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Two Prominent Members of Citizen Review Committee Resign in
Frustration The February meeting of the Citizen Review Committee (CRC), the civilian body which hears appeals about officer misconduct cases, was cancelled one day after the group's Chair, Kristin Malone, announced her resignation. Malone resigned shortly after member Daniel Schwartz expressed frustrations with City Council, the Chief, and the Auditor (who oversees the system) in his own resignation letter. Acting Chair Candace Avalos took time at the March meeting to read these two members' resignation letters into the record, prompting a healthy discussion among CRC members questioning how to accomplish their work with the odds stacked against them. In January, member Vadim Mozyrsky chaired a highly unusual (and short) meeting at which the Appellant called in from jail, leading CRC to ask the Bureau to conduct further investigation of his 2016 incident. At the same time, the "Independent" Police Review (IPR), which houses the CRC, signaled its intentions to further decimate their once robust Annual Reports by removing more data and focusing on their internal workings. Membership Musical Chairs: Four Open Seats Means Less Continuity; One Nominee Admits Conflict
Former Chair Malone's resignation was short and noted that the concerns raised in Schwartz's letter
were "uniformly ignored," indicating agreement with most of what he had said. Schwartz
mostly focused on two key concerns. The first is that CRC had made inroads with most of City
The second key point related to a case in which Schwartz was key to CRC's decision-making. In Appeal # 2017-x-0007, they found Sgt. Erin Smith had threatened a community member improperly by saying he could be arrested for video-recording police (PPR #73). Schwartz likened the threat to the mafia pressuring business owners for payola. Former Chief Outlaw agreed there was misconduct, but sent the case back to be reviewed for truthfulness issues. That second case (#2018-x-0005) came back and CRC voted to find the officer in violation, and the Chief agreed (PPR #76). But the September 2019 Police Review Board Report (and its coverage in the Oregonian) revealed that rather than fire Sgt. Smith (the only presumptive punishment for lying), Outlaw changed the allegation to a performance issue and give Smith one day off without pay (PPR #79). Schwartz noted that CRC had been unanimous in recommending the finding, and the Chief had agreed, but had "inexplicably changed her mind." In far less detail, Schwartz expressed frustration that the Auditor stopped coming to CRC meetings and would not push the City Attorney to send an employee to advise them. This last point triggered much of the discussion at the March meeting, with CRC wondering why the Auditor was not responding to their requests to meet. IPR Director Ross Caldwell and Assistant Director Dana Walton-Macaulay interjected that they were deputy auditors and at least one of them was at each CRC meeting. They did not convincingly state they would relay CRC's concerns to the Auditor about the structural issues surrounding the standard of review and the Chief's decision. At some point toward the end of 2019, CRC members Kayla Wade (about one year into her term) and Neil Simon (whose three year term ended in September) also left the group, meaning there were four seats to fill. Scheduled replacements were posted for the March 18 City Council agenda, but rescheduled to April 1 after most city business was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Andrea Chiller, who has been on CRC for three years, was reappointed along with four new members and one alternate. The April meeting was also canceled, due to coronavirus. There have been a few times where there was mass turnover at CRC, including five people on the then-nine member board resigning en masse in 2003 (PPR #30) and four of the 11-member team not reapplying for new terms in 2015, with two other seats filled at the same time (PPR #65). Such large turnover, especially the loss of Malone's important legal insights (even when we disagreed with her conclusions), is not helpful for continuity of the Committee. Analysis: What's Next for CRC It cannot be overstated how damaging it was for Chief Outlaw to undermine the decision made by CRC after originally agreeing with them. As CRC members discussed at the March meeting, the system is set up so if there is a disagreement between CRC and the Chief, either they work out a compromise at a "conference hearing" or the case must head to City Council. The fact that the Chief changed the allegations in the Erin Smith case rather than letting it go to Council throws into question the integrity of the system. Was this a decision made because the officer threw himself on the mercy of the Chief at a "mitigation" hearing? Did the Chief not want to bring a case before City Council because the last time that happened, they affirmed CRC's proposed "Sustained" finding, leaving the Bureau with no options to mitigate the effects (PPR #78)? It is not known. Combining this failure with the lack of interest in CRC's standard of review during "union" contract negotiations (see Contract article) and the lack of attention to details about whether members of the public were satisfied with the complaint system (see DOJ article), it is up to the CRC and members of the community to demand a meaningful system of oversight. Case #2020-x-0001: Man Claims Injury from Handcuffing by One of Seventeen Officers As noted above, at the time of the CRC meeting in January, the Appellant in case #2020-x-0001 was incarcerated. After some confusion by jail workers, the man was able to relate he felt the long-term injury to his hand(/s) was the result of a violent arrest made by the Special Emergency Reaction Team in 2016. His case took so long to get to CRC because IPR dismissed the case, even though the DOJ agreement requires all force allegations to be investigated. The reason for the dismissal? Nobody could figure out which of the seventeen officers involved had actually taken the appellant into custody. There was no dispute force was used on the man. CRC asked the Bureau to go back to find out which officer was responsible, perhaps through notebook entries. The hearing was very short--the entire CRC meeting including public comment lasted only about 45 minutes. Case #2019-x-0003: Woman Says Police Failed to Help with Stolen Car (follow up)
IPR Looking to Streamline Their Streamlined Reports IPR's Annual Reports started out as 100+ page tomes with loads of tables, analysis and explanations of how systems work, who the members of CRC were, and more. In the last several years, the Reports went from more streamlined 30 page documents to 17 pages mostly full of infographics, and no data tables. In their first 2020 Quarterly Report, IPR announced that "because information normally included in the Annual Report is updated more often through IPR's interactive dashboards, the 2019 Report will have a new look and focus." They announced new sections which will "share more about the office's goals, procedures and topics we want to look into in 2020." There is no real reason Reports can't include both data and such internal information, except that the Auditor claims nobody will read the Reports. PCW believes nobody will go on line to look at the data for one particular year, and even if they do, it is IPR's job to publish those data with analysis explaining trends and concerns from the City, the Bureau and the community. If you agree IPR needs to do a more thorough job, email ipr@portlandoregon.gov asking for a thorough Annual Report with information on common complaints, deadly force, investigation/appeal outcomes, discipline and more, also highlighting the hard work of CRC members. If CRC is actually put forward as the hard-working body it is, perhaps fewer members would feel like resigning and others would want to volunteer.
Also at IPR/CRC --The Crowd Control Work Group met briefly in February, mostly discussing the idea of an on- line comment form to obtain comments about police actions at protests, but which also could be used for other input to CRC. --CRC is putting off formalizing the current slate of Work Groups until new members are appointed and they can hold a retreat. --Due to the cancelation of the April meeting, a vote was not yet taken on who will be named Chair, Vice Chair, and Recorder, the only three officer positions in the group.
For more information on IPR call 503-823-0146 or visit <portlandoregon.gov/ipr>. |
May, 2020
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#80 Table of Contents
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Council to change the standard by which
they review cases to be less deferential to the police. The
"reasonable person" standard requires CRC to agree with the commanding officer's decision even
if they disagree with it, so long as a "reasonable person" could come to the same conclusion. CRC
tried to get the City to change that to a "preponderance of the evidence," going so far as to put
forward a formal recommendation with supporting letters from a variety of community
organizations (including Portland Copwatch-- 
This case, originally heard in December, was slated to come
back to CRC for a "conference
hearing" with Chief Resch, who apparently was not willing to accept CRC's recommended
"Sustained" finding. They felt the Appellant was right that an officer failed to take a police report,
which led to her car being impounded after it was recovered
from being stolen. In