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DOJ Agreement: Compliance Officer,
Community Board Question Police Protest Tactics
Committee Makes Strong Recommendations, Holds Numerous Meetings

A reckoning could come for the US Department of Justice in October, when the first official reports come out regarding whether Portland Police used excessive force during the ongoing protests that began in late May (see Protests article in this issue). The Settlement Agreement they signed with the City in 2012 requires the City to change its policies, training, and tracking to ensure constitutional policing without inappropriate use of force. For the first time since being hired in 2014, Compliance Officer/Community Liaison (COCL) Dennis Rosenbaum wrote a report in July which raised real questions whether the police are following that mandate, repeatedly referring to the death of George Floyd and urging the Bureau to listen to the voices of the community around racial justice. While this is late in the game for the COCL to be waking up, it is a welcome change. The Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP), created in 2018 to add community input into assessing compliance (replacing a board that dissolved in early 2017), put out a number of strong recommendations, not only around PPB crowd tactics but also denouncing white supremacist systems.

PCCEP's meetings all moved online due to the pandemic. The meeting in May included a moment of silence for George Floyd, who'd been killed by Minneapolis police a day earlier. They passed a resolution about the death of Floyd which urged the City to actively dismantle white supremacy. They also asked the City to press Congress to end qualified immunity for officers. Also at that meeting they reviewed force data with Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe. In the following weeks they held three emergency community listening sessions on the movement to end police brutality and racism. The first was attended by over 300 people despite being called on less than 48 hours notice. Meetings involved guest speakers such as Sen. Lew Frederick talking about his police accountability bills, including one about arbitration in police misconduct cases (see State Legislature article in this issue). PCCEP voted to support the legislation, but specifically urged that a further bill be passed to limit arbitrators' decisions in use of force cases by requiring them to defer to the original finding if a reasonable person could come to the same conclusion as the City.*

At their June meeting, they adopted more recommendations, including one strengthening the Bureau's current requirement for officers to intervene when witnessing officer misconduct. The current version only requires intervention if a law is broken. The Committee wisely suggested adding Bureau policies to that list. They made a suggestion to limit when officers can engage in foot pursuits. PCCEP also called for the city to speed up its work on a Truth and Reconciliation program for the police to come clean about the harms they've done as a way to earn community trust. They also asked that the Council put the PCCEP into City Code so it does not disappear when the DOJ Agreement ends--which could happen as early as February 2021.

A few of the recommendations made their way into Mayor Ted Wheeler's 19 point plan on changing the police and lifting up the Black community. It remains to be seen what will happen to these and the other recommendations. Prior to the City's vote on the budget, three PCCEP members wrote an op-ed in the Oregonian calling to "defund police and refund the community." PCCEP also coordinated with the Citizen Review Committee and Training Advisory Council on some statements and recommendations (see TAC article in this issue).

The COCL's report was by no means radical, focusing for many of its 50 pages on such thrilling questions as how many officers neglected to fill out all the questions on their use of force forms (very few). There still seems to be a disconnect that filling the form out completely doesn't mean they filled it out accurately. Nonetheless, compared to the broad put-downs of community voices included in the COCL's first report, the repeated use of phrases such as "especially in light of the ongoing protests after the death of George Floyd" make Rosenbaum 2014 seem like Fox News compared to the more enlightened 2020 MSNBC version. In any case, the Report says they will analyze both the police use of force at protests and the accountability measures applied to that violence in the next quarter, when investigations have been completed. If they find the Bureau is not primarily de-escalating, that could throw the 2021 compliance date out-- if the DOJ agrees with the COCL.

Portland Copwatch published an analysis of the first quarter 2020 report in early May. Our analysis notes how the COCL emphasized the Agreement only requires the City to check boxes around creating new policies, but does not require them to necessarily reduce the number of shootings, particularly against people in mental health crisis-- despite that being the focus of the DOJ's investigation that led to the Agreement in the first place. Even before the uprising, PCCEP co-chair Lakayana Drury fought back about the rosy picture painted in that Report, saying it did not represent the Portland that he and other young Black men live in.

Read PCW's analysis of the Q1 and Q2 Reports.

*-Notably, this is the standard that hampers Portland's volunteer Citizen Review Committee from making meaningful findings on appealed misconduct cases.
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September, 2020
Also in PPR #81

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Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.

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