|
|
Site NavigationHomeAbout us People's Police Report Shootings & deaths Cool links Other Information Contact info Donate
|
Updates --People's Police Report #61 (January 2014) The sentencing hearing for Mohamed Mohamud, the framed-up "holiday tree bomber" (PPR #59) has been canceled due to the admission by the feds that they used unlawful wiretapping in part of the case. This is a much bigger deal than if the sentencing was merely postponed. The judge's quote on Oregonlive (November 26) is that the sentencing might not be appropriate-- in other words, the conviction could be overturned based on this info. It was also good that the hearing was canceled since it was fairly cynically set a week before Christmas.
After about two years of back-and-forth trying to improve on the process that led to the same white man from Lake Oswego acting as the Portland Police Bureau's psychologist since 1999 (PPRs #56, 58 &60), a breakthrough moment occurred in mid-October when City Council approved the new contracts-- plural. The City decided to award the main part of the contract again to Dr. David Corey (the Lake Oswego man) to conduct the intake interviews for new recruits, while Dr. Sherry Harden will be doing "fitness for duty" reviews (when cops take time off due to stress etc.) and "360" evaluations for promotions. While this marks a step forward for diversity, Dr. Harden is a white woman, so still no psychologists of color are under direct contract. Both contracts last three years. Dr. Corey's contract lists two assistants and directs him to expand his diversity by recruiting graduate students from Pacific University "to promote practitioner diversity at the national level." The contract calls for him to evaluate new officer candidates including multicultural competence, and states no less than two psychologists will discuss each candidate to build Corey's "multicultural sensitivity and competency." Corey is also asked to "continue" a longitudinal study about predictors that cops will end up being disciplined, have sustained complaints against them, use excessive force, commit sexual misconduct, engage in negative contacts with people experiencing mental illness and perform racial profiling (the last two items added at the AMA Coalition's request). He has to attend the Community/Police Relations Committee's institutional racism training (also an AMA addition) and submit a report every six months on his multicultural competency model. For Dr. Harden, the City can send Fitness for Duty reviews to her based on their concerns, or in relation to the Civil Service Board, third party complaints, lawsuits or litigation. She will work with officers' supervisors on PTSD after they are exposed to "traumatic incidents." Ideally the opening up of the contract and focus on training more people how to screen police officers (which is allegedly a highly specialized field) will increase the likelihood of multiple qualified applicants asking for the job(s) the next time around.
Corey charges the city $420 per candidate, which means he can do an average of 178 assessments per year for his $225,000 contract. Harden will charge $1650 for each Fitness for Duty and $295 per 360 evaluation, meaning she can do 9-38 evaluations per year under her $45,000 contract.
On October 3, the Oregon Supreme Court granted the people arrested at 2011 Occupy Portland protests whose charges were demoted from misdemeanors to violations the right to trials. As the Associated Press put it, "Prosecutors can't unilaterally change a criminal prosecution to a non- criminal one and use that change to deprive defendants of their right to a jury trial" (October 4). Protesters arrested at Jamison Square and Shemanski Park (PPR #55) went to court for a status hearing on December 12.
Taser-related deaths in Douglas County of Gregory Price (PPR #60) and Walter McKelvey (March 3, previously unreported in the PPR) were attributed in part to "excited delirium," an uncategorized medical condition that only seems to kill people hit with electroshock weapons wielded by police (Oregonian, December 4).
On September 25, the City's Gun Exclusion Zone oversight committee presented its annual report to City Council. Much the same as last year's report (PPR #58), almost verbatim, the new report indicates that 83% of people excluded from the Zones are African American (far greater than the 50% of gun crime suspects) in a city that is just 6% black. It appears as though the raw numbers reported in 2012 included pending exclusions that were not issued, so the overall number since the program began in 2010 is 36, not 42 (or more) as previously indicated. While the numbers mean that the Bureau itself needs to be taken to task for who it targets using this law, the fact that the committee decided to continue describing police focus on "black-style gangs" means that the civilians learned nothing since last year when Portland Copwatch called them out on the bias of this language. The term is police short-hand to talk about African American gangs who use guns, but is a violation of the Bureau's directive on bias based policing. It means that officers are looking first not at the behavior of the suspects they seek, nor even what kinds of weapons they possess, but instead, the color of their skin. Even though the cops and the oversight committee keep saying the term is "nationally recognized," the "N" word was once, as well. If the police want to talk about "violent, gun-toting gangs" that is appropriate, but using a person's ethnicity for this purpose must stop immediately. This is important since the first people enforcing the law are members of the Bureau's Gang Enforcement Team, which it was revealed after Keaton Otis' death in 2010 (PPR #51) had no training in how to identify "gang members." The fact that the police recommend the exclusions (even though a court ultimately imposes them) means that the disparity can be traced to officer discretion. In addition, the report states that one person had violated an exclusion, but that the Committee was unable to determine the reason for the violation. How can this most basic information not be given to a Committee whose only charge is to oversee implementation of the exclusion ordinance? Fortunately, Commissioner Steve Novick picked up on many of the problems posed by the report, including its heavy reliance on "anecdotal evidence" (mostly from police) to support its conclusions. The committee should improve their analysis so that next year's report will be more meaningful, although (a) at the time of the report, no member of the Gun Exclusion Zone oversight committee was an African American and (b) PCW raised many of these issues with the Committee last October, and not only were changes not made, but PCW's participation wasn't mentioned in the report (even though the ACLU's was).
The Gun Exclusion Zone committee wrote in its 2012 report (and moved to a footnote this year) the comment that while the City's method for designating people as "gang members" is controversial, "it is not this Committee's role to perform that analysis or make any related recommendations."
Back to top
The Training Advisory Council (TAC), established after a recruitment process in August 2012 (PPR #58), spent most of its fifth meeting in early November re-booting from square one. This followed their August meeting, where sub-committees established earlier in the year had to throw out their work and start over. The TAC now has "Task Forces" dedicated to reviewing Use of Force data, developing scenarios for the 2015 in-service training, ways to best use and equip the new training facility, and communicating with the public. As is typical of the Bureau, this last Task Force is directed to ask others how to "help community members understand police training," rather than asking how to improve or change that training, or ask for help in delivering it. While the Committee includes at least two people who sit on other oversight groups-- Damon Turner from the Community Police Relations Committee and Jeff Bissonnette from the Citizen Review Committee-- there is no apparent active connection among the groups. Furthermore, the TAC, whose roster of 30 original members has gone down due to attrition, does not provide for community input at their meetings (though this may change in the future). The importance of having a Training Advisory group cannot be understated as the Bureau institutes updated Use of Force and mental health training deriving from the Department of Justice Agreement (article).
Even though the community won a partial victory when Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton agreed to honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds for people with felonies and other serious criminal charges (PPR #59), recent statistics show that he barely made a difference in his actions after the policy was changed. Only 27 of 323 people were let go from detention between May and September under the new policy (Willamette Week, October 2). One inappropriately held immigrant, Manny Perez Jaimes, was charged with contempt of court (a minor misdemeanor) but was held without bail for ICE for over two months. Public pressure including a sit-in at the County building and a large turnout at a County Commission meeting helped get the 20 year old released in mid-November, after he was sentenced to probation and ICE took him into custody. Jail beds that could be used to hold felony suspects instead are being used to break up families and assist in the deportation of people who in some cases have lived in the US most of their lives.
|
January, 2014
|
|
Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#61 Table of Contents
|