NEW PORTLAND POLICE REVIEW BOARD:
WORSE THAN THE OLD ONE?
Council Votes to Exclude Citizens from Deadly Force Reviews
In its first proceedings, the Portland's new citizen police oversight system, the "Independent" Police Review Division (IPR), proved to be riddled with more problems than its predecessor, the Police Internal Investigations Auditing Committee (PIIAC). (The IPR, consisting of seven staff people and a nine-member Citizen Review Committee [CRC] was created in June, 2001 to replace PIIAC--see PPRs #24-25.)
Prior to the first hearing on January 4, Copwatch expressed worries that the CRC received incomplete and unbalanced training. Although the Committee invited the NAACP and Project Respond (a non-profit mental health service) to one of its early December training sessions, the members soon followed up by meeting with the Portland Police Association and Chief Kroeker. This raised the total number of police-involved trainings to five out of seven informational sessions (we described Internal Affairs' visit to the CRC in our last issue).
The CRC postponed its plans for additional trainings after IPR Director Richard Rosenthal pushed to dispose of a backlog of 26 appeals inherited from PIIAC, in part to avoid accusations of being untimely. As a result, the CRC members were not trained in constitutional, civil, or human rights. Coupled with the fact that some of the IPR staff and committee members encouraged the police "union" to work in "partnership" with the IPR, this raises concerns that the new system will not live up to its claim of being independent.
Even our worst predictions didn't prepare us for the troublesome first hearings. In addition to the problem that the IPR reviews police investigations about allegations of police misconduct (rather than reviewing the allegations themselves), three other major difficulties exist:
(1) The very limited standard of review, which forces the CRC to decide a case based on whether a "reasonable person" could make the same finding as the Police Bureau "in light of evidence, whether or not the reviewing body agrees with the finding";
(2) The large amount of input from the Police Bureau's Internal Affairs Division (IAD). Even though IAD usually performs the initial investigations, and reviews and comments on IPR summary reports prior to the appeals, its representatives continue to present lengthy and misleading testimony-- in contradiction to the IPR ordinance, which restricts IAD to "answering questions"; and
(3) The overzealous involvement of Rosenthal, the IPR's head bureaucrat, in a process that is supposed to be driven by a diverse citizen committee.
Additionally, a number of other problems popped up at the hearings, including bias in favor of the police, use of double standards, the Director's declination of appeals without the assistance of CRC members, the failure to disclose certain public information (see sidebar), and much more.
Both cases from the first hearing (and a third case postponed for a week) involved highly questionable use of force against citizens, but the CRC members did not recommend any changes to the Bureau's conclusions that no police wrongdoing occurred (see separate article, p. 3).
Equally disturbing, IAD Captain Darrel Schenck revealed during one of the hearings that, in 2000, he unilaterally rescinded a policy that ensured full investi-gation for all complaints where force has definitely been used. Former Chief Moose established this policy in 1997 at the request of PIIAC. Schenck claimed he had limited resources to fully investigate such cases, ignoring the fact that IAD now has 10 sergeants, doubled since 1997. On February 7, Chief Kroeker wrote Copwatch a letter that defended Schenck, yetseemingly in contradictionstated "While a full investigation is time consuming and requires many resources, it is not the policy of IAD to decline to conduct a full investigation because of 'limited resources.' This would be irresponsible."
On the bright side, the CRC re-scheduled the ACLU, along with criminal defense attorneys and members of the Oregon Law Center, to give a "rights" presentation in mid-March which included information about Drug Free Zones, Hooper Detox, and basics on the law versus reality on the streets.
Late last year, the CRC disbanded its ill-conceived Executive Committee and estabilished three subcommittees (the Outreach, Policy and Internal Procedures "work groups"), which meet several times a month. The Policy work group had planned to forward unresolved PIIAC recom- mendations to City Council in the IPR's December, 2001 report, adding issues from CRC hearings to the April, 2002 report. However, Rosenthal and Auditor Gary Blackmer convinced them to postpone their comments. The CRC members agreed that recommendations, even those made last August, should not be sent to the Bureau without more work being done. Unfor-tunately, most of these recommendations require nothing more than common sense--police should not use profanity, the Chief should present a report on the Early Warning System (he promised in writing to give one last October), and police should take photos of suspects when they use force apprehending them.
Blackmer Slices Citizens Out of Shootings/Deaths Review
On an even more negative note, Auditor Blackmer (with Rosenthal's support) worked to prohibit citizens from reviewing police shootings and deaths in custody. Council requested code language to incorporate such cases into the IPR by the end of 2001; Blackmer's draft, presented two weeks later, recommended that an outside "expert" review deadly force cases to look for investigative deficiencies and to recommend policy changes. The "expert" would send the report to the CRC--at the same time he or she makes the recommenda-tions to City Council and the Police Bureau. Under this scenario, deadly force cases never come under the scrutiny of trained citizens representing the city's diverse population, despite the community's strong position that civilian reviewand public forums be provided for such serious cases.
On February 19, the CRC members voted 6-2 to ask Council to allow them to review those case files (one member was absent).
On March 6, the CRC members made a rational, yet passionate, presentation requesting this power. While the Portland Police Asso-ciation, the Auditor, and Director Rosenthal made outrageous statements in opposition, members of the public supported the CRC. Blackmer told the Council outright that he did not want responsibility for the board if it were given this new power, telling them they would have to find someone else to be in charge or create their own volunteer group. On March 13, without discussion, Council voted unanimously for Blackmer's proposal, choosing to disrespect the citizens.
This entire turn of events is particularly important, because the CRC stood up for its own capabilities against the City. The CRC members have experience in reviewing police reports, looking for investigative deficiencies, and identifying policy issues, so they are the logical people to involve in this process. Despite the illogical and badly formed arguments by Blackmer and Rosenthal, the existing layers of review do not include trained civilian participation.
While the PAC-2002 initiative's future is uncertain (see p. 1), it is clear that the community needs to make some basic changes to the current police review structure. At the very least, the CRC needs to be able to decide the appropriate findings based on a "preponderance of evidence" standard instead of having City staff force adherence to the "reasonable person" filter. Beyond that, the Director must be more willing to follow the CRC's recommendations, share all public information and stop relying on the Police Bureau for so much input.
For more info contact the IPR at 503-823-0146 or see their website at www.ci.portland.or.us/auditor/ipr
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