|
|
Site NavigationHomeAbout us People's Police Report Shootings & deaths Cool links Other Information Contact info Donate
|
Judge Delays Approving Current Dept of Justice Oversight Board
Again
Simon Says The June hearing began with testimony from the City, DOJ, Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform (AMAC), Portland Police Association and Mental Health Alliance, the parties to the suit, arguing whether Judge Simon should accept the PCCEP structure, which was tentatively approved last year ( PPR #76). As has been his trademark, the judge also allowed community members to talk, with three Portland Copwatch members covering the PCCEP and other troubling aspects of the City's so-called progress. The highlight was after the City passionately argued that the judge had to approve the PCCEP or else the group's members would feel they were in limbo and would not be able to do anything. PCCEP co-chair Lakayana Drury said the Committee members didn't care if the structure was formally approved, they are doing the work either way. The AMAC and Mental Health Alliance asked for a six month delay, the City, Portland Police Association (PPA) and DOJ asked for approval. Considering the former are "friends of the court" and the latter are the actual Parties to the settlement, this was a pretty big deal, even if kind of minor in the overall scheme of things. Committee Meetings Include COCL Town Halls The PCCEP meeting in April took place at the Unite Oregon office in North Portland. It included a summary of the COCL's first quarter report, which included tidbits about stop data, force and accountability. The group also took testimony from the public on how to increase police- community engagement. Ideas included instituting a Truth and Reconciliation process and ending the use of violence against the community. The group didn't get to the second question about holding officers accountable due to a lack of time. The May meeting took place at Taborspace and included recommendations from the Race and Ethnicity Subcommittee, chaired by Sam Sachs. The recommendations had no substantive research to explain why PCCEP should support the PPB: "moving forward with the Body Worn Camera Program," expanding the staff in its Community Engagement Office, and creating a Hispanic Advisory Council. That Sachs and the PCCEP didn't know the Latino advisory council disbanded in 2002 after the Bureau gave medals to the officers who shot José Mejía Poot in 2001 ( PPR #28) speaks volumes. In June, the group met at the New Song Community Church. The meeting ran short because nobody showed up from the consulting firm which led a community survey about the police-- required by the Agreement to be used by PCCEP to help formulate a Community Engagement Plan for the cops. The survey results had been finished in April, released the day after the May PCCEP meeting, then delayed for presentation until July because DHM, the consulting group, was "sick." This opened up time for PCCEP members to discuss the substance of a private meeting some of them held with PPA President Daryl Turner. Co-chair Drury indicated the PPA was generally supportive of the PCCEP being able to do its work, while Sachs seemed extremely thrilled to have been able to meet with "Daryl." One piece of business PCCEP was able to conduct was to adopt recommendations for the Bureau's Engagement Plan, including exploring the Truth and Reconciliation model.
The July PCCEP meeting was held at PCC Cascade. It began with a presentation by the COCL
team-- in this case, just intern-turned-partner Tom Christoff presenting with local contractor Amy
DHM finally appeared to present their report, skimming over the very telltale numbers showing that people of color-- especially African American and Native American Portlanders-- have far less faith in the police than other people. It also shows people who personally or within their family call police to deal with a mental health crisis have worse experiences with the officers than the general public. Community members raised questions about whether there had been serious efforts to interview houseless persons for the survey. The COCL's July report summarized the DHM report and similarly minimized the alarming statistics about people of color. The harshest words the COCL uses is to tell the PPB to "be sensitive to the groups" which gave them poor ratings. Considering how important this survey is to the PCCEP's work, they should have spent more time on the report and heard it much earlier. The PCCEP also discussed the PPB's draft 2018 annual report, calling it more Public Relations than substantive examination and calling for it to be longer and more full of statistics. The Mental Health Subcommittee submitted a recommendation that the City express condolences and an apology after officers' use of force results in the death of a community member; they put off discussion and vote until the August meeting.
