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Rapping Back #94
Portland Copwatch member Dan Handelman analyzes the Police "Union" newsletter, the "Rap Sheet" for the People's Police Report

Elections Eminently Elude Eager Enforcers

With the entire City of Portland government changing in 2025 from four Council members and a Mayor who ran specific departments/Bureaus, the Portland Police Association (PPA) jumped in to try to ensure a new Mayor and a majority on the expanded 12-member Council would support their agenda. Most of the posts to their Facebook page between August and December-- 9 of 15 (60%) were about the election, and who they thought people should vote for. Not surprisingly, this included law-and-order, anti-police accountability Commissioner Rene Gonzalez (see PPR #93), who lost. A businessperson candidate, Keith Wilson, won, expressing his similar approach to houselessness more moderately (see article). The PPA posted information about their candidates on September 10, then again on October 21, 22 and 24, stating their appreciation for differences of opinions when the initial results were becoming clear on November 8. Of the 12 seats, five PPA- endorsed folks prevailed: Former County Commissioner Loretta Smith in District 1, current City Commissioner Dan Ryan in District 2, former City Commissioner Steve Novick in District 3, and former TriMet lobbyist Olivia Clark and Multnomah County staffer Eric Zimmerman in District 4. Zimmerman narrowly beat out Portland Police Officer Eli Arnold, also endorsed by PPA.

The other six articles are mostly unremarkable, with four about crime, one "officer friendly" post remembering 9/11, and one about body cameras. Ten were posts by the PPA, one was a news release from the PPB about special crime missions, and the other four came from media sources. One crime story pointed to a community member who testified at City Council on December 4 thanking 13 officers by name, including Arnold, for patrolling downtown. Let's take a deeper look at the rest.

What is the Loyalty Test to Get a PPA Endorsement?

The Association has been fairly reserved in its endorsements in previous elections, in our experience doing much of their work behind closed doors, particularly through their labor negotiations, to get what they want. They did not testify publicly about the new oversight system. Instead, they attempted to put forward a ballot measure to gut the system, an effort which never got off the ground (PPR #93). But with a wide open field, it appears they were looking for candidates who "embrace a holistic view of policing." While this sounds as if the PPA is supportive of alternatives to police like Portland Street Response and the Public Safety Support Specialists (PSSS), remember they not only acted to limit what authority those programs would have, but absorbed the PSSS program into their "union" (PPR #78). They also wanted candidates who think the City needs to support (read: hire more) police and 911 operators... oh, yeah, they absorbed those workers, too (PPR #77). Listed first on their priority list was someone with a "pragmatic vision," which one could argue means valuing cracking down rather than protecting civil rights. Also, they seek a commitment to "restoring public safety." This is a continuation of the "Portland is on fire" myth that began in 2020 as a means to distract from the devastation / changes to how people work caused by the pandemic and gains in community awareness and support due to the racial justice uprisings.

The PPA's combination of eating crow (due to the failure of Gonzalez as well as former Citizen Review Committee member Vadim Mozyrsky for County Commission) and loudly crowing (over its having access to nearly half of the new Council) refers to a "remarkable campaign" in the face of the changing government. They believe that most elected Council members support "fully funding and staffing a robust, woven public safety system [which] is the cornerstone of the mandate given by Portland voters." Hmm, that might be news to the people who won five of the OTHER seven seats, which include Candace Avalos, former chair of the Citizen Review Committee (which hears appeals of police misconduct cases-- see article), Sameer Kanal, who staffed the Police Accountability Commission (PAC) which helped develop the coming community-run police oversight system (see article), Angelita Morillo, who was a champion for the PAC on her TikTok channel, and the only two candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America: Tiffany Koyama Lane and Mitch Green. So, it remains to be seen whether the other two swing votes (former aide to Governor Kate Brown Elana Pitle-Gurney and former City Council aide Jamie Dunphy) will tip things in the PPA's favor or not.

Notably, one of the people endorsed by PPA who did not win was Terrence Hayes, the cousin of Quanice Hayes who was shot and killed by Portland Police in 2017 (PPR #71). Hayes was interviewed on KOIN-6TV about a week after the PPA's president, with the Hayes interview posted to the PPA Facebook page on September 21. Hayes has taken a notably more conciliatory attitude toward police than some other members of his family, who marched, rallied, held vigils and spoke to City Council in favor of more accountability (see, for instance, PPR #72).

PPA President Admits Problems with Body Camera Footage, Calls Oversight System "Political"

Though he claimed to be a champion of transparency and a fan of Body Worn Cameras, PPA President Aaron Schmautz admitted in an interview on KOIN-6TV (September 13, posted September 15) that the footage from the August 24 shooting of Robert Seeger was not as informative as people might expect. Noting that officers were crouching behind police cars and/or that their weapons and arms holding those weapons blocked much of the view, Schmautz seemed to be agreeing with the opinion of Portland Copwatch: the best view of what officers are doing comes from third-party recordings ("copwatching"), not cameras strapped to officers' chests.

In terms of transparency, remember the PPA negotiated that footage can only be released in very limited circumstances, even excluding its use for spot-checking accountability issues or training officers on how to-- or not to-- implement policies in the field.

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Media Continue Looking to Police Collective Bargaining Unit for Expertise on Crime

In an Oregonian article posted August 19 and a NewsNation interview posted September 3, PPA President Aaron Schmautz was invited to opine about the County delaying a drug "�deflection center" and the new state drug law reversing a de-criminalization ballot measure (before it had a chance to work). PCW has written before that the rank-and-file officers are not the ones who assess and make policy, so it's curious why the media keep flocking to Schmautz instead of, I don't know, the Chief maybe?

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The host also asked Schmautz about Judge Michael Simon's decision to delay implementation of the new oversight system until the new Council was seated (see article). The current Council includes Mayor/Police Commissioner Ted Wheeler, who has been loudly decrying the fact that police can't sit on the new Board even though he signed off on that policy when he sent Measure 26-217 to voters in 2020. Law-and-order Gonzalez refused to vote on the watered-down City Code for the system as a message to the judge, and Commissioner Ryan, who rode in to office in 2020 saying he would help then-Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty complete her efforts for police reform, doing a 180 and agreeing with the Mayor about the lack of officers. So they were counting on the devil they know to do them a solid, and now nobody knows whether the new Council will fix the problems by, for instance, taking police off the nominating committee for the Board, or proceed with the weakened version.

January, 2025
Also in PPR #94

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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