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US Department of Justice, Compliance Officer Never Saw Racist, Politically Biased Crowd Training Slides
Community Committee Sends Detailed Complaint to City About Troubling Materials, Avoids 60 Day Suspension

During the summer of 2020, people lit actual fireworks and threw them at the downtown Federal Courthouse. There may be metaphoric fireworks there on April 29* when Judge Michael Simon holds a "Fairness Hearing" to determine whether the proposed remedies to the City's falling out of compliance with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Settlement Agreement are "fair, adequate and reasonable." Portland and the DOJ were singing kumbaya about the nine proposed remedies at the end of 2021 (PPR #85), but on January 14, that all changed when the City released a Powerpoint presentation used to train officers in crowd control. There was a lot of focus on the slideshow's last image, mocking leftist activists and encouraging police to do violence to them, but other problems are peppered (pun intended) throughout the presentation. The DOJ and the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison (COCL) expressed outrage they had never seen the training materials before. In turn, the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP) were angered by both the slide and that these two oversight bodies with full access to PPB documents never saw the 2018 training slides until January 2022. The PCCEP took this strong stand while struggling to stay afloat, as they only have seven of thirteen seats filled and their two main staff people each left in February and March. At their March meeting, Mayor Ted Wheeler threatened to suspend PCCEP's activities for 60 days, but recanted a week later after the group's vote against suspension. Also, the COCL released a report on the Bureau's progress in the third quarter of 2021, as usual mixing important concerns with evasions of key issues.

The nine remedies were presented to City Council for a vote in early February, a few weeks after the slide deck was released. Despite lingering community concerns about the implementation of body worn cameras for officers and how a new civilian "dean" of training will be integrated with the sworn staff, the proposal was adopted unanimously. One holdup on the body camera policy: it has to be negotiated with the Portland Police Association (see PPA Contract article, and body camera sidebar).

PCCEP grilled the DOJ and COCL about why they had not seen the offensive slides back in 2018. They responded that because crowd control isn't a key element of the Agreement and the training takes place "off-site" (not at PPB's training facility), the Bureau never shared the presentation with them. This raises the question, though, why didn't the COCL or DOJ ask for the training materials, which are related to the key finding driving the Settlement: use of force. The discussions happened both at the Settlement Agreement/Policy and Racial Equity Subcommittee meetings. The latter is particularly important because the slide depicting peaceful protestors shows a white man and a white child, while the slide about violent protests only shows protestors of color. There are also derogatory terms and questionable legal strategies in various slides in the 110 page Powerpoint. The Racial Equity group sent a lengthy document with comments and questions for the City to the full PCCEP at their February meeting, where it was adopted.

A good chunk of the January meeting not focused on the slides was the presentation and Q&A with the Compliance Officer about their Q3 2021 Report. Portland Copwatch (PCW) published an analysis of that Report which focused on what appears to be more Taser use against unarmed people in mental health crisis, a recommendation to allow the Bureau's Behavioral Health Unit Advisory Committee to give guidance to the Portland Street Response program (despite that entity's deliberately not including any police, only firefighters and mental health workers), and another exhortation for the community to do something about disproportionate demographics in policing, rather than the COCL making their own recommendations.

The Agreement is supposed to keep the PPB from using too much force, especially against people in mental health crisis. The majority of officer-involved shootings since the DOJ came to town, apparently including the one which occurred February 19 (see the Shootings article in this issue) were against people in crisis. The DOJ and COCL may mean well, but overall there has not been enough change in what has nearly been a decade since the Agreement was adopted by Council in late 2012. As a result, the Mental Health Alliance has called for Judge Simon to appoint a court monitor-- someone who works for and reports to the Judge rather than the City-- to oversee the Agreement moving forward. Since Simon himself floated this idea at the last status conference in December (PPR #85), such a move may be in the cards. If so, PCW would like to be sure the person is local and is required to interact with the community.

See PCW's analysis of the Compliance Officer Report at
portlandcopwatch.org/ COCLanalysisPCW0222.html.

Police Get More Voice In Body Camera Policy Than Community

The DOJ sent the City a letter in November indicating the ideal policy for body worn cameras would not allow officers to review footage before writing reports. This is consistent with the Supreme Court case guiding police use of force, which requires an officer to report what they knew at the time of the incident, not to apply 20/20 hindsight. Portland Copwatch (PCW) is not alone in supporting this policy idea; the consultants from OIR Group agree (see the Profiling article in this issue), as did the majority of Portlanders at a forum held by the COCL in January on the topic of body cams. Who doesn't agree? The Portland Police Association (PPA), which insists reviewing the footage will allow cops to write better reports. Generally speaking, people agree cops can view the footage after writing an initial report and amend the report with later thoughts, but the initial document must stand.

At the COCL forum, the PPA told community members that officers will not be editing the videos, and viewing them ahead of time will allow police to "put things together to tell what happened" (KGW-8TV, January 24, via the PPA Facebook page). They argue other Oregon agencies have pre- review rights, including Oregon State, Gresham and Eugene Police.

On the same day they contemplated the remedies to the DOJ Agreement, including the mandate to equip officers with cameras, Council considered (and eventually voted to accept) a "Request for Proposal" which asks body cam vendors to say what a budgeted $2.6 million will buy. Buried in the paperwork was the intent to hire six new personnel at the Police Bureau to review and process the footage; this is extremely problematic as the community has said the police should not own and manage these data. PCW and other groups urged the City to finalize the policy first, then ask for bids, so the purchase matches the desired outcome. They ignored this advice.

Ultimately, the DOJ's letter is not being proposed to the judge as part of the remedies, despite concerns raised by the friends of the court Mental Health Alliance and Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform, because of the PPA's right to negotiate over "working conditions." This does not, in our opinion, mean they get to write public policy around technology being sold as a means to hold officers accountable. Instead, body cams seem destined to be used to criminally prosecute and spy on community members.

*- a few days after this issue went to press.
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May, 2022
Also in PPR #86

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.

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