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Are Portland Police Biased? Maybe, Say Consultants
Report Supports New Gun Violence Team Despite Racial, Political Data

OIR Group, the consulting firm which has examined Portland Police shootings for the last decade, was hired in 2021 to determine whether the Bureau engages in racial or political bias. The study, released January 31, was commissioned after the leak of false information about Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty (PPR #83 and this issue). OIR published its Report a few weeks after the City revealed a training presentation equating people of color with violence and called for police attacks on protestors (p. 1). The majority of the 76-page Report is an analysis of OIR's survey of police officers, who believe they are not biased. The first part of the Report ticks off the issues Portland Copwatch has been noting for years: Black Portlanders are disproportionally subjected to traffic stops, force and deadly force by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).

OIR recalls historical incidents including when officers tossed dead opossums on a Black-owned business' doorstep (1981) and made "don't choke 'em, smoke 'em" t-shirts when an officer was to be held accountable for choking Tony Stevenson, a Black man, to death (1985). Yet the gist of their analysis is: "This creature has feathers, a tail, a beak, and webbed feet and it says 'quack' but we can't definitively say it's a duck." The Report also holds up as hopeful the Bureau's third iteration of a gun violence team which only got its start in mid-January, raising questions of aspirations versus reality. They also touch on Bureau policies which have now been enshrined in State law to limit when officers can pull people over for minor infractions like broken tail lights. While no significant change has been seen in disparities, they say, the overall number of stops have gone down.

As for the Focused Intervention Team (FIT), which replaces the Gang Enforcement Team and its successor the Gun Violence Reduction Team (GVRT), after eight months the Bureau found 12 officers to volunteer for street-level enforcement around guns. Their first mission went out on January 19 (Oregonian, January 21) and their exploits have been used for public relations to calm the fears of a city plagued with a surge of gunfire and homicides since 2020. As noted in "Rapping Back," the police blame the rash of shootings on dismantling the GVRT in June, 2020-- even though shooting rates were on the rise before then. The selling point for the FIT is a Community Oversight Group which holds public meetings and, in theory, is making sure their work isn't racially biased.

OIR encourages the police to make more connections with the community by making Tik Tok videos and reaching out to colleges to recruit members. None of these ideas work without their first recommendation: for the Bureau to apologize for past (and, we hope, current) racial discrimination. There are also calls to investigate political bias, examine cops who may be part of "extremist groups," and, significantly, not to let officers review body worn camera footage before writing reports (see DOJ article sidebar). Most other recommendations have to do with hiring, training, and the size of the public information office.

With regard to political bias, OIR notes community concerns about how police seem to collude with right-leaning groups and attack progressive protestors. They also mention the incident where Commander Erica Hurley urged a neighborhood group to vote District Attorney Mike Schmidt out of office-- an act which was found to be a violation of state law. Hurley is being fined $225 (Willamette Week, December 11), but OIR notes she is appealing the finding against her. They also raise the important question of why she wasn't held accountable through the administrative investigation into the incident.

One third of PPB officers self-identified as conservative in OIR's poll, which should have prompted a more in-depth analysis than wondering whether the Bureau reflects the city they patrol. Not that voter registration captures nuances well, but Multnomah County shows 55% of voters registered as Democrats and just 8% as Republicans.

Community organizations including the ACLU and the Oregon Justice Resource Center blasted the Report in a letter they sent February 15 for not taking into account more than a handful of community voices. They also point out the officers' denial of racial bias is itself indicative of racial bias.

Meanwhile, the Bureau's stop data show a slight decrease in over-representation of Black drivers, down from 18% to 16% in the Q4 2021 report, in a city which is 6% Black. Pedestrian stop data show 25% of those stopped on foot or on bicycles were also Black-- three out of 12 people total. The PPB continues to assert they stop fewer than 20 pedestrians in each three month period, which is highly unlikely. When PCW raised this issue in response to the Compliance Officer's report on the US Department of Justice Settlement Agreement, they deflected the idea in a dismissive publicly posted response.

Find the OIR Report at: tinyurl.com/OIRBiasReport.
Find the OJRC/ACLU response at: ojrc.info/community-letter-oir-report-on-ppb-bias.
See the COCL's rude response at: tinyurl.com/COCLQ3reply.

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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