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Musical Chairs and the Training Advisory
There's a philosophy which says it's good to bring in fresh faces in order to re-invigorate and bring
new ideas into an organization. Unfortunately, that's not the reason the Training Advisory Council
(TAC) found itself meeting with the fourth different Force Inspector in 8 months and the fourth
Captain in four years. The revolving door is the result of officers not saying in the same position
very long in order to advance their careers. In the case of the Force Inspectors, that's unfortunate as
they are in charge of putting together Force Data Reports for the TAC to review, which includes
Portland Copwatch played a role in the confusion about the new data: the March TAC agenda listed and linked to Quarter 4 2020 data, but Lt. Lindsey began a slideshow about the Q3 report. Seeing a question from PCW in the Zoom chat, TAC Chair Shawn Campbell interrupted Lindsey and asked him to come to the May meeting with the Q4 data. It turned out a previous presentation of the Q3 data had occurred at a meeting of the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing in November, not the TAC. Those were the data which revealed 3871 of the 5612 uses of force by the PPB at protests in 2020, after the Q2 data presented at TAC that same month showed 2378 uses of force (PPR #82). The Q4 data, for what it's worth, "only" show another 180 uses of force against crowds, but then protests substantially subsided from October-December.
Lindsey was also confused in part because he replaced Lt. John Sapper, who came to TAC in November, after Lt. Robert Simon was Force Inspector for a short time following Lt. Jeff Niiya, who gave the presentation to TAC in July. The Council made a recommendation about PPB education requirements. They suggested returning to a previous threshold of needing an Associates degree or having completed a term of service in the military. During the first review of that recommendation in January, PCW pointed out that the military has a very different mission from police. Military protocols may improve some aspects of policing: for example, the military is banned from using chemical weapons. There was also the West Virginia cop who used his military training to decide not to shoot a person in mental health crisis (and was fired for his efforts). However, it doesn't make sense to further militarize the police. TAC added a paragraph acknowledging some limitations in the final version they adopted in March. The TAC also continues to network with other advisory bodies, adopting and adding comments to the Latino Advisory Council's recommendation calling for the Bureau to use plain language in its documents, and namechecking the Alliance for Safer Communities in a brief letter supporting a new Directive on police interaction with the LGBTQ+ community (see article on Directives in this issue). As for the new Captain... as an officer, Abrahamson initially failed to write a report about a security guard who hit a civilian with the civilian's skateboard (PPR #52), and as a Sergeant wasn't wearing a nametag at May Day 2014 (PPR #63). Info on the Training Advisory Council is at portlandoregon.gov/police/61449. |
May, 2021
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#83 Table of Contents
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![[screen capture of Lt Lindsey at the March TAC
meeting]](http://www.pjw.info/copwatch/PPR83/lindsey_TAC031021.jpg)
picking out cases in which possible misconduct occurred but were not flagged by an
investigation
or supervisory review. Due to confusion at their March meeting, the current Inspector Lt. Chris
Lindsey did not present Force Data. However, Captain David Abrahamson introduced himself to
the group, having taken over for Lt. Greg Stewart, who was acting Captain for about a year after
Erica Hurley left to head East Precinct in 2020. Hurley took over for Captain Bob Day in 2018
after he was made Deputy Chief.