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Judge Defers Approval of New Oversight Board City, Dept. of Justice Seek OK Before 1st Meeting
Federal Judge Michael Simon elicited chuckles in his courtroom on October 4 when he asked the
representative from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) how the City's new oversight board for the
DOJ's Settlement Agreement could be doing well if it had not yet held its first meeting. After taking
public input, Simon told the City to come back on June 6, giving the Portland Committee on
Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP) time to show whether their structure meets the needs of the
PCCEP: Slow to Get Going The changes made to the PCCEP document on September 5 included (a) expanding the Committee from 11 to 13 members to include two youth members and (b) giving members options other than attending the Police Bureau's "community academy" and going on a ridealong (though both options still require contact with the police). They removed a requirement for PCCEP to hold quarterly town halls, instead saying the group should "meet community members where they are physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually," whatever that means. On the bright side, they added a requirement that PCCEP take input before voting and for their subcommittees to hold open public meetings.
PCCEP members received training between September 28 and October 13. However, the Mental Health Alliance set up a special optional attendance training on the content of the Agreement when they found the City did not provide that information as promised. A condensed presentation was formally transmitted by the DOJ and the City Attorney at the second PCCEP meeting on December 17. At their first meeting, PCCEP heard from Wheeler, Chief Outlaw, and DHM, the polling firm which conducted community surveys under COAB (PPRs #68&71). That discussion was mostly about process but almost nothing about the substance of the poll, which PCCEP is supposed to help design. PCCEP also adopted its bylaws and chose as co-chairs Drury and Lakeesha Dumas, an African American mother who describes herself as a survivor of police brutality living with mental illness. Compliance Officer's Report: Good Information Cloaked by Bad Analysis The COCL Report revealed most officers flagged in the Employee Information System (EIS) for repeated use of force are not being counseled, not all officers' use of force is used to find patterns in police units, and that 57 officers were subjected to either criminal charges or complaints which could contain such charges in a year. It's not clear how many officers crossed various thresholds of force use and complaints leading to EIS flags-- the Report only says officers exceeded those limits at least 426 times for force and 111 times for complaints. Supervisors performed "interventions" (monitoring, debriefing, or discussion) for only 79 (19%) of the officers using so much force and just 3% of those with multiple complaints. Meanwhile, 292 officers were flagged for having three "traumatic incidents" in 30 days, with 73% receiving counseling. While the section on Training indicates the Bureau's implicit bias and procedural justice trainings, which began in 2018, are heading in the right direction, it leaps to the conclusion the Bureau "communicating expectations to officers" means the PPB is engaged in Constitutionally sound policing. The Report also indicates (by omission) that the Bureau ignored the Training Advisory Council's suggestions about Tasers, even though the Agreement requires them to give input on annual training. However, the Report explicitly shows the Bureau made disparaging comments about the COCL and DOJ making "last minute" suggestions on how to improve the training curriculum. Out of 15 paragraphs under review, the COCL only labeled one as being partially in compliance-- the Training Division's continued inability to track records. The rest were "Substantial" or, using a rating the COCL invented in recent months, "Substantial-Conditional." Auditor's Training Report Gives Green Light to Still-Weak Division The majority of people subjected to deadly force by the PPB since the DOJ came to town have been in mental health crisis. However, the overall gist of the Auditor's June follow-up to her office's 2015 review of the Training Division is that the PPB is doing great and is almost done with the DOJ Agreement. According to her report, the Bureau will not use real-life Portland scenarios as the basis for learning because "they do not want to embarrass the officer involved, who might be present at the training." This is an outrageous statement if the Bureau is truly committed to learning from its mistakes. Rather than push the Bureau to train around its new "less lethal" weapons, the Auditor simply dropped an earlier recommendation based on Officer Dane Reister loading a live round into a "beanbag" shotgun. The excuse: the Bureau doesn't use bean bags any more. City Wraps Up Fake PCCEP Meetings The City held two more community forums meant to act as placeholders until the PCCEP was seated (PPRs #74&75). The August 29 meeting gave an update on how the City narrowed the field from 100 PCCEP applicants to 14 who interviewed with the Mayor. Notably, no former COAB members were chosen. The last such meeting on September 26 included an officer and two social service workers talking about "addiction and the criminal justice system." As usual, the City's presentations took up most of the time and avoided raising the issues of force or racial bias by police. For more information on the PCCEP go to: http://portlandoregon.gov/pccep. For PCW's full analysis of the COCL quarterly report, see |
January, 2019
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#76 Table of Contents
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Agreement. The status
conference took place just a month after the City tweaked the PCCEP's organizing document and a
week after Council affirmed the Mayor's picks for the 13-member Committee. PCCEP held its first
official meeting on November 28, nearly two years since the City dismantled its predecessor, the
Community Oversight Advisory Board (COAB-
On September 26, the Council
approved the people nominated by Mayor Ted Wheeler to sit on PCCEP. One name which stuck
out was Sam Sachs, a former corrections officer and Park Ranger whose leadership (or lack
thereof) helped end the existence of the Community/Police Relations Committee (