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City Blames Feds for Portland Police Violence at Protests,
US Dept of Justice Orders Changes
Community Engagement Committee Shows Mixed Messaging on Areas of Concern

In February, when the US Department of Justice (DOJ) chided Portland for failing to maintain compliance with the 2012 Settlement Agreement calling for reduced police use of force, they asked the City to come up with a plan to fix the problems. Instead, the City sought to blame the DOJ broadly for escalating protests last summer-- even though the federal agents involved were (a) not from the Civil Rights Division and (b) not responsible for Portland Police officers using unprecedented amounts of force on protestors. In July, the DOJ outlined a nine-point plan for the City to regain compliance, leading off with the requirement to equip all cops with body worn cameras. At about the same time, the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison (COCL) released its Report for the first quarter of 2021-- roughly three months behind schedule. That Report includes eyebrow raising information about officers not taking training about force at protests seriously, and hammers away at the Bureau's poor analysis of what went wrong last summer. The Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP), created under the Agreement in 2018, held several seminars about how to plan a Truth and Reconciliation program for the Portland Police, heard from the City's Director of Public Safety, briefly discussed the Bureau's draft Annual Report, and got presentations from from the DOJ, the COCL and PPB about the compliance issues.

Considering the City entered into the Agreement with the attitude that they had not violated anyone's constitutional rights but were willing to make changes proposed by the feds, it's not surprising they failed to take responsibility for the ultraviolent response to the 2020 protests. A key example is the case we wrote about in PPR #82, where an officer hit a woman in the head with a baton and both the DOJ and COCL had to push for there to be an investigation into possible misconduct (see p. 6 for an update). The DOJ's rejection of the City's supposed self-analysis led to them invoking a section of the Agreement in which the two sides meet to discuss remedies. If the City doesn't agree, formal mediation takes place, and if that fails, the DOJ can ask Judge Michael Simon to order the City to make certain changes. It's unlikely it will come to that, since the City has not-so-secretly wanted to buy body cameras for years anyway. Also, it's been reported that the main opponent of these surveillance tools, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, is warming up to their use. At the PCCEP's Settlement Agreement and Policy Subcommittee meeting on July 15, where the proposed remedies were revealed, the DOJ argued body cameras will "pay for themselves." Portland Copwatch challenges them to do a cost-benefit analysis, since most cases leading to settlements will not be stopped by the presence of cameras, the average annual cost of misconduct is about $675,000 a year (see Updates article on settlements in this issue), and the cost of the camera program is estimated at $1.2 million a year.

Other proposed remedies have to do with fixing forms, doing a serious review of the crowd responses to improve training, holding Supervisors accountable for allowing improper force to occur, and creating a plan to implement the new oversight board. For their part, the City padded out their 2021-22 budget in June with $1.7 million for what they think will help them comply, about a quarter of which is to buy software to track force reports.

The DOJ stated the COCL's Quarterly Report was delayed because the City did not continue generating the data required for the analysts to review, thinking they would be done with the Agreement in January. More hubris. The Report says officers attending crowd control legal updates and equity trainings kept their internet call cameras off, so it was not even clear they were listening. Despite the Agreement's requirement to use surveys to assess training, there were no surveys for the equity training. Anecdotally, the COCL says some officers were defensive when being told about racial and other inequities.

Subcommittee Work and Special Guests at PCCEP Meetings

A Portland Copwatch (PCW) member who attended one of the webinars at which the PCCEP invited experts to discuss a planned truth and reconciliation program reported the meeting was informative and inspiring. At the PCCEP Racial Equity Subcommittee, they discussed having a police officer formally become a co-chair of the group. PCW pointed out that one of the downfalls of the PCCEP's predecessor, the Community Oversight Advisory Board, was having police officer members on a community committee, and that furthermore until the reconciliation happens, it is not appropriate to have cops in anything but an advisory function. Apparently no decision was made yet.

