Portland Copwatch Analyzes Compliance Officer Report on US DOJ Agreement August 2021

To: Compliance Officer/Community Liaison
US Department of Justice
cc: Hon. Judge Michael Simon
City of Portland
AMA Coalition for Justice and Police Reform and other community organizations
News media

CONSULTANT DOUBLES FAILED COMPLIANCE RATINGS FOR PORTLAND IN US DOJ AGREEMENT
Failure to Fix Problems Associated with 2020 Protest Force Puts City Further from Ending Scrutiny

Released about three months later than usual, the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison (COCL)'s Q1 Report on the City's efforts to reform Portland Police Use of Force under the 2021 US Department of Justice (DOJ) Settlement Agreement shows things going in the wrong direction. In the Q4 2020 Report, they found the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) was in "Partial Compliance" with 8 of the roughly 90 actionable paragraphs. The new Compliance Report, issued in July, *-1 shows nine more paragraphs "fell out of compliance," as the COCL put it. Additionally, several paragraphs are "at risk" and likely will also be found out of compliance in the Q2 Report as no action was taken to fix them. 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. What's missing is the reason the Report was delayed: the fact that the PPB, in its hubris, failed to compile the Q1 data required under the Agreement because they thought their one year of being found in full compliance would end the DOJ's scrutiny in January. While the delusion that they did nothing wrong is bad enough, the point of the Settlement Agreement is to set up systems that are supposed to outlive the DOJ's tenure in Portland, leading to ongoing self- improvement. In this sense, the failure shows what Portland Copwatch (PCW) and others have been saying for years: The DOJ and COCL are going too easy on the Portland Police.

In July, the DOJ proposed nine actions the City needs to take in order to come back into compliance, with number one being to obtain body worn cameras for officers. The COCL echoes this sentiment several times in the new Report. While PCW remains neutral on body cam implementation, our concerns remain and we challenge the DOJ to prove its assertion that the $1.2 million a year program will "pay for itself" by preventing lawsuits. We also encourage the City not to implement the program if the Portland Police Association negotiates the right to review footage before writing their reports.

PCW has once again put together an analysis of the COCL's Report. In most areas, PCW agrees with the Compliance Officer's opinions. While the COCL notes in the body of the Report that the Bureau's three-part self-analysis of how they handled the protests was "not comprehensive in facts or scope," (pp. 5 & 14), they offered even more scathing comments in a separate April memo addressing that analysis.*-2

Broadly speaking, because the police did such poor reporting on the more than 6000 uses of force at protests last year, they failed to properly track data about that force in their Employee Information System (EIS, paragraphs 116-119),*-3 and never improved their system for supervisors to write After Action Reports in situations when daily protests are taking place (paragraphs 74-77). Not related to these issues, the COCL also said the City is not providing enough staff support for the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP), failing to post minutes and/or videos of their meetings in a timely way or offer other support such as creating a member handbook. Inexplicably, the COCL gives a pass to the PPB on their annual training plan (79) and delivery of training (84) even though they failed to create a viable lesson plan on crowd control or deliver it by the end of Q1. PCW called out the COCL similarly in Q4 for giving the Bureau credit for training all officers in the 2020 curriculum before it was done in January and February of this year.

Meanwhile, the COCL has joined the DOJ in calling for the City to speed up implementation of the new oversight system voted into existence in November 2020 to avoid "creating a gap in compliance" on accountability (p. 3). Setting aside the facts that (a) the existing system is already out of compliance for failing to finish all investigations in 180 days, (b) not a single officer was found out of policy for use of force in 2020,*-4 and (c) it's implied that the COCL thinks the City failed to hold officers accountable per paragraph 169, it is a positive development the two bodies' Reports suggesting a transition plan which may include amending the Agreement. For years, the City has pointed to the Agreement as a reason not to make vast changes to the current "Independent" Police Review (IPR); the door is now open to pull those roadblocks away.