Over the course of these past few months, several more PCCEP members resigned: Sharon Gary Smith, Rachael Benjamin, Aden Hassan and Bob Dye. This means seven out of the 13 members (plus one alternate who never got to step up) resigned in just the first seven months of the group's first meeting. Ms. Benjamin was appointed as an alternate to fill the seat of someone who'd previously resigned. Fortunately, the community had pushed the City to select a large pool of alternates, and some members were appointed. However, those who were not part of the original alternates pool and had not been trained were unable to vote until the alternate training took place in late July. Curiously, though City Council is supposed to approve the Mayor's selections for PCCEP members, none of the new appointees were considered at a Council meeting.
One of the alternates who moved up to a full PCCEP seat is Vadim Mozyrsky, a Social Security Administrative Law Judge who also sits on the Citizen Review Committee.
Other Assessment Information Prior to the hearing with the judge, the DOJ released its own analysis of the City's compliance and was, perhaps not surprisingly, even more generous than the Compliance Officer /Community Liaison. After all, this is Donald Trump's DOJ now. They showed the Accountability and Community Engagement pieces as still needing work. It is in these two areas the COCL now also claims the last bits of work need to be done to rectify the excessive force used by the PPB, especially against people in mental health crisis. Neither report addressed the shocking increase in PPB use of deadly force (see article), or that at least five of the ten people subjected to such force since September were in some sort of crisis. The City Attorney's attitude about the shootings, when speaking to the Court, boiled down to "those are just the cost of doing business," claiming that because other kinds of force are generally down, the Bureau has changed. Ultimately, even if the DOJ claims the City is in full compliance, they have to affirm compliance for a full year before the City is let off the hook.
Heading to the court hearing in June, the DOJ found 81 paragraphs in Substantial Compliance while the COCL said it was only 73.
Read PCW's analysis of the COCL July Report .
The Bureau's entire Reserve Officer program quit in 2018 after it was determined they had never received proper training to meet the DOJ Agreement's new standards. Most of the Reserve Officers transferred to the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office (Oregonian, April 19). Considering the PPB keeps complaining how short-staffed they are, it is amazing they did not bother to train or retain the Reserve cops. |
September, 2019
|
|
Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#78 Table of Contents
|
Michael
Simon, the federal judge overseeing the Settlement Agreement between the City of Portland and the
US Department of Justice
(DOJ), delayed accepting the City's current community body
meant to oversee the Agreement for a second time. At a status conference on June 6, Judge Simon
wound up a day of public and official testimony by noting he had approved the structure of the
Community Oversight Advisory Board in 2014, and that body fell apart in 2017. Thus, he set a date
for February 25, 2020 to review how the new body, the Portland Committee on Community
Engaged Policing (PCCEP) is meeting expectations. Meanwhile, the PCCEP continued to meet on
a monthly basis, sometimes addressing
important issues. The Compliance Officer/Community
Liaison (COCL) put out reports in April and July assessing the implementation of the Agreement.
Even though those reports are supposed to take a broad look at the 87 actionable paragraphs, the
new reports only focus on "remaining issues." The July version only addresses 14
paragraphs and claims there is only more work to do on six of them.
Ruiz,
without team leader Dr. Dennis
Rosenbaum participating. Rosenbaum has made hundreds of
thousands of dollars writing reports for the DOJ Agreement, moved from Chicago to Los Angeles,
and doesn't seem to have anyone reviewing his job performance. Portland Copwatch raised
concerns about the report, including that the "Independent" Police Review is seeking to dismiss
more misconduct cases they predict they won't be able to prove. In addition, after the City
hired a new project manager, Theo Latta, in late June, finally replacing Mandi Hood who quit in late
November, the COCL considered the City in full compliance with staffing PCCEP. This was a
report covering the time frame until June 30, meaning there is no qualitative assessment of Latta's
performance.
One positive development with PCCEP's Race and Ethnicity
Subcommittee: In July, they held a
community forum which did not draw huge crowds but allowed community members to weigh in
with concerns about the body camera program, the Gun Violence Reduction Team, and School
Resource Officers.