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NEWS ITEM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 23, 2014
LONG-TIME POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP DENIED MEETING WITH MAYORPortland Copwatch, an organization promoting police accountability since 1992, has been denied a meeting with Mayor/Police Commissioner Charlie Hales after three months of back-and-forth with his scheduler and police liaison. Although the group has met with every Chief and Mayor since its creation, the current Commissioner seems to be shutting out the organization, after meeting with them a year ago on July 22, 2013. Portland Copwatch (PCW) is known for "doing its homework," and has had representatives on several official City committees over the years dealing with police oversight and racial profiling. PCW also brought attention to the Joint Terrorism Task Force issue in late 2000, when Mayor Hales was a City Commissioner and eventually was the only member to vote against renewing Portland's collaboration with the FBI. While other groups such as AirBnB buy time with the Mayor, Portland Copwatch, an all- volunteer non-profit educational group, gets no such deference. The email thread beginning with the April request has been posted below . For context about the requests from the Mayor's police liaison, (Officer) Deanna Wesson Mitchell, note that PCW was vocal upon her hiring that an insider from the Bureau who would be able to rejoin the force at any time is not the appropriate person to liaison between the community and the police. PCW stands by this analysis. In the midst of ongoing anti-homeless policies, revived crackdowns to target "gangs" (read in Portland as "all African American young men the police see"), more shootings of people in mental health crisis despite the pending Department of Justice settlement agreement, and the overturning of two egregious policy violations by Capt. Mark Kruger, the group is hoping that public pressure will help convince the Mayor it's time to sit down and talk police accountability. For more information contact PCW at 503-236-3065 or copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org.
Below is the full set of email exchanges between Portland Copwatch and Mayor Hales' office attempting to set up a meeting with the Mayor, between mid-April and mid- July 2014. Note: Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch (PCW) sits on the AMA Coalition's steering committee, but is not to point person for contacting the Mayor's office about meetings with the Coalition. While the concerns of the AMA Coalition are similar to those of PCW, PCW's long history gives us a perspective on many other police issues which we have been discussing with every Mayor/Police Commissioner since PCW's creation in 1992 including in our initial meeting with Mayor Hales in July 2013.
INITIAL REQUEST (including policy analysis): APRIL 18
From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
Ms Dietz Our organization, Portland Copwatch, would like to request a meeting with the mayor about police issues including the Joint Terrorism Task Force, oversight issues, and the questionable policies listed in the below email, which we sent the Mayor this morning. We've heard that Sen. Dingfelder is in charge of policy issues around homelessness now, if so, can you see if she can be part of this meeting as well (or at least forward this email to her)?
Thank you
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 11:21:37
Portland Copwatch
OPEN LETTER Urging and End to Closed-Door Policy Making for Police Actions
April 18, 2014
Mayor Hales, District Attorney Underhill and members of City Council:
We are writing to urge the City and the District Attorney to end their
recent behaviors of staying behind closed doors when creating public
policy issues involving police and human rights. There are at least six
programs that have sprung up in the past 10 months, most of which are
targeted against homeless people, which were created either by the Bureau,
the Chief, the District Attorney (DA), and/or the Mayor's office, but none
went through a public discussion at Council.
1) Chronic Offender Pilot Project (COPP): This program, which was created
by agreement between the DA and the Bureau in the middle of 2013,
ostensibly was to target people committing otherwise low-level offenses
such as littering and urinating in public, upping the stakes by charging
them with "Interfering with a Police Officer" if they were caught a second
time. As was reported in the media, the DA "accidentally" included the
sidewalk obstruction ordinance (aka Sit-Lie 4.0) in the list of offenses.
As a result, 17 of the 19 people arrested under COPP were wrongly brought
in for sitting in the wrong place on the sidewalk and now have misdemeanor
charges on their permanent records. Defense attorneys have noted, and we
can't agree more, that giving officers the power to say "if I catch you
doing this behavior again, I will charge you with a more serious, but
unrelated, crime" opens the door to serious civil rights violations. We
would argue that such violations already took place under this project. We
had heard that COPP phased out in early April, but the Portland Mercury
reported on April 17 that it has been expanded by the DA to cover camping
and "erecting a structure" in a much broader geographical area.