While the new Report shows a less conciliatory COCL, it still contains many deferential statements to police excuses for their failings. They note that the PPB is still "recovering" from a year of demonstrations, the COVID pandemic, and budget issues, "to say nothing of the recent spike in crime" (p. 3). It is important to note that while shootings and homicides are indeed up in Portland, most other violent crime is down. And while there are references to race and the unequal application of police powers, the COCL ignores the racial disparities in Use of Force Data.

Perhaps strikingly, the Compliance Officer, who is supposed to have unfettered access to documents and training to create their assessments (as COCL notes, in paragraph 162b), was not allowed to view a number of the Bureau's online trainings, with the PPB claiming they could not attend because they are not police.

For a visual aid, PCW has created a "scorecard" comparing the Q4 vs. Q1 compliance ratings on Force, Training, EIS, Accountability and Community Engagement at http://www.portlandcopwatch.org/sampleDOJscorecard0721.pdf .

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FORCE, TRAINING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS: FAILURES MULTIPLY PROBLEMS

The COCL claims that a random sampling of force incidents _not_ related to the protests were all well processed, documented and appropriately examined for misconduct. However, the same system that is used for those other applications of force did not stand up to the 6000+ reports from protest actions, which in turn did not lead to proper misconduct investigations for many officers.

In its memo to the PPB about their three documents of self-analysis, focusing on so-called "civil unrest," challenges/solutions and an overall After Action report, the COCL notes that none of the critique looked at use of force and accountability issues (memo p. 1). Instead the Bureau blamed "other agencies,"*-5 having too many incident commanders, and not enough Sergeants assigned just to process incoming reports. Worse, the PPB claimed that people were marching in the streets, angry at the police due to COVID restrictions (memo p. 2). Unlike their early reports which were dismissive of the people's voices, the COCL called on the police to listen to the voices of the community and of experts talking about why people were marching. Moreover, they slam the PPB for trying to do a psychological assessment of the protestors instead of looking at the area they DO know something about, using force.

Importantly, the Bureau did not seem seriously interested in addressing issues raised in judicial rulings against them for use of force at the protests, including a restriction against using violence against people who are only "passively" resisting (ie not walking away fast enough) rather than engaging in "active aggression." They didn't analyze, said the COCL, whether the force was used to achieve the "presumed goal" of achieving some lawful objective. In the main Report, the COCL notes that officers described behaviors of an entire crowd rather than of individuals to justify force, didn't identify active aggression properly, didn't try to avoid force, de-escalate, report in a timely manner or apply the policy properly (p. 17).

There is more evidence of a lack of interest in the legal limitations put in place as a result of several lawsuits. The COCL reports that when the City Attorney was explaining the rulings to officers on the Rapid Response Team, the attorney seemed dismissive, officers did not turn their cameras on during the session, and one even admitted to multitasking. After this was allegedly fixed, the City gave the same training with another instructor (pp. 22-23).

The City also began doing a so-called "Equity Training" for the cops, which again sounds more internally focused than a way to end racial bias (p. 24). Even though the Agreement calls for surveys to be done after trainings, none were offered for this new training (pp. 7, 25 and 30). However, there is some assurance that future equity trainings will include input from the community, focus on issues including houselessness, and ask whether some policies might be "unintentionally" causing harm (pp 24-25).

As noted above, even though the COCL and DOJ asked the City to conduct more crowd control training for all officers in Q1, it was postponed due to those agencies' concerns about the content. Specifically, the police were teaching officers how to use certain weapons/kinds of force at protests, but not the reasons they could be deployed (pp. 22-23). This happened again in Q2, in part because of the resignation of all the Rapid Response Team members following the indictment of one officer for hitting a protestor in the head with a baton. Kudos here to the DOJ and COCL for highlighting this case to be administratively reviewed, though the credit for the indictment goes to DA Mike Schmidt, who noted that nobody is above the law.

In a related note, the COCL memo to the PPB claims the Bureau had problems figuring out how many munitions were fired at protests. The Compliance Officer matter-of-factly suggests counting the number of rounds at the start of each shift and again at the end (memo p. 3).

