"PROFESSIONAL" REVIEW OF
POLICE SHOOTINGS, DEATHS IN CUSTODY
WILL MOSTLY IGNORE LAST TWO YEARS

In October, the Los Angeles-based Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) began the review of Portland's police shootings and deaths-in-custody cases. Run by Director Merrick Bobb, PARC was hired by a selection committee put together by City Auditor Gary Blackmer, who only agreed to the "external" review of such cases at City Council's insistence (see PPR #27). The agency will be issuing the first of what will supposedly become regular annual reports around the end of April after reviewing 27 closed police deadly force cases that occurred between January 1, 1997 and July 1, 2000. Deadly force cases that occurred after that time will have to wait to be included in subsequent PARC reports.

City Council will not allow PARC to publicly report on those recent deadly force incidents before a two-year time limit for filing lawsuits has been reached. According to IPR Director Richard Rosenthal, the PARC's staff will be able to look at such cases upon request, but there's no guarantee that they will ask to do so.

PARC members Oren Root and Julian Thompson--both attorneys--met with representatives of eight community organizations on October 22, including Portland Copwatch, the ACLU, the African American Police Advisory Committee, and the Mexican Consulate. The community representatives asked many questions and expressed several concerns, especially over the two-year delay in reviewing deadly force cases. Since the shooting of José Mejía Poot occurred April 1, 2001, it will not be reviewed this year.

"PARC will mostly be looking at the quality of investigations and whether or not police directives were followed. Official files will only contain the names of witnesses the police bothered to write down. Thus, unless community members identify cases in which all witnesses may not have been contacted, PARC will not be able to verify that police investigators interviewed all witnesses.

In response to community concerns, Thompson stated that even if proper police procedures were followed in these incidents, PARC would consider whether alternatives to deadly force might have been better choices. The annual PARC reports will not cover reviews of individual cases, but rather identify problematic patterns in police procedures and make recommendations for improvements.

As with other reviews, Auditor Blackmer is pushing for PARC to seek out "best practices" from other cities, which could be helpful but often trumps common sense. Blackmer's history in creating the IPR (which ignored best practices in favor of a system Blackmer found politically palatable) does not bode well for the process. Blackmer made sure that the Citizen Review Committee, which asked City Council to be allowed to review these cases along with the "experts," would be relegated to the sidelines, meaning they may not be able to comment on PARC's report until after it is finalized. We can only hope PARC follows its limited mandate with the best interests of our community in mind and without interference from those seeking to minimize the Center's impact and the City's liability.

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