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PIIAC Reforms Stall in Starting Gate

Reforms to Portland's Police Internal Investigations Auditing Committee (PIIAC) proposed by Vera Katz passed unanimously through City Council in January. The measures themselves are little more than window dressing to cover the fact that police investigations into their colleagues' misconduct is inadequate (see PPR #1). Fortunately, a majority of Council (Mayor Katz, Commissioners Lindberg and Kafoury) pledged to revisit the issue once reforms have had a chance to kick in.

But now that the reforms are in place, PIIAC's Citizen Advisors seem to have even less of an idea of what to do. For example, several Advisors want to delay further complaint review until their full- time "independent investigator" is hired. However, the new plan does not call for an independent investigator, but a full-time staff person trained in investigation. While this seems like a semantic difference, it means that this full time staff person, like PIIAC, will not be allowed to investigate a case directly, but only to review Internal Investigations documents.

Beyond that, the earliest a staff person will be hired is July. We hope what little PIIAC is able to do under the current ordinance will not be postponed another 3 months.

Advisors are putting off implementing another part of the revised ordinance: community outreach. Some Advi-sors feel that going to 1 or 2 of their own neighborhood association meetings a year will be sufficient. But more needs to be done to show the public that civilians are overseeing police. PIIAC should visit as many neighborhoods, social service agencies, and community groups as possible.

To their credit, PIIAC Citizen Advisors have brought up the idea of holding their meetings in different neighborhoods to allow input from local residents.

The Citizen Advisors also put out a draft of their first quarterly report, a summary of 1993 activity. The report showers the Police Bureau with praise and leaves out tables which might allow easy comparison of data presented. However, the report brings up some very serious issues, including several cases of individuals being brought to Hooper Detox Center when they were not drunk. The report asserts that the people were brought to Detox simply for being rude to officers. POPSG has re-ceived two such complaints directly over the Copwatch line and heard of several others. There is obviously a problem here that needs to be addressed. If you have had an experience of being brought wrongfully to Detox (or to the psychiatric ward at Adventist Hospital), call Copwatch at 321-5120. We also encourage civilians to come hear the PIIAC quarterly report when it is presented before City Council on Wednesday, April 27 at 2 PM. We understand public testimony will be accepted.

Portland Pays Shooting Victim $100K+

Gerald Gratton, the police shooting victim hit by three of 27 bullets after being chased off a #4 Tri- Met Bus, was awarded $118,000 by City Council in early March. The officer who fired 23 of the shots was fired last October. We applaud these actions, but has justice been done? We plan to find out if any training or hiring practices were changed as a result of the incident.

Now that PIIAC is including Risk Management figures in their quarterly reports, they will get to look over many cases which don't go through IID. These are cases the City considers serious enough of a problem to pay off the complainant. From this, we hope they will spot trends which may lead to policy changes in the bureau, and fewer cases like Gerald Gratton's.
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Second Quarter, 1994
Also in PPR #2

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 #02 Table of Contents
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