Other problems highlighted in the memo include that the Bureau could not use certain videos to conduct their reviews because they had no way to link the After Action Reports to the videos. Supposedly this will be fixed with new software (here called "Sharepoint Enterprise" but referred to by PPB elsewhere as Microsoft 365). But the COCL clearly states that technology will not solve the problem of failing to critically review officer conduct, which will take "organizational will." (memo, p. 3).

To avoid the problems of failure to report on and investigate force thoroughly, the PPB is proposing to modify their policies (Directives). The COCL suggest a better solution is to have officers comply with the existing Directives (memo p. 4).

It's not clear where this fits into the Agreement, but the COCL says that the Bureau having added two extra Public Information Officers could be useful but if they do not release factual information they will "compromise" the PPB (memo p. 4).

To speed up the processing of the reports, the Bureau assigned two sergeants to review After Action Reports. As the COCL points out, the PPB admits that complicates matters since those sergeants weren't there when the incidents happened (memo p. 3).

While the phrase itself is potentially offensive, it was interesting to read the COCL call the Bureau's self analysis of doing an "excellent job" at the protests as being "tone deaf." They explain that the community, city representatives, courts, the COCL and DOJ all have raised concerns about police behavior (memo p. 5).

Back to the main Report, the COCL gives credit to the quarterly Use of Force Reports for proposing solutions to problematic issues identified, but does not give any examples (p. 16). They made this same claim in the Q4 Report. It's also a strange comment as it comes right after a statement that the Force Inspector did not report on trends in Q1. Moreover, the Report gives examples of recommendations made by various advisory bodies (PCCEP, Training Advisory Council. BHU Advisory Council *-6), so why not the Force Inspector?

An alarming fact is that the use of force compared to "custodies" and just in raw numbers are up. They write that Force is up 31% but custodies are down 8%, and the Bureau has no analysis of why (p. 16). The result of these changes is that the "force-to-custody ratio," which hovered around 2-3% for a long time, is now up to 6.2%. (p. 17)

Overall the COCL found that the Bureau is still out of compliance with paragraphs 66, 67, 69, 70 and 73 regarding force, force reporting and supervisor After Actions, and as noted above fell out of compliance with 74, 75, 76 and 77 with further After Action processing and data analysis.

Among the paragraphs "at risk" of falling into Partial Compliance are the annual training plan and delivery of Crowd Control training (79 and 84). A strange byproduct of this Report being delayed so long is that the COCL knows the Bureau did not plan or deliver that training in Q2, but they decided not to call the Bureau out of compliance yet (p. 20). The Bureau is also given a pass despite not taking minutes during their training planning meetings (p. 21).

In an oddly Shakespearean proclamation, the COCL says they "hereby" remind the Bureau of the importance of both Crowd Control and peer intervention training (p. 21). Since the Bureau only recently drafted a policy for the latter-- instructing officers to intervene to prevent or report on other officers' misconduct, it again is curious that the training delivery is found in policy. The COCL notes that peer intervention will reduce misapplication of force, which they point out hurts trust and officer wellness. Moreover, the training, also known as "active bystander," is in the Settlement Agreement (p. 26). So, why not find paragraph 84 out of compliance?

Some interesting tidbits about training: Out of 20 hours of in-person training, four were spent on firearms. To be fair, that may be a state requirement, but still it begs the question of whether this reinforces cops' reliance on deadly force. A lesson plan about a Chicago case that had to do with how to confront person armed with something other than a gun is mentioned, but with no details of what that looked like (pp. 27-28).

About those officers who turned their cameras off, the COCL recommends a rule that cameras must remain on during trainings (p. 30).

PCW previously raised a concern that there had not been an audit of the Training Division done for a few years, wondering why the COCL recommended doing one in 2022 instead of this year. In the new Report, the COCL calls on the Bureau to have a plan to conduct that audit by the end of this year (paragraph 80, p. 32).

