaders highlight the importance of hiring outreach workers who can directly relate to the people they’re serving, and employees agree. But that means a high percentage of SRT officers are financially, mentally, and physically vulnerable.
“Even when it’s not working well, it’s a helpful program… just having that presence on the street of people who are there to help,” Neve said. “The main thing that always brought me down was I was ‘it’ in terms of support for the people on my team. There was nothing in place for me, and there was nothing really in place for them.”
“If you use police officers to change what police officers look like, you’re not doing yourself a service.”
TriMet has faced skepticism of the Safety Response Team’s methods since its inception. Members of Bus Riders Unite, a local organization advocating for transit riders, spoke out against the program’s affiliation with PPI shortly after it launched.
Bus Riders Unite organizer Maia Vásconez-Taylor told the Mercury in 2021 the “community has no faith in PPI.” Vásconez-Taylor said even though SRT members don’t carry guns, their training still comes with a “policing mentality.”
This concern appears to be shared by those who have worked as SRT employees. Several former employees told the Mercury they think the program is too closely affiliated with the Portland Police Bureau, as many of the people running the program previously worked as police officers.
"The program should be taking the lead from grassroots work, and instead, they've got cops running it." -Ash Matthews, former SRT staffer
Tom Hunt, who manages SRT on the TriMet side, worked for PPB for 27 years, retiring as a captain in 2017. Before starting his job at TriMet, Hunt worked as PPI’s chief operating officer, helping run the private security company’s partnership with Downtown Portland Clean and Safe. Willy Goff, PPI’s transit manager, is also a former Portland police officer. So is Kraig McGlathery, PPI’s current chief operations officer.
“All these guys have good qualities, but they aren’t in touch with what we’re trying to do, what we want to do,” Neve said. “I feel like the SRT program should be run by people with a social work background, who understand the intersections between social and economic dynamics, and people from the recovery community, who can speak to what are the best ways to address some of these issues.”
Ash Matthews, who worked for the program from 2022 to early 2024, told the Mercury they applied for the job after hearing it advertised as an opportunity to reshape public safety on transit away from policing.
“When they were training us, they explained to us that the program was created in response to the George Floyd protests; they wanted people to get help and resources instead of being policed,” Matthews said. “But we ended up realizing we did have to work with the police. ...The program should be taking the lead from grassroots work, and instead, they've got cops running it.”
Matthews recounted a particularly troubling example of the close alignment between the SRT program and local police, when a man sought help from unarmed response workers for a mental health crisis and ended up in a confrontation with police after program members called 911. They later heard the man had been charged with a felony for allegedly interfering with a police officer.
“All he wanted to do was get help,” Matthews said.
TriMet Public Information Officer (PIO) Tyler Graf said it's "reasonable, even valuable," to have people with a background in security or law enforcement involved with the SRT program.
"People with law enforcement backgrounds are informed by decades of training and real-life experiences that help keep their team members safe. Safety awareness and de-escalation are at the center of much of the training that is provided," Graf told the Mercury in an email. "It also doesn’t change the team’s mission, which is to provide an additional safety presence while supporting riders, employees and community members in need."
According to Graf, SRT members receive Department of Public Safety and Standards Training, facilitated by PPI. The security company also leads employee training in safety, de-escalation, communications, and reporting. After that, TriMet leads two weeks classroom and field training for new employees.
They then receive six months of extensive on-the-job training, specific to the duties of the Safety Response Team (cultural competency, providing community-based referrals to partners, crisis communications, etc.), during which the new employees are considered probationary," Graf said. "In addition to this, members of the Safety Response Team receive continuing education and personal development training."
Still, almost every employee the Mercury spoke to said they felt untrained and unprepared for their job, in part because they felt there were conflicting philosophies guiding the program.
One former employee who requested anonymity said SRT staff were “never really given the opportunity to study and learn” from topic experts, despite being thrown into first responder roles.
“I think part of it comes back to it being run by a security company that knows nothing about the nuance of social behavior, so you just get this half-ass effort towards what public safety looks like,” he said. “If you use police officers to change what police officers look like, you’re not doing yourself a service.”
Another former staffer put it in starker terms.
“The idea was to remove armed, uniformed police officers from public transit because certain people didn’t want to see them, they didn’t make them feel good,” he said. “So what did they do? Their replacement was uniformed, unarmed, but totally untrained people.”
When the Safety Response Team first launched, field staff weren’t permitted to use naloxone nasal spray, commonly called Narcan, on people experiencing an opioid overdose. According to PPI Owner William Guidice, this was because company insurance providers were fearful someone would misuse the treatment and face legal consequences. Eventually, Guidice said, PPI convinced the insurance adjusters to approve the use, citing statistics about the effectiveness of naloxone as a tool to reverse opioid overdoses.
