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Monitoring Police Behavior at Demonstrations
and Other Copwatch Activities

On November 28, over 200 local activists turned out to celebrate international Buy Nothing Day, a time to evaluate our habits as consumers and to challenge corporate greed. The Portland event began with a brief rally at Pioneer Courthouse Square, then proceeded with a march to popular shopping centers.

Our first stop was at Niketown, which was targeted for selling sweatshop goods. There, the protesters were met with many law enforcement officers and four mounted police. Spirited but peaceful chanting gave way to emotional confrontation when a police horse stepped on a protester's foot and a mounted officer was overheard quipping, "Don't yell at me, yell at him [the horse]. I don't control him."

That same officer was caught on tape moments later, refusing to give out his name or BPSST number (as required by Police General Order 312.50) when a copwatcher demanded that he do so.

The mounted patrol remained a domineering presence throughout the remaining Buy Nothing activities, obstructing department store entrances and playing a crucial role in one activist's arrest. When Craig Rosebraugh was taken from his vehicle, arrested (and later charged with disorderly conduct), and put in a police car, demonstrators encircled the police car in a show of solidarity and support for Rosebraugh. The only way that officers were able to take Rosebraugh away to jail was by running their horses into the crowd.

With such reckless disregard for public safety -- not to mention the well-being of the horses -- it is obvious who the Portland Police want to serve and protect. The police never sought medical attention for the protester they injured, but they went to great lengths to guard corporations big and small.

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Copwatching at political demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience actions is something Portland Copwatch would like to make a priority, but rarely has the resources for. Ideally, people who make up these groups /events will take the initiative to monitor the police on their own. If your activist group, community organization or union local would like to participate in a Copwatch training, we have one planned for mid-January. Call (503)236-3065 for details.

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Tuesday, November 4: over forty demonstrators occupied the lobby of the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Portland to support 1100 striking steel workers in Pueblo, Colorado because of Wells Fargo's connection to the steel company. After less than an hour, the police arrived and demanded we leave. Most of us did, but a few refused and were arrested.

After the police ordered us from the lobby, most of the activists gathered outside to watch as police led about twenty of our comrades, starting with the clergy, out to their vans and off to jail. After the chanting, singing, and speechifying was virtually exhausted, I began to tire of watching police do the bidding of the corporations, and someone suggested I take the bullhorn and say so.

What I said, more or less, was this: "As I'm sure everybody's noticed, there's this group of people down here in blue uniforms, every one of them working class. They have a union. But the minute this bank calls them out here to cart us off, here they are, with no regard for their class interest."

I could have argued that the function of police in our society is to defend the interests of the powerful and the privileged, to preserve existing injustices and stabilize an oppressive social system. I could have explained that cops are just hired thugs for the elites, armed enforcers of state policy. I could have called them traitors to their class, worse than scabs.

Instead, I considered the point sufficiently made, and handed the megaphone back to the speaker before me, a middle aged man in a gray suit, who I presume to be some big shot in the Steelworkers' union. What he said to me was this: "We don't want to bother those guys [the cops]. We have a deal with them." And, at the end of the rally, the same gray suit thanked everyone who came, thanked the unions who mobilized their members, and thanked -- absurdly -- the Portland Police Bureau. "They did a great job," he said.

I wondered what sort of deal they had made. It was probably something along these lines: "Give us half an hour inside and then ask us to leave. Most of us will leave then, and the rest will be arrested peacefully. No one will give you any trouble." It strikes me as disgraceful that the union leaders negotiated these arrests, and were unwilling to criticize the cops for enforcing the system of boss rule.

Perhaps my attitude towards this is colored by my own experiences with the police. As a member of Copwatch, I talk regularly with people who have suffered various degrees of abuse at the hands of the cops. The possibility of forming allegiances, of making deals, with the same organizations responsible for such atrocities seems unconscionable. The idea of praising the people arresting your comrades seems absurd.