These failings in Force and Training led to the change in compliance for the Employee Information System, because it was "inadequately used" to look at how force was deployed in protests (p. 33). That comes back to lack of reporting (116), leading to an inability to review data in Q1 (putting 118 and 119 out of compliance as well--p. 45). Because of lack of documentation, they could not see which precincts/ divisions were using more force than others either (117- p. 47). The COCL says it is unclear whether the issue of supervisors reviewing individual officers due to protest actions has been addressed (p. 48).

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ACCOUNTABILITY: LACK OF TIMELINESS, THOROUGHNESS

One of the most important discussions in the COCL's discussion of Portland accountability systems is their reference to the DOJ's March 23 memo, which noted that the Police Review Board (PRB) was reviewing cases which were inadequately investigated (p. 11) and/or resulted in inconsistent findings (p. 52). They recommend that the PRB receive training on interpreting police policies and the meanings of findings.

Though an isolated case (so far as anyone can tell), the COCL reports that a supervisor called to investigate a Use of Force failed to report it to the IPR as required because they claimed no force was used (p. 10). COCL points out that all uses of force are required to be investigated unless IPR determines there is clear and convincing evidence not to (129). They add that they previously warned against this happening back in October 2017 and that in the spring of 2018, supervisors were trained to turn over all cases (p. 49). The COCL calls for corrective action for those in the chain of command who approved the decision.

The slowdown in protests has led to a drop in complaints, bringing the monthly average being investigated down from 82 in June 2020 (a spike from a previous average of 35) to 21 in Q1 (p. 49).

While Portland has notoriously taken long periods of time to fully investigate misconduct, the COCL says that 13% of "administrative closures" took more than 180 days (p. 10). So, one out of eight people had to wait six months to find their complaints had been dismissed.

As for investigations, the City remains out of compliance with paragraph 121, which says all cases should be completed in 180 days. Because they have to wait 180 days to know whether this timeline has been met, COCL reports that 32% of cases from Q3 2020 were not done in 180 days. Only 18% of those were performed by Internal Affairs, while 83% were by IPR.

The COCL opines that some cases that were referred to precincts for informational purposes should instead have been investigated (p. 10). Examples include a question of officer courtesy during a robbery investigation, an officer rudely telling someone they could not record them, and use of profanity made worse by not providing a business card (p. 51). The COCL says failing to investigate these "undermines the purpose" of Supervisory Investigations (which is why the police can't be trusted to investigate themselves, we would add), leading to making it difficult to identify trends or make policy changes. They also said some referrals should have simply been closed out, which makes no sense from a systems improvement point of view. Why not share information about a complaint with the Precinct?

While COCL applied attention to detail about referrals and PRB cases, their focus on the Citizen Review Committee (CRC) remains disconnected at best. They call the City in compliance on paragraph 136 (p. 52), in which the CRC can order Internal Affairs or IPR to conduct more investigation, which, per the Agreement, has to be completed in 10 days. In October, the CRC heard an appeal from former PPB Sergeant Liani Reyna about Internal Affairs mishandling a complaint of hers. The end of Q1 was nearly six months, and at the time this analysis is being written it has been 10 months and no report back has come to CRC.

Furthermore, CRC members were unable to participate in Police Review Board hearings because of a longstanding reluctance by the Bureau to make remote viewing of files possible. While the software to make this possible was discussed in COCL's Q4 Report, they call the issue "resolved" (p. 53) without evidence that the system is working properly.

They note that in addition, four or five CRC members didn't have full training, including police ride- alongs, to attend PRB hearings. The COCL recommends they do "walk-alongs" instead (p. 54). Fortunately, in June the City made a wiser choice that while COVID is still of concern, PRB members (including CRC) can waive the requirement for ridealongs and police training. It's not clear whether COCL did not report on this because it happened in Q2 or because they were unaware of the fix.

Finally, while it is blissfully true the Portland Police did not engage in deadly force in Q1 (p. 53-- but they have shot people in April, May, June and July), the COCL should have reported on the March 31 incident that is being investigated as a death in custody. Tai Anh Tranh was boxed in by officers when he (allegedly) took his own life, leading to an investigation that has to follow similar procedures to a shooting.