“This was a huge win for TriMet, PPI, and the general public!” Guidice wrote in an email to the Mercury. “Since reversing the decision we have deployed naloxone on multiple individuals… and can proudly say there are people alive today in Portland because we didn’t take no for an answer, and continued to press for change.”
But many former SRT staff mentioned the naloxone ban as emblematic of the powerlessness they felt on the team. One former employee said, more than once, SRT staff felt compelled to ask a bystander to administer Narcan to someone experiencing an overdose, while they did CPR.
“[The bystander] looked at us like, ‘what?’ And we said, ‘yeah, we can’t, or we’ll get fired,’” the employee recounted. “It very much felt like [SRT leaders] wanted the illusion. They wanted the public to believe they were helping, but in reality, they just wanted to get [homeless people and addicts] off their property. But since all the protests and things with police were happening, they realized they needed a softer touch.”
The value and challenges of “lived experience”
Many employees said the lack of training and confusion over their roles and responsibilities compounded the stress they experienced from dealing with difficult situations on the TriMet system. This was particularly true for the many employees who came to the job with direct experience with homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health issues.
This kind of “lived experience” is advertised as a priority and benefit of the SRT program, for both employees and members of the public who they interact with. But many former staff members say there’s another side to the story.
In July 2023, before her shift on the Safety Response Team, Alison Segler testified at a TriMet board meeting. The contract between TriMet and PPI was up for renewal, and Segler wanted to share how working for the program changed her life for the better.
Segler told the board she became addicted to drugs and alcohol at the age of 11, and spent many years of her life living on the streets and in and out of jail. According to her testimony, Segler interviewed for the SRT job a little over six months after getting sober, and the experience had a major impact. For the first time, Segler was able to get an apartment of her own, and she had recently gotten her driver’s license.
“For the first time in my life, my specific skills and life experience were considered valuable and would be utilized in a job setting,” Segler said. “Not only would my quality of life be improved, but I would be beneficial and purposeful in helping my people.”
Segler couldn’t be reached for comment for this article, but her testimony to the TriMet board came up during several interviews with both former SRT staff and program leaders. To PPI leaders, Segler’s experiences indicate the program is making an impact in the community and for its employees.
"One of the core values of the SRT program is second chances. Giving hope to those living on our streets, that they can change, get jobs, and return to society.” -William Guidice, PPI
“If you check our website and scroll down to the front and center, it’s not myself or a retired police officer, or tough armed security guard, it’s [an] SRT member with face tattoos and colored hair representing PPI,” Guidice, PPI’s owner, told the Mercury, referencing the video of Segler’s testimony, which is featured prominently on the security company’s homepage.
Guidice also said one of the benefits of running the SRT program via a private partnership is he can hire people who might not pass a background check to work at TriMet or another government agency.
“A fact is that many living on our streets do have prior lived experience with homelessness and addiction and low-level livability related experiences,” Guidice said. “One of the core values of the SRT program is second chances. Giving hope to those living on our streets, that they can change, get jobs, and return to society.”
But for some, those second chances came at the expense of their wellbeing. Members of TriMet’s Safety Response Team work as a frontline resource for people struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues. While employees say they found the work meaningful, it also took a toll, and could be especially difficult for people in recovery themselves. Several former and current SRT staffers the Mercury spoke with said employees weren’t given the support they needed to process the sometimes traumatic scenes they witnessed at work.
One former staff member, who identified as a recovering addict, said he felt he was on his own when it came to processing emotionally draining incidents at work, particularly when it came to helping people who were using drugs or overdosing.
“I’ve been that dude ODing on the sidewalk, so it really fucks with me,” he said. “But there was no, ‘Sorry, are you okay, do you need anything?’ It was, ‘We need this report done. Hurry up.’”
That former staff member said he thinks the SRT program’s approach to hiring people with lived experience can be harmful.
“I understand it takes a vulnerable person with a vulnerable past to deal with a vulnerable population. But when you hire people who were addicts, [it’s important they] have some consecutive clean time, and have gone through addiction or mental health treatment,” he said. “At my job now, we constantly check in with our bosses, we have one-on-ones every other week. They want to make sure we’re okay. That was not what I was used to [as an SRT member].”
Neve said there was “nothing in place” to help people experiencing burnout or traumatizing experiences at work.
“It doesn't matter how mentally tough you are, how prepared you are for what you're going into, you can experience burnout,” Neve said. “The people in recovery are obviously more at risk because they’re being subjected to triggers constantly. But among the other employees, many of them are just trying to be helpful. And PPI preys on that goodwill.”
“Things just piled up until there was no other reasonable reaction left.”
