Portsmouth Police Employees to Complete Ethics Course after Scandal

(Portsmouth, NH) - All Portsmouth Police Department staff, including sworn officers and civilians, will complete ethics training in August.

The training will be conducted by Christopher Dreisbach, who is an ethics instructor at the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit research and policy organization and a provider of management services, technical assistance and executive-level education to support law enforcement agencies.

Dreisbach is also the Director of Applied Ethics and Humanities for the Division of Public Safety Leadership at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education and has over 30 years’ experience teaching. He frequently lectures on ethics for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The ethics training is one of many new initiatives put in place by Chief DuBois in light of issues raised and recommendations made by the Roberts Report to the Portsmouth Police Commission in June.

Last month, Chief DuBois retained ethics attorney Russell Hilliard to assist the department with issues surrounding personal, professional, and outside business decisions, along with guiding the development of policies and training for the department going forward.

"The valuable training provided by Christopher Dreisbach is vital to the department to ensure all officers make sound ethical decisions on duty and off duty," Chief DuBois said. "Combined with the continued guidance from attorney Hilliard, We are committed to revising and improving our practices in a transparent manner going forward."