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Mayor Pats Self on Back
"Customer Satisfaction" with PIIAC not addressed

On May 9, Mayor Vera Katz released a 4-page document intended to be an analysis of the changes instituted in January, 1994 to PIIAC (the Police Internal Investigations Auditing Committee).

While the mayor's points are well made, she does not address two key issues about review of police misconduct: Do people who feel they have been wronged trust the system, and have their grievances been addressed?

The positive points the mayor makes, one at a time:

"1. Committee morale, participation and effectiveness is [sic] at an all time high." This is true, and encouraging, but an effective committee whose function is reviewing police investigations is not the same as a committee which directly investigates police conduct.

"2. Citizen advisors rigorously review appeals; the monitoring subcommittee assists the Police Bureau improve its Internal Investigations process and general Bureau operations." Several general trends, most of which revolve around the way Internal Investigations did their work, were pointed out by PIIAC. More thorough looks at training and policies are still needed. In particular, cases involving deadly force need to be reviewed, but PIIAC currently does not oversee these cases. (see page 4 for accompanying piece on PIIAC fourth quarterly report).

"3. The Internal Investigations Division has recently undergone a substantial restructuring." IID has now become the Internal Affairs Division, or IAD. Acting Captain Ron Webber, who was in charge of IID years ago, is back in charge; detectives are now being replaced by detective sergeants; and cooperation (with detectives) in conducting investigations into criminal charges against officers will be strengthened. These are positive steps, especially that officers are now going to have complaints against them investigated by supervisors rather than fellow rank-and-file. However, POPSG and other members of the community are still strongly cautious of police investigations of police.

"4. Complaint intake is now available at community sites." In addition to neighborhood coalition offices, the Albina Ministerial Alliance is now on board. How many complaints go through these agencies though? And, knowing that the complaint will end up with the police bureau anyway, how much does this encourage mistreated citizens to step forward?

"5. Citizen Advisors launched their Outreach efforts." Part of PIIAC's self-revision was to hold meetings in neighborhoods, and outside of the Portland Building downtown where they usually meet. The first community meeting at the King Facility had a fairly good size crowd. But the next one, at Portland Impact on SE Belmont, only had Dan Handelman of POPSG/Flying Focus, and two men from another cable access group present. Part of the reason for the low attendance is that publicity for the public meetings has not been given enough time to build a sizable crowd, but then again, the mainstream media hasn't done anything to pick up on the meetings either.

"6. We are refining the Mediation Pilot Project." The mediation program, one of the few of its kind in the U.S., was one of the elements POPSG supported strongly. However, only 3 cases have gone through in 19 months. Apparently neither citizens nor police trust the idea very much, which is a shame. Citizens have an opportunity to confront officers face to face, which will give them pause the next time they act rudely, search wrongfully, name-call, or commit some other kind of offense. Officers not confronted at this level of misconduct can go on to further misdeeds, including use of force and shootings. The main problems with mediation the way it is set up is that the complaint drops off the officer's record more quickly than an investigated complaint, and at this point it is unclear whether policy and training issues will be addressed since the content of the mediation is kept confidential.

POPSG would like to congratulate Lisa Botsko, the PIIAC staff person, for her hard work in bringing PIIAC this far. We hope the community will come forward to ask City Council for a truly effective review board, in which Ms. Botsko and other staff will be allowed to investigate complaints of police misconduct directly.

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PIIAC Goes Public

PIIAC has recently decided not to go into Executive Session except in special cases. This means that meetings will e much more public than in theist, and also that fewer documents will be withheld from viewing by the public at regular PIIAC meetings. Meetings are usually held the second Thursday of every month from 5:30-7:30 in a second floor meeting room in the Portland Building, 1220 SW 5th. However the July 13 meeting will be held at 6:00 PM at the SW Multnomah Community Center at 7688 SE Capitol Hwy. Call PIIAC for more information at 823- 4126.
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Second Trimester, 1995
Also in PPR #6

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 #6 Table of Contents
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