Many employees the Mercury spoke to pointed out the high turnover rate and lack of adequate staffing. Neve said over the course of his time working there, he trained hundreds of people, with a trainee joining nearly every shift.
Speaking about employee turnover, Graf, the TriMet PIO, told the Mercury TriMet “holds [its] staff and contracts to a high standard when it comes to providing customer service and treating people appropriately.”
“Like with any work team, especially one that provides experience and a pathway to other opportunities, staffing can fluctuate,” Graf said. “Not everyone ends up being a good fit, just like in any other job. But employees who show up for work reliably, do the job, and represent TriMet well will be adequately supported and may well find a path to future success.”
Graf said hiring people with lived experience is also a reason the program might see high staff turnover.
“In some cases, they too are rebuilding a stable life for themselves,” he said.
"I saw a lot of people break down. And you could see in a lot of people a decay until they reached a point where they quit, and they quit on bad terms." -Adam Neve, former SRT supervisor
People who have worked as SRT staffers, however, say they think the program could keep employees longer if it offered better pay and benefits, including more time off.
In their first year on the job, SRT employees have five paid sick days available, and no paid vacation time. According to the team member handbook, employees accrue 40 hours of paid time off after their first anniversary at the job. Neve said it would go a long way to allow employees to take more breaks, especially after experiencing a traumatic event at work.
“I know that doesn’t fit into a traditional mindset of labor, but we’re not doing a traditional nine to five, and it can be really hard to turn off,” Neve said. “I saw a lot of people break down. And you could see in a lot of people a decay until they reached a point where they quit, and they quit on bad terms. I don’t think in all those cases it was something egregious that happened. Things just piled up until there was no other reasonable reaction left.”
Guidice told the Mercury PPI partners with an employee assistance program which is available to staff for free, and offers a crisis telehealth line and in-person therapy, as well as other coping tools.
“We know the members of the SRT can at times be exposed to stressful situations and it is our goal to provide them with the best resources to cope with those situations,” Guidice said.
One former staffer, Kitty Hutchinson, said the employee assistance program was inadequate. She also disputed the availability of in-person therapy and said people were limited in how often they could call the crisis line.
“Do I feel like the individuals that experienced traumatic events every day had the support they needed? Hell no,” Hutchinson said.
While PPI offers health insurance to SRT workers, many said the premiums were too expensive to be reasonable. As of December 2023, PPI offered age-banded health insurance rates, starting at about $183 a month for an 18-year-old employee and rising from there. For dependents younger than 14, the monthly cost starts at more than $300.
Guidice said PPI follows the IRS’s affordability requirements under the Affordable Care Act, which mandates employers to limit healthcare premium costs to about 9 percent of their monthly salary. This means an employee making $54,600 a year—the average SRT pay, according to Guidice—might be required to pay up to about $410 a month for their insurance, though they could pay less. Statistics show the average American employee pays roughly $116 a month for their individual healthcare premiums.
According to employees, these high premiums mean most of the workforce relies on the Oregon Health Plan or other similar programs. Some people don’t have health insurance at all.
“If we had better health insurance, then we could have sought help for mental health,” Matthews said. “I mean, I did breaths while my coworker did compressions on a guy who was dead. Processing that when [you can’t afford your] therapist is tough.”
“A microcosm of the whole city”
Many former SRT staffers said they came into the job eager to be a source of good in the community, and left feeling disheartened.
As time went on, it felt more like a big PR stunt that TriMet was putting on." -Former SRT member
“At first, I was really impressed with the company. I thought they were doing a lot of good outreach work, and I really wanted to be part of the solution,” another former employee told the Mercury. “As time went on, it felt more like a big PR stunt that TriMet was putting on. Basically, we were telling people who were having some of the worst days of their lives, ‘Hey, here’s a granola bar and a pamphlet.’ And then we’d write it down as if we did something good.”
Despite TriMet’s recent efforts to increase traditional security on its system, the agency maintains its commitment to the SRT program.
“The Safety Response Team brings a unique set of skills and innovative approach that sets it apart from the others and allows us to deploy a comprehensive approach to safety–one where we’re not relying solely on the police or security officers,” Graf said. “TriMet is committed to the Safety Response Team and believes in this approach to help make the transit system a safe and welcoming place.”
Staffers said major changes are needed before the program can fulfill its potential. Those changes might not be so easy to implement, however. While the Safety Response Team may be able to help individual people, it hasn’t been the transformative police alternative it was touted to be.
And, although many former staff members have ideas about how the initiative could better serve its employees, some of its problems may require larger, systemic changes.
“[The program] feels like it’s sort of a microcosm of the whole city, when it comes to homelessness and addiction. There’s a lot of money being poured into this problem that never makes it to the street,” Neve said. “There’s a lot of money lining pockets that could be used to help people.”
