Charismatic.
Energizing.
Straightforward.
Such descriptions of Jason Lehman, a former Long Beach police sergeant, came from the attendees of an afternoon training session conducted at a San Quentin chapel April 23. Lehman’s mission at San Quentin: to reduce acts of violence between police and incarcerated persons.
Lehman trained correctional officers in the morning and then trained residents in the afternoon. Both groups received exactly the same training. Over 120 staff members attended the morning session, said Warden Chance Andes. Over 70 residents showed up in the afternoon and in the back row sat Warden Andes, listening attentively for a second time.
“It’s quite an honor to share the same message of peace with both incarcerated people and with correctional staff,” said Lehman.
Lehman said he directed the organization WYSM, which he acronymically pronounced as “wis-m” — an elision for “wisdom” — but which stood for “Why’d You Stop Me?” The phrase referred to the frequent inquiry asked of peace officers during traffic stops. Lehman said the question addressed the fairness of such a stop: persons who asked it typically considered themselves unfairly singled out.
“Have you encountered a C.O. who stopped you and searched you?” Lehman asked, and every hand went up. Lehman then engaged a volunteer resident in a role reversal scenario that demonstrated the necessity for a routine stop.
The stop’s probable cause focused on baggy clothing, which Lehman said many persons would consider an unfair reason for a stop. The San Quentin resident played the officer and Lehman played a stopped pedestrian.
At first, the simulated stop went well. Lehman portrayed the pedestrian as rational and in compliance with the officer’s requests. Suddenly, the scenario took a turn for the worse. The pedestrian pulled a gun from his baggy clothing and aimed it at the officer.
The gun, a non-firing model made of red plastic, “is the same size as my head,” said Lehman, who had concealed the large weapon inside his baggy clothing. Lehman’s role reversal proved the validity of the stop: Many residents no longer considered baggy clothing as an unfair reason for the stop.
Fairness featured as the key philosophy of Lehman’s message. He conceptualized fairness as the surface of a table with four legs named voice, neutrality, respect, and trust. The legs made the table functional, gave the table solidity, and most importantly, made it stand up, said Lehman.
Lehman explained voice as a concept that “makes you valued.” Neutrality to Lehman meant “treat everyone in the way you want them to treat you.” To Lehman, respect meant an earned quality he equated to trust; he called “disrespect” an emotion applied to someone “who has lost your trust” but also “an emotion you can remove.” Trust, Lehman’s fourth table leg, “comes from community, from keeping your word, from appreciation.” He finished his explanation with a recommendation to “have a bias toward positivity.”
“Let us keep these four legs intact,” said Lehman, leaving residents with the advice to “build relationships before you need them.”
At that point, Lehman uttered a sentence that many residents regarded as their primary takeaway. “If they [the custody staff] all left, no one here [meaning the residents] would make it.”
In context, Lehman’s message said that residents needed the custody staff for basic preservation of peace and order at San Quentin, much in the same way that society needed police for basic preservation of peace and order in towns and cities.
Warden Andes said, “I am all about strategic messaging. We had good conversations with the custody staff this morning. If I can stand up here and talk about prison reform, then we are breaking down barriers.”w
Warden Andes acknowledged that progress would take time: “For the Super Bowl event, seven staff members showed up. Today, we had over a hundred.”
“The bottom line is: we care about people,” said Warden Andes.
Lehman concluded his training with the words, “Own the change; take the reins.”
