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Training Advisory Council: Chair Steps Down, Revolving Door Inspector Changes Again
Lack of Curiosity About Demographics on Force Use Continues

Portland's Training Advisory Council (TAC), created in 2012, mostly focused on recommendations about how the Police Bureau's instruction could be improved from an academic analysis up until community member Shawn Campbell became the chair in 2018. Campbell pushed the Council to make more recommendations and give feedback on trainings they'd observed. No doubt in part because Campbell was hired to oversee Portland's Business Improvement Districts (PPR #85), he stepped off the Committee in March, with longtime member Jim Kahan taking over until elections in May. Under Campbell's leadership, the TAC tried to push the Bureau to include demographic data on Portland's population in their required quarterly reports on Use of Force (PPR #75). The Bureau refused, leading one member to quit in 2019 (PPR #79). The Bureau agreed to point to demographic data while asserting it is not relevant to the force data, which usually show 26-30% of people subjected to force by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) are African American in a city which is 6% Black. A dismissive and questionable statement has been included since Q3 2020, but the TAC seems to have lost interest in the matter. There may be a problem with continuity on the PPB's end, with Lt. Peter Helzer, the fifth Force Inspector in two years, introducing himself at the March meeting. Since mid-2019, the other Force inspectors have been Lt. Jeff Niiya, Lt. Robert Simon, Lt. John Sapper, and Lt. Chris Lindsey.

At their January meeting, Lindsey made his final presentation of data, with the Q3 2021 report showing Black Portlanders were 26% of the people who had force "applied" to them. Not that one would know, since Lindsey, as usual, skipped over the demographics slide quickly. The Q4 data, presented at the March meeting, were actually remarkable because the percentage of those on the receiving end of the night stick (metaphorically-- the uses of force vary from resistance to handcuffing up to "less lethal" weapons) was only 22% Black. While an improvement, this still means Black Portlanders are having police use force on them at over three times their presence in the population.

Even with this "improvement" which could have been noted for public consumption, Lt. Helzer ran through the overall data quickly, mostly focusing on how just one incident led to the huge spike in pepper spray use, making up 70 of the 77 reported applications. Similarly, Lindsey announced that of 52 uses of pepper spray in Q3, 25 of them were in one incident. While those are causing anomalies in the overall data, so much use of these "aerosol restraints" against single individuals should be raising training and policy issues.

Also, notably the number of deadly force incidents in each quarter are separated from other uses of force (as if deadly force isn't force); Helzer could not remember what the two incidents were (Brandon Keck and Joshua Degerness). Lindsey mentioned the dates of the three in Q3 but said he didn't know much about them because the Force Inspector doesn't look at deadly force incidents (those were the shootings of Joshua Merritt, Andreas Boinay and Alexander Tadros-- say their names!!!).

Although TAC member Gina Ronning also sits on the Oversight Group for the PPB's new Focused Intervention Team (see Profiling article in this issue), she did not offer insight about issues the TAC might consider around this gun violence unit. Portland Copwatch's comment making the connection came 20 minutes before the scheduled end of March's meeting.

For what it's worth, the Advisory Council did not review the lesson plans for Crowd Control in 2018, when a slide deck full of racial and political bias was created (see the DOJ article in this issue).

In January, the TAC passed a policy recommendation around the Bureau's new Restorative Justice program, which tries to divert people from the court/jail system by having them work with the survivors of the crimes they perpetrated. If the idea is to steer clear of the criminal justice system, it seems once the officer has arrested the person and this path has been chosen, there should be no more role for the police. That was not included in the TAC recommendation.

For more information on TAC including links to their recommendations, go to portland.gov/police/tac .

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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