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MENTAL HEALTH: THEY SAY THE SAME THING, WE SAY THE SAME THING

The COCL has taken the position for years that because the City is not the primary entity in charge of mental health care, there is only so much they can do to fulfill the obligations of the Agreement's Section Five. However, the COCL also keeps saying that they are not qualified to assess the status of paragraph 90 (p. 35), which calls for care agencies to have committees to address the links between police and the mental health system. They also continue to say that the Unity Center qualifies as the walk-in/drop-off center called for in paragraph 89 (pp. 8&36), even though it really doesn't have a viable walk-in component. They claim Unity conforms to the "intent" of the Settlement Agreement.

Because Portland Street Response (PSR), which pairs a Fire Bureau employee with a mental health specialist for non-police calls, launched in Q1, the COCL includes commentary in this Report. They say they are unsure whether it fits the Agreement (p. 35), an odd analysis because the program was designed to keep police officers away from people in mental health crisis, which would obviously make it impossible for the police to use force against people during those calls. They note, however, that as many as 84% of PSR's 54 calls in Q1 did not have to do with mental health. However, the Settlement talks about people who are or who are perceived to be in mental health crisis.

Finally in this section, the COCL states that the ambulance service in Portland (AMR) changed their service policy, but does not explain what has changed or whether it meets the intent of the Agreement (p. 36).

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CRISIS INTERVENTION: COPS INVESTIGATED FOR USE OF FORCE CAN BE ON SPECIALTY TEAMS

Portland Copwatch has been tracking the DOJ Settlement Agreement since its inception. Paragraphs 101 and 110 lay out criteria for the Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team (ECIT), which heads to mental health calls, and the Behavioral Health Response Team (BHRT), which does follow up with certain community members in conjunction with mental health professionals. All these years, we have read the criteria differently, apparently, than the powers that be. They say officers should not "have been subject to disciplinary action based upon use of force or mistreatment of people with mental illness." We thought that meant "use of force" or "mistreatment of people with mental illness." When we asked the COCL whether any officers had been flagged since nearly every cop in Portland was involved in the violent response to protests last year, they indicated that the "of people with mental illness" also modifies "use of force." This makes no sense either from a policy standpoint or a grammatical one ("use of force of people with mental illness"?). Anyway, they state on p. 39 that the Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) is alerted if ECIT or BHRT officers have force complaints filed against them, but do not say whether that happened. Their response to PCW implies that unless the officers thought the protestors were living with a mental illness, such complaints were NOT reported to BHU.

The PPB apparently finally got around to combining multiple quarters of data on use of force by ECIT members, which the COCL encouraged them to do because of the subjectively assessed "low number" of incidents (p. 9). The COCL promises information on that analysis in the Q2 Report (p. 39).

Regarding the BHU's Advisory Committee (BHUAC), to which the COCL has access, but the general public does not, the COCL notes that the Bureau of Emergency Communications has not asked them for input into training and policy on the Portland Street Response program (paragraph 114, p. 37). The COCL also reports receiving updates and minutes from the BHUAC, presumably by email, which PCW and others who have expressed interest in the BHUAC do not. On that note, the COCL references the first BHUAC public outreach meeting held in Q1 (p. 43), but doesn't mention that most of the public comments were people asking why the regular Committee meetings are not open to the public.

Also of note about the CIT section:

--The City has said that the number of BHRT units was down from four (previously five) to three, allegedly due to budget constraints, but the COCL makes no mention of this. This may be because the Agreement only requires three teams (106).

--The number of ECIT officers was down to 118 in Q1 (p. 39). There were 131 prior to the Q4 2020 Report.

--People who were referred to the BHRT out of a large pool of candidates used to be 45-55% but are now down to 36%; the COCL does not explain why this happened (p. 40).

