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Copwatch Completes One Year of Intake

Portland Copwatch, the police conduct monitoring voice mailbox established by POPSG last December, has been receiving calls for a little over a year.

Because complaints were difficult to verify, we are simply going to report the nature of the complaints we received. We also received a few prank calls which we don't include here.

TYPE OF COMPLAINT                Portland P. B.   Other
• Excessive physical force                                         6           2
• Arrest (questionable circumstances)                       2
• Harassment/intimidation                                         9            1
• Rudeness                                                                 5
• Taken to detox*                                                       2
• Other                                                                        2
• Threats accompanying other complaint                  2*

       *--then turned away because not intoxicated
       *-- accompanied another type of complaint
       Back to text.

COMPLIMENTS TO POLICE
• Old Town Police (general)                                       2
• Day shift officers                                                     1*
• Total separate incidents reported                             28          3

       *--officers Harris, Field, Daley & Thompson; accompanied another type of complaint
       Back to text.

Copwatch monitoring is time consuming, yet crucial for people who feel they have been wronged. The Portland Police have expressed interest in the calls made to Copwatch. Our position is to allow complainants to decide whether to file an IID complaint, go to City Hall, pursue a lawsuit, go to the media, or any combination of the above. We do not turn information from the line over to anybody, except in the statistical form above, unless it is requested by the complainant. If you have good listening skills, write things down carefully, are good about followthrough, and want to help, please contact Copwatch.

We hope to expand our Copwatch activities to include helping complainants through the processes of filing Internal Investigations complaints, appeals to PIIAC, or finding a lawyer. We are also preparing a hands-on Copwatch program which will take Copwatching to the streets sometime in early 1994. We will model these programs after Seattle's Mothers Against Police Harassment and Berkeley's Copwatch. If you are interested in training to be a Copwatcher, contact us right away and we'll let you know when the first training begins.

First Quarter, 1994
Also in PPR #1

Portland Copwatch
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

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

People's Police Report #1 Table of Contents
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