2) Prosper Portland: While media reports indicate that the Chief created
this project, and the Mayor questioned the wisdom of letting the Bureau
make policies around homelessness (which we agree with), it's not clear
how much of the Chief's plan is being enacted anyway. On top of the
clearly hypocritical concept of helping people "prosper" by breaking up
their living spaces and tossing away their belongings, this program was
designed by the Thetus Corporation, a consulting firm with ties to the
CIA. This corporate entity offered its services for free in hopes of
padding its resume to bring such anti-poor-people programs to other
cities.
3) "Quality of Life" program. A new unit with no name was announced in
early April that includes nine officers, a sergeant, and All-Terrain
Vehicles, to focus on so called "quality of life" issues downtown and in
the Hawthorne and Lloyd districts. It is fairly clear this program is also
set up to criminalize homelessness in Portland.
4) Neighborhood Involvement Locations (NILoc): Rolled out on March 25,
this program encourages officers to get out of their cars for 15 minutes
at a time to interact with community members in 20 different locations.
Portland Copwatch has already received information that a team in the
Kenton neighborhood kicked a young African American man, prompting local
business owners to question whether the increased police presence is a
deterrent to be in the area, rather than a deterrent for crime. This
appears to be the same program described in the Portland Tribune in
December as "stop and talk," which on its face is a thinly veiled version
of New York's failed-- and racist-- stop and frisk program.
5) Private security camp sweeps: A contract with Pacific Patrol Services
went into effect April 1 for "campsite cleanup." This contract was able to
avoid Council discussion, as its $35,000 pricetag doesn't trigger the
automatic Council review for contracts over $100,000. We wonder whether
the settlement of the anti-camping lawsuit in 2012 envisioned turning over
police functions to private entities, since complaints against PPS
employees can't be made through City structures such as the Independent
Police Review Division.
6) Portland Police as private security: The revival of police overtime
contracts to act as security guards at the downtown Target store, despite
the incredibly limited way in which such a presence might benefit anyone
other than that one corporation, points to a further blurring of the lines
between private and public safety officers. Much like the three officers
whose salaries are paid by the Portland Business Association, this kind of
contract indicates that the wealthy can buy more protection than average
or poor Portlanders. The way things are supposed to work is that everyone
pays their fair share of taxes, and then there is a public discussion and
decision by elected lawmakers on how that money will be spent.
PCW fears that the proliferation of all of these programs in the shadow of
an Agreement with the US Department of Justice indicates an attitude by
the City and the Portland Police, which can be summed up as: "Yes, we'll
start figuring out ways to be nicer to people with mental illness, now
we'll have to take out more of our aggressions on poor people and people
of color, and using police to benefit businesses only."
We note that there are a number of programs, including the aforementioned
Sit-Lie 4.0, the Illegal Drug Impact Areas (IDIAs), and the Gun Exclusion
Zones which have come before Council for discussion in the past. However,
only the Exclusion Zones have come up in a report to Council in the past
year, as statistics, reports, and an oversight committee for Sit-Lie were
terminated in late 2012, while the IDIA reports, once sent to Council
regularly by the DA, seem to have stopped. (We are looking forward to the
promised discussion on the one policy issue which seems to be generating
concern from the Council, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, later this year
after Mayor Hales finds out about his security clearance.)
In short, we are urging the City to put a halt to these potentially
harmful and discriminatory practices and require that the Bureau bring
such plans before Council for a full discussion with community
stakeholders and elected officials. The District Attorney shoult attend
these hearings and be part of the discussion. The vacuum in which the
policies are created shows what happens when people make decisions without
fully seeking out input to think of unintended consequences. (Or, intended
consequences which are an affront to human dignity.)
Please let us know when the above-mentioned programs will be coming to
Council for discussion, and/or confirmed as "dead on the vine" (as Prosper
Portland was called on the Portland Mercury blog on March 26, then
reversed days later). As noted above, the city must stop making these
important public policy decisions behind closed doors.
