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Police Association Takes Contract Sessions Behind Closed Doors Like clockwork, the Portland Police Association (PPA), the "union" representing rank-and-file officers, jumped at their chance when bargaining for their new contract reached its 150th day, using a provision of state law to demand future sessions be held in private mediation. The City expressed disappointment in this move, which shuts out the community's previous ability to monitor every second meeting. By this time, organizers working on the campaign for a contract that benefits the community had racked up nearly 80 group signatures on a letter to Council outlining major concerns. Specific topics which came up before the June 14 announcement included that the PPA claims they're all for the City getting body worn cameras because they "believe in accountability," while the City pushed to make all bargaining sessions public as part of the contract, and proposed to revamp the Bureau's Discipline Guide.
Public sessions were held on May 5 and June 2, with sessions open only to PPA and the City on
April 21 and May 26. Because the ground rules established for bargaining required the parties to
The PPA specifically asked that they and their officers be allowed to review body camera footage before writing reports. This is considered bad investigative practice, in part because, for instance, the Supreme Court ruling guiding police use of force relies on what the officer knew at the time, not "20/20 hindsight." Thus, reviewing the footage this way undermines that standard. The discussion of the Discipline Guide on June 2 included the City's proposal to make disparate treatment (racial profiling) a fireable offense. In theory, the PPA and its Executive Director Daryl Turner agreed to this at a PCCEP meeting in 2019 (PPR #79). The City said they want the Guide to be mandatory, and for it to apply to the current and future oversight systems. Complicating this matter is that a state law was passed indicating the State Department of Public Safety, Standards and Training would design a statewide set of guidelines for officer discipline, which might override local jurisdictions' guides. In late June, the City finally responded to a public records request from Unite Oregon for data on who attended the sessions from January to March. They showed that the January 13 session had 450 attendees (not 600 as the City stated--PPR #83), but a careful reading eliminating duplicates (people who signed on multiple times) left just 251 unique names. It's likely the numbers for February (211) and March (217) are also inflated. The PPA also had put forward a request for certain assignments to result in hazard pay, including the Rapid Response Team. Since the team resigned en masse before this item was resolved (see Protests article in this issue), they will never know if they would have received that raise. Ironically, the PPA asserted they needed to push the bargaining into mediation because they felt the City was going too slowly; the mediation was set to pick up where the June 2 session left off-- on July 28, eight weeks later.
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September, 2021
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#84 Table of Contents
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![[image of PCW's chart of analysis showing officer-
on-officer misconduct is more likely to be found out of policy]](https://www.pjw.info/copwatch/PPR84/PPA_WW_072721.jpg)
post a news release after each
session, the public learned about the PPA's body cam proposals
(which they brought in on April 21). Notably, mediation is generally considered a confidential
process, so the community will only learn what will (or won't) be in the contract at the end of the
discussions. Worse, if the mediation leads to an "impasse," an arbitrator, not the City Council, gets
the final say on what the contract will look like. That said, the Portland Mercury published a
copy of the proposed Discipline Guide obtained through a public records request on August 6.