--While the COCL buys the Bureau's claim that there are too few uses of force by ECIT cops to analyze patterns, they praise the rate at which people entered into the Service Coordination Team are put into housing. They note the lower rate in the most recent quarter of only 75%-- but the numbers are based on 4 of 16 people not getting housed, and previous quarters were 1 of 9, 1 of 11, and 1 of 15.

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: PCCEP STAFF, PPB ANNUAL REPORT OUT OF COMPLIANCE

As stated above, the COCL added paragraph 144 to the list of "partial compliance" with the Agreement due to inadequate staff support for the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing. They also note that the Bureau has "yet to properly share" their annual report (leading to questions as to why they were ever found in full compliance), so paragraph 150 remains out of compliance (p. 13). The COCL takes the new step to advise that the PPB should wait until after the precinct presentations of their report to present to City Council, something PCW and others in the community have pointed out is implicit in the Agreement (p. 65).

Overall, though, the COCL continues to believe the PCCEP is performing the functions laid out for them in the Agreement*-7, noting they recommended the City send a letter of remorse to families of those killed by police. PCW was not aware until reading this Report that Mayor Wheeler approved this idea on March 29 (p. 56). We hope that the families of Robert Delgado and Michael Townsend received such letters.

The COCL also says that in Q1 the PCCEP ran out of alternate members to allow them to fill empty seats (p. 58). A discussion at the July PCCEP meeting seemed to imply that some people's applications were not processed properly. We hope the details of this problem are explored in the Q2 Report.

Meanwhile, the PPB has been busy adding more advisory groups, with an Asian American/Pacific Islander group created in March (p. 60). The long-needed Coalition of Advisory Groups (CAG) apparently fallen into discord, despite the venue's real possibility for various communities to compare notes and find common ground. However, the Training Advisory Council (which is part of the CAG), the Citizen Review Committee and the PCCEP (which are not) *-8 expressed frustration that there was no place for voices who are critical of police (p. 59). As the COCL points out, the TAC reports to the Bureau, while the CRC reports to the Auditor and PCCEP to the Mayor. However, all are giving advice to the police so all should be included. There were tensions because (a) PCCEP called for an audit of the advisory groups and (b) two _other_ groups came into disagreement (not specified in the Report), and no apologies are expected. The COCL suggests that the PPB and the City/Mayor should resolve the conflict(s) (pp. 13&60). The Report claims that because there are so many advisory groups now, the PPB can't staff them all and is spread too thin (p. 60).

The community engagement section is also the only place in the Agreement that talks about race, including the requirement to collect data on traffic and pedestrian stops (148). The COCL, who has frequently echoed (and praised) the Bureau's statements that one should not look at the data compared to population totals, notes that African American Portlanders are still being pulled over in numbers greater than their representation in the City suggests (p. 13). Specifically, they cite that African Americans make up 6.7% of the population, but 17.8% of stops in Q4, an increase of 3% (though it had gone down 3% in the previous quarter). They note that there are other benchmarks to consider such as outside commuters and collision data, suggesting the community to keep monitoring the issue (p. 63). They ask the Bureau to bring up the data at the precinct meetings on Annual Reports-- after all, bias based policing is a topic required by paragraph 150.

The Bureau developed a new training about collecting demographics for stops, but the COCL was not allowed to observe the training (p. 63). Data being tracked will now include probable cause, reasonable suspicion, perceived demographics, consent search, other search, findings, disposition, mental health "and more." COCL used to attach all sorts of documents to their Reports; it would be helpful to see the new data screen in an Appendix.

The COCL has been using their Reports to assess the implementation of the Bureau's Community Engagement Plan (141). Here they report that the Bureau worked with Slavic, Latino, Muslim and NA/PI (unclear if they mean Asian American/Pacific Islander or Native American/Pacific Islander) communities, but should prioritize the African American community including the history of discriminatory policing in Portland and the United States (p. 62). This is not the COCL of 2014 talking.

Other bits of information from this section:

--The police are developing a card in five languages to explain a person's rights when they are asked to consent to a search, plus a phone app for police to record whether or not they consent. The delay of this program is not a compliance issue because it is not part of the Agreement (pp. 13 & 63).

