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Citizen Review Committee Up to Full Contingent, Rarely Meets
"Independent" Police Review Still Hasn't Produced Annual Report for 2023

As noted in PPR #92, the City appointed four new people to serve on a rotating basis onto the Police Review Board (PRB), which meets behind closed doors and recommends findings and discipline in certain cases, including police use of deadly force. The City (believes it) changed the rules last year so that members of the Citizen Review Committee (CRC), which is authorized to hear appeals of misconduct complaints, can rotate not only onto high-level cases where two community members are needed, but any PRB panel. When the CRC was down to just six members, the volunteers were stretched thin. In late April, the City appointed five new members, bringing them up to their full contingent of eleven. They met briefly on May 1, a week after the Council hearing, and... not again until early August. Their Work Group on the transition to the new system only met twice during that time, six days after the full Committee met in May and again on August 1. Meanwhile, the "Independent" Police Review (IPR), which houses the CRC, was expected to put out its annual report every year by May. Publication of the scant document had been happening sooner, but keeps moving later into the year. As of August 14, that report is not completed.

Portland Copwatch (PCW) frequently testifies at City Council when members of police advisory groups are appointed. When we talked about the new CRC members, we noted something strange. All five new members, and all three people being appointed as alternates, are people who use he/him pronouns. This leaves Jessica Katz and Kyra Pappas as the only two female-identifying members of the Committee. Such a gender imbalance was more common in the early days of CRC, but that changed dramatically when women were elected as both the Chair and Vice Chair from 2015 until 2022 (PPR #s 65 & 83).

Notably, CRC has not heard any misconduct appeals since June 2021 (PPR #84). The transition Work Group was waiting to hear from the City Attorney about development of the new oversight system which was tied up in negotiations with the police association. The plan needs to be approved by a federal judge before they are allowed to institute changes (see article).

At the May 1 meeting, PCW urged the Committee to hold their retreat in public, at least partly, as has been done in the past (PPR #72, for example). It's not clear whether they ignored that comment as no notice was given about the retreat. We also asked whether the IPR was going to hire the OIR Group to conduct another review of deadly force cases, which is required on an annual basis by City Code. No such report has been produced since early 2023 (PPR #89) and the cases reviewed at that time only went up until 2019. IPR indicated they were in touch with the consultants. There is much ground to be made up.

Also at that meeting, the IPR once again skimmed over their monthly report to the CRC, which includes the names of officers and community members in deadly force cases that are being investigated. However, they continue to use inscrutable codes to explain what part of the process is underway (PPR #90). If we are reading the report properly, as of May, only four of the 17 incidents from 2021-2022 had gone through the Police Review Board process. By August, that number appeared to have increased from four to fourteen.

At the August 7 meeting, CRC discussed the possible aspects of the City Code they might want to raise concerns about before it is finalized. The discussion ended as they decided to put off any decision about such a communication until the Transition Work Group has had a chance to present a detailed draft. PCW reminded them that individual members might want to testify at the Fairness Hearing on the issue on August 29.

See the IPR's website at <portland.gov/ipr>.

September, 2024
Also in PPR #93

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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