PCCEP member Vadim Mozyrsky, who also sits on the Citizen Review Committee, used subcommittee meetings of both groups to push the idea of body cameras. The powers that be keep ignoring PCW's comment that it is more likely the cameras will be used to prosecute community members than to hold officers accountable.

In late April, the PCCEP heard from Mike Myers, the Public Safety Director whose job was created early in 2021 to coordinate among Fire, Police and Emergency operations. Myers laid out his expectation the PPB would find new ways to ensure community safety, including, perhaps, using Bureau of Transportation personnel rather than cops to enforce traffic laws. At the same meeting, the Chief's office announced their intention to direct officers not to pull people over for non-moving violations, something which led to a decrease in traffic stops and disparities elsewhere (see the Profiling article in this issue). The PCCEP adopted their Core Patrol Services recommendations, hoping the City Council will translate them into policy, though the City budget was mostly finalized by the time they had their vote.

At their May meeting, the Committee agreed to ask the Mayor to appoint Celeste Carey, a longtime KBOO-FM radio host, to fill an empty seat. Because of confusion about whether Carey had finished her training (or even been formally appointed by a vote of Council), it was unclear whether she was considered a voting member in June. Council appointed her on July 7.

At the June meeting, the PCCEP did not even seem to realize the PPB's draft Annual Report did not include issues they recommended two years ago. PCW noted the Report's only mention of the two officer involved shootings in 2020 was that the Detectives Division investigated them. They added a section on police shootings in the final version, but didn't name the suspects. The Bureau announced the Agreement-required meetings in each of the three precincts quietly, with the second and third meetings happening after the City Council presentation on August 18. The August 17 North Precinct meeting did include some discussion of bias-based policing and use of force as required by the Agreement. This year's Council presentation lasted 33 minutes, longer than 2020's eight minutes, but did not address those issues and did not involve public input. Since the DOJ flagged the presentaitons of the Annual Reports as out of compliance, we hope the Bureau will do better.

In July, the PCCEP heard a talk from Deputy Chief Chris Davis about how the Bureau is committed to improving this community. By the end of the week, Davis announced he was hired to be the police chief in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Committee announced that two members, Yolonda Salguiero and Marcia Perez, were leaving the group-- Salguiero to move out of state and Perez to focus on her work. This led into an awkward discussion at the end about the City's plans to bypass the PCCEP's current role in selecting their new members.

A special guest that night was Kieran Ramsey, Special Agent in charge of Portland's FBI, invited to speak about the Bureau's role in the Metro Safe Streets Task Force (see Profiling article this issue). Ramsey stated that the FBI is only here to investigate gun crimes, but then also said that immediately after a shooting they would act to stop people from engaging in revenge shootings. Replying to concerns PCW raised about the FBI's long history disrupting and harming the Black community, he told a story about his supervisor keeping a framed copy of the surveillance warrant for Martin Luther King Jr. on his desk. It was ostensibly a reminder of what NOT to do, but one wonders whether it was more of a trophy.

Compliance Officer Doubles Out of Policy Findings

The main presentation in July was the Town Hall with the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison consultants reading highlights of their Q1 Report. Previously, they had found the City out of compliance with about eight paragraphs; in this Report they moved nine more sections to "Partial Compliance" ratings, and three to "at risk" of failing to meet the standards of the DOJ Agreement.

Many of the new ratings were due to the PPB's lack of action to get back into compliance after the massive uses of force and poor reporting thereof at protests for racial justice in 2020. Perhaps more interesting than the main body of the Report is a memo they sent to the City after its self- assessment of the protest response. The COCL called the City's review "not comprehensive in facts or scope," and (raising questions about ableist language) referred to the "tone deaf" conclusion they did an "excellent job."

Interestingly, one of the new paragraphs that fell out of compliance was whether the City is providing adequate staff to the PCCEP. Because of lapses in getting things posted to the website and responding to COCL requests, this section is now in "Partial Compliance."

September, 2021
Also in PPR #84

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

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