--The COCL notes that demographic data are collected about Use of Force as well as stops, but not that the disparity is much greater in the force data, where 25-30% of people subjected to force are Black.

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OTHER SUBSTANTIVE / LAYOUT ISSUES

--On p. 4, the COCL suggests that there is "scientific evidence" that Body Worn Cameras lead to fewer complaints and uses of force, though a footnote admits MOST cities had reduced complaints and MANY showed reduced force. However there is nothing that suggests proof that the body cameras caused these changes.

--In the continuing debate about defunding the police, the COCL has asked again to give more money for data analysts (p. 8). It seems as if a centralized city pool of data analysts should be employed instead to avoid growing the Bureau any larger with people who do not need to be sworn officers.

--The COCL continues to refer to the issue of timeliness for complaint investigations as "expediency," despite our suggesting that term implies haste over accuracy (p. 10).

--The numbers of cases closed through the Employee Information System do not match because, the COCL notes, some cases are opened in one quarter and closed in another (p. 46). We suggest noting this issue as part of the table showing the data.

--After 1.5 years of COVID protocols, the COCL continues to say that IPR is taking in-person complaints, even though their office has not been and is not expected to re-open until at least September (pp. 10 & 49).

--Although PCW has pointed out repeatedly that Assistant Chiefs and Internal Affairs have the same ability to controvert a supervisor's proposed findings on misconduct complaints, the COCL still only talks about IPR having this authority (p. 11).

--The COCL claims that more people are attending Citizen Review Committee meetings thanks to Zoom, but it's not clear how they would know that. CRC uses the Zoom webinar format where only committee members, staff and invited speakers can see who is on the call (p. 52).

--The charts on pp. 41-42 show up to four columns numbered with the same year at the bottom, but not the which represents which quarter. COCL says this is because the charts were provided by the Bureau. The COCL team is paid more each year than Portland Copwatch and its parent group have raised in 29 years combined. They can afford a subscription to Photoshop or some other software to fix up the charts.

--PCW sent other minor corrections to the COCL in a separate document.

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CONCLUSION

Once again, the Compliance Officer's Report is a mish-mash of useful information, some appropriate critiques of the Bureau, and a lack of institutional will to fully examine the issues at hand. While the COCL has improved in their analyses since the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, there is still a lot to be desired. In the same way they are trying to convince the Police to confess to their shortcomings in reporting on and holding officers accountable for use of force at the protests, the COCL should also do more self-examination of when their analysis is too deferential to the police. The behavior of the PPB in not providing the data for Q1 because they thought the judge would release them from the Agreement is indicative that they are not capable of self-improvement. Until there are better, stronger mechanisms for oversight on the ground in Portland, we hope the COCL will help the community push for better changes in the institution of police.

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___Footnotes:
*1- Find the Report at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pccep/article/784982

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*2- Attached after page 70 of the Report as an appendix but also at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pccep/article/783418

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*3- notably, the COCL's draft Report doesn't mention the EIS at all in its Executive Summary.

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*4- see PCW's analysis of the IPR annual report at: www.portlandcopwatch.org/ipr_2020_analysis.html

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*5- there's a reference to not blaming external forces on p. 19 of the full Report. Because the issues covered in the Report only go until March, there's no note here about how the City blamed federal police for increasing the crowd size, supposedly prompting the PPB to use more force, in their May response to the DOJ's compliance notice.

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*6- for example, the COCL notes that they agree with a TAC recommendation to look at the impact of training on officer behavior (p. 33), and that PCCEP voted to support TAC's proposal to expand Public Safety Support Specialists, but got no response (p. 56).

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*7- Although technically, Judge Simon still has not approved of the PCCEP amendment to the Agreement that was proposed in 2018.

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*8- CRC reports to the Auditor and PCCEP reports to the Mayor.

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Posted August 10, 2021, last updated August 29, 2021
Note: Footnote 8 was inadvertantly left off of the email and original web posting of this analysis.