This much I know: you can sing "Which side are you on?" all day, but it doesn't mean a thing if you can't tell your friends from your enemies. If the police were on our side would they be making those arrests? If they were on our side would there be such long lists of union martyrs? If the individual officers were on our side, if they were anything other than mercenaries for the bosses and the state, would they even be cops?
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Copwatch joined thousands of people worldwide on December 6th to demand the release of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, an outspoken critic of police abuse accused of killing a police officer nearly 20 years ago. The day was an International Day of Mobilization highlighted by a People's Tribunal in Philadelphia.

Locally, over 100 demonstrators convened at Irving Park in Northeast Portland and spiritedly marched to Holladay Park near the Lloyd Center. Hundreds of flyers with information on Mumia's case were distributed, and the community response was positive. Copwatch was present with video and photo equipment to keep an eye out for police disturbances. The police were very well-behaved and presented no obstacles to the people's right to assemble on this particular day. There were minor incidents of harassment involving private security guards at Lloyd Center, who at one point locked the marchers out of the mall.

A report from the April "National Emergency Conference on Police Brutality and Misconduct" held in New York has handy hints from organizers around the country, a list of demands and organizing points, and a contact list.

The "PACT" (Police and Citizens Together) report may be a hokey title for the Mediation program instituted as part of our police accountability system in Portland, but this report gives great insight into a program which has been underrated and underutilized.

Every month we receive a packet from San Diego County's civilian review board. While this was created as one of the most powerful law enforcement oversight boards in the country, Sheriff's deputies have stymied the efforts of the people by pleading the fifth when subpoenaed to testify.

Luckily, that gives the staff enough extra time to photocopy tons of articles from southern California and around the country about police misconduct, many of which we have now put into a special notebook in the Copwatch office.

Reed Copwatch has officially existed for two semesters, and we'd like to update everyone on what we've been doing. Reed Copwatch consists of members of Portland Copwatch who attend Reed College. We participate in all Copwatch activities and host Copwatch meetings on the Reed campus. We keep each other aware of Copwatch-related events through the campus computer network. Perhaps most importantly, we conduct "Your Rights and the Police" and Copwatch training workshops on the Reed campus with the help of other Portland Copwatchers. Reed Copwatch works closely with other activist groups on campus to make sure interested Reed students have easy access to information on political and community issues.

In September, the Student Senate allocated about $380 of student funds to Reed Copwatch. Our first purchase was a much-needed video camera to use on Copwatch beats and anywhere else where documentation might be necessary. Reed Copwatch also contributed money to bring a Mexican labor organizer to speak at Reed as part of the campus-wide "Joy of Struggle" symposium. Possible uses for the remainder of our funds include printing stickers with the Copwatch Incident Report Line number on them and hiring Dan Handelman to give a report on his journey to Iraq. So far, the existence of Reed Copwatch has helped increase awareness of and participation in Portland Copwatch. It has also played an important role in educating the Reed community about police- related issues. We are currently planning a series of workshops in late January which will help us continue to positively impact the Reed campus.
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The Hawthorne "beat" is an ongoing Copwatch project consisting of community outreach, education and police observation. We have continued to walk the beat on SE Hawthorne between about 30th and 45th Avenues two evenings a month. The project has yielded good results as far as getting our name and literature out to the public, but has been less successful as a tool for bringing new people into the group or increasing use of our incident report line. We will most likely be moving the beat to an earlier hour for the winter.

Ideally, a beat takes place in a community where there is a consistent police presence and to which the Copwatchers have some claim of belonging. By observing the police in our neighborhoods, we begin to establish the type of grassroots civilian oversight that is a necessary prerequisite to true police accountability. Portland Copwatch offers Copwatch trainings in which we share some simple (but important) insights gained through experience here, in Berkeley and in other cities. We have such a training scheduled for the week of January 19th at Reed College. If you want to establish a beat in your neighborhood, or just want to learn how you can safely, legally and effectively monitor police activity, call Copwatch to arrange a training.

January, 1998
Also in PPR #13

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 #13 Table of Contents
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