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Auditor Continues to Slam Police on Profiling, "Gangs" Following up on their audits from 2018 which suggested ways to collect better data about disparate stops and called out the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) for continuing to use a secret "Gang List" after dismantling an official one (PPR #74), the City Auditor's office issued follow-up reports in May showing more work needs to be done. In related news, the Oregon State Legislature amended the law requiring police departments to collect stop data (PPR #72) by expanding the definition of stops beyond those that end in arrests or citations. This will likely lead to improved data from the PPB, whose information about pedestrian stops dropped from hundreds to dozens per year after the initial law passed. They claimed to stop less than 20 pedestrians a month in early 2018, but that number was up to over 150 a month by the first quarter 2019 report.* One audit looked again at the PPB's data collection, calling out the analysis of the Gang Enforcement Team (GET)'s stops in 2016 and 2017-- 61% and 56% of people stopped by GET were African American while only 6% of Portland's population is black. They noted, as Portland Copwatch had earlier, that using a benchmark of "gang crime victims" is not appropriate. They suggested comparing stops to people injured in traffic crashes and crime victims in general. The PPB actually does use those benchmarks, but not for the GET.
The reports say the GET was "restructured" in early 2019 as the "Gun Violence Reduction Team" (GVRT), though the Bureau seems to believe that change happened in late 2018. In either case, during the May budget debates, Mayor Wheeler became highly indignant when Commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly, in asking to cut the GVRT's budget, referred to it using the old name "Gang Enforcement Team." Whether that happened three or seven months earlier, getting worked up about using the old name reeked of distracting the debate from the question of funding. Wheeler apologized during the hearing. Hardesty had support from the Urban League of Portland, who said of the Team "what it served to do is harass African Americans" (Willamette Week, May 8). However, since only Hardesty and Eudaly voted to cut the funds, the motion failed. Meanwhile, the PPB's quarterly stop data continue to show that African Americans are stopped disproportionately, making up 18% of those stopped both in cars and on foot/ bicycle in Q1 2019. The good news, such as it is, is that the 2017 annual report (published in January--PPR #77) shows "contraband" was found on African American drivers at about the same rate as white drivers-- 40% and 41% of the time, closing a gap that used to be spread out by 20 percent. However, African Americans made up 30% of all searches while whites--77% of Portland's population-- were only 57%, meaning black people are stopped three times more often then population would indicate and searched at five times that rate. Read the PPB's stop data.
* -Starting in Q3 2018, the Bureau noted the difference between the
state's definition of a stop and
their own, presumably starting to tell officers to collect data on more encounters after that; the
numbers for Q3 and Q4 2018 were about 75 and 90 stops per month respectively. |
September, 2019
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#78 Table of Contents
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The other audit focused
on the "Gang List," for
which they had previously asked the PPB to collect
better information proving whether people being stopped were, in fact, suspected gang members.
According to the report, the Bureau stopped using its secondary list and created a policy on
"managing criminal intelligence files" Bureau-wide. The Auditor asked that information
about gang affiliations include a requirement of "reasonable suspicion," as well as quality
control for accuracy and security, all of which are in the Bureau's draft policy. However, the report
notes they did not include documentation of reasonable suspicion.