Thank you
On Mon, 21 Apr 2014, Dietz, Susan wrote:
Dear Mr. Handelman:
I will gladly take a look at the calendars, and make some
recommendations for a meeting. At this time, due to our budget
season, the Mayor's calendar won't be available until late May or
early June. However, our chief of staff, Gail Shibley and Policy
Directors, Deanna Wesson-Mitchell and Jackie Dingfelder, to go over these
items you have
included.
Please let me know if that will work with you, and I will continue
to work on scheduling the meetings as necessary.
On Tue, 22 Apr 2014, Portland Copwatch wrote:
Ms Dietz
From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
Ms Dietz
On Wed, 21 May 2014, Dietz, Susan wrote:
Dear Dan,
I appreciate your patience and feedback, and look forward to working out a
time that fits
everyone's schedules.
From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
Ms Dietz
On Tue, 10 Jun 2014, Dietz, Susan wrote:
Dear Mr. Handelman,
Please contact Deanna for initiating the process so we are on one accord to
continue this scheduling
procedure. From there, Deanna will work with me on identifying the time.
Thanks again!
From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
Ms Dietz and (Officer) Wesson-Mitchell:
We believe we have been clear that our intent is to speak to the Mayor about
numerous police
policies which are of concern to our organization and others in the
community, including but not
limited to:
Chronic Offender Pilot Project (COPP) (and/or its successor)
to which we would specifically also add
Videotaping of first amendment activities vs. ORS 181.575
It's not clear why our previous emails outlining these concerns are not
sufficient to establish a
meeting with the mayor and appropriate staff. We made our initial request in
April and it is now
June 10th. We appreciate that the Mayor was busy with the budget during
some of that time, but
have never in 22 years of existence encountered so many hurdles to setting
up a meeting.
As it happens, one of our members will now be out of town between June
14-24 so setting up the meeting after the 24th would be preferable.
Thank you
On Wed, 16 Jul 2014, Wesson-Mitchell, Deanna wrote:
Hi Dan,
Tuesdays mid-day, Wednesday mornings, and Thursday afternoon are usually
the most flexible in
my schedule. Let me know what dates/times might work for you all.
If you send me a more specific list of concerns, I can be more sure to have
specific answers or
invite the appropriate people. Can you also let me know who all plans to
attend? Thanks.
On Jul 17, 2014, at 7:54 PM, "Portland Copwatch"
Ms Wesson Mitchell
We put in a request to talk to the Mayor back in April and we feel that the
vague accusations about
"misinformation or mischaracterizations" you perceive in our perspective,
which might differ from
yours or the Mayor's or the Chief's, are unnecessarily causing a delay in
scheduling a meeting.
So, please schedule a meeting with the Mayor and, in preparation, send us, in
writing, anything
you can that documents:
--Chronic Offender Pilot Project (and its successor)
--lack of reporting on "Illegal Drug Impact Areas" and Sit/Lie (Sidewalk
Management)
We began asking for a meeting with the Mayor in April but were willing to wait
until June due to
his schedule being tied up with the budget process. It is now mid-July, and we
hope to have a
meeting scheduled within the next few weeks that will include any appropriate
staff who can speak
to the above-mentioned issues.
thank you
*note that since we sent our original letter in April, the Citizen Review
Committee began hearing an
appeal involving private security at a camp sweep, in which the security
company refused to talk to
IPR investigators.
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 21:19:48
Hi Dan,
Again, I will be happy to meet with you regarding these matters.
Please select from the time periods below. Let me know if none of them
I will quickly address the simplest topics here:
--Portland Police as private security (Target store, etc)
- Yes, Portland police officers continue to be able to work events and
spaces open to the public through contracts with the PPA (like Target,
Moda Center Events, etc.). As has been publicly reported, these fee rates
are gradually increasing to cover all direct and indirect costs.
--Prosper Portland
- Was simply a presentation of an idea at a LPSCC meeting. It did not go
further than that.
--the status of the Mayor's security clearance/Joint Terrorism Task Force
- The Mayor will not apply for or receive a security clearance as is
actually standard throughout the nation.
- I will check into the issue being raised at CRC about the clean-up
contractor.
Looking forward to getting a meeting date set.
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