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Citizen Review Committee Loses Five Members, Gains One
"Independent" Police Review Fails to Bring Annual Report
to Its Community Body

As the City gets ready to implement a new police oversight system (see oversight article), the existing structure is creeping along to fulfill its remaining obligations. The "Independent" Police Review (IPR), which handles complaint intake and a few investigations per year, put out its Annual Report in late August (see IPR annual report article). The Citizen Review Committee (CRC), community members who hear appeals and are supposed to advise IPR, met three times in late summer/early fall. Despite a request at the September meeting, IPR staff did not present the Report to CRC at either its October or November meetings... and they canceled the December meeting. Meanwhile, through attrition, the CRC is down to just seven of its authorized eleven positions, with another member set to leave in February. This could cause serious problems if CRC does receive a request for appeal, but good news/bad news, they haven't had any since June 2021.

What CRC has done lately is to compile a relatively comprehensive history of the group ("Transition Past") and recommendations for the new system ("Transition Future"), adopted on a vote at the October meeting. This was the last meeting for former CRC Chair Candace Avalos, who announced her resignation that night to pursue other interests. At the November meeting, the group formally elevated Vice Chair Yume Delegato to be Chair, Recorder Gregg Griffin to be the new Vice Chair, and elected Kyra Pappas as the new Recorder.

Joining CRC at the October meeting, the same night he was appointed by City Council, was Mike Walsh. Walsh served on the CRC's Work Groups on crowd control (PPR #85) and the Transition documents. Members Taylor Snell (whose term was technically over earlier in 2023 anyway), Amanda Greenvoss and Sylvan Fraser also submitted their resignations, because of life getting in the way, not any animosity toward CRC. It was also announced in November that Vadim Mozyrsky had resigned. In February, long-time member Julie Falk (perhaps with a record-long tenure of nine years) will be leaving CRC as well. Outreach is underway, but since the resignation of Outreach Coordinator Irene Konev, IPR has not hired a new person to help recruit. As a result, staff from the Community Safety Division... which works closely with Police, Fire and other public safety bureaus... is helping with outreach. (CSD also housed the Police Accountability Commission).

The IPR Director, Ross Caldwell, and his Deputy Kelsey Lloyd, both share the habit of making extremely brief presentations of the four-to-five page "Director's Reports" at CRC meetings, skipping over the data on caseloads, crowd control complaints and deadly force investigations. The CRC is their stage to promote the work they're still doing until the new system is in place, but they don't take advantage of the opportunity. They may be avoiding presenting the Annual Report to CRC because the community body, which reports to IPR, isn't even mentioned this year.

January, 2024
Also in PPR #91

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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