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Outlaw Rides into the Sunset;
Copwatch's Areas of Concern from Previous Chief to New Chief Following our meeting with Outlaw, in early January PCW sent a follow-up email to Chief Resch outlining issues we had brought up with her predecessor. Major issues included that the Chief (and Mayor) pointed fingers at the mental health system, not taking responsibility for the police shooting of Koben Henriksen on December 8 (see article). In the email, we noted: "The mental health system did not kill Koben Henriksen, a Portland Police officer did." We also raised concerns about the two then-recent reports on traffic stop data, one by the PPB and one by the state's Criminal Justice Commission (PPR #79). When we pushed back against the Bureau's benchmark of looking at crime victimization as an indicator of how often people should be pulled over by police, A/C Shearer stated there is a study showing crime victims are likely to become perpetrators. He also stated the data include when the same driver is pulled over multiple times, skewing the numbers. PCW continues to believe the Portland Police are not willing to admit there is a problem with the over-representation of African Americans in both traffic and pedestrian stops. The state data showing black people are over-stopped used filters to adjust for time of day because officers supposedly can't see the race of the driver at night. There is no analysis of why the PPB stops of pedestrians stand at almost 18%, three times their representation in the population. We asked again that reasons for the stops be broken down again to include Equipment Failure, which is especially important in light of the Oregon Supreme Court ruling limiting what officers can ask a driver about (also PPR #79). Copwatch told both Chiefs the Bureau should not have declined the Training Advisory Council's request to include demographic data in Use of Force quarterly reports. The Bureau argues that African Americans are coming in from Gresham, Vancouver and elsewhere. If that is true, stop and force data should be scrutinized to see how often people stopped or subjected to force (who also give an address) are actually from Portland. We also pointed to the case which apparently helped trigger the resignation of two members of the Citizen Review Committee (see article ), wherein Chief Outlaw changed an allegation from Truthfulness to a Performance violation, undercutting her agreement with the Committee's finding. Outlaw did not give details about why that happened, but pointed to a complex bureaucracy involved in discipline matters, constituting a giant notebook of rules. PCW also made it clear that even though the PPB does not conduct the majority of the physical "clean ups" of houseless camps, officers act as "security" when Rapid Response Bio Clean or other private entities conduct those sweeps. We wondered whether the security was for the contractors or the people being forced to move. We encouraged Outlaw to find ways to have officers call out the contractors for violations of the "Anderson Agreement," which restricts how the City handles posting notice before and then seizing the belongings of houseless people. We also briefly talked about issues surrounding the Police Association's contract (see article), including fixing the "discipline matrix" so officers can be fired for making overtly racist remarks, rather than being given a second chance as is now required. When we noted more officers should be found out of policy for deadly force incidents, the former Chief suggested we should change the state law as California did, restricting the standard from a reasonable belief deadly force was justified to when it is "necessary." PCW pushed back that the PPB's administrative rules are already stricter than state and federal law ("Graham plus") and that officers who do not de-escalate can already be disciplined for shootings which are deemed lawful. About how the PPB handles protests, we noted having 700 officers police 1400 protestors for the August 17 alt-right/anti-fascist demonstration was too much. Chief Outlaw agreed with us that is not a sustainable plan. We stated the City's news conference sounded as if they were discouraging people from counter-protesting the alt-right, while elected officials in other cities have joined large crowds to outnumber those with narrow views about America. The former Chief was clear her intended message was to stay away if you wanted to engage in violence. Chief Outlaw became quickly irritated when we suggested the arrest of an African American teenager at the September 20 Climate Strike seemed like bias-based policing. We suggested even if the arrest was justified, the Bureau needs to think about the optics of what they are doing when pushing into a crowd of mostly white teens to arrest one of the only youth of color. |
May, 2020
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#80 Table of Contents
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Chief Resch engaged
with
PCW shortly after her appointment, letting us know she expected the
Joint Terrorism Task Force annual report to be done by mid-January (see